Blood.
Blood was everywhere.
It covered the dais, reflecting the incongruously bright sun. It gave the very air a metallic taste. It smelled so strong and sickening that the scent choked him as he surveyed the awful scene, gagging when the sight made him take a sharp inhale of breath.
There were only two noises. The chime of a golden clock tower— a sort of disgusting reminder that the world did not stop for anyone, or the lack of someone— and, shakily rising toward the heavens, Julian's wails.
It was a cry of many terrible things at once. A cry of anguish. A cry of rage. A cry that pleaded for mercy. But most of all, a cry of betrayal. Though whom he'd been betrayed by was a mystery. The universe? The Angel? God? Perhaps it was everything. Perhaps he'd been betrayed by the very laws of existence, laws that did not bar such a thing to happen. Laws that did not prevent Julian Blackthorn from losing one of the pieces of his soul. Laws that allowed for a girl with a whole life ahead of her to lay dead in the arms of a brother who had raised her since she was ten years old. Laws that said: Yes, Livvia Blackthorn may die.
Her body was lifeless, a crimson bundle within Julian's grasp.
No symphony could've captured the despair better than the stuffy silence pierced through with the two forlorn sounds, twirling around each other, stepping to a fatal dance, two forces set eternally opposed to one another. The agonized wail that demanded justice and the chime that declared the world would silently chug along without a thought given to dead children. No instrument would ever be able to find the right pitch to match that of a tuning fork that had been struck upon the shards of hearts so thoroughly broken. No requiem would ever convey Julian's grief.
Perhaps his first coherent thought should've been about Livvia. Maybe it should've been about the horror of how every seam that had held him together during the most difficult and confusing time of his life had suddenly burst apart. Maybe it should have been a thousand other things.
But his first thought was a single word.
Kit's first thought was: Ty.