When the Moon Hatched (The Moonfall #1)

Chapter 74

I toss the dice, rolling a four, deciding to pluck the twentieth shard from the top left corner—keeping my face smooth when my gaze coasts over the smox. A black swirling splotch that can transform into any creature, immediately inheriting its strengths.

Its weaknesses.

A risky shard that can’t represent the same creature as any other played in the final lay or else it’s immediately void, that play lost. Problem is, by the end, all the best shards are generally played, leaving it useless. A waste of space when you could be holding something genuinely valuable.

I pinch the flotti from my fan and set it back in the empty space.

“You know,” Kaan says, rolling the dice, taking a shard from the square and threading it amongst his hand, filling the gap with one of his previous shards, “I taught my sister how to play this game.”

“She any good?” I ask, scattering the dice.

“Excellent.”

I purse my lips, pick a shard, look at it. Set it straight back down again. “Better than you?”

“Hasn’t beaten me once,” he mumbles, tossing down.

My eyes almost roll out of my head. “How conceited of you.”

“Just hopeful, Moonbeam. Ever hopeful.”

I arch a brow in question.

“Unless you were playing Skripi with Slátra while you were balled up in the sky, I have at least an eon on you.” He shrugs. “I pray to the Creators that it gives me the advantage I need to win.”

I slay him with a stare while he lifts another shard, swapping something out, his features cast in stone as he spears me through with a simmering gaze.

“Your turn.”

Right.

Clearing my throat, I sweep the dice into my hand and flick it across the table, swapping my sowmoth for the Moltenmaw.

He rolls, but rather than pick a card from the board, he slaps the woetoe on the table, its furry face leering out at me from the upturned shard.

Fuck.

I flash him a smile, further fanning my deck as I extend my arm across the table to give him easy access to whatever card he decides to steal.

Holding my stare, he pinches the Moltenmaw, and I grind my teeth so loud I’m certain he can hear it.

“Apologies,” he says before he’s even had a chance to look at the powerful shard in his hand, threading it into his fan while still holding my eye contact.

“Don’t want your apology.” I toss the dice, my mood immediately brightening when I pick up the Moonplume. “I certainly won’t be offering one if I beat you.”

He throws the dice again, lifting a shard and swapping it out for another. “And the Mindweft? Will you apologize for that?”

Clearing my throat, I collect the dice in the cup, giving it a shake.

He lifts his gaze, meeting mine as he says, “Skripi.”

The dice flies free, bouncing across the board. “ Already ?”

Silence.

Internally, I groan—placing my nilacle he trumps with a colk. He places his Moltenmaw next, forcing me to reveal my Moonplume.

“Ouch,” he says, and a sour smile spreads across my face.

I slam down a swamp hag he trumps with a velvet trogg. Teeth gritted, I play my hushling—my remaining power card seeing as he ended the game so fucking quickly.

A beat passes before he slowly—almost gently —sets his doomquill on it, effectively handing me the play.

I look up, catching his stare.

Holding it.

Holding my breath, too.

“If I’m losing you again, I need to know why,” he implores, his gravelly words shaped more like an apology than an admittance.

My brow furrows as he pulls another shard from his fan and settles it on the final spot.

I break his stare, looking down.

My heart plummets so fast I almost vomit.

He sets the rest of his shards face down on the table and leans back in his chair, crossing his arms.

I release a shuddered breath, scouring the heavily tusked face of the roaring Sabersythe, a ball of red flame illuminated at the back of its throat—the only other shard that can possibly trump it already placed in the second stomp.

My Moonplume .

“Well played,” I rasp.

He dips his head.

I tap my finger against my shards, dropping my stare to my remaining spread, filling my lungs before I pull the smox free and set it on his Sabersythe.

A moment of pause, then “What is it?”

“A tick.”

The smox swirls, then congeals into the shape of the tiny bulbous bug …

Kaan’s eyes darken, a heaviness settling, like gravity just bore down on us.

“Your Sabersythe is feral,” I whisper. “Now it’s dead—slain. Unable to so much as lift its wings and soar into the sky to rest with its ancestors.”

All the color leaches from his shard, like the Sabersythe just perished between us.

Silence.

The promise that was scrawled across my palm squiggles free, releasing me from its clutch.

Kaan draws a deep breath through his nose, exhaling slower than a setting aurora. “Impressive,” he says, barely moving his mouth.

“Thank you.”

Another stretch of silence burdens the space between us, his eyes dark shadows still set on the final play.

I clear my throat, filling my cheeks with a blow of air I audibly release. “So … is there somewhere for me to store my gold so we can enjoy the festival without lugging it everywhere?”

Kaan blinks, drawing another deep breath. He lifts his head, evading my eye contact. “I have guards beyond the exit. I’ll send them in to bag it up and take it to the hutch so it’s ready for your departure.”

I nod, more of those fluttery things swarming through my chest at the thought of what this cycle could hold.

Anything’s possible.

We get to live this fantasy out, then I can get back to living my solitary life lifted by the knowledge that he’s safe from whatever curse seems to follow me around like an invisible scythe, slaying anybody I form attachments to.

“I’ll need to pay Pyrok back the gold I borrowed—”

“I’ll see it done.”

The words are so clipped they sting.

There’s a hardness in his eyes I’ve never seen before. Cold.

Detached.

“So,” he says, and a chill scuttles up my spine as his upper lip peels back from his canines. “Would you like me to come around and bend you over the table?” He tips his head to the side. “Fuck you right here so we can get it over with? Or would you like to draw it out a bit?”

I drop my gaze to the table.

He doesn’t get it …

If I wanted to fuck, I’d find someone without the laden baggage to scratch the itch with.

A few lusty glances here, the crook of a finger there. I could have some faceless male in a darkened corner in no time, parting the tendrils of my skirt and giving me what I need without the pressure of leaving with our fates intertwined.

This is not about … that .

All I want from this slumber is to allow myself to love . Or at the very least try .

For him.

For me.

Though I may not be the one he lost, I could give him the goodbye I don’t believe he got but undoubtedly deserves. I could pretend my heart is soft and warm and vulnerable. That I’m worthy of everything this spectacular male embodies, even though a stone in my gut tells me that’s not the case. That Kaan Vaegor is too good for me in every way, shape, and form.

But I won’t think about that right now.

No …

I’ll save that thought for when I’m stepping into The Curly Quill. For when I’m preparing to pass Vruhn a sack of gold, then beg him to remove Kaan like a prickly weed when he’s actually a forest .

Lush.

Strong.

Beautiful.

Too vulnerable to the nip of flames for me to bear.

Maybe he’ll follow my lead. Remove me .

Perhaps this slumber will give him the freedom to finally say goodbye to the female he used to know. To bury the past. Find happiness with someone worthy of his big, warm-hearted love.

Perhaps.

I stand, move around the table, Kaan’s stare still speared at my now-empty chair when I finally reach his side and extend my hand.

His gaze dips to it, then lifts to my smile.

My eyes.

“Dance with me?” I whisper.

The ball in his throat rolls as his eyes take on slightly softer lines. As my heart thumps harder, those fluttering things inside my chest multiplying. Nuzzling against my ribs and making my entire body tingle.

“Please?”

A moment of pause before he stands, towering above me, ignoring my outstretched hand. “Lead the way, Prisoner Seventy-Three.”

I take his hand anyway, then tug him toward the exit.