"Just stop," she begged aloud. "I can't help you. I don't know how. Please. Just tell me how to go back to the way it was yesterday. He is gone, and I amsorry."
Exhaustion gripped her.
She'd gotten no sleep at Magnice. Had barely eaten since she and Drae had shared the snacks she'd brought up with her soup.
She was so tired she felt like a child on the edge of a temper tantrum. It was an annoying rage that she didn’t know how to stop. Tears in the corners of her eyes. Sloppy words coming from her mouth that she didn’t realize she was saying.
She didn’t want to push them out, but she wasn’t sure she had a choice.
She wanted it to end.
As she held her head between her hands, pressing on her ears to stop the voices from flowing in, she couldn’t stop shaking. Rocking back and forth. It was a different kind of torture than her own grief. This was grief she couldn't ignore or push away.
"Please stop," she begged aloud.
She couldn’t get the wails out of her head. She couldn’t stop seeing the flames of her older brother. His words radiated through her insides on a loop, interjecting itself into the Wyverdraki cries.
Their songs turned to echoes in her ears.
And then the Ulfram began to howl along with it.
The great marsupial creatures, the Aberds, began their gibbering.
The Aviteth sang out in high-pitched calls.
And suddenly, there was a great chorus of mourning Noctuans singing through the trees that turned her insides to a fire she didn’t know how to contain.
Hearing the dragons had been agonizing enough.
Hearing every Noctuan in the forest cry out for their King was something else entirely.
She purged nothingness onto the ground, unable to stop her stomach from flipping.
Stop, she begged.Please stop.
The grip her fingers had on her own hair was no reprieve from their pain. Tears and saliva collecting in her throat, she choked on her sobs. She tried to avert the pain to anything physical, tried pinching her skin and tearing at her roots. Digging her toes into the cold dirt.
Get out,she choked.
The sounds grew louder and louder in her ears as though the beasts had surrounded her on all sides.
“Pleasestop,” she pleaded.
Back and forth.
Her core succumbed to the weight of their melodic void. Her fingers dug into her skull. Her muscles strained. She was pulled in all directions.
Burn her.
“Get out,” she sobbed aloud.
Be brave for me.
I know how much you want that power.
“Just stop. Get out of my head.”
She shuddered at the high-pitched howls of the Ulfram. The Noctuans had all come together as a family to grieve.
