𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐅𝐑𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐇 𝐊𝐈𝐒𝐒𝐄𝐑𝐒
❝ They're the French Kissers,
that's what they do.
They will lure you in
and then they'll kill you
with a kiss. ❞
━ in which the leader of the french kissers
...
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"You should get your arm checked." Below the flickering lights of the waiting room, Kaya's voice sounded far as she came closer to Rose. There were people all around them, yet Rose's silhouette by the window felt lonely, like a small boat amidst an unmoved ocean.
"There's no point." Her vision was reduced to the four lines of the window frame as she peered into the grey streets. Soon the morning would be greeted with drizzle. And no matter how tight the lump in her throat was, she would greet it with dry eyes.
"There are new treatments now, you'll regain movement." Sienna said from her other side. Behind them, Christopher and Angeline kept pacing back and forth like a clock with a bothersome tick. Rose wished she could block the sound; she wished she could block that dreadful hospital scent that always sent her back to Amiens, and most of all she wished she could punch her way through her chest and stop her heart from waging war against itself.
Renée had regained consciousness, but no one could enter her room while her burns were being taken care of, and every second away from her felt like a year. No one had told them anything about the baby yet. If he didn't survive, the cracks seeping through her family's tissue would be ruptured completely.
"Not all."
"Some."
"Not enough to play." Rose kept her eyes on the puddles, watching as the first droplets made ripples out of them. Violin tears, Audrey used to say. Liquid emotion. If she'd been there, she'd tell her it was okay to cry. That it was okay to pour her pain onto the world instead of having to carry it all on her own. But Audrey wasn't there. And the world had enough pain on its own. "To play like I used to, like I'm meant to play. Not enough to play the violin as it deserves to be played."
"Rose..."
"It's funny, isn't it?" She chuckled; a chuckle so dry it could have stopped the rain midair. "Steaphan killed the person that gave me life. Then Tavish went and killed the thing that made me live."
She turned her back on them and ambled to another window, the stinging, sterile smell of antiseptics shooting through her nostrils. She ran a finger along the casing, cutting the tip in a splinter. If only grief was like that. An acute pain, felt all at once. Instead it was thousands of slashes coming in waves, one after the other, stronger, than softer until you thought it almost bearable, than stronger again, stronger than anything you'd ever felt, until it was dragging you down with it. Grief was water in your lungs. It was dirt in your throat. It was everything awful in all of the wrong places.
