Page 60 of Vengeful Melodies

Carve your name into my chest

Until there’s nothing left of me but fire and need.”

Bash screams next to me, unhinged:

“We bled for you, girl,

Every drop of ourselves

Spilled into this song,

So you could see us,

See every broken, desperate inch…”

Kaiser rips harder. Alix crashes the drums like he’s shattering his own bones. I can barely think between breaths, between screams, between glances at her. My chest aches, and I know—she knows.

“Ruin me. Ruin me without mercy.

Leave me raw. Leave me bare.

Make me yours, make me nothing,

Because if you speak…

I’ll believe I was made for you.”

The last note dies. Silence presses in like a living thing. My lungs burn, arms tremble. Bash collapses onto a floor knees pressed into the black tile floor, hair plastered to his forehead. Kaiser leans against the wall, strumming the final echoes from his strings as if the song is still clinging to him. Alix slumps over the drums, chest heaving, still feeling the pulse in his veins. I can barely stand. I can feel it in my chest. But all I’m thinking about is her.

Dreya.

Standing somewhere in the wings, heart pounding, lips parted, eyes wide.

Did she hear it? Did she know?

That it was always about her like fate was playing a cruel wicked joke before bringing her to us, broken souls.

The silence after the storm always feels wrong.

The dressing room smells like sweat, leather, and cheap tequila. We’re spread across mismatched couches and floor cushions, bodies loose, laughter echoing louder than the music still playing from someone’s phone.

Alix is nursing a beer, one foot propped on the coffee table, the other tapping a silent rhythm like he’s still on stage. Bash is slumped beside him, shirt half-unbuttoned, a lazy grin curving his lips as he tosses an empty mini bottle into the trash and misses.

Kai’s got his head tilted back against the wall, a lazy smile tugging at his mouth. His fingers toy with a pick he’s been flipping between his knuckles all night.

The buzz is warm, slow, but not enough to drown out the static under my skin. That damn song still vibrates through me like an echo that doesn’t want to let go.

I glance down at my hands—still faintly trembling. I don’t get stage nerves. Not anymore. But that song, the way it poured out of me last night after Dreya looked at me like I was made of both fire and wreckage… it hit something raw.

“You really finished writing that last night?” Bash murmurs beside me, voice hoarse from screaming and booze.

I nod slowly, not looking up. “Wasn’t a choice.”

Kai hums. “Some people... they walk into a room and flip your whole damn frequency.”

“Yeah,” Alix mutters, leaning forward, his eyes hazy but sharp. “She walks like silence and talks like a fucking storm. Can’t tell which one ruins me more.”

I smirk faintly, staring at the ring of condensation forming beneath my untouched glass.