Chapter 33
D renched, tingling all over, and with a now-itchy shoulder wound, I follow the path Kaan took back up the red-stone stairway, frowning at the tufts of copper grass that have sprouted in the cracks. Pausing to run my hand over the soft blades.
Seeing foliage this color is … strange. In The Fade, anything that manages to sprout from beneath the snow is a vibrant shade of green. And though I like it, I like this better.
Looks sturdy. Harder to kill.
Maybe if I lived here, I’d actually be able to keep some form of vegetation alive.
Something smooth and round catches my eye, my gaze sliding to a dark, ruddy Sabersythe scale half the size of my hand, resting amongst the grass. Probably Rygun’s, perhaps flicked from a leg during one of his previous sheds.
It’s here. On this step. And I’m entirely unsupervised.
Maybe I’m not so cursed after all?
I grab it, cutting a glance at the top of the stairs while using my fingers to wedge the scale down between my wrists, hiding it from view, my heart thumping so loud I’m half convinced every pair of ears in the jungle can hear it.
I pull a steadying breath, victory bursting through my veins with such potency I almost do a dance.
Nothing to see here.
A rumbling sound has my gaze whipping skyward to the dense clouds gathering overhead.
My brows pull together.
I’ve heard it rains here where the air is well above freezing, these mountainous areas a lush spawning ground for drenching storms. All I know is the slice of sleet and the soft, gentle fall of snow …
The pale clouds bulge and swell, and I shiver despite the sticky heat, an electric current caught in the air I can’t seem to shake.
I crest the rise just in time to watch Rygun leap over the edge of the massive grassy plateau, his barbed tail the last thing to disappear—the entire mountain seeming to shift with his displacement.
There’s a clamorous roar, the thud-ump of his wings, and then he’s scooping skyward.
Kaan stalks toward the edge with something round and wiggly caught in his fist, scowling as he watches the beast carve off through the gorge and disappear from sight.
“Where’s he going?” I ask, moving closer, weighing my chances of reaching the male in time to shove him off the cliff.
“Like you,” Kaan mutters, waving the shiny black bug at me, “Rygun is allergic to help.”
I frown, eyeing the creature, its spindly legs waggling, clawlike pincers protruding from what I suppose is its face nipping at the air. “What’s that?”
“A tick I found nudged up under Rygun’s armpit where his scales are still hardening from his last shed.” He flicks the thing at his feet, crushing it with the heel of his boot. It pops, purple innards splatting across the grass. “If left unattended, they release a toxin that can turn a dragon rabid.” He cuts me a hard look shaded by thick lashes and the darkening sky. “There is no cure for an animal intent on torching cities and slaying everything in its path except a swift and merciful death.”
My blood chills.
Torching cities …
Slaying everything …
Swift and merciful death …
None of it stacks up for a king who apparently condones that from his beast. At least according to rumors.
Confusion wrestles through me, my gaze dropping to the purple splat on the ground.
“Come.” Kaan hefts a saddlebag over his shoulder, wrapping his arms around another and heading toward a path etched through the dense foliage ahead. “If you want food, that is,” he tosses back at me. “Can’t escape until you’ve eaten. You’ll pass out and wake up right back where you started.”
He’s got a point.
Sighing, I follow his lead, the ropes around my wrists now swollen with moisture. “I think you accidentally tied this too tight,” I say, looking left to right. Trying to trace the chirping sounds that keep scratching through the air—like somebody’s dragging sticks up and down many ribbed, hollow logs.
“I assure you,” he says, kicking a fallen branch off the track like it personally offends him, “that was no accident.”
“If my hands fall off, so will my iron cuffs, and then I’ll call upon Clode to suffocate you in your sleep.”
“Such pretty promises,” he muses, his tone so dry it could wick all the moisture from my body.
The path opens to another plateau, though this one supports a small stone dwelling that looks like it grew straight from the ground. It’s got two levels, bearing oddly shaped windows not round or square but somewhere in the middle. The dwelling is crooked one way at the bottom, the other way on the second floor, the roof peaked. The walls are knobbled in places and dipped in others, like little thumbs pressed them into place.
I pause, transfixed by it, a smile catching the corner of my mouth.
It’s like a youngling drew the building on a piece of parchment, then peeled it off and whispered life into its walls, giving it the strength and substance to stand.
This south wall boasts a makeshift trellis of crisscrossed branches clothed in a vine heavy with fat purple molliefruit, their scent zesting the warm air. Beneath it are rows of raised garden beds, each bearing a flush of frilly vegetables, some of which appear to have gone to seed …
My gaze lifts, sweeping over the structure, unable to shake the feeling that this place isn’t attended as much as it once was despite the warm sensation that fills my chest just looking at it.
