Honor Among Thieves (The Honors #1)(85)

I had Leviathan woven into my body.

The worst that could happen was that Marko or Chao-Xing would tell me to settle down, or I supposed they might gas me again. I’d survived it once, right? I’d seen street performers make music out of what most people would call trash. Bin lids and broken bottles, rusty ladles and upturned pails. There was a whole troupe of them who worked the Zone, and I’d admired their skill more than once. Now my life—our lives—depended on me matching them.

I started slow with gentle raps on the bucket, and Typhon didn’t register the sound until I brushed the wall, trying to make it seem accidental. Suddenly I had all his attention, and it was like being drenched in ice water. Despite fingers that wanted to tremble, I went on with my quiet rhythm, not enough to make him think it was purposeful. When you tried to coax a wary cat into your lap, you had to pretend like you didn’t even notice it slinking around. Basically I felt like ten kinds of a fool drumming alone in my cell, like this would do any good. It didn’t matter how I looked or what anyone thought. My dignity was nothing compared to Bea and Nadim, so even if this turned out to be a colossal waste of time, I wouldn’t be sorry for trying.

After a while, I added a soft rendition of a song my mother sang to me when I was very small. Hush little baby, don’t say a word. Papa never did buy me a mockingbird, or much of anything, for that matter. There weren’t many lyrics, and they made no damn sense, but it was a relaxing melody. Added to my slow taps and thumps and hissing brushes of fingers, the music I made had a soothing, hypnotic quality. I nearly nodded off a time or two.

At first I thought it wasn’t working at all. Typhon’s attention drifted away, and it seemed like it was just me, singing to myself like some old-school jailbird. I just needed a mouth organ to make the picture complete. Except as time wore on, I noticed my cell warming by such minuscule degrees that I didn’t even think the Elder was aware of it.

I took it slow. The next time I brushed the wall, I lingered just a little, and the spark I got back from Typhon wasn’t all death-lightning and GET OUT written in blood. I wasn’t sure how deep bonds worked, but he was clearly responding to my song. If Chao-Xing caught me at this, she’d put a stop to it. Then again, she probably didn’t feel about Typhon the way I did Nadim.

Even if I wasn’t supposed to.

Singing this song on loop summoned thoughts of my mother. For the first time, I wondered how hard it must’ve been for her, having a child in pain that she couldn’t save. I couldn’t imagine giving somebody life and then having that person walk away as if it meant nothing. I did love her. But I’d never understood how she felt before, not really. And I’d never regretted hurting her this much, either.

I didn’t know if my new softness was the key, but the next time I touched Typhon, he opened too—a rusty creak, like an iron hinge that had been sealed for years. The Elder didn’t seem alarmed by what I was doing. In fact, some of the darkness had washed away with the song, like an ocean of peril at low tide.

What I found, deep in the heart of the Elder Leviathan, surprised the hell out of me.





CHAPTER TWENTY


Breaking Barriers


WEARINESS. ISOLATION.

I’d expected to find a monster hiding behind his cold walls, a fiend that feasted on violence like it was wine and meat. Instead, I encountered a lone soldier, poised on ancient battlements, overlooking a war. One he was losing. Knowing he’d fight and die, yet he could not lay his weapons down. It was terrifying, and I wasn’t sure if what I sensed was literal or metaphorical. The top of my head tingled and I couldn’t get my breath.

Never expected to feel sorry for Typhon.

Somehow, I was in the Elder’s consciousness in a way he didn’t permit Marko and Chao-Xing to be. He suddenly noticed me and rumbled a threat that shook the whole ship. I didn’t advance or retreat, just kept singing softly.

A few moments later, I heard Typhon directly for the first time. Not aloud, as Nadim spoke, for courtesy’s sake, but like thunder in my mind. Honor Cole, you dare too much.

You’re so tired. So alone.

I didn’t mean it as an accusation, and Typhon knew that—of course he did. There could be no dodging a truth with that much weight. That does not concern you.

More avoidance. More secrets.

With some effort, I pictured the Elder as that lone soldier, not the enemy who hurt Nadim. It took everything in me, all my self-control, and then I relaxed into Typhon, still singing. Echoes of wrongness pricked at my brain, needle sharp, but I ignored those frissons. The shock that reverberated through him told me he wasn’t used to this unfiltered sharing; he was used to taking, commanding, not receiving from the humans he bonded with. I scooped up a few of his memories like collecting fish from a pond and realized that the two Honors he carried now were certainly not his first deep-bonded crew.

Why do you settle for such a bleak existence? Did you forget it could be more?

Sudden pain nearly blinded me. Not mine. Not Nadim’s, either.

I didn’t forget. We can’t forget. Another tide of memory, and it carried me along to when Typhon was young and eager, like Nadim, soft and sweet. His first pilot wasn’t human—an alien race whose name I didn’t know—but those emotions, the warmth of the sharing—that was the same. His pilot gave him everything, even unto death.

It hurts too much, I realized, not trying to hide it from him. Tears gathered in my eyes. You treat them like things so it doesn’t wound you as much when they die.