I have been deaf before. Took a hit to the side of the head in the Night Battle that put a whine in my ear for three days, and that was deafness, and I knew what it was.
This was not that.
Deafness leaves you something. It leaves you the sound of your own body, the wet click in your jaw, blood going round, the hum your head makes when it has nothing else to work with. That's the floor. Nobody ever tells you it's there because nobody has ever been without it.
I was without it.
I put my hand on my own chest and felt my heart going like a fist on a door and heard nothing come off it. I opened my mouth and shouted, hard, the full weight of it, and my throat tore and my ribs squeezed and the air went out of me into nothing at all.
'Wren.'
Here.
'Say something.'
I am saying something. Cade. Look at me — listen, you know what I mean, just—
'I hear you. I hear you fine.'
