When the Moon Hatched (The Moonfall #1)

Chapter 21

W rook scratches at the corner of his cell while I hum, sitting in the corner, tapping my foot against the ground to the tune in my head. I trace the dips and spines of the ceiling, hunting the bulbous balls of moisture hanging off the more prominent peaks, trying to guess which one will drip next. A game I’ve played on and off since I was dumped here.

Not sure how long ago that was. Feels like a while.

Perhaps those who tossed me in here think that by leaving me to rot in this shithole, I’ll madden into a pulp. Become pliable enough that when they finally present me to the Guild of Nobles, I’ll mold to their stringent will.

Unfortunately for them, I’m well practiced in the art of existing in a confined space, and there are many ways to bide time in a cell if you have a rich imagination.

Heavy footsteps thump down the corridor, and I dim my sound, a small smile swelling my cheeks as Wrook stuffs his blanket over his rebellious hole, tucks into a ball before it, and pretends to sleep.

My gaze clings to a water droplet I’m certain is the next to fall—disappointment backhanding me when instead one lands atop the peak of my nose, making my face twitch.

I frown, eyes narrowing on the wobbly globule …

Drip, you stubborn bastard!

A different one splats on my knee, and a sigh gusts past my dry, split lips.

I’m terrible at this game. Not once have I gotten it right. So help me, I will crack the code by the time I’m marched to my doom.

A figure storms past my cell in a flutter of thick white material, and a voice in the back of my mind questions why a Runi would bother with a trip into Gore’s septic bowels cluttered with half-digested “traitors” to The Crown. Whoever it is stops before Wrook’s cell, crouching. “I heard you stole the wrong ring from the wrong fae,” the male rumbles in a deep, gravelly voice that skates across my pebbling skin.

A voice I recognize .

My heart flops against my ribs, gaze drifting to the broad, cloaked visitor as Wrook feigns a stretch.

The hooded male from the Hungry Hollow, now dressed like a Runi .

I tuck farther into the shadowed corner …

I was so strong and composed outside the wind tunnel with my iron blade pressed to his member. Now I’m in bits in a cell, chasing drips of mildew, smelling like my own filth and ruin. I’m like a dragon midmolt, and the last thing I want is that assessing stare poking me in my tender spots that are yet to fully calcify.

“Costly mistake,” Wrook forges past a faux yawn.

The male grunts. “I’ve been looking for you all over, you know.”

Wrook’s ears flick forward, nose twitching. He licks his paws, using them to swipe the hairs back on his face as he rocks up into a crouch. “Why?”

“Because someone I’m acquainted with saw you scurrying for the nearest sewer with a moonshard in your mitts.”

My heart skips a beat.

Why in this Creators-forsaken world is he hunting moonshards ?

Wrook kicks back his foot to scratch behind his ear. “I don’t know what you’re t-t-talking about.”

“I can get you out. Digging won’t work. This place is runed against anyone digging farther than a foot. And I have a Sabersythe tusk I’m willing to trade for the shard.”

My brows lift.

According to Ruse, Sabersythes drop their tusks every shed, but they’re remarkably hard to find.

I think back to the first time I purchased a sliver for Essi. Ruse said they don’t dislodge until the beast is well into its spurt of growth, often swallowed by Gondragh’s volcanoes since that’s where Sabersythes flock to complete their shed, burrowed away from anything that might harm their delicate state. I also quickly found out they’re worth ten times their weight in dragon bloodstone, serving as a bonding agent most Runi’s use for their etchings.

Wrook’s nose twitches, his scratching foot coming slowly down to rest against the floor. “How big is the t-t-tusk?”

“The size of my leg.”

My gaze drops to said leg, eyes widening.

“Deal,” Wrook spits, his response swifter than the snap of Rekk’s whip.

I smile, pride warming my chest.

Good for him. Love a happy ending.

“I’ll purchase your sentence and have you out by the rise,” the male says, just stalking by my cell when he stops, drawing a deep sniff of the air, his head turning in my direction slower than a setting aurora.

My breath flees.

His gaze rakes across my shadowed form, like he’s trying to sweep past the curtains of filth and shadow to my unveiled face.

