That in their eyes, it was tame.
Sereme later told me I’d looked out at her through black, glittery eyes, face splashed in blood, canines bared, and that she knew I was broken beyond repair, in desperate need of an avenue to channel my rage.
I see it differently now.
I think she saw me, surrounded by the mulched bodies of freshly slain folk who’d come to hunt me down, and decided broken things make the sharpest weapons … so long as you fetter them to yourself so they don’t fly away.
“You coped just fine without me before you snatched me from the gutter.”
“I gave you the option,” she volleys, quick as a blink.
A deep belly laugh wrestles up my throat, spilling out in a mirthless tune. “And what an option it was,” I muse. “Die or drip my blood into your runed vial and be a forever slave to your whim, able to be yanked to heel at any given opportunity. Except it wasn’t voiced that way, was it? You offered me revenge. Painted such a pretty picture I was salivating to give you my blood, falling into your web like a plump bug, immediately put to work.”
So many empty promises.
“Ironically, had you simply asked me to join the cause, I may have agreed, given the drowning amount of injustice I soon discovered in this kingdom. But you just had to slap a collar around my neck.”
She sighs, long and deep—the breezy confidence of someone who lives in a bubble of safety I can’t penetrate. “Always so dramatic, Raeve. Truly, I’ve never met someone with so much battle in their blood.” Her elegant hand grips the vial hanging between her breasts. “Perhaps you wouldn’t be so bitter were you not constantly testing me, forcing me to take advantage of the blood bind.”
Yeah, okay. It’s my fault.
“Can’t you see you’re made for this?”
“Sure,” I deadpan. “Nothing quite like the constant threat of a casual torture session to make you feel right at home.”
“It’s nothing personal. Everybody puts their blood in the vial—”
“Except you.”
“—benefiting from its many advantages. Remember how quickly I was able to heal you?” she continues seamlessly. “You would’ve died without it. Besides, you’re the only one I’m forced to punish.”
“And what do you do for the cause?” I ask, brow raised. “Besides sucking the Elding’s metaphorical cock.”
Her cheeks flush, painted lips falling open. Not that any words come out.
My brows bump up.
Not so metaphorical, it seems.
“You chose to live,” she seethes. “Sure, it’s no longer on your terms, but at least you’re breathing. I’d think you’d be more humble toward the one who saved your life.”
I click my tongue, trying to imagine a world where someone would deign to help another without expecting something in return.
Failing.
Thousands of times I’ve been pieced back together. Only once was it for my own benefit—but Fallon’s dead, her light extinguished, all that goodness gone from the world.
Sereme may think she saved my life, but all she did was cage me again, carving Fallon’s death into an even deeper tragedy.
I’d rather be back in our cell, looking up at the moons Fallon sketched on our ceiling with blunt bits of coal. Would rather be listening to her vivid explanations for the colorful clouds draped across The Fade, her words so descriptive my mouth would water—like I could taste the colors, feeling their textures puff against my tongue.
She made freedom sound so exquisite with her big, beautiful vocabulary. Made it sound so magical.
I couldn’t wait to taste clouds with her. To lie on our backs, side by side, and look upon the real moons.
Together.
But she’s dead, and I’m here, shackled to this purple-scaled serpent. Doing none of the living I promised Fallon I’d do before I lost her. Before I woke to find her cold.
Unmoving.
The barbed memory is an icy spike hammered into my hardened heart, all the way to the soft core, pitting me with a twinge of raw, familiar pain—
No.
I sink into my inner self, landing upon the crumbled obsidian shore of my immense frozen lake, struck by the eerie silence that always makes my skin pebble. I pinch a fist-sized stone I use to bind the offending memory around, then creep out onto the smooth, frosty expanse that soothes the bare soles of my feet.
Kneeling, I carve a hole in the thick ice, cold water oozing up the moment it cracks free. I tip the lid, plop the heavy thought down the gap, and rush away, the hairs on the back of my neck lifting as I blink back to my external reality.
My next breath is a blow of icy air, Sereme’s earlier words still echoing through my mind:
You chose to live.
Sure, it’s no longer on your terms …
At least you’re still breathing.
I look at the female watching me down the line of her nose like she’d love for me to drop to my knees and kiss her purple shoes.
“My life has never been on my terms.” I stand, wrap my veil around my face, then gather her quills off the ground and lump them on the desk, rearranging them in order of size. Just the way she likes. “And I refuse to accept this as living.”
I grab my bag and turn, moving toward the door.
“I didn’t say you could leave, Raeve.”
“Drag your nail down my rune again.” I shrug. “See if I care.”
I slam the door on my way out.
Haedeon leaves early next cycle to try and steal his own Moonplume egg. He has to sleigh there and spend many slumbers in snow huts on the way, even though it’s dangerous beyond Arithia’s walls.
Seems a bit silly to me, since Pahpi’s Moonplume could carry him there so fast. But Haedeon keeps saying that’s how it’s always been done. That he wants to prove himself.
I don’t think Mahmi and Pahpi want him to prove anything, because I overheard them beg him not to go. Not that it worked.
This aurora fall, Haedeon smiled big and made lots of jokes while I was helping him fold his clothes and tuck them in his bag, but I can tell he’s scared. I can tell because he gave me three butterberry chews from the jar he keeps beside his pallet.
Normally, he never gives me more than one at a time because he says they’ll give me a bellyache, which is a lie. I ate all three and my belly feels fine.
Pahpi said it’s really hard to get a Moonplume egg. That you have to go to Netheryn—the place where it’s too cold for almost everything else to grow or breathe—and climb really high ice towers without being seen. That you have to steal the egg from a mahmi Moonplume’s nest, then get back down the tower fast and quiet.
My brother’s big and he makes lots of noise all the time. He doesn’t know how to breathe soft or make his boots not crunch in the snow. Even his voice is rough and coarse like grain.
He doesn’t hear any of the elemental songs.
Maybe those butterberry chews do give you a bellyache after all, because I don’t feel so good anymore …
I don’t think my brother’s coming home from Netheryn.
Slamming the door shut on The Curly Quill, I charge west through the rowdy Ditch now packed full of merchant carts, folk flocking to claim the cheapest bushels of vegetables they can barter. I’d planned to stop for a cindercream pastry from one of my favorite merchants on the way home, but after having all of Sereme’s purple-toned trash stuffed down my throat, I’ve lost the urge.
A chorus of panicked gasps has me pausing, gaze whipping around, following a sea of upturned stares.
My pulse scatters at the sight of an adult Moltenmaw gliding almost close enough to rip a ballista off the wall with its massive talons. A gust of wind slams down with the might of its magnificent wings—almost unveiling me.
Chest expanding, it lengthens its neck, cranks its maw, and paints the sky in a plume of flame that pours enough heat into the Ditch to turn the snow slushy.