Filed to story: When the Moon Hatched Book
“I’m still intent on killing you, if given the chance,” I warn past clenched teeth.
“Don’t forget to cut off my head,” he murmurs. “Or I’ll haunt you for eternity.”
“I don’t believe in that.”
Not one bit. I’ve cut off very few heads in comparison to my rather large body count, and I’m yet to see a single spirit claw at me from the shadows.
He lifts a brow. “Then what do you believe in?” he asks, his voice guttural.
“Revenge.”
All the warmth sputters from his eyes, like part of him just slipped away. “Revenge is the loneliest deity of them all, Moonbeam. Take it from someone who knows.”
I open my mouth to speak again, but Bhea cuts in. “If I’m to do this properly, it will take a while. And it will hurt. The cuts are deep. She will have to relive the pain while I mend the damage.”
I realize she’s not warning me, her eyes able to see what most others cannot.
She’s warning him.
“She can do it,” he rumbles, gaze challenging me to do just that.
With my nod, Bhea begins etching her runes, reversing the lifespan of my wounds one vile slash at a time. The King holds my stare as I’m stitched shut in over a hundred ways, though it doesn’t feel like that. It feels like I’m being ripped wider—
my insides bared.
Examined.
Perhaps because I’m used to doing this without an audience besides the Runi fixing me new. Without somebody else timing their breaths to my own, as though reminding me to breathe.
Without somebody else tightening their grip on my hands every time I flinch, wiping the sweat from my brow, rubbing tracks across my blanched knuckles as if to calm my rioting heart.
It’s a humble moment of peace despite the pain lancing through me. A quiet moment destined to scream.
It doesn’t matter how much of my skin is smoothed or how deep he kneels at my feet. I’m still an assassin marked for execution come aurora rise, and he’s still a tyrant king.
Iwas working on Allume’s wing stretches this dae, singing her a soft, calming song while extending the fine bones as far as they could go—which is now almost a full extension. She was getting restless, swinging her head around and nudging my side, looking at me with those massive glittery eyes. Like she was trying to say something. She even threw a little flame toward the entrance, which is very unlike her.
I now realize she was challenging it.
Suddenly, she began tilling her wings so fast her gammy one clipped me in the head and threw me back toward Haedeon’s chair. I skidded across the ground and landed amongst a pile of ice boulders Mah’s Moonplume N?thae had recently brought in because we think she might be broody.
I hit my head. Hard.
When I opened my eyes again, Allume was gone, but I could see her through the entrance—fluttering across the sky, light shafting off her brilliant silver hide. Could see her long silken tail dusting the dim with each wonky waggle of her wings. Could see the plumes of aqua flames she kept throwing skyward, accompanied by squealing shrieks. Like a victory cry to the moons.
To her ancestors.
I scrambled up to check on Haedeon …
He was smiling.
He looked me right in the eye and said “thank you” in a voice so rough I think the words might’ve hurt coming out, and I’ve never felt happiness so fierce.
For the first time since I climbed in Haedeon’s sleigh all those phases ago, I felt remarkable.
“O
kay, that’s the last,” Bhea says, smoothing an oil over my back—her hands soft and tender, rubbing all the tension from my now-healed flesh.
Battling the urge to groan with relief, I open my eyes, looking straight into a pair of intense cinder orbs, a line dug between the King’s thick brows.
“You okay?” he asks, tightening his hold on my clammy hands.
“I’m great,” I slur, tugging them from his grip.
Never better. So glad he tortured me back to health during my last living moments. What a way to go out. Fitting, but a bit shit.
I lean back so I can lift my hands up over the chair’s headrest without snagging my chain and take the towel slung over his shoulder. The one he’s been using to dab at my forehead whenever sweat beaded down into my lashes.
“I’ll get my fine-tipped prongs for the pin,” Bhea says while I stuff my face in the towel, scrubbing the tension from around my eyes, hearing the sound of her footsteps before she begins rummaging through something.
Her words finally sink past the fog currently clouding my head.
Prongs?
What do they need fine-tipped prongs fo—
Oh.
I pull the towel from my face, catching the King’s stare again. “You’re removing the pin?”
Makes sense. Wouldn’t want any hatchlings choking to death on it if I’m carted west and spat out in a Moltenmaw’s tinder nest.
“You wear iron cuffs,” he murmurs, his gaze dragging over every angle of my face—like he’s mapping out the shape of it—landing on my eyes again. “The pin is unnecessary.”
“Well, yeah. But
I’m unnecessary, remember? Skin slabs … Rekk Zharos’s finger … I don’t think you appreciate quite how close you came to being hacked into bits, then tossed off the wall. But hey, thanks for mending me before I die, even though it makes no sense.”
The corner of his mouth kicks up. “Hacked into bits, you say?”
Obviously.
“You’re the biggest male I’ve ever seen.” I shrug, biting down on a wince because that pin absolutely hurts. It’s blatant now that my skin’s no longer slashed to ribbons. “There’s no way I could’ve dragged you to the edge after I slit your throat.”
“But you didn’t …”
I frown, wishing he wouldn’t stuff my indiscretions in my face like that.
He smelled good.
I fucked up.
Let’s not dwell on it.
“The prongs aren’t here,” Bhea says, and that small smile instantly falls off the King’s face as he pushes to a stand.
“I have some in my saddlepack, but it’ll take me a while to get there and back,” he announces, striding toward the window covered by a round of aged, half-rotten wood. “How are we on ti—“
“Give me a blade.” I wave my hand in the air, jingling my chains. “I’ll cut it out.”
The King abruptly stops, and both he and Bhea glare at me like I just asked them to pretty please bare their throats so I can slice them open.
I roll my eyes.
“I won’t stab you. White flag, remember? I won’t give it back, either, so don’t give me one you’re particularly attached to.”
The only thing worse than losing a good blade is losing all your good blades, dammit.
The tips of my fingers tingle with the urge to gouge them through Rekk Zharos’s throat and rip out his trachea with my bare hands. Now that I’m mended, the injustice is extra crippling. I’m more than well enough to hunt him if it weren’t for these fucking chains.
“I can put a salve on it,” Bhea suggests, turning her attention to the King—like I’m not even here.
“That’s a terrible idea,” I gripe, reinserting myself back into the conversation. “I have a pin in my shoulder.”