I tuck my chin to my chest, loose tendrils of hair falling forward to curtain me.

Leave.

Leave.

Leave—

“It’s you ,” he rumbles, and my heart drops, the hairs on the back of my neck lifting. “Come forth into the light.”

“Who died and made you king?” I rasp past my ruined throat.

“My pah,” he deadpans, and a laugh bubbles out of me, tapering off before the excess motion has a chance to rip my wounds and make them weep again.

“Funny.”

Silence reigns.

He steps closer to the bars, arms crossed over his broad chest, the uncomfortable absence of sound dragging on for so long it pecks at me.

“Were you … waiting for something?” I ask, frowning.

“Yes. For you to shift into the light so I can see your face.”

I snort-laugh.

Righteous asshole.

“No, thank you. You’ll have to step through those iron bars and drag me into the light yourself.”

There’s a moment of pause before he grips the lock hanging from my door, knuckles blanching. The metal creaks and groans, and he rips his arm down—

I suck a sharp breath as the lock comes away.

Broken.

He lifts his hand and makes a show of loosening his fingers, letting the useless lump of metal fall to the ground with a clatter that echoes off the walls to the tune of my rallying heart.

Fuck.

“I’m not usually one to take things from a female that aren’t given freely,” he rumbles, swinging the latch off the hook. “However, your voice reminds me of somebody I used to know, and I’ve spent five sleepless slumbers convinced I’m going mad.”

He boots the door open, the sound of squealing hinges carving across my nerves, reminding me of times I was dragged from another cell—feet first, fingernails gouging the stone while I snarled through gritted teeth.

He takes the first step in, and I pull my feet back toward my bum, gritting my teeth against a bludgeoning howl as I push my weight against my shredded back and leverage myself to a wobbly stand. “Hate to break it to you like this,” I hiss, “but I’d never seen you before that slumber on the south side of the wall.”

“For your sake,” he growls, stalking forward, packing the space full of his massive presence, “I hope you’re wrong.”

“And if I’m not?”

He steps into my shadow, almost close enough for me to reach out and touch him, my next breath laced with a drugging punch of his rich, molten scent.

He flips back his hood, revealing that beautiful, hard face.

My lungs snag at the sight of him.

Lips pinched in a line, he steals another step forward.

“And if I’m not ?”

“ Vaghth ,” he whispers, the scalding word a flame against my conscience.

My spine stiffens, every nerve in my body tingling in all the wrong ways.

The lantern overhead rattles—like something inside is trying to escape. One of its tiny panes pops, a shred of flame fluttering down into his cupped hand and cradled before my face like a mold of clay.

His thick black brows collide, his face blanching as my teeth clamp together, heart seizing.

Eye bulging.

I look at that flame like the spitting, scalding enemy it is, waiting for him to drag it across my flesh and paint a puckered trail.

A choked sound slips out of him, like his lungs forgot how to work.

He lifts a trembling hand as if to cup my cheek, leaving an inch of space separating us—the heat radiating off his palm akin to a ray of sunshine.

“H—” His stare blazes back and forth across my face, tracing the slopes of me with devastating precision. “H- how ?”

Something about the way he rasps the word cuts me down the middle, like he’s stuffing those big, strong arms into my frosty depths, churning my lake into a storm of slush.

I open my mouth to speak, but all that comes out is a blow of frosty air.

Tension stiffens in the space between us.

The hand so close to cradling my face pulls back, crunching into a ball. He punches the wall behind my head with such force a hairline crack forms in the stone, weaving across my ceiling.

A litter of mildew rains upon us.

“ How ?” he bellows, and I growl, upper lip peeling back from canines aching to snap forward and sink into his flesh.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I snarl, wanting him out.

Gone.

Wanting the flame in his hand extinguished before it tills up any more of the hurt I’ve worked so hard to rid myself of.

“She speaks the truth,” comes a wobbly voice from the opposite cell. From the dark-haired Truthtune who only stopped crying eighty-nine ceiling drops earlier.

I thought she was asleep.

The male frowns, rips his cinder stare off me, and stabs it over his shoulder in her direction. “You a Truthtune?”

