When the Moon Hatched (The Moonfall #1)

Chapter 8

“ I heard that,” Sereme snips out, her voice a whetted blade.

I unwind my veil, stepping into her long office, casting my gaze about the tidy space that boasts an extravagant amount of purple.

Rugs, cushioned seaters, walls, bookshelves …

Can’t escape it. I think I’d actually like the color had I not been treated like a scratching post almost every time I’ve stepped foot in this room.

“What?” I ask, finding Sereme by the large purple glass window that looks out upon the Ditch below. “I’m genuinely baffled. Ruse deserves a raise for putting up with your shit on a constant basis.”

Sereme spins, impaling me with her cool silver stare, her angular face perfectly painted—as always. Never a hair out of place or a blemish to be seen, white Runi bead hanging from her lobe. She’s donning a thick purple coat that melds with her body, snowy tufts of fur spilling between each seam that match the color of her coiffed hair.

My eyes narrow on the chain around her neck, threaded with a silver vial that’s etched in luminous runes, every cell in my body screaming for me to lunge forward and rip it free.

Tip its contents down a drain.

Instead, I move toward the huge desk that dominates the space, everything on it perfectly squared. Setting my bag on the floor, I drop into the boxy chair reserved for visitors and kick my legs up over the armrest. “I bite my tongue everywhere else; I refuse to bite it here. Feel free to cut me loose if it bothers you so,” I say, batting my lashes. “Promise I won’t complain. Quite the opposite. I might even do the odd side assassination for the cause in between hunting folk I choose to hunt.”

Murderers.

Child abusers.

Incompetent kings.

The muscle in Sereme’s jaw pops, her eyes hardening like molten ore dropped in a bed of snow. “You’d struggle without the Ath’s unlimited support were you forced to live like the masses, Raeve. Don’t forget how well we pad your pockets. There would be no more dragon bloodstone to scatter throughout the Undercity and give you that false sense of importance you can’t seem to live without.”

I see neither of us are in the mood to play nice.

Sliding a blade from my bodice, I thump my boots on her desk, nudging a few of her perfectly lined up quills. “Don’t act like you care about my well-being. You don’t,” I say, flipping the weapon between my fingers. “You’re just the bitch who clamped a shackle around my wrist and called it mercy.”

The vein in Sereme’s temple swells so much I quietly hope it’ll burst. “It’s surprising you speak to me with such disrespect, given said shackle .”

“Yeah, yeah,” I mutter, using the blade to dig some of Tarik’s dried blood from beneath my nails. “To what do I owe the honor of being summoned into your den, Sereme?”

She glares at me, watching me flick curls of hardened blood upon her plush purple rug. It’s always interesting to see how far I can push her before she sweeps me from her space like a long-legged bug she can’t eradicate fast enough, hoping she’ll eventually decide my presence is more hassle than it’s worth.

She paces toward me, lowering into the plump purple throne on her side of what I consider our makeshift barricade, folding her hands together atop the desk. “I wanted to make sure you received my parchment lark.”

“Is the mission complete?” I ask, brow arched.

“No confirmation yet. I mean the one I sent last cycle, just before the aurora fell.”

Fresh orders.

Lovely.

My interest dissolves, stare cast on my nails again, digging out more filth. “Must’ve gotten lost. Perhaps it’ll circle back ’round once I’ve slept, as they often do. So considerate. You should take notes.”

I sense her simmering frustration like a welling storm cloud that clots up the air with a static charge.

Still, I flick.

Flick.

Flick.

“Funny how you’re the only one who has trouble receiving my larks.”

“One of the world’s great phenomena.”

“Doubtful.” A brief pause, then, “Rekk’s Moonplume is in the city hutch.”

My heart drops, gaze whipping up, plunging into Sereme’s stony stare. “Who’s he hunting?”

“Us.”

My responding curse is as sharp as the blade in my hand.

“He’s been hired by The Crown, and he’s here to put a pin in our rebellion. To stop us from draining the kingdom of its fresh-faced conscripts.”

Well, he needs to die.

