The word belts out of me so fast it scrapes the back of my throat, a strangled breath pouring into my lungs.
I break from his gaze. Gather the embers of his scorching declarations and cart them into my frosty expanse, shoving them down a hole in the ice where I don’t have to look at them.
Attention stabbed at the table, I keep shoving …
Shoving.
He leans forward, elbows resting against the stone, finger sliding beneath my chin and tilting my head, forcing me to meet his softening stare. “War is messy, Moonbeam. Even when it’s raised for the right reasons, no one truly wins until eons have passed, memories have faded, and all the hurt and loss starts to blur—”
“I understand,” I grind out. “You can stop.”
My eyes scream the word my mouth doesn’t shape.
Please.
The moment stretches while he searches my eyes with an intensity that threatens to dig beneath my skin and skim across my hardened heart.
“I’m not going to kill you, if that’s what you’re waiting for.”
The corner of his mouth kicks up again, and it’s like staring into the eye of a storm. So hauntingly beautiful you almost forget you’re in danger.
Almost.
“I’m honored. Let me know if you change your mind.”
Doubtful. I’ve actually decided his death might be one of the greatest losses this world could suffer. Not that I’m going to tell him that, of course. This … whatever between us will grow into a ravenous beast unless I starve it to death—I’m certain.
“Hungry, Raeve?” There’s a tender hopefulness in his warm gaze that grates. “Would you like to share a meal with me?”
Clearing my throat, I pull away from his touch. “No. I don’t think I should,” I murmur, reaching for his málmr, feeling the air stiffen as I lift it over my head. “Thank you for lending me this. I very much appreciate what you did for me in the crater.”
I don’t go into more detail. Certainly don’t speak of the Fate Herder or the Sól’s odd foretellings, not wanting to open that messy topic up for inspection as I untangle the loop of leather from my hair, the world a rumbling roar outside. I dangle the precious pendant between us, looking up into hard eyes that still the beat of my heart.
He makes no move to take the málmr. He doesn’t even look at it.
“It was not lent, Raeve.”
The words land slow and hard, lacking the softness of his previous sentence, casting my skin in little bumps.
I shove my hand closer to his chest. “This means things I can’t give you.”
He watches me with the honed regard of someone inching toward a wild dragon, head tilting. “What do you think I want?”
I break from his stare and look through the window, seeing a tumor of gray clouds rolling toward the bay, light scribbling across the surface to the tune of crackling thunder.
A warm heart.
Offspring to carry on his heritage.
At the very least, someone who gets along with his swaggering sister.
I swallow, refusing to meet his gaze as I settle the málmr on the table and stand, shouldering my satchel. I edge from the booth and push free of the fluttering curtains.
Around him … sometimes words just feel inadequate.
Wind snatches my hair and tosses it about, Clode’s song a mix of tittering mania and high-pitched screams. Like she’s working herself up to slit the atmosphere straight through its bulging, electrical gut.
I feel somewhat similar.
I charge down the esplanade in a flutter of black fabric, not bothering with my hood, the sun blocked by a boil of gray clouds burgeoning toward me like some rumbling beast—the horizon lost to a hazy smear that appears to be falling from the storm cloud’s underbelly.
So unlike the earlier bustle, the esplanade is empty and still. So at odds with the rowdy thump of my boots.
My thoughts toil with the churning wind, that phantom heaviness sitting on my chest like a mountain, each breath a labored pull.
Sighing, I recall the way Kaan’s eyes lost all their warmth when I offered him back his málmr …
He was hurting. I know he was.
I could see it.
Perhaps I should’ve explained. Told him the last fae who saved my life did it to her detriment. That folk who care about me enough to put themselves in harm’s way tend to end up dead. He dodged that blow in the crater battling Hock. I’m not stupid enough to believe he could dodge another.
Life doesn’t pat me on the head and praise me for making connections. It thunks arrows through hearts. Stabs bellies. It makes damn fucking sure I know loneliness is the only acquaintance I’ll ever have, waiting until the roots of connection bore deeper than I’d like to admit before it rips out flesh and bone. Sheds blood. Stops hearts.
Hardens mine with another calloused layer of disconnect.
But to explain, I would’ve been forced to fish heavy, painful memories from that ice-covered lake inside myself, and I’m not doing that. Going within is eerie enough as it is. I’ve dumped all sorts of shit down there, adding to whatever else is already hiding beneath the surface.
Who knows what I’d pull up.
Probably my illusive Other, and I’m really not in the mood to wake with more tendons between my teeth, strung up to endure another whipping, completely oblivious to whatever trail of carnage was left in my wake.
Nope.
Not happening.
That’s what led me here in the first place.
If Kaan wants me to keep his málmr, he might as well slip his head through a noose and tighten it himself, then hang his weight upon the loop until he chokes. And though that would’ve been a balm to my burning rage just a few short slumbers ago, the thought now plows its fist through my chest and rips, rips, rips at all my important bits.
I need to get out of here.
Casting my stare toward the plateau where I saw the Moltenmaw land, I slow, frowning. The assassin tack I ordered would’ve been handy, but fuck it. Looks like I’m going bare.
I’ve got a dagger. And Clode. Once I reach The Fade, I’ll work out the rest.
I charge down a side alley that appears to weave in the right direction, pausing when a drop of rain weeps right past my ear and splats against my shoulder.
My heart stills.
Grappling with my internal sound snare, I make sure it’s the right tautness. That I’ve got the right sieve tucked over the opening—the one that allows Clode to slip through but prevents Rayne’s frosty, snow-falling sobs from penetrating my brain.
Keeps her out.
I cast my stare upward, and another wailing bead plunges toward me. I flinch as it collides with my cheek in an agonized splat, my hand lifting to sweep its weeping corpse from my skin …
What’s happening?
I study the wetness smeared across my fingers like the anomaly it is, the raindrop’s forlorn whimper cleaving a crack through my chest. Like she broke apart on impact, achingly aware she’ll never be whole again.
Not as she was.
More heavy droplets wail as they plunge, singing foreign words I don’t understand, splashing upon the pavement by my feet. Howling from the shock of their savage deconstruction, like they’re begging the stone to absorb them.
To pull them back together.
I edge away from each sad little blotch wetting my heart in all the wrong ways …
This—
This is not good.
Eyes wide, I search the sky, chasing the cloud’s mournful tears as they sing their fatal song. Like each tiny raindrop is innately aware they’re caught in a descent that can only end one way. That they will never be more whole than they are right now, plummeting to their doom.
My hand flies to my chest to rest upon my thumping heart, the heartbreaking melody growing in strength as the rain falls harder.
Faster.
Pins prick the backs of my eyes, the same weeping upheaval threatening to mimic within me.
Again, I check my mental sound snare. Find no flaws.
None.
Meaning the song of rainfall must be a different frequency than I’m used to blocking …
Lovely.