The Ballad of Falling Dragons (The Moonfall #2)

Prologue

It was unnaturally quiet that dae, the Loff a sheet of tempered glass that offered only the sharpest reflection.

Not a breath of wind ruffled the grass or squealed past honed corners, the volcanoes that blistered Gondragh quelling their grumbled ruckus for the first time in many phases.

Not a single rock rolled out of place unless ordered to, the action swift and without strain.

Even the clouds refused to weep, like a crumbled face holding breath before the anguished sob.

It was as though Ignos, Bulder, Clode, and Rayne had pooled their consciousnesses … elsewhere. As though they’d been watching.

Listening.

Folk mulled over the strange occurrence, and those who could hear the Creators’ songs would later speak of it as a bad omen, given what was to unfold that dae. That the large silver Moonplume moon perched in the sky above The Shade was about to wobble from its lofty perch.

First came a scream from the mouth of someone buckled with too much pain and loneliness. Like bursting a seam that had been sewn too tight. Then came the words—tilled from a thirsty heart, without much thought beyond hope of easing the ache in the female’s chest.

What happened next had the Creators screaming with equal might, their voices hitched with foreboding.

Then …

Slátra pitched from the sky like a luminous egg, plummeting with such velocity that fire plumed in her bouldered wake.

Those who witnessed the event and lived to tell the tale would later say the ground around them seemed to heave a sigh of acceptance, right before the moon struck with such force the entire world rattled for a beat, like a shudder.

Fitting, given the event would later bring about a reckoning that was well overdue.

The Creators watched as a female hatched from that moon, stumbled free of the beautiful, luminous wreckage with eyes a crush of glitter and ink, blood leaking from a bone-deep gash in her head.

As she tore toward Arithia with vicious intent …

before she was captured. Subdued. Tossed in a cell beneath a mountain that housed a male who frothed with bloodlust.

Watched as she was tortured. Hardened.

Sharpened.

They knew the end began here, amidst this echo of something that took place so many phases ago.

That the male this moon-fallen fae once loved roamed the plains with a heart full of ache and a mouth full of words that could crumble the world to dust. That he could end things faster and with more ferocity than any moonfall.

That fate was working against them to make things right, herding them into a corner too small and suffocating.

They didn’t fight, for they knew they were in the wrong.

Knew that if they did, they would lose. For the dae they laid their little trap and tore Caelis to shreds, packing him into a cage that crushed him into a screaming mulch, there was but one thing they hadn’t counted on.

Something bearing a potent strength that would forever go unmatched.

Love.