Page 29 of The Syndicater (Dark Verse 6)

She is found.

For more than twenty years, he'd thought the words.

She is alive.

She is real.

She is found.

For more than twenty years, he'd lived the words.

She is alive.

She is real.

She is found.

Yet, he'd never heard their sound.

They had a sound. A melody of a lifetime spent sustaining a hope, spoken through lips he had kissed countless times.

"Tristan!" the voice, the melody, the sound, shook him from a trance-like state. His gaze focused. Morana was looking at him, waiting for his response. He realized that he'd been standing like stone for a few minutes, long enough to prompt her to physically shake him.

He still stood mute, slightly numb, unable to understand what was happening to him. The words rebounded in his brain, injectingsomethinginto his blood, sending it rushing to the organ underneath his ribs, making it pump extra hard, doubling thesomethingback into his veins.

She is alive.

She is real.

She is found.

Someone was shaking his hands.

He looked down.

Nothing was shaking his hands.

They were just shaking in the air.

Why were they shaking?

What was happening to him?

Smaller hands gripped his, stilling the tremors. He raised his eyes up to lock gazes with hazel eyes he had learned like a litany. The look in them was heavy but happy, emotional, a sheen of tears filmed over them, making them appear glossy like the stuff she put over her lips sometimes.

"Tristan."

Just one word. His name. Her eyes. Her hands.

And it crashed into him.

A noise escaped his chest, one he had never heard before, something raw but confused, and Morana stepped up like she always did, wrapping him in his arms like she always did.

He stood motionless, trying to find the words and compute as she hugged him, his own eyes beginning to burn.

She was alive.

She was real.

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