Book 15
Blake
I love a straight line.
I like a natural, expected curve. I like a perfectly sharpened pencil against graph paper, the rhythmic pull of an eraser swiping away at flakes of lead. I like a solid foundation built on the back of flawless trigonometry–something static, impenetrable, and utterly flawless.
I like solid, well-built rooms in shades of muted gray. I like clothes that feel weightless, soft, without a tag scratching my neck or the feeling of fabric rubbing my skin. I like exactly three foods–a rare steak. Nectarines. One specific brand of granola that I’ll stop eating if the recipe even remotely changes. I like a single cup of coffee in the morning–black and bitter. No cream. No sugar. No frills.
No color. No emotion. No feeling. Nothing unexpected. Nothing that’ll draw my mind out of the carefully crafted funnel of resistance I’ve crafted where I’m safe and secure, unbothered and unburdened.
But… noise…
I flinch as another shrill voice wafts from the radio attached to a nameless warrior’s hip across the cavernous grand foyer. The static makes my skin crawl even from this far away. I roll my neck, closing my eyes as prickles make my skin erupt in gooseflesh beneath the tailored tuxedo draped over my body, snug like a well-fitted glove. My reflection in the mirror, however, is stoic and unbothered–a mask of indifference, just how I like it.
“Bad news,” Mom says, her voice cutting through the static weaving through my brain.
I look up at her as she carefully steps down the marble staircase in too-high heels and a dress of rich lavender silk–her signature color. Her white-blonde hair is pin straight and twisted in a low, regal bun pinned to the back of her head. The Luna Queen of Crescent Falls in all her glory, truly, her jeweled fingers sliding down the banister as she picks her way to my side. “Dad isn’t coming. He’s stuck up north, he says, still in a meeting with the chancellor of Wellington.”
“He’s always hated the symphony,” I reply, and she rolls her violet eyes before coming to a stop at the bottom of the staircase. Two warriors appear at her side, one handing her the silken clutch that perfectly matches her gown while the other helps her into a luxurious white fur coat that rests just below her ankles.
“Well, there are things you can’t train out of a man, and apparently taste in music is one of them,” she says with a knowing, sly smile, eyeing me with interest. “I’m surprised you agreed to come with me tonight, given your affinity for the club scene. What did Brie call you? A club rat?”
“That sounds like something she’d say.” I turn back to the slightly rusted antique mirror and straighten my tie, smoothing the black fabric over my starched white dress shirt.
Mom’s reflection hovers just behind mine as she adjusts the pearl earrings dangling from her earlobes. Her lifted, demurely excited expression flattens, however, as she strokes a pearl. “These belonged to your great-grandmother,” she says in a near whisper, a pained tone that makes me turn to look into her face instead of her reflection. “Grandma Maddy gave them to me recently,” she continues with a heavy sigh. “I miss her. Isla. I wish you kids would have had more time with her.”
I barely remember my great-grandparents. I’d been… around four years old when they died. My childhood memories are hazy, to say the least, but I remember running circles around a plush, butter-yellow armchair in what we used to call the pink room at the palace in Moonrise. I’d been chasing… Aris, I believe, in a tight circle while Isla’s laugh reverberated around the room and our grandmother, Maddy, half-heartedly tried to rein us back in, but she’d been enjoying the show as well.
I remember playing with Isla’s rings while she told stories about what Crescent Falls used to be like, what it used to look like before the population boom that followed her rise to power. She became more than just a breeder; she became a queen. What was once a small city turned into a deep, writhing metropolis with buildings that disappear into the clouds around us as I drive my mother toward the performing arts center in the middle of downtown, the city washed in twinkling lights that reflect off glass skyscrapers and wet pavement.
There used to be a forest here–a deep, endless one. Roads were narrow and made of dirt instead of multi-lane highways and bridges that span miles, that span entire pack territories that linger beneath the shadows.
Crescent Falls is… too loud. Too mechanical. Too electric. It echoes even in the darkest hours of night–a constant hum of noise. The sound of life itself.
And for someone like me… it’s too much.
It’s why I bought my penthouse in the clouds, so high off the ground I can’t hear the traffic, the car horns and the scrape of trains and trolleys. It’s why I paid a small fortune to have a team come to install blackout blinds on the windows that keep the immaculately tidy, open space out of the glare of the lights. It’s why the walls are gray, the couch is gray, the cabinets, doors, and floors are gray.
Getting to this place was a blur. I blink down at the concert program in my hands, sure I was just standing in the foyer of my parents’ castle, and now I’m here, surrounded by incessant white noise that grinds through me, screeching through my head like a train coming off its tracks.
“Oh my Goddess,” Mom says, popping each syllable like bubble-gum. “Do you recognize her?”
I lean into her space to look at her program as the concert hall below our booth sizzles with noise while people take their sweet time finding their seats. The memory of her music greets me, embraces me, folds me back into myself, and I close my eyes in an attempt to let it sweep me away.
“Marianna Abbot? It can’t be.” Mom turns to the friends we’re seated with–her friends. Other high-ranking Lunas, as well as Betas’ wives, whom she invited to share the royal booth tonight for the finale of the concert season. I’m the only male present in the booth as it stands, and the women titter around me like little birds as the memory of Anna’s violin fades and is replaced by the soft “Oohs” and “Ahhs” falling from softly painted lips.
“She is just gorgeous. How do you know her? Should I know her?” a Beta’s wife, her name lost on me entirely, says directly behind me. The nameless, faceless woman leans forward to speak to my mother, her hand resting on the top of my chair. I flinch at her proximity, but she doesn’t notice how I lean away just a touch.
“Oh, it’s been years since I’ve seen her. She and Blake were the best of friends back in the day.”
A half dozen sets of eyes turn toward me, but I ignore them, pretending to be invested in the crowd below.
