Authors: Harper Alexander

Whisper (34 page)

BOOK: Whisper

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“If he doesn't get
some
kind of memo, with you looking like that, he must be the densest creature on the planet,” he observed.

I chuckled, flattered. “It's about Crescendo, Jay. Not how pretty Lady Alejandra and Cambrie can make me look.”

“You look mag
nif
icent, Willow,” he informed me, denouncing my apparent understatement.

I took a breath, composing myself, smiling at him slightly because I didn't know how else to respond. To my surprise, though, he initiated the next move himself, saying,

“Come here.” Pushing himself away from the threshold, he did something completely unexpected, and opened his arms to me. “I don't want to mess you up, but...” He shrugged and beckoned to me at the same time – an awkward, endearing gesture. Touched, I obliged, and he folded me into a genuine embrace. “You're going to be amazing,” he said to the top of my head. “And then you're going to come back here, in one piece, so I can continue to act like I'm not concerned with your existence in good conscience.”

I laughed into his shirt, reveling in the smell of him. “You're a jerk, Jay,” I murmured, and he drew away to look at me.

“But I'm your jerk.”

I nodded, and he tweaked me on the chin before returning to his usual, distant self. “I'll leave you to make sure you're nice and ready.” Looking me over once more before he turned to leave, he noticed the color choice for the occasion and added, “Try not to get dirty.”

I watched him go, stood in the summery atmosphere he had brought into the tent, then took a deep breath to get my head in the game. Too soon, they were ready for me.

Leaving the safety of my tent, I went out and mounted Crescendo, and managed to hold him relatively still long enough for Lady Alejandra to arrange the train of my outfit into submission, pulling it out from under me and fanning it out behind me. Before sending me off, she patted me on my knee.

“You know the drill,” she told me. “Just do what you do, and let the rest of it do the talking. You'll make a splash, trust me.”

I nodded, and then it was time. The others had already gathered in formation. And that's how we had planned it – make it all look like the regular drill, and then introduce me. Have me walk in and steal the show, when my entrance would make all eyes turn to me.

I sat tall and proud, radiant with the poise of someone who knew exactly what she was doing. Confidence would add to the effect, I knew. It was a crucial part of it.

I could feel the layers of my gown rippling with Crescendo's movements, the yards and yards of fabric dancing like an extension of our miraculous unity, the resulting creature that we made together. I rode him out to the front, marching him down the line of poised soldiers. He pranced in slow-motion, knowing the nature of this place, nervous with the memory of it. I wore no spurs, but he could remember them – stabbed relentlessly into his sides on every past occasion such as this. His breaths blew in and out, the deep rasp of the furnace at his core ringing in my ears.

And I could feel the eyes – landing on me. Following me. Marveling over me. A collective sense of disbelief rippling through the ranks of our opponents. I glanced up from under my lashes, raised my head and met their eyes across the distance. A daring figure on one of their own.

Their stolen thunder was a feeling in the air. Like a transfusion of ego from the veins of their morale to ours. Something vital was robbed from their midst as they looked on, and fed into ours.

Self-righteousness swelled within me. I heard music – a rising torrent of
crescendo
leading up to an orchestral climax – felt the power of the beast beneath me, raw and terrible and bursting at the seams. I drew him around at the center of the pack that flanked us, lining him up as the figurehead of the movement. We faced the enemy – that swarm of dragon-like kin, chomping at the bit to come at us.

But this time, we would fight fire with fire.

A glance over my shoulder found Jay mounted just behind me to my left. I let a grim smile touch my eyes, acknowledging him there. He matched the look, and I faced forward again knowing I was fully free to do this. I had the blessing and support of the army at my back. The grossly affective secret weapon of whispers charged on my lips.

We were ready to fly.

Alright, fledgeling,
I directed a fond wave of thought at Crescendo, quivering and rippling and ready to burst with pent-up energy beneath me.
Show them what you're really made of.

When I gave him his head, I granted him in equal measure his heart, and he took off like a fireball from a cannon, freed and elated and wild with the power of release – in the opposite extreme to that of his oncoming, slave-driven brothers. Freedom, it seemed, was a greater source of power than what could ever be forced out of something – I felt him discover the new gear of it, and he ate it up like a starving spirit.

A cry of elation broke from me, drowned out in the fray but priceless in my intimate experience of it – wind-stung tears of joy for having done this thing for this creature, given him something so beautiful and prevailing. Feeling him respond to it, take to it like it was his almighty deliverance, his all-consuming calling...it was like no other reward I had ever experienced.

We crashed into opposing forces like a cleaving tidal wave, galloping on through their midst like the showy rebels that we were. That was my mission, that day – get in, make a clean sweep, and get out. I had my otherworldly focus on top of things, pinpointing all the gaps, the breaks, the cracks – anything we could slip through, and come out on the other side with our lives intact. We dodged, and shirked, and danced – maneuvering at break-neck speed through that human-and-beast obstacle course until we made it all the way through and back, and skidded out of the fray.

Emerging into the free air, we galloped out of harm's way, leaving it to the experts. Crescendo showed no signs of wanting to stop, though, and so I let him run. I let him run until the fire burnt out, and he stopped, and hung his head. Sparks issued out with his panting breaths, swirling about his feet and up through is mane in the breeze, dancing through the strands.

Stick that in your pipe, Gabriel,
I thought smugly.
And smoke it.

We hadn't taken back the nation, but we had made a bold and uncompromising statement to the empire. This would get back to Gabriel, and he would know that his secret weapon had lost its novelty.

You're going to have to do better than this.
This was child's play, for me. Making lemonade out of lemons.

I directed Crescendo to the top of a slope of rubble, where we might gain a vantage point of the now-distant battle that raged out of range and of our hands. Alighting there, I saw a lone rider separate from the mob, coming for me on a chestnut steed – Jay. I smiled, there where we stood atop a belly-up slab of graffiti that read
'
&#*$
The World
'
, replete with the notion that there was hope for the world yet.