I swing my boots off the table and sheathe my blade. “I’ll take care of him,” I say, an eager hitch to my voice. Every time I’ve seen the bounty hunter, the metal spurs on the back of his boots have been caked in blood. Don’t need a grand imagination to work out who the blood belongs to. Likely the poor Moonplume he apparently charmed after slaughtering its former rider, if the rumors are true.

I’ll take a vast amount of pleasure in his assassination.

I rise from my seat—

“No,” Sereme bites out, and I frown.

“What do you mean, no ?”

“Sit , Raeve.”

I sigh, then do as she ordered, loathing the spark of satisfaction in her eye.

“Why don’t you want me to kill him?” I ask past clenched teeth. “That’s what I do. I take out the trash nobody else wants to muddy their hands with, sweeping the path clear of any filth that might prevent the Ath from completing its missions. Rekk is in the path , Sereme. He’s endangering other members— most of whom I respect.”

She gives me a bland look that doesn’t so much as pinch, though perhaps it would if she’d ever done anything to gain my respect.

“Let. Me. At him.”

“No.”

That fucking word again.

“Why not?”

“Because he’s well-watched bait.”

“Then I’m perfect for the job.”

“ No ,” she chides for the third time. “Your instructions are to lie low until he’s gone. That means no random slaughterings when you find someone doing something they shouldn’t, or hear someone crying out for help. No jobs. Nothing until I say otherwise. You will only leave your home to purchase produce or to come to me if I call on you.”

I frown, thoughts churning hard and fast, whisking into a snowstorm caught beneath my ribs. There’s not a single hit Rekk Zharos has failed to bring down, so he’s not leaving this city without blood on the tip of his barbed whip.

“If we don’t eliminate him, he’ll take one of us down, and it won’t be pretty.”

“I’m aware,” she says through tight lips, a stern finality to her tone that strikes my nerves with that Sereme-serpent bite.

Meaning …

She’s going to toss somebody considered less useful at him. A sacrifice to the ravenous Crown.

Something inside me splinters, bowing beneath an immense weight pressing against my ribs, my upper lip curling. “You feed the monster and more will slip from the shadows. Once the smell of blood taints the air, they don’t … stop … coming .”

Sereme sighs, reaching across the desk to straighten her quill collection. “Are you going to tell me how to do my job again, Raeve?”

It’s getting old for me, too.

“Every time we intercept a transport carriage full of young elemental conscripts, it’s a bandage on a much bigger problem. So long as the King continues to rule, there will be more carriages. More bounty hunters. More death and suffering.”

Still, her eyes are cast on her quills, like she values the task more than she values everything the Fíur du Ath is supposed to stand for.

I snarl, slashing my hand across the table, littering the floor with feathers. “What about the sick? The starving? The nulls?”

Slowly, she pulls her hand back, scouring me with a wide-eyed stare. “We spent all slumber saving fifty-seven nulls. At your bidding—”

“An operation I funded myself,” I snip, brow raised. “Or perhaps you thought I wouldn’t notice, since I don’t often check my reserves?”

“Of course I docked your reserves,” she sneers. “Running such a large-scale operation is costly in ways you’ll never understand. We risked our entire cause to keep you happy. Hindered political progress. Someone had to pay.”

To keep me happy.

Right.

“You know what that tells me?” I say with a humorless laugh. “That the Ath doesn’t value the nulls as much as it values the elementals. I don’t go down to the Undercity just to scatter bloodstone , Sereme. I go down there to see if anybody needs help, because nobody else seems to give a fuck.”

She snatches the vial dangling between her breasts.

Shit.

I brace myself as she scrapes the tip of her tailored nail down the groove of my rune—

My entire body jolts, the same scratching sensation scoring one of my ribs like a filleting blade.

“Why can’t you just be happy ?” she snips while my breaths come short and sharp, eyes narrowed on the poisonous female. “You have the Elding’s favor. He does more for you than he’s ever done for anyone else. Isn’t that enough?”

