But my hope is a flame that’ll never blow out. Not when it comes to her. She could sink me to the bottom of the Loff, and it’d still burn like a sun.
Leaning back, I tip my head against the ice and squeeze my eyes shut. “They’re closed for you, Raeve …”
Small flapping things swarm through my chest while I wait, for better or for worse.
Broken or whole.
Wanting.
Loving.
I feel her presence before I hear her, the hairs on my arms lifting as her lips brush my temple, so featherlight I’m almost certain I imagined it. But then her hands are threading through my beard, tipping my head to the side.
Her lips press against my neck, mining a gravelly sound from deep inside my chest—the kiss so real I know it’s not a dream.
“You’re here,” I murmur, a tremble rattling through me. Like I just dislodged a ghost from my bones and set it free, scrubbing some of the weight from my chest that was packed tight from phases and phases of dreams that felt so real.
That never were.
“Another,” I beg, the next kiss pressed to the spot just below my ear.
My cheek.
The corner of my mouth.
“Where now?” she asks, her voice tentative. Nervous even.
Like she’s standing on unsteady ground.
“My lids.”
She used to kiss them when she thought I was asleep. Of all the things I’ve missed during the many phases I’ve lived, I’ve missed that the most.
I hear her swallow before she leans so close her exhale tickles my lashes, her lips pressing upon my left lid, then my right—like a warm, pillowy gift from the Creators themselves.
My next breath is more unsteady than my knees.
Another blow of flames warms my skin—
She stills, and I hear her heart skip a beat, feeling mine mulch.
Oh, she’s hiding …
I squeeze my eyes tighter, and she softens against me even before the flame snips off.
“You’re remarkably good at keeping your word, Sire.”
“I’ll take it to my grave, Moonbeam.”
I feel her cheeks swell in a smile, hearing the flame-throwing Sabersythes scream off into the distance, wings beating into an echo.
“Count to ten,” she whispers against my neck. “Then come find me beneath the moon.”
What?
My hand whips forward to thread around her waist and pull her close, only to tuck around my own abdomen.
My stomach dips, eyes snapping open.
I search both ways, but she’s gone—not even a swirl of mist to mark her retreat.
“Moonbeam!”
The name bangs off the walls like tossed boulders as my head cuts left and right.
“You’re not counting,” she chastises from afar, and I sigh, crunching my hands into fists. Releasing them. “Are you doing it in your mind?”
“Two,” I grind out, shaking my head. “Four—Six—Eight—”
“You’re a terrible counter.”
“—Ten.” I lunge forward, kicking through troves of mist. “Sing me a song, Raeve. Give me something to chase that’s real.”
Please.
Nothing while I stalk down path after path, but then her voice comes to me. A melody that weaves across my heart in silky notes that both slice and soothe.
I pause, close my eyes, and absorb—pulling my lungs full, like her tone is a meal my soul just sat down to feast upon.
There she is …
I’ve heard folk speak of Rayne’s voice. Of how it’s so achingly beautiful it makes you want to weep. Of how Clode makes you question your own sanity.
I imagine Raeve is a blend of both, sewing knots in my chest I treasure despite the agony they cause.
With a single lyrical order, she could will me to the edge of a cliff.
To jump.
I charge through the maze like I’m following a map in my own mind—turning left then right, racing down a jagged path before turning right again. I come to a lofty ice pillar with an opening carved in one side, moving into the hollow and up a curled stairwell, every turn bringing me closer to her haunting melody. The same song she once sang to me while she cried outside Slátra’s hutch.
I burst onto the pillar’s flattened top that’s large enough to support a nesting Moonplume, directly beneath a luminous moon. Almost close enough to the aurora to touch the threads of light.
“Lie with me?”
I look down at Raeve—on her back, her stare pinned to the moon overhead, hair unraveled and cast around her in crimped waves. Her mask has been flung aside, her dress a scatter of ribbons mostly draped across the ice, less so against her pale skin, like she just fell from the sky and landed here.
My heart aches at the sight.
The thought.
Clearing my throat, I lift my crown and set it on the stone beside her mask, then do as she asked, placing myself beside her, arms at my sides as I study the moon—its appearance altered by the dome’s distorting veil.
Usually black and spiky.
Now silver and smooth.
“I like this moon,” she whispers, followed by a lengthy pause. “It’s the same color and size as the little wonky one I could see from my window back in Gore.”
The same one on my back.
I swallow, the silence between us growing its own mournful pulse. “Do you want me to tell you why you like it?”
“No.”
Of course not.
Glimpsing movement to my right, I frown as she rolls atop me. With her back to my chest, she reaches down, grabs my arms, and weaves them around her body—now bound in a hug she built for herself.
I forget how to breathe. To blink.
To fucking think.
I close my eyes, speaking past the noose threatening to strangle me. “This hurts, Raeve …”
“I don’t want that,” she rasps, and her arms tighten their grip on mine, like a clenching comfort that fails to soothe the burn. “I wanted—”
“I know what you wanted. But I find no joy in pretending to have something we don’t.”
“I can’t do anything but pretend …”
“Because you lost someone?”
She stiffens in my arms.
This time, I’m the one to tighten my hold, tempted to squeeze her until our bodies fuse.
After a long pause, she finally whispers, almost too soft for me to hear, “Yes.”
My heart splits, the knowledge of her devastating past sitting in my chest like a lump of lead. A cruel, burdening weight I loathe to pile atop whatever grief she’s already carrying before she slips through my fingers again.
But a necessary cruelty.
She needs to be able to make a justified decision about her future based on the facts of reality. Not this smokescreen she’s living behind.
I thought I’d have more time to pick the right moment. Wait for her to grow curious and seek the answers out since the moon reveal went so fucking poorly.
Now I see the truth.
She senses the weight of her past, or she wouldn’t be resorting to such extreme measures. She’s poisoning her curiosity, refusing to let it sprout.
Meaning she’d rather be alone for eternity. Alone, and happily na?ve.
Unfortunately for her, I have a responsibility I refuse to cower from.
“I envy the dragons, Kaan. They worship death so beautifully. We just … lose. Left with nothing but ghosts and memories that feel like wounds.”
The throaty husk of her voice forces me to keep my eyes closed. Raeve doesn’t break when she’s being watched. She stuffs it all down, pretends it’s not there. And right now … she’s not pretending.
At all.
“Have you ever wished the dead could come back? Even for a fleeting moment so you could feel them in your arms? Tell them how much they meant to you?”
“Yes.”
For a hundred phases, I looked upon Slátra’s moon and wished for her to bring Elluin back to me. Begged the Creators, too.
Just another dimpled smile.
Another touch.
Another kiss upon my lids.
Anything.
She releases a shuddered breath. “I’m not back—not really. Much as I’d like to be … that.”
Her.
Elluin.
Weaving her fingers through mine, she lifts my hand.
I open my eyes. Watch her use our fingers to sketch the shape of the rounded graveyard hanging above us, tracing the slope of the Moonplume’s wings.