Chapter 43
T ension cuts the air, hundreds of stares scraping across my skin.
Delving beneath it.
I scan the leering crowd, then look to Saiza, her complexion pale, eyes bulging as she watches the King’s retreat. “Why six?”
“I am not certain,” she says. “Five for Oah. Six is unheard of.”
I swallow, tightening my hand around Kaan’s málmr.
He rummages through the weapons stacked upon a nearby rack, clunking things to the side, finally gripping the small knife I noticed earlier—the one with a maw’s worth of tapered teeth mounted around the fringe of the flat blade.
He passes it from hand to hand, grunts, then rips his boots off and tosses them aside. “ Hach te nei , Rygun ,” he growls, pointing to his beast, his stern words echoing off the crater’s sheer walls. “ Hach te nei , ack gutchen!”
I lean into Saiza. “What’s he saying?”
“He is ordering Rygun to stand down … whatever the battle’s outcome.”
The last four words land like boulders upon my chest.
Blazing eyes still pinned on Kaan, the beast fills his chest with a breath he rumbles free, the sound so abrasive it packs the crater with a thick promise of fiery violence I understand perfectly.
Too perfectly.
Kaan bellows another order. “ Hach te nei , Rygun . Ack!”
Rygun stretches his wings, turns his face to the sky, and releases a searing screech—the sound accompanied by a mushroom of red flames that scorch and lick and flick at the powdery blue.
Folk scream, crouching over their younglings to shelter them from the heat. Others dive upon the ground, as if that could save them if the massive dragon decided to tip his head and pour his flames into the crater.
I also crouch, but for different reasons … binding myself into a ball as my skin illuminates with the remnants of a million wilted runes. Turning such a stark shade, the light emitting from the old etchings rivals one of the Moonplume moons perched within The Shade’s otherwise gloomy depths.
I’m so crouched over myself, trying not to look too close at the residue of runes sketched across my skin—at the layers upon layers of tiny etchings used to stitch me together more times than there are moons in the sky to count—that I forget Saiza’s beside me. At least until my eyes open and I catch her bulging perusal.
Her gaze drifts up my body, meeting mine. My heart leaps into my throat, and I open my mouth to speak—
“No wonder you laughed,” she says, then reaches behind me, flicking a blanket over my back and easing it around my shoulders. “The unbreakable always do.”
I don’t correct her. Don’t tell her I’ve broken too many times to count. That I laughed because the pain I’ve felt in my heart eclipses any damage that could ever be inflicted upon my flesh and bones.
Instead, I give her a dozy smile of thanks, tucking deep into the corded fabric as Rygun throws his fiery tantrum toward the sky, like he’s trying to sizzle the moons.
Seems he’s more than displeased about being told what to do. To be fair, if I could rip off this iron cuff, I’d be taking fate into my own fucking hands.
His flame snips off, and he shoves into the sky, bits of rock raining from where his claws were pierced into the crater’s lip. He tills his massive wings, stirring the crater into a billowing gale, forcing us all to shield our faces from the whip of sand.
He circles higher … higher … until he’s far enough away that the clan’s folk grow comfortable enough to unbundle themselves.
My mouth dries as Kaan stalks toward the crater’s center, to where Hock has resumed his pacing, again wielding the same spiked mace he used to defeat Zaran. A spiked mace I picture swinging through the air with untraceable speed, colliding with the side of Kaan’s face.
Shattering his skull.
I flinch, my body reviving its terrible tremble, more blood leaking down my temple. The antivenom is working hard to smooth the wobbly crinkles from my equilibrium, but not fast enough.
Not fast enough.
Even so, I force myself to my feet. Saiza leaps up to help me rise, acting as my post to lean against. The other female dabs at the wound on my head again, slathering it in something thick and potent while the males circle each other in prowling strides that trample through my chest.
Finally, they charge —clashing in a bludgeoning bash of fiery rage, again and again, each meaty, growling collision ricocheting through my bones so hard I jolt.
Skin splits.
Blood sprays.
Weapons turn wet and red.
