Northern Daughter

River Bradshaw's POV

There's this myth that when a grenade goes off, the blast will cause you to hear this sharp, almost whistling sound, but that's all it is; a myth. You don't actually hear that sound. In fact, you don't hear anything. The whistle, the sharp scream is just the blood that's filling your ears which, if you're alive, means that they took the hardest hit. If they didn't, you'd be dead, cause the only organs more affected than the ears by the heat waves are the chest, diaphragm and throat, and if they were struck, you'd be either dead or in a coma. No, the sharp dog whistle is created by the pain in your head, the sound of a hundred thousand small, sharp hammers striking your brain over and over again, the sound slipping through while your ears bleed. You don't hear a whistle. It's just your brain screaming, using your bleeding ears as its mouth since your real mouth is in a post-traumatic, physiological shock.

Tonight? The ears, the organs most affected, are indeed screaming in pain.

"River! River no, open your eyes, please.... Please! River! River come back to me! River! River please!"

Duke's still holding her back, in the end having no choice but to kneel with her when she collapses, my heart falling with her. "You killed him," she whispers, her voice coming out like a sharp sound produced by a thin opening where wind seeps through. "You killed him, you- Why did you kill him?!" she screams, clawing at Duke's hands. "Why did you kill him?! You loved him! More than me! Why did you kill him?!"

Because all of this will end with you, Arlet, not with me.

"He made the biggest mistake of his life by joining the Non-Polar alliance, and I set an example," Morgan calmly explains, my frozen blood boiling. I wish I had told him something while I still could.

But then you couldn't have told Arlet that you'd finally become her eternal sun.

That fucking cunt has it waiting for him. I'm waiting for him. I don't know in what fucking bardo I've landed, but I know I'll be waiting for him in fucking hell. I'll beg whatever celestial being there is, on my knees, for just five minutes with this asshole. He won't remember the name he chose for me, the balanced, stable flow of a river, no. "You two forgot for way too long and way too often that I am the North before I am anything else. A father, an uncle, a brother, a son."

Shut the fuck up, everyone's been hearing the bones of your mother shaking in her grave the past twenty five years. "We've spent enough time on River, we have an agenda to move on with and I'm afraid our time is disappointingly limited."

He smirks, my nonexistent hands wanting to enclose around his throat. "Speaking of sons...."

Dear God don't let it be too late. "Oh Lucas...."

He turns around, Luke becoming visible in the tight grip of one of the soulless motherfuckers that sold themselves to him more shamefully than the prostitutes he bought.