Discordant Note: Crescendo | TBATE

Chapter 294: The Pain of Love

Thank you to my beta reader and editor, GlassThreads!

Aurora

Andravhor had the most wonderful eyes I had ever seen. I remembered, long ago, being immediately struck with intrigue upon seeing them. It wasn't simply their paleness, like a geode's crystal, or the way they reflected any emotion I might feel. It was that sparkle, that inquisitive awareness of everything around him that made me gravitate towards him.

When my husband-to-be spoke, there was a sort of dance that he held with his own mind, deep within. He'd talk of the stars and mathematics and distances and things that made little to no sense to me, but I could understand that twinkle in his eyes as he told grand tales of the wider universe. I could understand that because it was what I felt whenever I sang.

Days had turned to months, then years. Before long, I had made Andravhor—one of the very last of the djinn—my husband. And then Chul had come along.

Even now, I remembered the swell of pride and joy I felt whenever I looked into the binary gaze of our son. He had both of our eyes. The fiery suns of my pupils burned there, true, but so too did that inquisitive and hopeful curiosity that my husband called his own.

Until this moment, I had never truly understood why I loved those eyes so much. I had never truly internalized what made them so special to me.

My son was covered in a dozen shallow wounds, each of them still red and seared from his last battle with Toren. Though I had no heart that could beat, I still felt as if it had broken apart all over again upon seeing the ragged state of his body. The unhealing wounds were cauterized in a vain attempt to seal them, but it was an imperfect measure. His hair clung to his face like reeds, each strand seeming to lack the vibrant fire that always drove him to laugh and challenge the world.

He shouldn't have suffered like this. Nobody I loved should have to suffer like this.

Chul's eyes held Toren's, both of my sons frozen as if by a spell. I could feel our rage—that twin, burning, impulsive rage that we both had shared as we enacted a facsimile of justice on the broken Scythe at our boots—melt away in the face of this moment.

The room was still as they looked at each other, quietly measuring. Quietly guessing. Not a soul moved, not even Seris Vritra.

I pushed outward more with my spirit, layering the Unseen World over Toren's vision. Though my skin ached and burned with every movement, it was utterly inconsequential to the thunder of my thoughts.

Toren, I thought quickly, Toren, please! Let him see me! He can't, not without your intervention.

Painful visions of a night not long past seared through my soul, where my son had failed to see me. He lacked the requisite understanding of heartfire to pierce the veil of souls. Already, I was seeking the relic brooch pinned to Toren's breast. Should I inhabit it, we could finally speak.

Toren's eyes flicked to me, his jaw slowly working in the darkness. "I can try, Aurora," he thought slowly, "but with the Brand–"

As Toren's attention shifted away from Chul's, my half-blood son seemed to finally gain awareness of the room around him. He blinked, groaning as every movement jostled his wounds. His confused attention wandered about the prison chamber: from the black diamond walls, cracked from Toren's might, to Viessa Vritra's broken body beneath our feet, and then to Seris.

Chul snarled, then lunged.

Toren was moving before the world had time to register his brother's bared teeth. He flickered from a pulse of mana, then interposed himself between his nest-mate and his blood-borne brother. In his clenched hands, fire sputtered protectively.