Chapter 96
My lungs labor as I chase the near-constant blow of smoggy, blustering wind through a warren of juddering tunnels, up, up to an exit in the mountainside.
I skid to a stop, eyes wide. Stare through the strange, rippling waves in the air to the busting world beyond.
Moons pitch through the flushed sky, leaving burned streaks that look like open wounds. Every time one strikes the ground, a mushroom of fire and stone erupts to Bulder’s aching laments. Such pained sounds that I picture his bones being dismantled, smashed, and melted.
I look up. Map the sky still riddled with moons.
How many more blows can the world take before it’s uninhabitable? Before—
A chill swishes through me as my Other perches high. Something urges my gaze south, to where Hae’s Perch is wobbling in place, as though invisible hands are trying to jiggle it free—thieving a most precious silver egg from its nest in the black.
“No …”
Please, no. Please stay right where you are—
It topples … drops. Slow at first, then faster, chafing the sky while my knees threaten to buckle.
My Other pushes so close to the surface a familiar numbness threatens to pull me under.
She stops on the precipice, watching through my eyes like she’s peeking over a windowsill.
Together, we trail that little wonky moon as it makes its final journey, pitching past the arched horizon before its distant collision shakes the world.
A rough sound moves up my throat, more beast than fae but very much belonging to both of us.
Clode shoves me from behind.
I stumble into a gusting clamor that threatens to pick me up and toss me off the mountain. Drop low to claw into cracked clefts in the stone, innately disturbed by the deafening bluster. Like an exhale that never stops to inflate again.
But there’s something else.
An echoey undertone that clogs my brain so full I want to compact down and cry. Instead, I snarl, trying to work out if Clode sent me through the wrong tunnel or if she has, in fact, grown to dislike me enough to torture me, when a splitting sound rends through the squalling racket.
The ground beneath me slips away.
I plummet with it, screaming. Not with fear, but frustration.
Clode absolutely just coaxed me out here so Bulder could toss me down the mountainside.
Assholes.
All the breath is punched from my lungs as I collide with something hard, leathery, ice cold, and … moving. Undulating beneath me like—
“Líri …”
I open my chest, let her presence flood me.
She laments, the sound tapering to a giddy honk while I gain purchase, settling my feet against her wing buds.
I manage to curl my fingers around her reins before she banks away from the deluge of rock and snow that’s falling toward the thick, fire-lit smog that’s started to gather across the plains.
She cuts from side to side, then shoots up, as though she’s about to power us beyond gravity’s grip, offering me a daunting view of the plains, pocked with hundreds of fiery collisions as far as the eye can see.
Shock waves undulate through the dense and dusty cloud of exhausts rising with each ferocious strike the ground endures.
My heart crushes at the sight, panic rising. Finding it hard to believe that anything’s going to be left by the end of this.
Líri flicks around and halts with a forward tilt of her body. Tilling her wings, she drops her head and neck, allowing me an unveiled view of the mountain’s flattened peak. What appears to be the epicenter of the rippling waves.
I squint through the gale to its core, heart stopping at the sight of a light-blue gown I recognize. Long pale hair whipping in the surge. Kyzari … bound within the broad, muscled embrace of a winged being the likes of which I’ve never seen.
Protective rage has my upper lip curling back from my canines, but then I look deeper.
Harder.
See the tender way he’s cupping her cheek; the yearning in the soft slants of Kyzari’s face; the gentle tilt of her head as she looks up at him, lips moving with words I can’t hear, though I can see the intent in her gaze.
Love.
With deeper observation, I realize those ripples are undulating not just down into the mountain’s crevices and across the plains, but also upward. Toward the remaining moons still precariously perched in the sky, some threatening to wobble … free—
“Fuck.”
The moons … They’re falling because of them. The strange energy rippling from the doting pair is shaking the atmosphere with enough might to dislodge the moons, ripping them to the ground with catastrophic force.
My heart jolts in synchrony with another pitched plummet.
