Chapter 90
We’re herded to a jagged exit that’s gasping snowy breaths of frigid wind. A snowstorm like I’ve never seen. Unfortunately, Uno doesn’t hesitate before launching into the churn, immediately lost to it.
Shit—
I whip around, glaring at the Fate Herder. “This can’t possibly be right!”
He drops low and snarls, shoulders bunched with the threat to pounce.
I shake my head, lips pinched as I hastily tuck Raeve’s cloak around Kyzari, pulling the hood up over her head. Another warning growl has me reciprocating the sound before I step out into the dark and howling onslaught, powering through the cakey snow.
All but blind.
Nauseatingly disoriented.
Fucking freezing.
Though I can’t hear Rayne or Clode, I get the sense that something’s off. Feel it in the messy blows that cut through my garb, my lungs chafing with each chattered inhale.
We won’t survive long out here. Already, my fingers and toes burn from the cold, limbs shaking so much that every step through the blustery dredge feels like a battle won.
And I’m wearing boots. A long-sleeved shirt.
Pants that are runed to beat back the worst of the cold. The little miskunn, however …
“UNO! WHERE ARE YOU?”
A screaming plea, lost to the wind’s holler. But the roar of a distant dragon cuts through.
A burst of orange luminosity catches my gaze somewhere ahead. Like a lid just flicked back on a boot-sized fire weald. Though something tells me it only appears that size because it’s far away.
The battle pits?
Another snowy gust breaks my view, and the Fate Herder nudges his dense head between my shoulder blades. Hard. Urging me forward with such might I almost catapult into the snow.
I lack the gusto to complain, my concentration spent on keeping Kyzari tucked close, keeping steady as I edge forward, hoping the boisterous fucker’s not herding me straight off a cliff.
“UNOOO!”
Something tugs at my pants.
I look down to find the little miskunn staring up at me, holding a tiny jar of captured moonlight that must’ve been tucked in one of her pockets. Her big pink eyes are luminous against our flurried surroundings, her lashes, fur, and tunic thick with matting snow and ice.
“Uno found the place!” she belts out. “Follow!”
“But—” I glance back, only to see the Fate Herder is no longer behind us. Like he bumped me with his head, then grew sick of the cold and deserted.
Bastard.
“Quicklys!” Uno throws out a hand, pointing.
I squint ahead. Spot a dark smudge in the distance, likely an outcrop protecting the hollow beneath from wind and gathering snow.
Shelter …
Again, Uno tugs my pants. She leads me forward in plowing increments, my gaze pinned to the luminous beacon caught in her fist.
I’m numb all the way to my knees by the time we step into the outcrop’s meager shelter, shards of stone and stripped bones crunching beneath my boots. All the evidence I need to assume we’re finding refuge in some carnivore’s lair.
No Runi. No mending tonics or tinctures.
Just stone, bones, and a scant reprieve from the storm.
Any bit of hope I had about Uno’s proclamation of saving Kyzari sputters like a doused flame.
If there’s anything worse than dying in a cell, it’s dying on layers of bones belonging to equally unfortunate beings.
I work my throat against the lump of grief clogging it and use the edge of my boot to shove some remains aside, creating a nestlike divot to gently lay Kyzari in, folding Uno’s shroud as a pillow for her head.
Teeth clashing, I ease the hood aside so I can see her face. And immediately regret it. Unable to bottle my sob at the sight of her blue lips and waxy features.
I’d believe she’s already passed, were it not for the way her eyes shift beneath her lids. Like she’s hunting the darkness for something.
She works through another crackling breath, and I tuck frosty hair back from her slit cheek, doing what I can to hide the bruise on her temple. Like a splat of ink that’s taken over a third of her beautiful face. “It’s okay,” I murmur—a blatant lie.
There’s nothing okay about this.
It shouldn’t be me here right now, comforting Kyzari through her final breaths. It should be Raeve and Kaan and a pallet so warm it feels like a hug.
