Discordant Note: Crescendo | TBATE

Chapter 300: Crescendo

Thank you to my beta reader and editor, GlassThreads!

Arthur Leywin

The sound of Toren Daen's quiet sobs fell, deadened and muted, upon my ears as I, too, tried to suppress the welling pain in my heart. The sounds that wrenched themselves from Spellsong's throat weren't the kind that you projected to the world, unable to keep them quiet and contained. It wasn't an eruption of pain and misery that tore its way from the throat until you were ragged and sore.

No. This was the weeping of something seeping through cracks that had been open for a long time. It was soft and subdued, the sort of sorrow that comes after seeing a man dying on the side of the road. It was the kind of sorrow that came from necessity and pain all at once, where there was that endless question of what could have been done otherwise.

Sylvie was the first to move. As I stood transfixed at the top of the crater, my draconic bond glided past me, the rain drenching her as much as anyone else. The rims of her dress came away muddy with every step, brown leaching into the black.

She approached Toren Daen without a word, her emotions clear and poignant over our bond. Her golden eyes were warm with characteristic compassion as she knelt across from Toren, but she said nothing as his tears continued to fall.

I stayed back. I wasn't certain I could walk back down the stairway of Hell and look into Nico's empty eyes. I wasn't certain I could keep myself whole.

I didn't know how long it continued like that. Long enough that the runic chains along Toren's arms flickered a deep, bloody red, pulsing for a few moments before something I couldn't understand shifted about him. Long enough that his weeping ceased, draining into something hollow and reserved as he cradled Nico's corpse. Long enough that I reasserted control over my frayed emotions, pulling them into a semblance of order.

At my side, Regis stared on impassively, uncaring. The Elderwood Guardian crooned, sinking and compressing from the weight of everything around us.

Toren let out a shuddering breath, his breath misting in the cool rain. For the moment, the downpour had lightened to a drizzle, but the phoenix-blooded mage was still drenched to the bone. He gently laid Nico's body on the ground, his shifting eyes clouded.

"It feels wrong to leave his body here, cold in the rain," he muttered, as if just now finding the words. His voice was a deceptively calm baritone, with just the slightest hint of a quiver. The light-haired mage brushed his hand across Nico's eyes, closing the lids as raindrops splashed off of them. "Too much wrong has happened already to him."

As Toren spoke, I finally forced my mechanical limbs to move. I put one foot in front of the other, moving the muscles that controlled my forward momentum.

Sylvie raised a slender hand, brushing it through Nico's hair and pushing it away from his face. She pursed her lips, staring down at the body as she contemplated what she would do.

My bond had known Elijah, just as I did.

"Nico did not deserve this kind of end," my bond agreed somberly. "It wasn't right. But he doesn't deserve to just rot in a ditch, either. Forgotten. Abandoned."

I stopped once I reached them, my breath shuddering as I forced myself to stare down at the body of the man who had been my best friend in two lives. And in both, I had failed him. His skin was already unnaturally pale. That hadn't changed, even in death.

But as I looked down at the face, which had been twisted in hideous, rabid snarls and horrid anger, I wanted to imagine it was peaceful, now. Those muscles didn't tense and pull his lips into sneers or make his eyes flash with malevolence. I could imagine that he was at peace, in some sense of the word.