I wonder what song it sings, picturing it a deep, rumbling, happy one. More content than a regular slab of stone. I wonder if Clode twirls past its rounded edges, sipping from bits of its serenity.
Most of all, I wonder why just looking at it makes the backs of my eyes sting—blisters of emotion I pop faster than Kaan popped that tick.
He moves between the garden beds, drops his laden bags on the ground, then grips a lush tuft of vegetation around the neck. He rips a canit root from the heaving dirt, its squiggly length dusted in rust-colored soil that falls back to the ground as he shakes it off, then thumps it against my chest.
Frowning, I curl my arms around the vegetable, cradling it while he repeats the process, over and over, adding to the growing pile until I can hardly see over the top of it.
“Are you cooking Rygun vegetable soup?” I mutter, wondering how I’m expected to see where I’m walking with my arms packed so full.
“I’m making enough so we don’t have to stop at any villages before we reach Dhomm,” he tells me, dumping something that’s particularly hard to balance upon the pile and almost undoing me. “I’d prefer not to be seen with you if I can avoid it.”
Fuck you too, Kaan Vaegor.
“I’m not particularly fond of being seen with you either. Not unless I’m toting a pike with your head on the end.”
He lumps another vegetable on the pile without shaking it off, dusting me in soil that peppers my hair and clings to my damp skin.
Maybe he’s getting sick of me …
Good .
I’ll keep agitating him until he drops his guard, then make a move. I quite like my chances of surviving in these mountains, given the abundance of water and fertile vegetation. In fact, I’ll probably thrive —gather my strength as I move south. I think these mountains finally kneel somewhere near Bhoggith. Perhaps if I charm a full-grown Moltenmaw, I can easily hunt Rekk Zharos. My options are endless now that I’m free.
Well …
My thoughts drift to my rope-bound wrists. To the nulling iron cuffs still locked around my arms and ankles.
Almost free.
First, I have to get away from this male and his dragon and these filthy Creators-damn vegetables. And this cozy little house with its pretty, idyllic view and a warmth that tells me it’s held so much more happiness than I’ll ever understand.
“I think we have enough,” Kaan rumbles, placing a flush of herbs atop the pile before I hear him gather his saddlebags, the sound of his heavy boot steps making my ears twitch. “Follow me.”
Ahh …
“How?”
“Tether yourself to the alluring tone of my voice,” he drawls, and I roll my eyes, tentatively following the sound of his steps instead—sliding my bare feet through the fluffy grass at a slow and steady pace in the effort not to trip.
I crash right into the back of him and dust myself in another layer of dirt, suppressing a cough so I don’t drop anything. I wait for him to place his bags on the ground, then unlock the door, hearing the squeal of metal hinges before he shifts out of my way.
I’m about to step into the dwelling when he says, “Wait. I’ll unpack you first. Don’t want you dragging more dirt across the rug than necessary.”
“Ever heard of a bucket? You just threw me in a pool and tossed a bar of soap at my head. Now I’m more filthy than I was before.”
“No,” he grinds out, relieving me of my pile one bulbous, overgrown root vegetable at a time. “Before, you smelled like spew, rage, and dead things. Now you smell like soil. This smell calms me.”
“You don’t seem particularly calm.”
He removes the final vegetable, transferring it into a large wooden bowl with all the rest of the produce. “I’m calm.” He cuts me a dark look. “You’ve just been lucky enough to avoid witnessing my other temperaments.”
Yet.
The unsaid word slams between us like a gavel.
I hold his pointed stare, clumps of dirt rolling down my cheek and falling from my jawline. I, too, have many temperaments I’d like to test against his not calm .
Grunting, he severs our stare-off and strides through the room.
I attempt to brush myself down, flicking more dirt onto the grass while I take in the dwelling’s cozy, eclectic interior, rich with a soft assortment of organic furnishings—mostly in Burn tones.
Burnt orange, warm umber, black, bronze …
A large kitchen takes up half the floor, bearing three long benches that run the walls in the shape of a giant U. There’s a butcher block that breaks the space in two, the right half of the room garnished with two low seaters and a small table—all without any gaps beneath. Like they were grown from the ground, embellished with plump cushions and tufted throws.
A crooked staircase on the right leads to what must be the second level. My gaze cuts to the windows—tawny glass that’s distorting to look through. Quirky and organic like the rest of this tiny home.