“I am. The female is confused by your interest. She is also petrified of—”

“That’s enough,” I snip, my words ricocheting off the walls.

The male turns his attention back on me, his all-consuming stare etched in so many shades of disbelief.

He crushes the flame in his large, calloused hand, though I have only a brief moment of reprieve before he pulls a metal weald from his pocket and flicks back the lid, revealing a bloodred bulb of Sabersythe flame.

My throat constricts, a strangled sound squeezing through the tightening space. A sound I want to crush from existence the moment it leaves my lips.

He raises his other hand, the rough tips of his fingers sweeping a tendril of hair from my forehead, leaving a wake of tingling flesh.

“ Get your hand off me ,” I seethe as he tucks the fall of inky locks behind my ear.

His chest boils with a sound that makes me picture the ground shaking, the tip of his finger tracing the jagged scar on my forehead. A scar that can be seen by dragonflame—the only substance in existence that can ignite a trail of long-ago runes and unearth their glowing ghosts.

“Your head,” he rasps. “You’ve been mended.”

Mended …

Such a funny word, signifying the end of something. But every hurt has an echo if you look deep enough.

A wound is never fully gone.

“Don’t remember getting that one.”

Not a lie.

His gaze dips. “Your eye. What happened?”

“Tripped on a stone.”

His head banks to the side. “Did it reach up and punch you in the face?”

I offer him a faux smile. “Strangest thing.”

A beat of silence before he continues, so smooth and soft it chills me to the bone. “Who are you protecting, Moonbeam?”

My frail, suffocating vengeance, flailing as it is.

Perhaps my skewed vision is making me see things, but he has a look about him. Like if I tell him who really punched me in the face, the kill will no longer be mine, and I’m holding on to that promise of hope until I’m masticated by a dragon’s maw or sliced from throat to navel.

“That’s not my name. And I don’t need you to fight my battles any more than I need your presence in this cell.”

He steals a single step back, snapping the lid shut on his weald, sealing the flame back into the runed metal vial. “Prove it.”

I frown. “Excuse me?”

“Turn around, lift your tunic, and show me your back. If a stone can cause such damage to your face, I’m very interested to see just what it’s done to pack this cell with the smell of so much blood.”

My heart plops into my gut. “I … No .”

“Always so stubborn,” he bites out, cradling the words like he fucking knows me.

He reaches forward—

Somebody sprints down the hall, cloaked in another white Runi robe akin to the one this male wears—an obvious ruse, given his weald and affinity with Ignos. Unless he’s multitalented, I guess.

The approaching Runi slows by my cell, peering into the shadowed depths. “Sire?” he whisper-hisses, the word pinching me. His eyes are wide with panic, stare bouncing between us both. “Guards are coming. Lots of them.”

My brows pull together, gaze cutting back to the male standing before me—unmoving.

Unblinking.

Sire.

Fucking Sire.

Realization washes over me like a dunk of icy water, whipping all the warmth from my body. “You’re a … king .”

“As I said.” There’s a brief pause as he flicks up his hood, casting his face back in a shroud of shadow, though his eyes still glimmer like a crush of embers caught in the orbs. “Is that a problem, Moonbeam?”

A swell of fiery rage packs my chest and mouth so full it’s impossible to speak. To tell him yes, that’s a problem .

The Shade, The Fade, and The Burn are each ruled by a different Vaegor brother, each cut from the same vile cloth.

I’ve seen King Fade from a distance—Cadok Vaegor. This male is not him. Meaning he either rules The Shade or The Burn.

The Shade is said to be even more rotten than this kingdom, if rumors are anything to go by, the cold, shadowed expanse governed by King Tyroth Vaegor. A cruel king with a heart said to fester from the loss of his queen.

The Burn … well.

Few who venture deep into the sunny part of the world return to tell the tale, though it’s said King Kaan is savage and bloodlusting. That Rygun—his ancient Sabersythe—was too big to fit in any of the city hutches the last time he came to Gore. That he lets the beast hunt freely across his kingdom, firing cities with his blazing breath and feasting on his folk whom he cares little about.

I’m not sure which option is worse. Who I’d least prefer to be sharing this cell with right now, breathing the same filthy air.

