Filed to story: When the Moon Hatched Book
Confusion scrambles my thoughts.
“Thank you,” I announce, straightening my shoulders. Keeping my blade pointed at his crotch, I crunch the parchment into a tighter ball, then stuff it into my pocket.
Maybe I won’t have to kill him. He didn’t see me kill Tarik, hasn’t seen my face nor the notice I tore off the wall. He certainly hasn’t tried to take liberties with me.
Perhaps he’s not the monster I thought he was while he watched me sing all slumber with an obsessive sort of severity?
Not to mention the time it would take to drag him to the same edge I shoved Tarik over if I were forced to slit his throat where we stand. That’s even if I could drag him. I’d probably have to hack him into smaller bits—a messy task that sponges time. Something I’m swiftly running out of, Tarik’s hand a heavy weight in my pocket.
“If you’ll excuse—“
“There’s a dead male fae speared through the gut down there,” he says, brow arched, jerking his chin toward the wind tunnel’s gaping exit to the unmerciful plummet below—his voice a rough monotone that cleaves an even deeper split between my options.
“I just came from there, and I saw no male.” I keep my dagger steady, muscles poised. “All I saw was a monster.”
I hold his gaze, perched upon the sharp edge of indecision. Waiting for his response to stretch between us before I decide which way I’ll fall. Whether I categorize this male in the same box as Tarik or a different one.
Asafer one.
His eyes bore into me like he’s excavating bits of my soul as he says, “On that, I heartily agree.”
I frown, open my mouth, close it.
Safe box it is.
“Don’t follow me,” I bite out, then pull my dagger from his crotch and stalk off down the nearby staircase without looking back.
Idump Tarik’s hand down a scarcely used, predesignated rubbish chute, waiting with my head pushed through the hole until I hear a whistle from another member of F?ur du Ath deep in the Undercity. Confirmation the package was caught. That the others will now work to free the younglings.
Being an Elding Blade, I kill. Nothing more. I certainly don’t rescue
—
that task left to others not so comfortable getting bloody. But part of me almost …
yearns to this time.
This mission has been so personal to me. A large-scale passion project I fought hard to have approved. One that tunneled the Ath’s resources away from our regular missions that focus on implicating The Crown.
I turn, lean against the wall, close my eyes, and smile, a pleasant warmth spreading through my chest as I imagine the light igniting in those younglings’ eyes when they realize they’re free.
Truly free—in a way I doubt I’ll ever fully understand.
Make yourself indispensable and folk dig their claws in. Doesn’t matter if they’re good or bad or somewhere in the middle. If there’s anything I’ve learned from this life, it’s that.
Still …
I hope those younglings like it at The Flourish. I’ve never been to the underground safe haven ruled by the Elding, and though I’ve heard it’s somewhere in the south, I don’t think I’ll ever know for certain.
See it with my own two eyes.
That would be considered retirement, and I doubt the leader of the F?ur du Ath has any interest in relinquishing my usefulness, instead plying me with placating missions I’ll happily accept. Especially ones that end like this, filling me with this warm feeling of momentary contentment. Like I’ve just scrubbed one of the many stains from this big, beautiful world I so desperately want to love.
Besides, I’m not so sure retirement would suit me. Not the sort that would undoubtedly come with a one-way trip to The Flourish. I think my fingers would get itchy.
There’s too much trash to take out.
Istep out onto one of the perilous skybridges that stretches between both halves of the wall—the silent city so far beneath me. At thirty-three levels up, this one is the highest, never used by others and crusted in layers of snow that crunch beneath my boots.
Reaching the middle, I lie on my back—as close to the clouds as I can get—letting the cold sink through my gown. Into my flesh and bones.
Deeper.
My eyelids flutter shut.
Fat flakes of snow patter upon my face and the lax scoops of my hands, and I focus on each icy point of contact, loosening the muscles beneath, releasing some of the tension I’d collected throughout the slumber.
Picturing myself as a dragon, wings outstretched, I tip and churn through the puffy pink clouds, so far above the world that all I hear is my heartbeat and the heavy thump of my imaginary wings. All I feel is the flexing strength of my body. Untethered.
Free.
An icy calm settles within me like a nesting beast, and I wiggle my toes, my fingers, slowly bringing myself back to reality.
Opening my eyes, I look through a gap in the clouds to the moon of a perished Moltenmaw resting above the city. Perhaps the biggest one I’ve seen—bound in a tight ball, head tucked beneath its wing, its stony plumage brushed in shades of purple, pink, and blue.
I stare at it, recalling the time Ruse mentioned the sad story about how that dragon got there, not that I probed for details. In fact, I think I turned around and walked straight from her store without looking back.
Sadness is like stones that stack inside you, making it harder to move. Ignorance is my self-preservation tonic, and I’ll swear by it until I die.
Sometimes, however, when I’m lying on what feels like the top of the world with a sleeping city beneath me, I wonder if that moon is ever tempted to fall. To crush Gore in a strike of spite for whatever caused it to soar up there and perch atop The Fade’s decorated capital like a lingering threat.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe every last wisp of a dragon’s cognizance dissolves the moment they solidify, and they don’t decide to fall at all. Maybe something else rips them from the sky.
And maybe that dragon didn’t consider much of anything when it decided to curl up there. Maybe it wasn’t fueled by thoughts of revenge, as I like to believe it was.
Maybe it was just a convenient spot to die.
Gaze still cast on the moon, I wiggle my hand into my pocket, retrieving the parchment lark I received at the Hungry Hollow and lifting it above my face, unfolding its wings, beak, and body until I’m left with a crimped square scrawled in Essi’s handwriting.
I hope you got your hand, since I know you won’t read this until after you’re done. Which is anxiety-inducing, just so we’re clear. What if I desperately need a stick of porthonium to prevent the world from crumbling and you’re too busy carving words into somebody’s chest to unfold my lark still stuffed in your pocket? Think of the world, Raeve. And the hyperfixation I’m currently nursing.
Anyway, here’s a very important list I’m sending because I know how you feel about me going to the Undercity alone. Patience is my biggest and most impressive virtue.
I snort-laugh.
Essi has the patience of a waif hungry for a soul to sink its teeth into, and not a pinch more. But good for her thinking otherwise. Enthusiasm suits her.
??A hand-sized lump of iron
(so I can make more pins for your boot)
??Three shaves of Sabersythe tusk
(ideally from a mature beast well past their tenth shed)
??A 0.0112 etching stick reinforced enough to scour diamond
(just hand this list to Ruse because this probably makes no sense)
“Wise beyond your lifespan,” I say, gaze skimming farther down her list.
??A jar of fluffy sowmoth powder. Or if there’s none in stock, can you catch me one? Please? I’ll collect the powder myself, then set it free. Promise.
I cringe, remembering the last time I leapt around the Ditch, armed with a glass jar and a holey lid.
A full-body shudder almost rattles me to the core.
I’ll never forget the way the sowmoth squeaked. I didn’t even know they could squeak.
“Catch your own damn sowmoth,” I mutter, knowing damn well I’ll catch her a bloody sowmoth if the bloody store has no jars of bloody powder.
My eyes narrow on the last request half concealed by a blotch of Tarik Relaken’s blood.
??And lastly, please go to the Undercity and