It should be them.
A metallic jingle lures my attention to Uno, hunched over Kyzari’s shackle as she works through the keys, testing them. Seeking the right one. I take Kyzari’s hand in mine, appreciating Uno’s efforts to make her more comfortable.
The lock clunks open.
The storm loses all its breath, the last of the snowflakes drifting down to dust the mountainside, then … nothing. Just a silence so stiff that every shift of my body clamors.
My skin prickles with the sense that we’re being watched, and I cut my gaze around the plateau beyond the sheltered ridge, finding no leering predators. I open myself to Bulder, but he’s equally silent. The sort of quiet he demonstrated before …
Before Slátra fell.
A sense of foreboding unfurls within me as I look up. See the heavy clouds now shredding apart, dissipating so fast I hardly believe it’s real. Moonlight floods the sheer mountainside, spilling off the graveyard of bundled Moonplumes clustered together, tangled with the middae aurora.
Uno tugs my sleeve.
I meet her wide eyes, brimming with reflections of the luminous moons. “Veya should go. Find a rock to hide behind.”
She wants me to leave Kyzari? Let her die alone?
Really?
I ease onto the ground beside my niece and cup her cheek in a manner that allows me to keep a finger on her weakening pulse. “There’s no honor in that,” I say with blunt determination. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Veya does not underst—”
“No. Not even a moonfall could rip me away.”
Uno hisses. “I warned.”
She pulls the shackle off.
My heart grows heavy as Kyzari’s eyes pop open, staring right at me, but not actually seeing. No doubt the lucid moment that’s had by some before they succumb to death.
Tears well in both our eyes, her face twisting in a way that makes me feel like there’s a mountain on my chest.
“I’m here,” I whisper, sweeping my thumb across her cheek. “I’m with you, darling.”
You’re not alone.
Her hands come up. Trembling, she wedges her fingers around the edges of her diadem and pulls—like she’s trying to pry it free. When it doesn’t budge, her face crumbles further, hands clawing, fingers digging so deep she gouges her skin, a swell of tears streaking from the corners of her eyes.
I take her hands in mine, bundle her fingers around Kaan’s málmr still strung around her neck, and gently squeeze. “It’s okay,” I whisper, choking on each strained word. “You don’t need to worry. I’ll get it where it needs to go.”
Her body shudders with a whimper, and something flashes in her eyes before she pulls a long, rattled breath that makes her chest rise all the way. Then her lips begin to move, murmuring a string of lyrical words I’ve never heard before.
“Hov ahka nuieljuak. Hov-at haquil. Nuieljuki taf maruli.”
The atmosphere shudders, its reverberations moving through my flesh and bones, taunting nausea to claw up my throat.
“Gov tuu, gelunith vat kin jist, hov-at haquil, Caelis.” Her song becomes more desperate. Strained. “Guithin-dahl mai. Quialhn. Tuu tahn atharuilé—”
I frown, searching her unseeing eyes wrought with frenzy.
Something’s not right …
“Uno, did you see this in your foretelling?”
My only response is a hungry silence. Like how it feels in the presence of a Moonplume, but more intense.
Edging up, I hunt for the miskunn, finding only a trail of footsteps. Little craters that dimple the snowy plateau, leading behind a rock that resembles a gray canine. As far as protection from a moonfall goes … pretty useless.
“Un—”
An icy force bludgeons me with such might I pitch through the air. Like being slapped by the seismic boom that pulses from an erupting volcano. Except there’s no fucking volcano here.
I tumble, plummet. Crash face-first into the hard-packed snow, all the breath exploding from my lungs.
Everything hurts, but nothing compares to the pound in my ears. Somehow both the loudest sound I’ve ever heard—drowning out anything else—yet ghostly silent.
Around me, the snow peels back in disintegrating layers that fall victim to the pulse.
I’m pushed, hair whipping into my eyes and mouth, tugging at the roots.