One thing’s for sure—I wouldn’t bow to any of them, even if a sword was notched at my neck.

A stampede of booted steps echoes down the corridor while I hold his stare, the racket coming to a halt before my cell. In my peripheral, I note the shadowed silhouettes of heavily armored guards.

“Runi,” one of them bellows, “what are you doing in cell seventy-three?”

The King doesn’t break my stare as he says, “I’m the resident healer. I was instructed to inspect this prisoner’s wounds.”

I give him an incredulous look.

“Impossible. Everyone is under strict instruction not to enter that cell. She is our most dangerous captive.”

I would be flattered, but there’s no room for it beside the bubbling well of undiluted rage piling up my throat like a dragon about to wield its first flame.

“I must order you to exit her cell. She’s expected at trial before the Guild of Nobles. We’re to escort her straight there.”

Music to my ears. I don’t want to spend another second in this monster’s presence.

“Yes, resident healer ,” I say, serving him a sour smile, “kindly step out of my chambers. I have no need of your assistance—now or ever.”

The air between us becomes impossibly tight, and he grunts, stepping back.

The guards flood my cell in a spill of bloodred armor and the smell of polished leather. A male grips me by my wounded shoulder and jostles me forward, a wince hissing past my clenched teeth.

“She’s been pinned ,” the King proclaims, his voice a veiled death threat I want to scrunch up and stuff back down his throat.

I don’t want him whipping out his imperial cock for me. Certainly not when he doesn’t bother to whip it out for his own folk.

He eyes the guard like he wants to rip out the male’s trachea. “Why?”

“Because she speaks with Clode and Bulder.” I’m held in place while another guard unlocks the metal pole connecting my chains. “The very reason this cell was off limits.”

“How do you know?” the King queries as I’m attached to an iron leash I consider using to strangle them all—until I see the red elemental bead hanging from the lobe of one of the guards.

Perhaps not.

“She took out an entire unit in the Undercity. Collapsed the lungs of seven soldiers before she even began tossing her blades. She slaughtered another twelve in ways that would make your insides wither, forged a cleft in the ground that took another six, then bit off the finger of a prestigious bounty hunter employed by The Crown.”

Well.

Good for me. I’d pat myself on the back if my skin wasn’t flayed.

“Wanna tussle?” I ask the King, flashing him a complimentary grin he can take to my grave, wondering why he doesn’t look anywhere near as outraged by my large body count as I expected him to be. “If I win, you purchase my sentence, and I go back to killing vile males with small cocks and enough ego to justify their sick behavior. And you get to go back to … well, hunting moonshards .”

I feel the guard’s beady-eyed stare bouncing between myself and the Incognito King, the latter stepping so close to me that barely an inch of space separates us.

The world around us fades into oblivion as he looks upon me with such a fierce intensity I almost forget how to breathe. “Not much point anymore, since I’ve found the most important piece.”

The air between us grows so tight I’m certain one small tap will make it shatter.

The next breath I pull crushes my breasts against his solid, muscular chest. “Well, off you go,” I rasp. “Collect your prize .”

“Hard,” he rumbles. “It’s in a problematic position. Difficult to reach.”

I snort.

Please.

“I’m sure you have the resources to work it out,” I mutter, lifting my chin, flicking a look at the soldier behind him. “Let’s get this over with.”

“So eager?” the King asks, and I release a mirthless laugh.

“Yeah, sure. I’m just itching to get drawn and quartered or served to the Moltenmaws on a stick.”

Said nobody ever.

I’m led from the cell, down the hall, taking shuffled steps past caged folk clinging to their bars.

Watching me go by.

But the only stare I can feel is his —drawing a crisscrossed trail over my back, my tunic no doubt stained in blotches of blood both fresh and old.

I swear the ground shakes.

I’m shoved down another hall free from his line of sight, marched toward a trial that’ll pound the gavel on my fate.

No point hoping for a good outcome. There is none. A thought that’s almost … freeing . That lifts a weight from my shoulders and makes my steps feel lighter.

A smile splits my face as I’m nudged up a curl of stairs by one of the boisterous guards …

Might as well have some fun before I die.