As our small group made the easy trek back to my home, I fell behind and pried Liv carefully from her companion; seeming to understand the urgency of my situation, Adalia broke gently apart and moved ahead to talk to Michael Fears.
"You're mad," Liv stated once we were out of earshot.
"I am not mad."
"You're mad, Bastian. I'm not stupid."
"No," I agreed, "you aren't." I paused for a moment and then looked down to her. "I'm not mad at you."
"No, but you're worried for me. What's going on?"
I sighed heavily and stopped walking altogether. Michael Fears turned briefly but continued on when I waved him away. My head throbbed persistently and I wet my cracked lips, ignoring the desperate need for another drink.
"Where did you get that melody?" I finally asked her. She frowned.
"I don't know. It came to me." A nervous hand reached up to tuck her short blonde hair behind her ears. "As if I'd known it all along."
"You have," I told her, feeling rather uncomfortable with the whole situation. "It's an old song."
This was entirely too dangerous and important for my sister to be involved in; even then, I saw flashes of her undoing every time I closed my eyes. The King of the Underworld was not pleasant and did not care a lick about sentiment; if she got into any sort of trouble with him, I knew I would not be able to save her. Still, I did not try to restrain her beautiful, brilliant song; I did not have it in me to extinguish that spark within her spirit.
I continued on.
"It's an old love song," I said, and chuckled darkly. "Long time since I've heard it, though."
"You've heard that melody before?" she said excitedly, her eyes wide and seeking knowledge in that hungry way of hers. I smiled fondly at her.
"Yes."
"Tell me more," she insisted, and my chest ached painfully. In that moment, she looked every bit the rambunctious child who had consistently wheedled her way into bedtime story after bedtime story, until we were talking so late into the night that she eventually curled up on my chest like a cat and slept soundly until the sun had risen; and every night, I stayed as still as I could out of fear of waking her, much content to sleep in whichever chair I had firmly told her would not be my bed for the night, our hearts beating in sync as her chest rose and fell in rhythm with mine.
I shook this feeling away. This was not helpful to the current situation, and as much as I wanted to reminisce about her childhood, I had many more pressing matters to deal with.
"You remember the tale I told you once about the gods?" I asked, resuming a strolling pace. She followed.
"Which ones?"
"Hades and Persephone."
Something shifted in her face at the mention of Persephone; when the woman was around on a more regular basis, she had loved to spend time with Liv, and often amused her in the spring and summer months by pulling flowers and fruits from thin air. Erianna would have simply adored Liv's earlier performance with the rose; yet I knew how fragile the situation was, and that Erianna could never be shown Liv's brilliant song that might truly bring the world back to the way it used to be.
"You mean Auntie Eri and Uncle James?"
Uncle James. That had taken me off guard like a knife to the back, and for a moment I was honestly winded. He had not been referred to as thus in many years, since he had turned hard and embittered, since he had begun to snarl constantly and I had feared to let him cradle Liv in his arms as he had done many years ago. I was not even aware that Liv remembered him from her youth; he had been starkly different then, always bringing her gifts of animal skeletons that had amused her hungry mind, and teaching her about the stars above in terms far too complicated for a child, while she listened with rapt attention. I had not allowed him into my home in a very long time—Liv had been perhaps all of six. That she had remembered him at all—that she had still called him Uncle James—was staggering.
