“Cody.” The word is barely more than a whisper, but still, he seems to hear me.
His eyes meet mine, looking so confused, forced to play catch up quicker than his mind can process. Elorie sneers down at me with a smug grin despite the changelings fighting past the line of guards in front of them, placing her hand on his shoulder. And then they’re gone in a blink, the changelings reacting with as much rage and indignation as is simmering in my gut.
That fucking bitch looked at me like she won a game I didn’t know we were playing, convinced I wanted to take her son away from her.
She isn’t completely wrong. I’d love to save him from her poisonous influence, but I’m not so bold as to assume I have more right to him than she does. It’s enough for me that he’s breathing, so long as she treats him well. I’ll happily surrender victory over to her if it means that the brother I love isn’t dead, that he gets a shot at life. She can turn him against me, breathe tales of how the jealous attention whore tried to kill him all she likes.
He’s alive, and that means more than my misery.
They appear again not too far away, Elorie frowning like she doesn’t understand what happened. My stomach lurches and I unconsciously take a step forward.
She drained herself too much waking him up. She doesn’t have the energy left to get them out of here.
Chaos ensues the moment everyone realizes the same thing, the changelings going for them both, the guards surging forward, and some of the changelings breaking off to rush the seven of us. I take another few steps forward, not exactly sure what I mean to accomplish beyond getting to him, to distract the changelings for a moment so he has a better shot at escaping.
An arm bands across my stomach and yanks me back before the air rushes from my lungs as I’m thrown over Lucien’s shoulder, the world careening around me. Dorian shoves open the nearest door before slamming it shut behind us, him and Atlas barricading it shut as Luce drops me to my feet.
“What the hell were you trying to accomplish?” he demands, looking absolutely livid.
The door jolts against its hinges as something slams into it, then again. Dorian and Atlas lean against it as reinforcement and I have the weird vision of a hand punching through the wood and clawing their throats open. It’s an overlaying vision as I know completely that it isn’t happening and yet still able to see it so vividly.
I run a hand through my hair, starting to pace. The walls seem to shrink around me despite the massive room we’re in. Every stone column appears to grow until there’s hardly any space to stand and my breathing grows rapid.
“We have to go back out there. He’s out there; needs me, needs us. There’s too many, and Elorie can’t teleport them out, he’s going to be slaughtered.” I look up at Lucien’s stoic face, my eyes wild. “I have to go back out there.”
“And what are you going to do when you get in the hall?” His voice is cold, flinging facts in my face, reminding me just how helpless I am in this situation. All of this supposed power and it means nothing right now.
“I’ll distract them long enough to give him a chance.”
I meet his glare with one of my own, fire burning in my veins. Panic, rage, desperation; call it what you will, but it makes my blood heat as it courses through my veins, rising in intensity until I question if I’ve still managed to retain some of Apollo’s abilities.
Lucien grips my upper arm and starts walking away from the others and I’m forced to fall into step beside him, lest he start dragging me. His grip isn’t tight enough to bruise, just firm. “Then help him.”
We follow the pathway lined by stone columns, approaching the raised dais that I was forced onto the day we were summoned here. The glass wall is still intact, the sun starting to lower in the late afternoon sky.
As we stand beside the piano bench he releases me, but I’m still trapped by his determined glare, holding me captive. “Be the distraction that everyone needs you to be right now and we’ll keep you safe so you can concentrate.”
“Everyone’s dying around us and you’re asking me to pretend everything’s fine,” I hiss, annoyed that my big contribution is acting as nothing more than a songbird.
“No, I’m asking you to accept that everything is falling apart and channel that helpless rage into something useful so we might actually survive.” He doesn’t mince words or lessen their intensity to make them easier to swallow. Every sharp edge he tosses my way, trusting that I can dull their edges into something manageable.
Dropping into my seat, I glare at those damned ivory keys containing a lifetime of pained memories, all of those emotions rising up as I hover my fingers over them. With a heavy exhale that takes more energy than I imagined, I push them away. Every ghost that haunts me, I refuse to let have any more power over me. All that’s left is that helpless rage Lucien shone a light on, demanding it finally be acknowledged.
He refuses to let me hide anymore, and I’m not so sure I like the person he shoved into the spotlight.
But all I have is me, whether or not that’s enough. All of my personas and delusions have no place here, not while my mates are the only things standing in the way between us and an early grave.
Closing my eyes, I finally let my fingers touch the smooth keys, trusting the people around me implicitly while I let my guard down. Every shield I’ve spent a lifetime building up to keep myself safe, I take down brick by mental brick. The entire dam of pent up emotions from the repressed trauma and desperation I let loose, knowing that I’ll walk out of here and never be able to pretend things are the same, if I even walk out of here at all.
My fingers fly across the keys without conscious thought, and on the next breath, time itself seems to stop. My fingers are the same flurry of movement as before, and yet they’re somehowmore.Everything I am; every sob, every scream, and every smile. I let all of it bleed into the music, pour every drop of who I am into the next note, the next puff of air that leaves my lips as the words begin to slip free.
I play, not for all of the people outside of those doors, but for me.
Sweat beads on my temple as my fingers fly, keeping my eyes firmly shut the entire time. I’m not sure if it’s because I want to block out the world around me, too much of a coward to face it, or if it’s because I don’t want anything to exist beyond this feeling. The words pour from my throat without hesitation now, rising in volume as I push more and more of myself into them.
Energy thrums through my body, stirred to life alongside my abilities. And though I know it’ll put a bigger target on our heads with the changelings already trying to storm into the room, I embrace it. If they’re focused on me, then Elorie has a better chance of getting Cody out of here in one piece. She’s a necessary evil right now, one that I’d love to see the smug look wiped off of her face, but we share the same goal currently.
One song blends into another, and I feel no different than a violinist on a sinking ship, striving to put just a little bit more of myself into the world before I die, trying to ease the mind of at least one person so that they can enter death’s embrace without fear. I fumble only once, needing to clear my throat through the steady stream of tears racing down my cheeks.