“Second chair at her age? What a feat,” another little bird remarks, her dangling diamond earrings clinking, the sound loud and grating enough to drown out the noise all around me. “She must be an angel on the strings. What does she play? Violin? Cello? What else is there?”
“Bass is the big one, right?” another laughs, followed by more giggles, an endless amount of noise.
I rise, murmuring something under my breath that is either a firm, audible, “Would you all shut the fuck up?” or a soft and polite, “Excuse me,” as I side-step out of the booth and into the private hallway leading away from the space directly overlooking the stage.
The warriors guarding the hallway don’t pay me any mind. I cut through a service door to avoid the light crowd still mingling even as muted applause rings out through the walls, and the orchestra tunes their instruments. A dank, dimly lit concrete stairwell is at once my salvation–silent, but slightly damp, the odor of mildew masking the scents of several thousand people and making it possible to catch my breath again.
I should have known. No, I should have checked. I should have read the program online like a normal person would do, wouldn’t they? See what wordless songs would play? How long I’d have to sit in the dark until intermission when I could order a scotch, neat–a double pour. Triple?
I practically fall down the stairs in my haste to just… get away. From what is entirely lost on me. Two weeks ago, my mind was torn to absolute shreds. Like talons of iron raking through my gray matter, leaving festering lesions in their wake. I remember little about the after, the healing, the incessant sense of Mystics hovering nearby, worrying over me–their lord and fucking savior.
But I do vividly remember the look on Soren’s smug-ass-shit-eating-grin-wearing face when I’d sputtered Marianna’s name.
Worse. Skye’s name.
To his credit, which I hate to give him, he hasn’t said a word to anyone about it.
To my credit, a few white lies about my head hurting has kept most of the family at bay, including Evander and Ryatt, who would love to see me strung on the palace gates for the stunt I pulled by hiding over a dozen Alphas over five Goddess-damned years without so much as mentioning a word about it to the family.
I shove through another door with no sense of direction nor time, my breath coming in quick gasps, and stare into the empty abscess of the basement level of the concert hall.
Flickering fluorescent lights quiver overhead. The heavy stairwell door slams shut behind me, sending a booming echo into the recesses of the space. Lockers line the walls, followed by a few cheaply made and recently replaced doors. Practice rooms. Bathrooms. A few empty offices. I pace as the sound of the orchestra tuning bleeds through the ceiling, past pipes and incredibly unsafe exposed wires.
I do not know where I’m going as I loosen my tie, one hand braced and sliding against the wall as I walk into the cover of shadows where a short, metal staircase leads to the wings of the stage. The gnawing, overlapping voices in my head fade, replaced by water dripping and the screech of tuning instruments. Normal noises. Noises that remind me I still have two feet planted in reality.
A woman stands in the shadows holding a violin. Her dark, almost black, hair trembles just an inch above her shoulders. She raises the violin to her shoulder, tilting her head, pulling an invisible bow across the strings.
I can… hear the silent music. I can see it in my mind as her perfectly straight spine relaxes, her body rolling to a song branded in my chest. The memory of it hurdles back to me against my will. The dark hues of a basement level apartment with an old couch and a TV heavier than I was at sixteen. Cans of soda going flat on a coffee table. Her laugh. The polyphonic texture of her violin over the smooth hum of a recorded cello piece. The sonata, the allegro, the distinct movements, tastes, colors, and noise as I watched her expression adjust to every changing melody, every pluck of her fingers and smooth pull of her bow. It was everything. It was nothing. It was the loudest sound and the softest lullaby. It was my undoing. It always has been.
Captivating. She was always just as captivating as her music.
Marianna abruptly lowers her hand and turns to me, her blue eyes wide, adjusting to the shadows gathered between us.
“Blake?” she rushes out, glancing around. “What–what are you doing here?”
“I have no idea,” I answer because it’s the honest truth. “It was too loud upstairs.”
Her mouth moves, but no sound comes out. “You’re at the symphony. Of course it’s loud.”
“Why aren’t you on stage with everyone else?” I haven’t spoken to her in years. Not face to face… nor voice to voice. I’ve seen her smooth signature on various forms and documents. I’ve seen her… input and opinions regurgitated in emails between me and the mediator I hired to handle… everything.
We had an agreement. An iron-clad contract. It was… her idea. Her decision.
Not mine.
But she was right.
“I’m–I’m filling in for the first chair of the string section,” she says, tilting her chin while her cheeks burn a deep fuchsia. “I go on stage last.”
“Congratulations.” I’m not sure my stiff tone is appropriate. I’m never sure. I can’t read the emotion behind her eyes. I don’t understand why her eyes narrow and her mouth pulls into a tight line. She’s not happy to see me, I think. No, I know it. She’s confused as to why I’m here, alone with her, but that… sliver of feeling casting a shadow on the left side of her face isn’t something I recognize.
Because it’s a…
Bruise.
“Did he do that to you?” I ask without a shred of hesitation, my voice as cold and smooth as ice.
She looks away, her eyes back on the stairwell where shadows dart in and out of view. I have minutes with her. Possibly seconds. Seconds to take in the faded mate’s mark on her neck as she swallows, the column of her throat bobbing.
“Anna–” I take a single step in her direction.
Her entire body locks up tight. My hands curl into fists at my sides.
“Marianna, it’s your cue,” a shadow hisses from the top of the stairs, and she moves like lightning, disappearing without so much as looking over her shoulder.
That ache is back. That writhing, snake-like presence in my temples. That pinprick that entices me to consider the stars, at the tapestry woven into the heavens. That dull, throbbing pain that urges me to pull prophecies from the sky and make my own music with them.
But the last time I looked there, searching for Marianna… and me?
It ruined everything.