Page 5 of Of Songs and Silence

Then she is gone, leaving me with more of the eternal silence she has cursed me with since she took my sisters from me.

My head spins, resignation overtaking me before the gentle hum of the ocean breaches my mind once again.

The song.Mysong. It’s returned.

It’s louder than before, pulsating with an urgent rhythm. I can’t risk it abandoning me again. Maybe it will be my salvation. Or maybe it’s my damnation.

Either way, I find myself finally answering its call.

CHAPTERTHREE

MELODI

The closer I get to the beach, the louder the song becomes.

It isn’t deafening, though. More all-encompassing, so thick in the air, I can feel the melody gliding against my skin like silk, can taste it dissolving on my tongue like spun sugar.

It tugs at my limbs until I am closer to the water than I have ever dared to get before. Then my feet are submerged.

My sandals sink into the wet sand, and the tips of my nightgown trail in the warm, receding water.

Is this what death sounds like? What it feels like to be lured into that endless void?

And if so, is it really worse than Damian’s bloodstained hands caressing my face like he already owns me?

Another wave rolls in, pushing me, prodding me to return with it. Logically, I know I can’t swim, but some irrational part of my mind tells me that the sea is my home. That it belongs to me, and I belong to it.

So deeper I go.

Just as the water hits my thighs, the song stops. Silence pours in. The air is empty and still, but for the rhythmic, maddening crashing of the waves.

I am frozen with fear—fear for what Mother will do when her soldiers tell her that I defied her orders to stay away from the water, fear for the way I am losing my own mind a little more each passing day.

Worse than that is the curious, unreasonable sense of grief at the loss of the song that nearly led me to my death.

It’s only as I turn on shaking legs to walk toward the back gate of the chateau that I wonder why the one thing I didn’t seem to fear was the water itself. I know better than most what lurks in its depths.

I should know enough to be afraid. And I should certainly have known better than to turn my back on the inky, churning sea while I am still standing in its midst.

There is no time to chastise myself when a cold hand wraps around my ankle. My body slams down onto the beach, sand filling my mouth as I’m dragged back into the sea and into the waters below.

Terror, unlike any I have experienced before, wraps its hands around my throat in an ever-tightening grip. I open my mouth, though, of course, no sound comes out. It’s oddly silent, the moment that pulls me to my death. Just a small splash, barely audible over the sound of the waves.

Then the water closes over my head.

I struggle, for all the good it will do, limbs flailing against the iron grip that tugs me deeper into the sea. My breath escapes me in a single, precious bubble of air, rising to the surface I suspect I will never see again. I clamp my mouth shut, trying to preserve what little oxygen might be left in me.

“Kane.” A deep, angry voice sounds from behind me, but that doesn’t make sense.

There can’t be voices down here, let alone one that’s warm and clear and ungarbled by the sea. My heartbeat thunders in my ears, my lungs already protesting the lack of air.

“What?” a different, closer voice responds. My captor.Kane?“You were overthinking it.”

“No.” It’s more a growl than a word, fury truncating in the single syllable. “As usual, you’re underthinking it.”

Has my mind fabricated male versions of my sisters arguing to accompany me into death? I search for a memory instead, something to hold onto. Zaina’s scent of jasmine and cloves, the sound of Aika’s fiddle, Rose’s pure, melodic laugh.

Tears stab at the back of my eyes. Zaina will blame herself for this, and Aika will blame the rest of the world. They will both lose themselves over a single moment of carelessness on my part.

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