I bind my side with a trembling hand, struggling to wrap my mind around the jealous taint to her tone. Not only have I never met the Elding, but being his favorite is swiftly tumbling to the bottom of my priority list.

She lifts her nail, brows hiked up her forehead, finger poised to mess me up all over again.

Creators, I loathe this female.

“Hard to be happy when the King’s mincing young elemental minds until they’re brainless killing monsters. When thousands of less valued folk are rotting in the Undercity, failing to scratch out an existence in the mines—slaves to the kingdom’s well-oiled cogs.” Wiping beads of sweat from my brow, I reach into my pocket, unscrunch the notice I ripped off the wall, and slap it on the desk, though Sereme merely glances at it. “If we don’t usurp the King, I’m convinced things are going to get much, much worse.”

“Not now,” she says in a firm, even tone. “Not until the Elding deems it so.”

Same story, different dae.

“Screw the Elding.”

Another sadistic scrape of her nail, this one scouring down the knobbles of my spine. Another series of hissed breaths, and I chew on the urge to lurch across the table and pop her eyeballs from their sockets—fuck the repercussions.

But I hold my composure, the pain still slicing down my bowing vertebrae like skipping stones as I speak through gritted teeth. “Slitting King Cadok Vaegor’s throat will not only keep me from being a pain in your ass, it’ll protect the cause.”

She releases the vial.

I swallow my breath of relief, refusing to give her the satisfaction, instead jabbing an unsteady finger at the notice that’s fully armed to do irreparable damage. “Nobody will suspect it, given the heat surrounding our name.”

“Simply killing him without a thorough, well-constructed plan would leave the Queen in charge.”

“Perfect.” I throw my hands in the air, wondering why it was presented as a negative when it’s exactly what this kingdom needs. “This is her ancestral land. She should be in charge.”

“The Tri-Council would never allow it. Queen Dothea can only speak with Clode.”

A sour taste coats my tongue. “Don’t they have a tri-bead son?”

“Prince Turun hasn’t been seen for many phases. Some say he went mad, and rather than make the problem public, the King was all too happy to hide him away.”

“Bet he’s still more competent than King Cadok Vaegor. Perhaps he’ll pop his head back up once his pah’s remains fertilize the ground?”

Sereme looks at me like she’s more than ready to grab the broom and sweep me toward the door. “Again, Raeve, you assume you have some say in the matter. You don’t. You have one job, and that’s to follow my orders. When I say stab, you say how deep. When I say leave Rekk Zharos alone, you leave Rekk Zharos well the fuck alone.”

It’s weird hearing her swear. Perhaps I’d pump my fist and call it a victory if anger wasn’t churning in my gut like a snowball that grows with each bouldered roll.

“How do you live with yourself? Honestly?”

She grips her vial again, and my entire body flinches.

Satisfaction ignites her eyes, a smirk curling her lips that boils my blood. “These aren’t easy decisions to make, but I must consider the cause first and foremost. Your strong affinity with Clode, your skill with a blade, and that savage side I glimpsed before you collapsed in the Undercity the first time we met makes you an essential tool we can’t do without.”

An icy rumble builds in my chest.

I curse the dae she fell upon me, seeing that side of me I barely understand myself. Not that I remember that part of our meeting—tucked beyond a veil of ice I was all too happy to ball up and wither beneath.

I do remember the screams that somehow found their way down to me. I also remember being pitted with a certainty that whatever I was doing was not okay, but that the part of me in control lived by a different set of rules.

That in their eyes, it was tame .

Sereme later told me I’d looked out at her through black, glittery eyes, face splashed in blood, canines bared, and that she knew I was broken beyond repair, in desperate need of an avenue to channel my rage.

I see it differently now.

I think she saw me, surrounded by the mulched bodies of freshly slain folk who’d come to hunt me down, and decided broken things make the sharpest weapons … so long as you fetter them to yourself so they don’t fly away.

“You coped just fine without me before you snatched me from the gutter.”

“I gave you the option,” she volleys, quick as a blink.