What really catches my eye are the stone carvings lining the windowsills. Sabersythes in all shapes and sizes, though no bigger than my fist. No two are the same, some bearing more tusks than others, more or less spears adorning the tips of their tails. Almost as if they have little lives and personalities of their own.
“What is this place?” I ask, stuck on the threshold.
“It was Mah’s retreat,” Kaan says from his spot before the basin, rinsing a vegetable beneath the gushing tap. He places it in a different bowl, then grabs another, drenching it.
Was …
I didn’t know his mah had passed. Have never researched The Burn’s reigning history beyond the fact that the three Vaegor brothers each rule one of the three kingdoms.
Now I wish I had.
I glance around, failing to shift the heaviness now sitting on my chest, crushing my ability to breathe properly. “Is there somewhere else I can spend the slumber?”
He pauses what he’s doing, turning his head the slightest amount as he says, “Somewhere else?”
Feels wrong to step into a female’s warm, homely dwelling when I’ve fantasized about killing her son.
“This feels like a family space,” I murmur, taking in the artwork littering the walls. The crooked alcoves and shelves packed full of bits and pieces that can only be precious memorabilia. “I’m not family.”
Kaan’s coarse growl fills the space so abruptly I jolt, stare whipping back to him as he says, “Get in the dwelling, Prisoner Seventy-Three. Or you’ll miss out on this meal.”
His shoulders appear taut and stiff, and there’s a tension in the air that makes it hard to inhale. Part of me wants to tell him to choke on the order he just gave me and die a painful death, but then my stomach rumbles loud enough to wake a sleeping dragon.
He raises a brow.
I roll my eyes. Chew my bottom lip. Try to wriggle this situation into a spot that fits comfortably beneath my ribs.
I don’t know a lot about northern traditions, but I once read that it’s considered rude not to offer something in exchange for shelter. Maybe that’s the answer. And maybe I shouldn’t shed Kaan’s blood while staying here.
That would feel wrong, I think.
“I have nothing to gift in exchange for the time spent under your mah’s roof.”
There’s a moment of utter stillness before Kaan turns his head a little more—just enough for our eyes to meet. “Your name will do.”
My name …
I open my mouth, shutting it as I reconsider, then shake my head and blurt, “Raeve.”
All the color drains from his face.
He pulls a breath—slow. Like he’s consuming a meal he’s been looking forward to for longer than I care to admit. “Just Raeve?”
Another name sizzles through my soul like a burning scream.
Fire Lark.
Fire Lark.
Fire Lark.
“Just Raeve,” I say, stuffing the other down. Far away.
Gone.
He nods slowly, the ball in his throat rolling. “Well, thank you for the offering,” he says, followed by a soft, “Raeve. Please, enter my mah’s dwelling.”
He handles my name with such care and precision a shiver rakes up and down my spine—a sensation I try to ignore, stepping over the threshold and into the space that feels much like a warm hug. Perhaps the reason it chafes. Haven’t had one of those since—
Clearing my throat, I lift my chin and move toward the butcher block, sitting atop one of the three knobbly stools that each appear to be carved from a single stump of wood, placing my bound hands on the counter.
Kaan resumes his rinsing, time ticking by. He finishes cleaning the vegetables, dices them with a blade I duly note the location of, then piles them into a large pot with water, herbs, and salt. He sets it on the stove and clunks a lid on it.
He opens the small grated door of the stove’s plump metal belly, then pulls a weald from his pocket and flicks the hood. I cast my attention elsewhere as he whispers a sizzling word that coaxes a bulb of flame through the opening, kindling the prepacked pile of sticks into a roaring flame.
Closing the metal grate, he turns, his warm gaze roaming the side of my face while I stare out one of the windows to the world beyond. The room darkens by the moment—more and more clouds crowding the sky, sponging most of the light bar the flickers of orange spilling through the grill.
He snaps the lid back on his weald. “You don’t like fire.”
“I don’t like males with cocks bigger than their brains.” I slay him with a stare I hope cuts the head off his observation. “Unfortunately, that eliminates half the population.”
Silence bleeds between us, a victim of my slashing ire.
Arms crossed, he watches me. Unblinking.
Unyielding.
I watch him with the same intensity, sharpening more barbs to sling should he decide to have another pick at the subject. One that is, in fact, none of his fucking business.
He clicks his tongue, then moves around the butcher block.
Perfectly still, I watch from my periphery as he lumbers to the door and retrieves his saddlebags, dumping them on the long, cushioned seater. He brings the smaller one to the bench and flips the satchel open. Rooting through it, he pulls out a scroll of leather he unrolls, bearing a tidy collection of tools. He lifts a small hammer from one section, a tapered nail from another, and jerks his chin at my hands.