It takes me too long to realize I’m sliding backward—something that reminds me of being tossed and shoved by the waves while playing in the Loff when I was young.
I glance over my shoulder. See the ground fall away.
A cliff.
Fuck.
With a sneer on my lips, I dig my fingers into the stone, finding divots to wedge my toes against—steadying.
I dare to look up. Squint through the strange, chaotic storm—
Nothing looks the same.
The rocky outcrop is gone, as though the tip of the mountain just cracked off and toppled into oblivion. Kyzari’s at the epicenter of the ongoing explosion rippling through the atmosphere like heat waves, still lying exactly where I left her. Still singing. Still clinging to Kaan’s málmr.
But she’s not looking at me anymore.
She’s looking up as streams of silver light seep from the Aether Stone like oil on water. Thousands of them, ribboning all around, weaving together, congealing into the shape of a broad-shouldered being on his knees beside her.
A striking, otherworldly male draped in a silver cloak that’s frayed at the hem, gusting with the pulsating waves.
He boasts a swathe of pitch-black hair, ebony skin, and startling silver eyes that glint like distant suns, alight with equal amounts of fury and devotion. They sweep over Kyzari, inspecting every bruise, cut, and speck of dirt she’s marred with.
Those silver ribbons continue to sketch out the shape of him as, with the gentleness of a rising aurora, he eases Kyzari into his arms—his mouth also moving in silent verses. Words I can’t hear but can feel etching against my skin, like runes.
He curls his arms, crushing her limp body against his barrel chest in such a way that I picture Bulder hugging Rayne, trying to keep her in one piece … even though it’s hopeless.
An ooze of silver light seeps from the being, into Kyzari’s many wounds, and I gasp, looking up. Meet those unbridled silver eyes.
It only lasts a beat before I’m expelled like a mouthful of spat meat.
I drop my chin, exposing the back of my neck in submission as I spear my gaze to the ground, feeling minced. Like I just got torn through.
Another tide batters me with such force my skin almost rips off my bones, the sheer power making it impossible to breathe.
It peels my fingers up … up—
I’m flung across the plateau, flailing. Manage to claw into a divot and stop myself from skidding past the plains, and probably all the way to Ovlaeve.
The surge loses enough of its punch that I’m able to draw breath, gulping it back while I find somewhere sturdy to wedge my boot and look up through my lashing hair, petrified of what I’ll see.
I sob, realizing it’s all in vain. Because amidst the heaving gloom, the two have shifted.
Kyzari’s no longer limp, lifeless, and crushed against the male’s chest.
No.
She’s on her feet with her hands flat on his chest, her white hair billowing. Her skin … unblemished and lit with a healthy, luminous glow.
The male smiles with tender relief, his hands moving over Kyzari’s face.
Like he’s mapping the shape and feel of her.
She cups one, then steps closer, and the atmosphere pulses as he binds her in his staunch embrace, one hand splayed between her shoulder blades.
The other cradles the back of her head and eases her into the crook beneath his chin with such benevolent devotion my eyes burn.
Still singing, Kyzari melts into the embrace, looking more at ease than I’ve ever seen her.
More at home.
And I realize how stupid I was to doubt her when she told me her heart already belonged to a Creator. It all makes perfect sense now.
This is him.
The God of Aether.
Immense wings begin to lift from amongst the billowy folds of what I thought was just a cloak, flicking out into a dominant silver stretch—almost the exact shape as Rygun’s, but frayed and droopy. Like bits have been torn free.
As they stretch, I glimpse the dark undersides, the leathery membranes like windows to unrecognizable skies. Gloomy voids speckled with stars and strange-looking moons and—
They gust forward, encompassing Kyzari in an intimate embrace, the two fitting together in a manner that makes me think of Kaan’s málmr.
Two perfect parts of a whole.
I’m so enraptured—breathless from the blunt force of their catastrophic love—that I don’t notice some of the moons jiggling from their lofty perches and plummeting toward the snow-covered plains.
Until the first one strikes.