Filed to story: When the Moon Hatched Book
I promised Fallon I’d do before I lost her. Before I woke to find her cold.
Unmoving.
The barbed memory is an icy spike hammered into my hardened heart, all the way to the soft core, pitting me with a twinge of raw, familiar pain—
No.
I sink into my inner self, landing upon the crumbled obsidian shore of my immense frozen lake, struck by the eerie silence that always makes my skin pebble. I pinch a fist-sized stone I use to bind the offending memory around, then creep out onto the smooth, frosty expanse that soothes the bare soles of my feet.
Kneeling, I carve a hole in the thick ice, cold water oozing up the moment it cracks free. I tip the lid, plop the heavy thought down the gap, and rush away, the hairs on the back of my neck lifting as I blink back to my external reality.
My next breath is a blow of icy air, Sereme’s earlier words still echoing through my mind:
You chose to live.
Sure, it’s no longer on your terms …
At least you’re still breathing.
I look at the female watching me down the line of her nose like she’d love for me to drop to my knees and kiss her purple shoes.
“My life has never been on my terms.” I stand, wrap my veil around my face, then gather her quills off the ground and lump them on the desk, rearranging them in order of size. Just the way she likes. “And I refuse to accept this as living.”
I grab my bag and turn, moving toward the door.
“I didn’t say you could leave,
Raeve.”
“Drag your nail down my rune again.” I shrug. “See if I care.”
I slam the door on my way out.
Haedeon leaves early next cycle to try and steal his own Moonplume egg. He has to sleigh there and spend many slumbers in snow huts on the way, even though it’s dangerous beyond Arithia’s walls.
Seems a bit silly to me, since Pahpi’s Moonplume could carry him there so fast. But Haedeon keeps saying that’s how it’s always been done. That he wants to prove himself.
I don’t think Mahmi and Pahpi want him to prove anything, because I overheard them beg him not to go. Not that it worked.
This aurora fall, Haedeon smiled big and made lots of jokes while I was helping him fold his clothes and tuck them in his bag, but I can tell he’s scared. I can tell because he gave me three butterberry chews from the jar he keeps beside his pallet.
Normally, he never gives me more than one at a time because he says they’ll give me a bellyache, which is a lie. I ate all three and my belly feels fine.
Pahpi said it’s really hard to get a Moonplume egg. That you have to go to Netheryn—the place where it’s too cold for almost everything else to grow or breathe—and climb really high ice towers without being seen. That you have to steal the egg from a mahmi Moonplume’s nest, then get back down the tower fast and quiet.
My brother’s big and he makes lots of noise all the time. He doesn’t know how to breathe soft or make his boots not crunch in the snow. Even his voice is rough and coarse like grain.
He doesn’t hear any of the elemental songs.
Maybe those butterberry chews do give you a bellyache after all, because I don’t feel so good anymore …
I don’t think my brother’s coming home from Netheryn.
Slamming the door shut on The Curly Quill, I charge west through the rowdy Ditch now packed full of merchant carts, folk flocking to claim the cheapest bushels of vegetables they can barter. I’d planned to stop for a cindercream pastry from one of my favorite merchants on the way home, but after having all of Sereme’s purple-toned trash stuffed down my throat, I’ve lost the urge.
A chorus of panicked gasps has me pausing, gaze whipping around, following a sea of upturned stares.
My pulse scatters at the sight of an adult Moltenmaw gliding almost close enough to rip a ballista off the wall with its massive talons. A gust of wind slams down with the might of its magnificent wings—almost unveiling me.
Chest expanding, it lengthens its neck, cranks its maw, and paints the sky in a plume of flame that pours enough heat into the Ditch to turn the snow slushy.
Folk scream, dashing for cover beneath skybridges that are, in all honesty, completely fucking useless. If that beast decided to turn its head and torch us, I doubt a single one of us could do anything to stop it.
Dragonflame doesn’t abide by the rules of nature. Ignos’s language can’t deter it from blistering skin. Melting flesh and bone.
Destroying cities.