There is no rhythm to their rippling motions that remind me of cracking earth and shattering stones. Of quakes that rattle the world hard enough to knock you off your feet. They’re a chaotic dance of bulging muscle and feral regard I don’t want to see, don’t want to hear, my chest crushing a little more with each new scar slashed across Kaan’s beautiful skin.
But despite the crippling sensation, I can’t bring myself to look away.
Saiza leans close. “You should sit, Kholu. Your legs are shaking, and that cut on your head is losing a lot of blood.”
Kaan fails to parry another swinging attack that lacerates the air, hacking shreds of skin from his abdomen.
A strangled scream slips up my throat, and his bloodshot stare latches onto me as something painful grubs through my chest like a flesh-eating worm.
My knees give way.
Saiza lowers me to the rug while Hock rains upon the King in a flourish of deadly strikes. As I cling to Kaan’s málmr like the motion alone could hold his body together and protect him from the advancing blows that
don’t
stop
coming.
Snarling, Kaan reaches into the swinging mass of lethal force, eating a spiked blow to the chest in order to snatch Hock’s arm, and I think another sharp sound wrestles up my throat.
I think it might be his name.
I think I might’ve ordered him to live .
Hissing blood through clenched teeth, Kaan drags his toothy weapon through Hock’s inner bicep, severing the bulge of muscle with a splash of red.
The mace drops to the sand.
Hock roars.
Kaan roars louder, stepping around the monstrous male and fisting his hair, ripping his head back far enough to bare Hock’s throat in my direction.
My heart stops, the rest of the world smudging into oblivion.
Holding my stare, he lifts his toothy, bloody weapon to the stretch of flesh and saws .
A breath shudders into me.
Hock’s screams start fierce and frantic before tapering into a gurgled groan as his throat is severed in messy, bone-grinding increments, plumes of blood ribboning down his jerking chest like a ruddy aurora.
His body drops. Head stays.
Something warm slips from my eyes. Drips down my cheeks.
Kaan steps over Hock’s motionless mass and stalks toward me, chewing up the space between us. Still fisting Hock’s hair as the world begins to split and sway.
Split and sway.
Kaan reaches me, teeth bared, his ravaged chest leaking blood. He lumps Hock’s head on the ground before my low dais, and I feel that same weight thump within me, a choked sound wriggling past my trembling lips.
I drop my stare, taking in the rough, weeping sever of flesh around Hock’s neck, his wide-open eyes. His mouth caught in a perpetual scream I’m certain I’ll never stop hearing. The very reason I snip their breath.
Kaan drops into my line of sight like a crouching dragon, having just proved he’s every bit capable of being the monster I thought he was. But right now, I feel only cold, plunging relief .
I cast a noose around the delicate, vulnerable feeling. Hang it from one of my ribs where I can look at its rotting corpse whenever I feel my heart doing the fluttering thing it’s doing right now. Because that’s what happens when I get attached in any way at all.
Death.
I look into Kaan’s devastating eyes, a darkness toiling within the fiery depths that’s so unhinged it brings me a strange sense of calm. Makes me feel a little less alone in this fucked-up world.
I lift his málmr and drag the leather loop over my head, settling the heavy carving between my breasts.
That darkness deepens.
Boldens.
A rumbling sound boils in his chest, planting a seed of ease in me even as my world sways with so much violence my entire body flops with the motion.
He catches me, lifts me.
Tucks me close to his chest.
Then his steps are thumping, thumping …
Or perhaps that’s Rygun’s wings.
I become quietly aware of the shadow. The wind. Of the fierce, feral roar that tears at the air, and the fact that we’re likely leaving.
I settle my hand on Kaan’s chest, finding comfort in the heavy pound of his heart, my eyes prying open just in time to see a silver smudge clawing up the crater’s side.
Leaving.
Something else I decide not to assess too closely, certain that line of thought can only lead to more pain.
Suffering.
Loss.
“Moonbeam.”
“Hmm …”
“Please don’t scare me like that again.”
Scare?
What a nice thing to say.
“You shouldn’t spend such lovely words on me, Sire,” I murmur groggily, wishing I didn’t find such comfort in his scent. In the feel of his arms wrapped around me.
In him .
“You should save them for somebody special.”
His guttural growl is the last thing I hear before darkness consumes me.