Frowning, I ease them toward him, remembering too late that I have a scale tucked between my bound wrists.
My heart leaps so high up my throat I almost choke.
Shit.
I silently beg him not to notice while he settles my hands on a folded piece of cloth, sets the nail against the pin of my right cuff, then taps it.
My brow lifts as the pin slides out, allowing him to loosen the iron cuff and wriggle it free, though he shows no inclination toward the one on my left wrist.
“What about my other one?” I ask, nudging my still-bound hands at him.
He bats them away. “Oddly enough, I’m in no mood to have my lungs minced.”
“Well, what about my ropes?” I shove my hands at his chest again. “I had a perfect opportunity to shove you off the cliff earlier, but I didn’t.” Only because I got distracted by the tick story, but he doesn’t need to know those finer, rather embarrassing details. I’m not usually so bad at … slaughtering. “That should earn my hands some freedom, surely. Small sign of good will?” I say, winking at him.
“Foot,” he drudges out, and I scowl.
“What in the Creators do you think I am? Some sort of filthy animal who goes around putting her muddy feet on cute, oddly shaped butcher blocks?”
He frowns. “You think it’s oddly shaped?”
I shrug. “Lil bit.”
“Huh,” he says, scanning it, a deep line still etched between his thick brows.
“That only adds to the cuteness, in my humble opinion. Wish I had one just like it.”
Guess I could, except I can’t shape stone well to save myself. The flipside of blocking Bulder out so much I can only wield a few roughly-hewn words, and none of them very well.
That, and I don’t have a home anymore to put one in.
Ouch.
Kaan clears his throat and slaps his hand on the top. “Foot, Raeve. Before the soup burns.”
Bossy and a bad listener …
Definitely needs to die.
“I’m not putting my filthy foot on your mah’s butcher block, King Kaan Vaegor. End of story.”
His head cocks to the side. “And I’m not kneeling before you for fear of being kicked in the head hard enough to knock me out cold so you can steal a blade from the drawer, slit my throat, and escape.”
Valid concern, honestly.
“Foot. Unless you want to keep your pretty anklets on?” he goads, and I kick the damn thing up on the stool beside me instead, tarnishing the surface with a smear of dirt.
He glares at me.
I flash him a smile.
“You’re very stubborn,” he says, moving around to crouch by the stool.
“So nice of you to say. I sharpen that weapon daily.”
“I can tell,” he mutters, tapping the cuff free of one chafed ankle, then the other. When he’s done, he tucks the tools in the pouch and rolls it up, stuffing it in his satchel, a waft of cold air blowing back at me from within the packed hollow.
Frowning, I catch a glimpse of something silver and shimmery inside. Something that stills my heart, my next words cut with a serrated blade. “What else is in there?”
“None of your business.”
“Your precious moonshard?”
He strikes me with a stare that chills me to the bone, then flips the satchel’s flap. Giving me his back, he strides toward the stove, lifts the lid on the pot, and stirs the soup.
I blow a wisp of dried hair from my face, gaze shifting from the satchel to Kaan, back again. Scratching at the skin beside my nail, I tap my foot against the ground, drawing a breath so big I’m certain it’ll shift this heaviness from my chest.
It doesn’t.
Moonshards come in all different hues, depending on which fallen beast they split from. Most are dug up by those who work in the mines—from long-ago moonfalls from long-forgotten times.
There’s only been three documented moonfalls since folk began scribing our history onto scrolls, and each occurred somewhat recently.
An adolescent Sabersythe barely three phases old that fell within the Boltanic Plains. A Moltenmaw large enough to destroy a chunk of the wall, littering the sky with a cloud of dust and sand that could be seen all the way from Gore. And a Moonplume … the first to fall in more than a million phases. Perhaps longer.
That beast was not small, and it did not fall lightly.
It did not plummet without aftershocks of carnage.
Silver as the aurora ribbons, that beast shone with the light of a thousand moons before gravity lost its grip on the thing. Before it fell, bursting into a litter of shards that blasted a crater within The Shade so large a city could dwell within its dimpled depth.
Or so I’m told.
I’ve seen shards of it before, in a place where I was remade more times than I could count—those glorious shards one of the only forms of luster that didn’t cause me some sort of pain.
I don’t know why Kaan’s collecting bits of the fallen Moonplume that ripped from the sky more than twenty phases ago, but my gut tells me that’s a secret best kept stuffed in his leather satchel.
For that reason alone, I let silence have its crown.