Filed to story: When the Moon Hatched Book
I didn’t craft this space with gentle precision. The ceiling isn’t high or paved in grandeur. I didn’t bother willing the walls into a fine polish.
This space is exactly what is required, nothing more. A crater-sized arena to throw fists and split skin. To break bones and fray feral tendencies before they grow their own blood-letting pulse.
Stepping down into the sand peppered with grains of iron, the voices in my head extinguish like a blown flame. I make for the arena’s epicenter, the doors thumping shut, followed by the sound of Grihm removing his boots.
I stretch my arm across my chest, then the other. The fine scabs that had begun to form on some of my wounds reopen with the motion, warm blood slicking down my torso and dripping onto the sand.
“I’m not in the mood to hold back,” I rumble, spinning.
Grihm’s jacket is on the ground by his boots, head dipped as he loosens the strings on his black tunic before pulling it over his head, exposing his back, his pale flesh a puckered mess. Like it melted, got stirred up, then abruptly solidified.
He begins to turn, and I look away.
“Neither am I,” he grates out, and it’s a battle to keep my face stony. To contain my shock at the sound of his voice—its coarse texture a tribute to how little he uses it.
He stalks toward me, looking at me from behind the flop of snowy strands half concealing his face, broad shoulders flexing as he fists his hands at his sides.
“Good,” I growl, then charge.
We collide in a clash of white-knuckled blows that break more than they build, our blood spraying the sand as we exert the menace from our systems in the only way either of us understands.
Fists to flesh.
Snarl to bloodlusting snarl.
Rage to fucking rage.
Agni closes the wooden shutters, blocking out most of the light while I drape Elluin atop the large pallet in one of the many guest suites, placing her lax hands upon her chest. Pausing, I take in the ravaged skin down the sides of her nails, my brows pinching together.
Interesting …
Either a bad habit or she’s lusting over the thought of having someone’s blood on her hands.
Wonder which it is?
I pull the silk sheet up to her chin, sweeping a tendril of freshly brushed hair from her now-healed brow. Not even a trace of a scar she would’ve forever worn like a fucked-up version of the diadem she once bore.
“You did well,” I tell Agni, who dips her head in thanks, pausing by the end of the bed. Gaze caught on Elluin, she chews her bottom lip, fingers knotting—like she’s deliberating. “Something the matter?”
“Yes.” She looks at me, slowly filling her lungs. “There’s something I didn’t want to bring up in front of the males. Mostly because they seemed … on edge. Didn’t want to add fuel to the flames, so to speak.”
So she’s telling the one who threw herself across the table and punched the King three times before she was manhandled into submission?
Nice.
I mold myself into a vision of poised composure and say, “Go ahead.”
Her cheeks flush. “The patient’s, ahh … As you know, the gift of Dragonsight runs thick in my family line. So once the blood was cleansed from her skin, I could see the layered stain of many runes. Many, many runes.”
I frown, looking at Elluin. “Recent?”
“It’s hard to tell.” Agni makes her way around the pallet, peeling back the sheets. “But she has one wound that doesn’t appear to have been mended by runes. It glows a shade of silver I’ve never seen before. Right … here,” she says, placing her hand directly over Elluin’s heart.
My blood chills.
“A killing wound,” she continues. “Not one folk survive, since healing a stab to the heart takes more time than the patient usually has.”
All the heat drains from my face.
Creators …
I swallow the thickening lump in my throat, rubbing my hands down my cheeks, threading my fingers through my hair. “Don’t tell the King. Not until we know why … or how.”
Agni’s face blanches, stare flicking to the door at my back, to me again. She drops into a swift curtsy, clears her throat, then turns her attention back on Raeve.
Frowning, I look toward the door, moving out into the hallway just in time to see a shirtless Pyrok disappear around the corner at the far end.
I sigh.
Charging forward, I spill into the sitting room and cut my gaze across the cluster of colk leather seaters curled around a low stone table that’s seen more games of Skripi than there are stars in the southern sky.
Pyrok’s sprawled across a large seater, his long, disheveled hair the same blazing hue as the flame dancing between his fingers. “Don’t tell the King, huh?” he says, condemning me from beneath raised brows.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I mutter, stalking toward the opposite seater and dumping myself on it. “He’s so fucking happy to have her back he’s not asking nearly enough questions. Besides, you don’t slaughter your enemies with a blunt blade. You sharpen it until it’s so honed you’re certain it’ll do the job.”
Pyrok flicks the flame from one hand to the other like a ball, its illumination casting his face in fierce, angular shadows. “What do you know?”
That Elluin was stabbed to death—contrary to the story we were all spoon-fed like younglings desperate for a scrap of sustenance.
“Let me rephrase,” Pyrok says with a roll of his emerald eyes. “Is whatever you do know going to lead us to war with our fledgling army?”
I shrug.
He curses, squashing the flame in his fist, fingers still steaming as he runs them through his hair. “For someone who’s never officially been to war, you’re incredibly hungry for it.”
“What have we been preparing for all these phases if not to swipe the filth from the board and undo all of Pah’s hard, bloody work?” Tucking one leg beneath myself, I pivot, unlacing my leather vest from where it’s threaded down my front and sides. I loosen it, pull it over my head, then lift my loose brown tunic, exposing the ancient fire-lash marks I know make a damn good mess of the pretty skin on my back. “You know I didn’t keep these because I like the look of them,” I say, tossing him a backward glance, though he keeps his eyes on my scars—stare bouncing from one deep, mangled slash to the next. “I kept them so that every time I look in the mirror, I’m reminded of why Tyroth and Cadok need to rot.”
Nothing quite like winning your own Tookah Trial, then being scored to shreds by your own blood for soiling the family name.
Yes, I’m war hungry. I’ve earned that right. Seventy-eight times, to be exact.
Pyrok clears his throat, dropping his gaze as I spin, wiggling my tunic back into place—not bothering with my vest.
“I didn’t get to rip off Pah’s head,” I mutter, reaching for the mug of brandy and tipping myself a glass. “I’ll rip off theirs.”
“Well, let me know if you want me to fry their cocks.”
“Maybe. See how I feel at the time.” I jerk my chin at the stack of Skripi cards and the eight-sided dice tucked in a tall clay mug beside it. “Deal us.”
“I hate when you’re bossy,” he groans, sitting up and reaching for the deck, swiping away some of the thickening tension.
“If I don’t boss you around, nobody will. As it is, you’re about as useful as a pretty mead-stained floor rug.”
“Pretty, you say? Fuck me,” he boasts, chest puffed, elbows on his spread knees as he leans forward and shuffles. “I’m flattered.”
“Course you are.”
He winks, dealing the hard parchment shards. I snatch each one that slides onto the table before me, features smooth as silk despite my delectable hand.
This game loves me.
“I don’t want to play for gold. I’ve got enough gold.” I fan my deal, reordering them from best to worst—left to right. “I want to play for favors.”
Pyrok snort-laughs. “Take it you’ve got the Moonplume?”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” I purr, batting my lashes at him.
He cuts me a dry look, then lays the rest of the deck around the board that never leaves the table. That’s absorbed more spilled Molten Mead than Pyrok—and that’s saying something.
“My roll,” I say, reaching for the cup containing the dice. “Since your face annoys me.”
“You said I was pretty.”
“Yeah.” I toss the dice across the table, rolling a six, picking the eighteenth shard from the far left corner. Choosing to add the spangle to my deck, I set my sowmoth face down on the empty spot. “Pretty annoying.”