Bhoggith.
My gaze drifts to the one on the right, finding it bound in thorny vines, the rounded black blooms singed at the tips and smelling like scorched wood.
Gondragh.
“Where’s the King?” I ask, and Pyrok gestures to the right, looking down at me with what I picture as a raised brow expression. Hard to see much with his mask on.
“That narrows it down,” I say, gaze bumping between the other two before I tug him to the left, stepping beneath the fall of mist that smells fresh and crispy.
If Kaan wants to dance, he can have fun finding me first.
“Interesting choice,” Pyrok muses as we stroll down the path, stuck behind a couple of slow-moving folk garbed in bustles of faux plumage.
“I’ve never been much further south than the border between The Fade and The Shade.” I shrug. “I’m curious.”
He clears his throat, the folk before us tugging at the waggle of air, parting it like a curtain before disappearing into the dome with a puff of fog. Our steps slow, and Pyrok grips the invisible barrier like he’s handling a tent flap, pulling it back. Another pour of fog seeps out and tangles with our feet, the drumming thump pounding against my chest in rhythm with my thrashing heart.
A flock of … something takes flight within my belly. Something that makes no sense.
Kaan’s not here. He’s elsewhere.
Why won’t my feet move forward?
“You okay? I didn’t take you for the hesitating sort.”
I search for a sharpened edge I can use to throw something quippy back, finding them all blunt and rounded.
Soft and floppy.
I swallow, still staring at that triangular opening to the swirl of dusky motion beyond.
No, I don’t think I am okay.
“I’m fine,” I lie, then straighten my spine, force my feet forward, and shove past the flap—engulfed by a swallow of darkness.
Each step forward is another crunch of my slippers through the layer of fluffy snow. Another whisk of the fog churning about my feet.
I’ve stepped into another world, the sky a stretch of black velvet buttoned with pearly moons, scribbled with ribbons of aurora that cast my eerie surroundings in a flood of silver light. Clusters of hexagonal ice pillars reach for the moons, each large enough to support a nesting Moonplume.
It’s like standing within a painted depiction of Netheryn, minus the deadly chill. Minus the threat of being swooped by a broody Moonplume protecting her clutch from thieves who’d risk the climb up one of those sheer, seemingly unscalable pillars in the efforts to snatch an egg.
The air feels hollow but for the thud of the drums and a harp’s lilting tune—like someone called for Clode to sit so chillingly still within the confines of this dome. A hollowness that nests in my chest. An invisible weight I can’t grasp the shape of.
The origin of.
Shaking it off, I step into the swirl of masked folk tiding to the smooth, ethereal melody, as though they’re caught in some sort of trance.
I clear my throat, whipping a crystal flute off the tray of a passing server. “What’s this called?” I ask, gesturing to the azure liquid spilling milky mist down the sides.
“Moonplume’s Breath,” the server says, his lips tinged blue from the cold, a line forming between his brows as he takes in my scant garb. “There are fur shawls by the entrance …”
“I’m fine.” Perfectly fine. “Thanks!”
I continue on, setting the frosted rim of the glass upon my lips. I take a sip, filling my mouth with sour sweetness—crisp and so cold it’s an icy balm to my tongue, throat, and belly.
There’s a momentary thinning of the crowd, and my stare delves into the chasm between two lofty pillars.
My heart skips a beat, and I pause, spinning the iron ring on my finger …
I’m certain there’s something between them I need to see. That if I don’t go and investigate immediately, something bad will happen.
Not sure what. Feels important.
“Is everything alright?”
Definitely not.
It’s on the tip of my tongue to ask if Pyrok knows how I ended up with the Moonplume I supposedly charmed in my previous … existence. To ask if I raided a nest for an egg, or perhaps inherited someone else’s previously claimed beast.
To ask if I’ve been here before—the real here.
“Of course,” I say, flashing him a smile over my shoulder that falls off my face the moment I stab my stare forward again and charge through the crowd.
“Where are we going?” he yells as I weave between bodies draped in heavy layers of leather and fur, between tables and stools, moving toward the tallest cluster of pillars in the epicenter of the celebration.
“Don’t know,” I murmur, taking another sip of my drink, holding the puddle of chill in my mouth until I’m verging on a frostbit tongue before I swallow it down.
The crowd thins, giving way to a barricade of guards standing shoulder to shoulder, barring entry to a frail path that appears to thread between two immense icy pillars. Bronze armor molds to their bodies like Sabersythe scales, black masks covering the top half of their faces, dark fur shawls draped around their shoulders.
“What’s behind there?” I ask Pyrok when he finally catches up to me, a Moonplume’s Breath in one hand, the other cupping a dragon’s egg filled with curly fried things capped in a glob of white sauce.
“A game table for the highfliers,” he says. “You don’t go in there unless you have a lot of gold to waste and an ego large enough to absorb a few blows.”
Huh.
Not what I was expecting to find. But now that I’m here …
I spin and pat down Pyrok’s pockets, discovering a bulge in the left one that I dig out to the tune of his disgruntled mutterings.
“You know what you remind me of?” he grinds out as I wave the pouch of gold at the guards who part ways to let us through. “A woetoe.”
“Met one of those while I was in prison for serial murder,” I say, loud enough a few of the guards turn their heads, looking at me over their shoulders. “Nice fellow. Kept his face hair smooth and slick despite the squalor they kept us in. What game are we playing?”
“Skripi,” Pyrok mutters, following me along a frail path woven between the lofty pillars that certainly aren’t quite cold enough to be real ice. Perhaps just stone runed to look like it. “You play?”
I throw his pouch in the air, snatching it. “Lil bit.”
“Great,” he gripes. “Can’t wait to lose a sack of gold to a clutch of elitists who use pebbles of the stuff to decorate their garden beds.”
“That’s not the right attitude.” I take a few more turns down the zigzagged path, tossing back another deep glug of my Moonplume’s Breath. “Take it King Burn doesn’t pay too well?”
“Very well. For sweet fuck all, if I’m to be perfectly honest. Not the point.”
There’s an edge to his voice that makes me pause, glancing over my shoulder, seeing a hardness to the line of his mouth that wasn’t there before—his own Moonplume’s Breath entirely untouched.
Odd. He usually tosses drinks back like they’re split moments away from evaporation.
“Care to elaborate?”
“Care to get this over with so I can find a barrel of Molten Mead large enough to drown myself in?” He jerks his chin, urging me on. “Quick, before my squinn curls get cold.”
Frowning, I continue forward, wondering if Pyrok has a prickly history with some of these highfliers.
Another jagged bend, and the path opens to a wide cavern, like somebody took a spoon to the ice and carved out a dead-end dollop. A hexagon-shaped table sits in the center, six high-backed chairs perched around it, all but one inhabited.
My feet still.
Four males clad in fine black garb and sooty fur cloaks wield a fan of game shards close to their puffed chests, each bearing the same simple half-face masks sculpted from polished gold. A fifth seat is occupied by a creature I’m somewhat familiar with.