Only a
Daga-M?rrk can wield dragonflame—one so bonded with their dragon they can harness its strength and fire. Though the connection is more myth than reality.
The beast glides toward the coliseum that’s clamped between both lengths of wall like a ghastly, blood-splattered crown.
“Creators,” I mutter, watching the Moltenmaw circle lazily above the massive structure.
The feeding bell gongs loud enough that I feel the sound in my marrow, and a haunting hush falls upon the crowd, the air igniting with the frantic thump of beating wings. A thunder of Moltenmaws swarm from every direction, clotting the sky with a riot of ravenous motion, charging for the free meal—their sharp maws pointed toward the coliseum like a volley of arrows.
They converge, snapping at each other, talons slashing, vibrant feathers spraying as they battle for whoever’s currently tied to the stake within the structure.
An ear-splitting scream followed by a bloodcurdling howl of anguish echoes into the otherwise silent Ditch with eerie precision, almost like someone willed Clode to carry the sound down just to fuck with us. To remind us of the chilling consequences for those who madden The Crown.
My hands shake with my welling rage, fingers tangling through the folds of my gown, fisting the thick material.
I’d be up there right now, screaming for blood in the spectator seats if the one being fed to the beasts were a monster like Tarik Relaken. But it won’t be.
They never are.
They’re others like me, caught masquerading as nulls. They’re folk who speak out against the King, or parents of gifted children who try to keep their young from being forced through the painful screening process required of every offspring. From being shaved. Pierced. Ripped from their homes in exchange for The Crown’s prescription bucket of bloodstone—gratitude for their great contribution to The Fade’s swelling militia.
A paltry bandage for a wounded heart.
The searing scream is snipped to the tune of splitting wood, and my guts plummet so fast I’m struck with the urge to vomit.
A victorious Moltenmaw shoves from the coliseum, churns its feathered wings, and heaves into the sky. Blood leaks from its honed mouth as the beautiful, monstrous creature glides west, a sea of heads turning to watch it sail along the wall.
All the oxygen wicks from my lungs.
In that direction, the wall eventually dips, half swallowed by the Moltenmaw spawning grounds—Bhoggith. Whenever they fly west with fresh meat, there’s only one place the victim is going to end up.
Spat out in a nest, fed to the dragon’s young.
Live prey.
I shiver from the base of my neck all the way to the tips of my toes, my gaze coasting across the silent crowd, most staring skyward through wide eyes, their mouths pinched shut as if under lock and key.
Apparently, the Kingdom of The Fade used to be a Creators-blessed place to live, where children’s giggles echoed through the Ditch. Where the wispy watercolor sky inspired an era of music and arts.
Then our current king was sworn in, caring only for his military might.
I’d like to have seen Gore back then, when the kingdom was in its prime. Would like to have experienced the reality that was colorful to the core—not just on the outside.
I think that’s the living
Fallon was referring to. Not this.
This can’t be it.
I swallow the rage boiling up my throat, certain there’s enough anger inside me to incinerate this city in a single blow of breath. Even so, I force myself to continue forward, ignoring the feral urge to stalk to the city hutch, hire a carter, and fly west to Drelgad. To where King Cadok currently resides, overseeing his militia.
Only a fool would believe I could get close enough to kill him without a fierce amount of backup, the tri-beaded male constantly guarded by dual-beaded elementals and his vicious dragon. Making my anger useless—at least until the Elding decides to stop clipping leaves off this malignant tree and start hacking at its roots.
Itake a zigzag path up the Ditch’s lofty interior, scaling thirty-one stories, scanning my surroundings as I cross a crumbling skybridge and step onto the side of the wall that looks out upon The Shade. I skulk down a rough-hewn wind tunnel that reminds me of a choking throat, the ground etched in bands of runes that trigger all sorts of terrible responses for anyone other than myself or Essi.
The immediate urge to shit themselves. The sudden loss of vision—like they fell headfirst into The Shade’s inky sky. And my personal favorite, the unnerving belief that a Moltenmaw just stuffed its beak down this very tunnel and is trying to pluck them out like a bug in a hole.