Page 175 - DivineSparkRising II-TheMirrorofSilenceFinal

Nicholas Boothman
reader, and laid two fingers on it. Hold. The word
didn’t matter. The grip did.
Carolina’s mouth relaxed. The pressure behind
her eyes receded. Letters crept back along her
spine, shy animals coming home to a porch light.
She tried again, quietly. “I—” The vowel arrived.
The consonant followed, ragged, true. “—won’t.”
The engine flared, offended. The inversion
swept again. The sentence wavered.
Sera whispered, failing microphones by
succeeding breath: “Give her your voice.”
Henry blinked. “How?”
Sera touched his throat with two fingers, then
Carolina’s, gently, aligning like a choir director who
knows better than to command. “Speak a word she
has taught you.”
Henry closed his eyes. He saw Carolina in a
raincoat under cheap fluorescents, coaxing a dead
router back to life for a church kitchen. He saw her
at the bazaar, her voice shaking but steadying a
city. He saw her lean over Serpa’s notebooks like
hunger.
He said, simple, present tense: “Carolina.”
Her name landed. She caught it. Her mouth
formed her own name with steadiness. “Carolina,”
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