Filed to story: When the Moon Hatched Book
I douse the corner of another small cloth, tuck it in my sheath with a stick of flint, then move toward the window, pausing by the seater where I drop to a kneel.
Brushing my hand through Essi’s hair, I take in the sharp slopes of her ethereal face … Too beautiful for this world.
Too pure.
“I love you,” I whisper, mapping her freckles. Storing the vision of her somewhere safe where I can treasure it forever. “I’m going to take away the cold, okay?”
The silence that follows is a cruel taunt that rips at the contents of my chest. Like a Moltenmaw is caught within me, slashing.
Feasting.
With a final kiss on her temple, I force myself to turn. To climb out the window and up the bloodstained wall, sullying my hands with more of her.
I pull myself into the wind tunnel, stare stabbed at the drop chute as I push to my feet.
Feed me to the fire where I’ll never be cold again.
My face crumbles, then knots into a savage twist despite the reluctant shudder tilled from my ashen past.
The thought of burning Essi’s body … it makes me want to bunch up and scream. The idea of casting her in flames goes against the grain of everything that shaped me into who I am this dae, but I will not cower from this fire she asked me for.
I will not fail her again.
I pull the cloth and flint from my sheath and force myself forward a single wobbly step. Hand trembling.
Soul squirming.
Teeth gritted, I scour the flint across the stone wall, catching the spark on the cloth. It bursts into flames so fast they nip at my skin, and panic wraps its hands around my throat, squeezing so hard I can barely breathe. But I maintain my trembling hold on the cloth, forcing three strangled words past my chattering teeth.
“I’m sorry, Essi.”
I’m sorry I couldn’t keep you safe. That I never said I love you before you were dying in my arms.
I’m sorry I wasn’t the family you deserved.
I flick the flaming cloth down the chute, followed by the flint, staggering back from the blow of heat that blasts my face, choking on the pour of smoke.
There’s the sound of glass shattering, and I squeeze my eyes shut, picturing her jars of tinctures popping—one by one.
The heat intensifies, and I picture the rug burning, the smell of fried flesh coming to me too soon.
Too fucking soon.
A strangled sob squeezes up my throat as I stagger back from the heat. The smell
—clapping my hand upon my mouth.
Something clatters against my boot.
I open my eyes, looking to the ground splotched red. To the bloody blade resting by my foot and the leather satchel beside it.
Black.
Essi’s.
My heart lurches, like something just tossed it against my ribs so hard I’m surprised they didn’t fracture.
Tentatively, I bend down and flick the mouth of the bag aside to peer in, seeing a book and a frosted jar. A book she must’ve gotten from the library.
From the
Undercity.
I don’t bother opening the jar, knowing exactly what’s within. The final ingredient she required to bind the diamond cap to my tooth …
The cap she’d made to protect me.
My lungs constrict.
I reach for the dagger Essi must’ve pulled from her abdomen. The dagger that did this to her.
That took her from me.
I’m about to sheathe it next to my own when something catches my eye—a slithering motion on the flat face of the blade.
Every cell in my body stills as Essi’s blood congeals into a collection of ruddy letters:
A summons. For me.
From Rekk Zharos.
The blade slips from my hand. Clatters to the ground.
He’s narrowed his eyes on me. Discovered where I live. Taken down Essi to lure me out.
Somehow.
Which means it’s my fault she snuck out to the Undercity. My fault she got stabbed, then returned to our home rather than finding a Fleshthread to heal her. My fault she bled out on the couch until she stopped moving.
My fault she’s burning—
Dead.
A guttural groan ruptures from deep within, bruising my insides as it wrestles free. As the realization crouches upon my chest, slashes me open, then stuffs its maw in and chews
—masticating my lungs. My heart.
My soul.
My face crumbles, shoulders, spine.
Knees.
I heap upon the ground, deflating just as fast as my rupturing resolve, crushed by a mountain of suffocating guilt. Certain I’m being slit through the chest in long, jagged severs—again.
Again.
I flinch with each agonizing slash, my gaze dropping to the blood-soaked hands I used to lead Essi from the dark bowels of the Undercity—so determined I could give her a better life.
I promised I’d keep her safe. Instead, I gave her a grave.
And I—
I—
I can’t do this. I can’t fucking do this anymore.
Something within me shifts, and a booming collision jars me from the inside out, my bones locking from the impact. A thunderous crack ricochets from deep beneath my ribs before a sharp explosion pierces through me, shattering my insides into a thousand icy shards.
My body temperature plummets so fast I hear my heart slow, like it’s wrestling slushy blood through my veins one sluggish beat at a time.
I inhale a shudder of air that feels too warm. Like pulling lava into my frosted lungs.
It’s coming.