Page 107 of Aïdes the Unseen
“I can’t give it to you.”
Fuck. Now I would scream. But before I could, she continued.
“But I can give you the sound it makes in the world.”
She reached out with one long, pale hand and touched her fingers to my brow.
I didn’t feel heat. I didn’t feel cold.
I feltrecognition.
A whisper passed through me, not in words, but insong. The syllables coiled around my breath like vines. It wasn’t a name I knew, but my heart slammed against my ribs like it had just heard its own reflection for the first time.
Graven caught my shoulder as I swayed.
“You okay?” he asked.
I nodded, barely. “I think I know where to go.”
Mara’s voice cut through. “Then go. But you won’t like what you find.”
Frustrated, I turned to her. “Why?”
“Because if the first memory was stolen,” she said, “then someone will be guarding it.”
I looked at the dog. He stared back.
Not wagging. Not blinking.
Waiting.
Graven reached for my hand. “Then we go together.”
Without hesitation, I threaded my fingers with his. I kept hearing the sound.
Not with my ears, but in that place behind the ribs, where breath becomes instinct and instinct becomes language. It wasn’t a word. It was a feeling. A tone. A shape made of longing and distance.
It clung to the edges of my awareness, a perfume I couldn’t place, ancient, half-buried, butmine.
Neither woman tried to stop us or offered more insight. I didn’t even pay attention to whether they were still there or if their images had dissipated. They just weren’t important anymore.
We reached the hallway just beyond the hearth chamber before I realized I was trembling.
“How do I find something by asound?” I muttered.
Graven was quiet beside me, letting me think. He hadn’t put his shoes on. He didn’t seem to care. He looked like a man chasing starlight, barefoot and composed, letting me lead.
I stopped walking.
The dog halted too, one paw slightly raised. Watching.
I closed my eyes.
There it was again.
Not a name. Anote. A low, humming resonance that tasted like smoke and honeysuckle and lightning just before it strikes. It was hummingupfrom within me.
My fingers twitched toward my pocket, an old habit. Of course, that was when my phone rang.
