Up …
Any words I had are swallowed into the depths of my tumbling guts, my grip tightening on the strap. My head tucks back into the crook of Kaan’s throat, his heart a fierce sledge against my spine, powering in unison with the thump of Rygun’s wings.
We whisk through a wispy tuft of cloud, then level out, the entire world seeming to regain its balance.
I pull my first breath since we shoved off the sand, blown out with a shaken exhale.
I miss the dragon’s mouth. It was wet, it reeked, and there was a high chance of being swallowed, but at least I wasn’t clinging to life by a single strap of leather, pressed close to a male who smells too good to flay.
“You okay?” Kaan asks close to my ear, and every cell in my body prickles with awareness.
I dare a peek over Rygun’s side, expecting to be severed with fear as I take in the world below, the barren plains stretching far and wide in all directions like a ripple of rusty water. Instead, something tangible swells within my chest. Something that makes me want to spread my arms, tip my head, and release a deep belly laugh that’s raw and real and so fucking wholesome it makes me want to …
Cry.
“Answer me, Moonbeam.”
There’s an edge to his voice that whips me from my reverie. Reminds me that I’m a prisoner of yet another vicious Vaegor—dancing from one shackle to the next.
The world shreds past beneath us while I mull over Kaan’s question …
Am I okay?
“Yes,” I whisper, cradling the strange, giddy feeling with a gentleness I didn’t realize I possessed, worried it’ll break if I squeeze too hard. “I’m okay.”
The Creators are so quiet now, their voices vacant echoes barely loud enough to grasp.
I’m not sure why.
Perhaps the Aether Stone is taking so much of me there’s little left to listen with.
That’s how it feels. Like my soul’s being suckled through the diadem’s web of tendrils now magnetized to my skull.
I hate it.
How Mah survived this for over a hundred phases, I’ll never know, but perhaps I do understand why it took her so long to bring Haedeon into this world.
Then me.
Perhaps I understand why she was crying in the snow so many phases ago, when my world was small and my heart felt full and whole.
I barely have the energy to breathe, let alone eat. Last cycle, I certainly didn’t have the energy to help with the preparations for the committal. To stand on my own two feet while Náthae and Akkeri blew plumes of aqua flame on Mah’s and Pah’s pyres—committing their bodies back to the elements. Instead, I sat in Haedeon’s chair and watched them burn, my heart so raw from cycles of clutching them close that I almost wheeled myself into the fire, too.
Then came Haedeon’s turn.
Rather than blow flames onto his body, Allume scooped him up, tilled her wings, then tipped her head to the sky and lifted off the ground with my brother clutched against her. She soared unsteadily toward the deep dark where her ancestors rest, then curled into a ball, tucked Haedeon beneath her gammy wing, and solidified before my eyes—giving herself to death rather than live an eternal life without the one we both loved so much.
Or perhaps she just knew how much he hated being alone.
Everyone else went inside to feast in honor of my lost ones while I lay in the snow and sang to Haedeon’s moon, tracing the outline of that small, misshapen wing. Until Slátra came, settled beside me, and curled her tail into a fluffy nest I fell asleep within.
I haven’t woken from this terror yet.
I’m losing hope that I ever will.
Mah and Pah’s aides say I have very few options. That the folk of Arithia won’t accept a queen so weakened by the Aether Stone unless I’m bound with someone who can wield more than two elemental songs. And even so, I’m not yet old enough to rule.
There’s to be a meeting in Bothaim where my fate will be decided by the Tri-Council. Of course, I can’t attend and speak for myself because princesses are to remain mute and veiled in public until their binding ceremony—something Mah and Pah never enforced … But they’re not here anymore.
It’s just me, and I’m certain the sky is falling.
The wisps of cloud burn off as we coast closer to the sun, Rygun’s head stretched toward it like a hunter stalking his prey. I decide that’s not far from the truth, considering the Sabersythe spawning grounds sit directly beneath the gigantic ball of fire.
I tug the hood of Kaan’s cloak down, tucking deep into its shady hollow to avoid the sun’s harsh rays. Entombed in his molten musk, I find a smooth, grounding sort of comfort that … does things to me. Makes me picture sweaty, snarling warriors scorched beneath this overbearing blaze, a blood-heating smell that muddies my mind and makes me want to slap myself.
Hard.
He may have saved me from the coliseum and had my back mended, but he’s still a tyrant. Based on the way he stuffed his finger in my wound and made me scream, I’d say he has the same brutal streak as his kin. Probably worse, knowing my luck.
He wants me for something, I just have to work out what.
Bottom line: I can’t let him take me to Dhomm. Something low in my gut tells me it’ll swallow me whole.
The Fíur du Ath believe I’m dead. The Fade King and his Guild of Nobles believe I’m dead—presumably. I just have to find a way to escape Kaan so I’m free to hunt Rekk Zharos, then slice and dice him for murdering Essi and whipping my back to shreds.
Vengeance crackles through my veins, making the tips of my fingers itch. A shiver rakes up my spine, and I use the sharp of my thumbnail to scratch at the skin on the side of another—
Rygun coasts to the left, tipping me into Kaan’s arm, usurping me from my spot between his legs. I clear my throat, shuffling back into place, his powerful body a mountain stacked around me. Like I’m a fall of snow tucked between his crevices.
“There’s a sun-veil in the hood,” he rumbles, his accent so thick it’s like it was ripped from the Creators’ mouths, not tumbled by the tides of time like so many of those who live in Gore.
So unlike mine—forged in dark places where words were spat, hissed, and shrieked. Where the only softness belonged to the tight embrace of somebody who no longer exists.
“If you roll it down, you’ll be able to look around while we fly and better anticipate Rygun’s motions.”
The cut of his tone implies everything he’s not saying. That I won’t almost plummet to death every time Rygun banks or hits a current of air that forces him to dodge, dip, or sway.
Tentatively, I loosen my hold on the strap and reach up, frowning as I blindly pinch and pull at the hood’s hem, finding buttons I’m able to wedge free and release a roll of fabric that falls before my face.
Huh.
I lift my chin and dare a glance around, the material a fine sheen that casts me in a mask of shade and even allows me to look almost directly at the sun without fear of going blind.
I take in the vast expanse of our surroundings through widening eyes.
The rippling stretch of sand has given way to sun-scorched dirt torn through with a ribbon of bright-blue silk that I suspect is a large body of—
“There’s the River Ahgt,” Kaan announces as I marvel at its wide, interloping weaves. The way it sparkles in the light.
It threads as far as the eye can see, stretching for the sun, back toward the darkening sky in the south—something I confirm by peeking beneath Kaan’s arm. Tall, lanky trees cling to the rusty, sun-crusted banks, the tips of their numerous branches boasting blades of orange foliage that look sharp enough to slice. I even spot the odd golden wormlike creature slithering through the dirt, leaving a wiggly trail.
I look to the right, a few tendrils of the aurora still glinting over the horizon, though mostly it’s now out of sight.
Guess we’ll find somewhere to stop for slumber soon.