Filed to story: When the Moon Hatched Book
My throat dries.
“His fear, his sadness
… It flowed through me like a stream. I felt like I was being ripped apart, piece by piece.” Her gaze flicks up to meet mine, and I think a spear through the heart might hurt less.
There’s so much pain in those big blue eyes …
“I put the necklace back on,” she says, wiping her cheeks with her sleeve. “Left it on for many, many phases. Because I was a coward.”
“You’re not a coward, Kyzari. Don’t ever speak about yourself like that.”
She cuts me a faux smile, then draws another drink of mead, almost draining the mug before she speaks again.
“I found courage eventually. Removed the necklace for the first time in over eighty phases. I listened to his sounds. Truly listened. I realized it wasn’t just screams and wails, but words,” she says, voice cracking as her wide eyes plead with me. “I began threading those words together, shaping his language in my mind, learning … too much.”
My gaze nips at the curtain, and I plant my arms on the table again.
There’s more, I know there is. She’s dancing around the fiery pip like she’s afraid to handle it.
“Keep going.”
There’s a moment of pause before she lifts her chin, and for the first time since she sat down at my table, I see her as someone with something to guard.
Something to lose.
“I’m telling you this not because I want your pity. Pity doesn’t help me any more than it helped him during those many phases I sat in silence.”
“Then why?”
“Because I want help to set him free.”
It’s like she reached across the table, swung her hand back and slapped me in the face.
“Impossible,” I growl. “It’ll kill you. The diadem can only be removed from a pulseless host.”
“I don’t intend to die,
Uncle. There has to be another way. I just have to work it out.”
I’ve never wanted to shake someone so much in my life, my hands bunching into fists so tight my knuckles pop.
“And why do you want to do that?” I grind out. “The Aether Stone has been passed down for generations. Your mah wore it. Her mah before that. On and fucking on—“
“His name is Caelis,” she announces, her voice stained with a fierce imperial lilt. She pins me with a stare that cuts through flesh and bone. “And because I’ve fallen in love with him.”
A rumble boils deep inside my gut, scalding up my throat with such intense heat I swear my flesh peels off.
I know too well how malignant the roots of love can be. I’ve suffered from the same ailment for over an eon, and I’ll continue suffering until the dae I die.
Kyzari’s suffering, too—I can see it in her eyes. It’s taken her, and it won’t let go.
If my brother hadn’t kept her so sheltered from the world, perhaps she wouldn’t have fallen in love with a fucking stone.
Perhaps she wouldn’t be trying to rid herself of a diadem that could very well take her life the moment it’s ripped free.
“There is no reality where this ends well,” I snarl through gritted teeth, and something shatters in her eyes.
“You can’t know that …”
“I know he’s in that thing for a reason. That your family line was blessed with the power to contain him for a reason.”
She rips her gaze from mine, stare plummeting to the table so fast she probably thinks I missed the stain of guilt clouding her eyes.
“What do you know?”
“Nothing,” she bites out, cheeks flushing.
My eyes narrow. “What. Do. You. Know?”
She shoves to a stand. “This was a mistake. Forget I said anything.” My eyes flare as she flips up her hood and makes for the curtain. Looking at me over her shoulder, she says, “I will leave you with your empty mug.”
She goes—her parting words like drips of poison fed to me on a tarnished spoon—leaving the curtain wide open. Allowing me a perfect, unveiled view of the dais. Of the musician perched on the stool beneath an illusion of luminous snowflakes, the vacant seat beside her haunting me to the marrow.
I look at my empty mug, pulling my lungs full.
Holding the breath.
Kyzari’s right, but my mug’s not the only thing that’s empty.
My chest feels pretty fucking hollow, too.
Something bumps against my cheek, ripping me from the fiery clutches of a dream that was melting flesh from my bones in slow, sizzling sweeps. My eyes pop open, a scream sitting in the back of my throat like a welling beast threatening to split the world in two.
I sit up, hissing through clenched teeth, trying to refocus my gaze on the here.
The now.
Nee flutters around me, frantically nuzzling my chest while I scrub my sweat-dappled skin, trying to scour the terror from my flesh.
Unsuccessfully.
I rush to my washroom, fill the stone basin with icy water, and splash my face in laden scoops that do little to douse the burn. “A dream,” I murmur, repeating the motion again.
Again.
Nee continues to dance around me as I dunk a cloth in the water and use it to dab the back of my neck. I dunk it again, pressing my face into the sodden material.
Just a fucking dream.
I lift my head, looking in the small mirror hanging on the wall. My eyes are bloodshot, ice blue standing out in stark contrast against the red scribbles, my cheeks flushed from the rabid heat that chased me to the surface.
Growling, I screw up the cloth and toss it at the wall, scooping my palms full of water again, splashing my face and dragging the wetness back through my hair. I set my hands on the edge of the basin and close my eyes, humming my calming tune while I focus on my fingertips, then my hands, my arms—moving all the way through my body. Slowly loosening each muscle, convincing myself there’s nothing here that wants to hurt me.
To battle me.
Nee nuzzles much too close to my sodden hair, and a warning growl boils up my throat. “Don’t, Nee. You know how I feel about water getting near you.”
With a burst of fluttering motion, she rises above my head instead, circling a safe distance away.
I’m not certain she has waterproof runes, and I’m in no rush to find out the hard way that she was constructed before they were invented.
I press my face into the towel and pour a heavy sigh through the fluffy fabric, untacking the sticky remnants of my terror, a full-body shiver racking through me.
That one felt so real. Too real.
I jump a few times to shake it off, then move back into my sleepsuite, chased by a flutter of parchment wings. My eyes widen at the outside view, the sky clear enough that I can see the aurora already beginning to thread below the western horizon.
Falling. Wow.
I slept the entire dae away …
My stomach growls, clamping down on its aching hollow.
I’ll check on Essi, make us some food if she hasn’t already eaten, then try to get back to sleep. Otherwise, I’ll be out of sorts for cycles.