My attention stabs to where Kaan is standing by the end of the pallet, arms crossed as he watches me through shadowed eyes.
“You broke my wall.”
“Our wall,” he grinds out. “And I had to get your attention somehow.” His gaze drops down to my chest and thighs, up again. “What are you doing?”
I look down at myself, appearing almost feathered with the amount of blades I’ve packed upon my body. Most of which I barely remember wielding. “Hunting,” I say, lifting my eyes, meeting his sooty stare. “Anybody who treats an animal that way deserves to be flayed. Without remorse. Now, move the stone.” There’s a brief pause before I remember my manners. “Please.”
I could try to move it myself, but chances are I’ll just create more of a mess. I have no interest in making a fool of myself before the Burn King who can famously build or crush cities with a few well-crafted words.
No thank you.
Too much finger-itching silence slips by before Kaan says, “He’s toting a white flag, Moonbeam.”
“I can fix that.” I whip a blade from my bandolier, flicking it between my fingers. “I’ll use it to mop up his blood when I’m done. It’ll be red by the time I’m through.”
Red like Essi’s hair.
Red like the color of his beast’s fleshy welts.
Red like the blood he lashed from my body.
Kaan watches me with feline precision, like he’s assessing a battlefield, trying to work out the best angle of attack. “There will be war with whomever his patron is if that rider ends up dead on my doorstep.”
My heart rallies into a wild, rib-crunching churn, my upper lip peeling back from my canines. “Anyone who hires that monster deserves to die, too.”
Just as slowly.
Just as painfully.
“I agree. But this is not the dae for it. He’s traveling with two Shade emissaries who’ve not shown the same cruelty toward their Moltenmaws. Are you going to kill them too?” he asks, tipping his head to the side. “Because if you don’t, word will get back that an emissary was killed on Burn soil—a perfect excuse for my brothers to shred across the Boltanic Plains and batter me with a war they’ve been so looking forward to since I murdered our pah.”
I open my mouth, close it, then crunch my hands into fists so tight the hilt of my iron dagger bites into my palm. “So what do you want me to do?”
His eyes soften the slightest amount while I imagine mine do the opposite. “Much as I loathe to say this,” he rumbles, too slow, too assuaging, “I need you to put your blades down. I will leave now and speak with the riders. Find out what they want.”
I grind my back molars, tasting blood, the ravenous energy churning beneath my skin threatening to split me at the seams. “You’re not going to kill him?”
If he takes this kill from me, I will be so intolerable he’ll have to cut me from this world.
“No,” he says, his voice remorseful. “I’m sor—”
“Promise you won’t?”
The faintest line forms between his brows. “I … promise I will not kill the male. You have my word.”
Good.
Nodding, I stuff my dagger back into my sheath, the boiling bloodlust strumming through my veins dropping to a low simmer.
I know where he is.
I can hunt him the moment he leaves.
The soothing knowledge eases the itch at the tips of my fingers, if only a little.
Spinning, I begin unsheathing my daggers, lining them up on the pallet’s stone base again. I slip my arms free of my bandolier, then unbuckle my sheaths.
“Can I trust you to stay here, Raeve?”
I look over my shoulder at Kaan—still standing in the same place. Still watching me with cutthroat precision.
“I’m not going to slay him on your soil, Kaan. Now that I understand, I will not put your folk in danger. I promise.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
It doesn’t.
I turn, arms crossed as we lock eyes—stances matching—a thrum of tension pounding between us that’s almost palpable enough to shake the ground.
Twice he opens his mouth to speak, then snaps his teeth shut. Finally, he clicks his tongue, snatches his Great Flurrt tunic off the ground, grabs his crown, and releases a dense command that shifts the beautiful, broken piece of stone to the side.
Without another word or glance in my direction, he leaves.
Shadowed by six armed guards, I charge through erratic beams of sunlight shafting into the Stronghold’s corridor, a stony silence hanging over the lot of us. “Hutch twenty-seven?”
“Yes, Sire. The other emissaries settled on platform twelve. They’ve already dismounted and are under beaded guard until you’re ready to accept them. But the Moonplume just fell into the first patch of shade she could find rather than listen to the keepers.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t blame her,” I mutter as we round a corner, almost bowling over two soldiers who flatten their backs against the wall and pump their fists to their chests.
“Hagh, aten dah.”
“And did anyone get the name of the Moonplume’s rider?” I ask.
“Rekk Zharos, Sire.” My gaze whips to Brun on my left, his flinty eyes flicking to me. “A bounty hunter. He’s well known in the southern kingdoms.”
“Oh, I’ve heard of him.”
Pretty sure Raeve bit the tip of his finger off. Now I wish she’d been able to tear out his throat while she was at it. Based on her reaction to seeing him, I’d say she’s feeling somewhat similar. “Anyone have iron cuffs?”
“Me,” Colet says from my right.
Good.
Another screeching roar belts through the Stronghold, splintering my self-control.
I grind my teeth, quickening my pace, storming up a flight of stairs. The two guards bracketing the doors at the top rip them wide the moment they catch sight of us, exposing the flat stretch of chapped stone large enough for almost any beast to land, the odd coppery bush growing from the cracks.
One of the earliest hutches, somewhat isolated. Distanced from the rest of them.
Rarely used.
I look out upon the massive kidney-shaped landing patch forged in an otherwise sheer drop of cliff, the hutch’s mouth drenched in a pour of sunlight on the eastern side. The other half is steeped in shadow currently occupied by Rekk’s trembling Moonplume pawing at the stone, coiling away from the sunlight with Rekk still saddled.
I’m not surprised she’s distressed. Frightened.
With the storm clouds dissipating rapidly, there’s a dense, humid heat this creature’s not built to withstand and no hope of the sunshine letting up to allow her a painless crossing to the hutch’s shadowed entrance on the other side.
“Creators,” I mutter, taking the creature in. A black mask is fitted to her face, shielding her eyes and protecting her from blinding, not that it helped the rest of her. Her leathery skin is bubbled, blistered all over, blood and puss leeching from her mottling of sun-exposure wounds, smearing across the stone as she binds herself into a tighter ball.
A shape that reminds me too much of Slátra—solidified in the same position deep beneath my sleepsuite.
My heart pounds as I scour her shredded wings that look barely capable of catching air, and I wonder how she made it here at all.
Hutchkeepers inch toward the broken beast, yelling commands for her to pull from the shadow and move into the hutch. Her silky tail sweeps across the ground, threatening to flick them off the cliff, some leaping out of the way just in time to dodge their plummeting fate.
“Beuid eh vobanth ahn … defun dah,” Rekk bellows to Bulder—a groundbreaking timber that clefts a web of hairline cracks through the stone directly beneath his beast. Attempting to force the poor creature from the small patch of shade.
Rather than scurry from the unsteady ground, the tormented Moonplume tucks into an even tighter ball, almost crushing Rekk against the cliff at her back in her squealing efforts to avoid the sun.
Scowling, Rekk mashes the thorned heels of his boots through gory holes in his saddle blanket. “Move, you stupid bitch!”
The Moonplume tips her head, releasing another deep, droning lament that shreds my fucking heartstrings.