A deep belly laugh wrestles up my throat, spilling out in a mirthless tune. “And what an option it was,” I muse. “Die or drip my blood into your runed vial and be a forever slave to your whim, able to be yanked to heel at any given opportunity. Except it wasn’t voiced that way, was it? You offered me revenge. Painted such a pretty picture I was salivating to give you my blood, falling into your web like a plump bug, immediately put to work.”

So many empty promises.

“Ironically, had you simply asked me to join the cause, I may have agreed, given the drowning amount of injustice I soon discovered in this kingdom. But you just had to slap a collar around my neck.”

She sighs, long and deep—the breezy confidence of someone who lives in a bubble of safety I can’t penetrate. “Always so dramatic, Raeve. Truly, I’ve never met someone with so much battle in their blood.” Her elegant hand grips the vial hanging between her breasts. “Perhaps you wouldn’t be so bitter were you not constantly testing me, forcing me to take advantage of the blood bind.”

Yeah, okay. It’s my fault.

“Can’t you see you’re made for this?”

“Sure,” I deadpan. “Nothing quite like the constant threat of a casual torture session to make you feel right at home.”

“It’s nothing personal. Everybody puts their blood in the vial—”

“Except you. ”

“—benefiting from its many advantages. Remember how quickly I was able to heal you?” she continues seamlessly. “You would’ve died without it. Besides, you’re the only one I’m forced to punish.”

“And what do you do for the cause?” I ask, brow raised. “Besides sucking the Elding’s metaphorical cock.”

Her cheeks flush, painted lips falling open. Not that any words come out.

My brows bump up.

Not so metaphorical, it seems.

“You chose to live,” she seethes. “Sure, it’s no longer on your terms, but at least you’re breathing. I’d think you’d be more humble toward the one who saved your life.”

I click my tongue, trying to imagine a world where someone would deign to help another without expecting something in return.

Failing.

Thousands of times I’ve been pieced back together. Only once was it for my own benefit—but Fallon’s dead, her light extinguished, all that goodness gone from the world.

Sereme may think she saved my life, but all she did was cage me again, carving Fallon’s death into an even deeper tragedy.

I’d rather be back in our cell, looking up at the moons Fallon sketched on our ceiling with blunt bits of coal. Would rather be listening to her vivid explanations for the colorful clouds draped across The Fade, her words so descriptive my mouth would water—like I could taste the colors, feeling their textures puff against my tongue.

She made freedom sound so exquisite with her big, beautiful vocabulary. Made it sound so magical .

I couldn’t wait to taste clouds with her. To lie on our backs, side by side, and look upon the real moons.

Together.

But she’s dead, and I’m here, shackled to this purple-scaled serpent. Doing none of the living I promised Fallon I’d do before I lost her. Before I woke to find her cold.

Unmoving.

The barbed memory is an icy spike hammered into my hardened heart, all the way to the soft core, pitting me with a twinge of raw, familiar pain—

No.

I sink into my inner self, landing upon the crumbled obsidian shore of my immense frozen lake, struck by the eerie silence that always makes my skin pebble. I pinch a fist-sized stone I use to bind the offending memory around, then creep out onto the smooth, frosty expanse that soothes the bare soles of my feet.

Kneeling, I carve a hole in the thick ice, cold water oozing up the moment it cracks free. I tip the lid, plop the heavy thought down the gap, and rush away, the hairs on the back of my neck lifting as I blink back to my external reality.

My next breath is a blow of icy air, Sereme’s earlier words still echoing through my mind:

You chose to live.

Sure, it’s no longer on your terms …

At least you’re still breathing.

I look at the female watching me down the line of her nose like she’d love for me to drop to my knees and kiss her purple shoes.

“My life has never been on my terms.” I stand, wrap my veil around my face, then gather her quills off the ground and lump them on the desk, rearranging them in order of size. Just the way she likes. “And I refuse to accept this as living.”

I grab my bag and turn, moving toward the door.

“I didn’t say you could leave , Raeve.”

“Drag your nail down my rune again.” I shrug. “See if I care.”

I slam the door on my way out.