He growls, and there’s a clicking sound. He says a word I don’t hear over my roaring pulse as a flame dances to life in his hand.
My body stills, paralyzed by the sizzling sight. A deeper, almost sentient silence hollows the cavern surrounding us. A silence that seems to spawn from … within.
Me.
Like I’m sponging the sound. Absorbing it.
Kaan brings that flame so close to my face I’m certain he’s about to smear it across my skin, and I become innately conscious of the fact that something inside me is watching.
Listening.
“You look me in the eye, Moonbeam—right in the soul—and tell me you don’t hear this fire’s hissing shrieks. Look me in the eye, sharpen those words, and don’t fucking blink as you plunge them through my heart.”
I struggle to gather the breath to tell him exactly that. That his flame does not shriek or hiss or spit. It is but a flame, and it does one thing.
It burns.
“Crush your flame, Sire. Or I’ll crush you,” I seethe with cutthroat certainty—violently aware that my Other is on the brink of bursting free. I may be utterly against hurting this male, but I cannot speak for … it. “That’s a promise.”
A line forms between his frosty brows.
He whips his hand away, crushing it into a fist of smoke, flooding my system with a cold deluge of relief. “Who hurt you?”
“I do not hurt, King Burn. I harden. And no—your pet flame did not sing to me. Not even a little bit. Otherwise I would’ve sung it up the hall and ordered it to suicide itself in a puddle.”
His frown deepens, his hand coming up as if to cup my cheek. Like he wants to touch me but is worried I might slice it off. “Don’t lie to me, Moonbeam. Lie to the world, but please don’t lie to me.”
“Stop talking to me like you know me. You don’t. Even if I did fall with your precious moon, I owe you nothing. Elluin is dead.”
“Stop.”
His word commands. His eyes plead.
Both ricochet off my armor like arrows I snatch, lodging them between his ribs. “Saving my life, dragging me away to your big, bright kingdom where everybody fucking loves you is not going to reincarnate her. I’m not yours, and I never will be.”
He steps back, leaving me arched over Slátra’s solidified wing. Allowing me space to draw my first full breath since our atmospheres clashed.
I ignore the unveiled pain in his eyes as I charge toward the stairs without a single glance over my shoulder, every step skyward pulling me farther from the comfortable nest of chill.
I ignore the tugging sensation that tries to lure me to turn around. To climb over that folded wing, tuck within the hollow, and fall asleep in Slátra’s stony embrace.
Most of all, I ignore the sense that every step skyward is another step further from my truth.
Instead, I strip the moment of all the soft wisps of attachment and curiosity, bind them into a parcel, then tie them to a stone, finding my internal lake already crushed near the shore. A convenient hole cracked through the ice, making it easy for me to discard the package.
I don’t believe in much, but I do believe that the unknown needs to be handled with caution—much like a dragon. Leave them alone, and they rarely decide to attack. You can exist in harmony for eternity, so long as nobody makes any sudden movements.
Try to climb on their backs or steal their eggs? Well.
Chances are you’re dead.
I happen to like living in my blank oblivion. It’s lonely, but lonely folk have nothing to lose.
That suits me perfectly.
Iexplode free of the stairwell and burst into the ruffling breeze. Shoving past a low canopy of big round leaves, I storm for the door to Kaan’s suite.
“I knew I shouldn’t have followed him down there,” I mutter to my stupid self. When has following somebody into a dark tunnel to the words of “it’s just down here” ever been a good idea?
“Idiot,” I bite out, hammering the word into my brain like a nail that obviously wedged loose, landing me in a cavern with a deceased Moonplume he thinks was mine. The same Moonplume he has drawn on his back—a realization that threatens to cleft me straight through the heart, leaving me with another package to discard in my icy nether.
Snarling, I slap myself. Hard.
Idiot, idiot, idiot.
I charge through the sitting room and snatch my knapsack, flipping the flap as I move toward a bookshelf, pilfering a few dragonscale blades and a number of iron ones because—despite my lapse in brain function—I’m incredibly resourceful.
I’m almost at the door when Kaan shoves before me, cutting me off. Like Rygun himself just pushed before the exit with a belly full of flames and fire in his eyes.
“Stand aside,” I growl, scouring his savagely beautiful features cast in a stony frown.
He grabs my hand, pressing a small leather satchel into my palm—heavy with the promise of what I suspect is a significant amount of gold.
“Bloodstone,” he says. “You’ll need it once you cross the border.”
“Oh …”
Thoughtful.
He takes my face in both hands, snatching my breath. Pulling me so close our noses press together, his shuddered exhale a too-welcomed fever upon my flesh. “Chase death, Elluin Raeve.”
A gasp cuts down my throat like a blade—whetted edges goring deep.
Elluin Raeve …
“Spend your life alone, forever wondering why you scream in your sleep. Calling for that very Moonplume I’ve spent the past twenty-three phases piecing back together, hoping it would bring your spirit peace. All because you loved that beast so fucking much,” he utters, shaking my head, “I knew it would break you to know she was scattered all over the world after scavengers raided her impact zone.”
“I—”
My words catch on the tip of my tongue as he takes my hand and brings it close to his heart, the pad of his thumb running back and forth across the torn skin down the side of my nail.
His gaze implores, voice plagued with a sadness too heavy to bear as he says, “Chase death, Moonbeam. And I pray your bloodlust brings you the same sense of peace I feel just knowing you exist.”
He plants a kiss on my temple, so swift and light I barely register it until he’s gone. Until he’s storming into the adjacent room where he disappears into the shadows—the ghost of his kiss still a brand upon my pebbling skin.
For a moment, I consider chasing him. Asking if Raeve was Elluin’s last name on the off chance I ever want to unveil a past that’ll undoubtedly burn just like the rest of it.
I reach up. Touch my temple.
Whip my hand away.
No.
Snarling, I tighten my fingers around the sack of bloodstone and storm through the open door, hoping the hutch doesn’t shut for the slumber. That there’s a Moltenmaw already saddled, ready for a swift escape from this beautiful, haunting place riddled with too many sinkholes to bear.
It’s not until I’m tromping across the Loff’s rocky shore toward the western tip of the cove I’ve been drawn to since I arrived—the city hutch well and truly at my back—that I realize I have no intention of leaving yet …
Another foreign compulsion that’ll no doubt bite me in the ass.
It’s been a while since my last entry. My attention’s been … elsewhere. Tangled in a web of confusion. That’s the only way I can describe this feeling in my chest.
After my first fighting lesson with Veya beneath the harsh rays of Dhomm (which, by the way, is nowhere near as easy as I thought it was going to be), I moved through the halls of the Imperial Stronghold—body aching, smelling like the sun-deterrent poultice she always cakes me in before I step outside. I came to the grated door that leads to Slátra’s hutch. Only it was closed.
Locked.
Sitting beside the door was the male I now know to be Kaan Vaegor—the eldest son of the King, only recently back from the Boltanic Plains to watch over Dhomm while his pah helps Tyroth secure his foothold in Arithia.