My daughter is destroying the world …
“Creators,” I murmur, something almost leaning forward and whispering in my ear. Telling me the moons will keep falling until the sky is empty if something doesn’t change. If that strange, blustering clamor doesn’t dissipate.
I tense my jaw, flatten against Líri, and nudge her forward.
She presses her wings close to her sides and dives—body sleek, powering headfirst toward Kyzari, straight into the surging current that threatens to strip the skin from my bones, each breath a gasped battle.
Despite it, Líri keeps strong and streamlined …
until the blare packs a raging punch and snatches her wings from her body, prying them wide enough they catch like a sail, tossing us sideways.
Líri doesn’t cry out in panic or pain, but with every frantic jolt, she releases a raging honk, like she’s chastising the sky. Telling it to leave her alone.
Another battering wave; another chaotic bank. Through it all, I glimpse Veya struggling to crawl toward Kyzari, body pressed against the rocky plateau that’s void of snow or anything loose.
She surges forward with teeth-gritted effort, face muscles strained, her hair a brown streak threatening to rip from her scalp. She makes a foot of progress, silently roaring at the tumult—
Another blast sends her skidding, and my heart mimics the motion, feeling as though it’s about to explode from my chest by the time she finds purchase again—farther back than where she started.
A smear of vibrancy draws my gaze to a jagged gray stone that’s slowly crumbling. To a small, colorfully dressed miskunn bundled in its waning shelter.
Uno …
We lock eyes, just long enough for me to realize she’s foreseen this. Hopefully she’s also seen us all survive.
If we can get close enough, perhaps I can ask for instructions?
A brief gap in the undulations has me urging Líri down again. She tucks her wings so flat against her frame she’s a luminous arrow plummeting almost directly for Uno’s dwindling shelter, nearly there before another ripple strikes.
Líri skids sideways. Gouges her claws so deep into the ground we come to an abrupt halt. Only my cramping grip on her reins keeps me from being torn off and tossed through the sky.
She drops low, her mane, tail, and tendrils whipping in the gusting bellows as I edge down her side, into the nook of shelter created by her arched body—gulping big blows of much-easier breath.
I peer into the turbulent surrounds, noting that Uno is as far away as Kyzari and her doting companion.
It’s not going to be efficient for me to crawl across to her first and ask for helpful tips, dammit.
Guess I’m going in blind.
I’m just about to edge into the raging open when Veya comes skidding toward us, screaming. I snatch her wrist moments before she can shoot off the cliff, then jerk her into my arms.
She crumples, releasing a heaved sob that speaks a thousand words.
“I can’t get to her!” She looks at me through bloodshot eyes, hair windblown, cheeks slapped red from the cold. “I’m so sorry, Raeve. I—”
“Helped get my daughter out of that fucking cell,” I holler, dragging her farther into the shelter.
She blanches, eyes widening, her lips shaping two quiet words I can’t hear over the clamor:
“You know.”
I nod.
“I’m going to fix this,” I belt out with more confidence than I feel, unsteady in this unfamiliar terrain. Fearful that Kyzari was the one who tore Nee in two. That she doesn’t need or even want me.
Not anymore.
Either way, we have to stop the moons from falling before there’s nothing left to save.
“Stay here!”
I edge past Veya, open myself to Clode, and begin to sing a sturdy tune. The most flawless fucking song that’s ever graced my lips.
She abides, forging into a shield to soften the destructive force radiating from Kyzari, her responses spoken through gritted teeth. Like an adamant but slightly pissed-off charge into the worst of it.
I step out behind her, away from the shelter of Líri’s crouched form, squinting into the icy blast.
The tumult is a hundred fisted blows beating me over and over and over again, threatening to rip out my hair, almost tossing me to the ground despite Clode’s help. But by some miracle, I manage to push forward a single victorious step.
Shifting a mountain would feel like less of a conquest.
I pause, breathing hard, mapping out my next step as I regather my gusto. Punch my other foot forward—fast so I don’t risk toppling over. All the while, I gust Clode with tales of her beauty and prowess. Marvel at her fierce strength and poise. Beg her to hold; to get me there.
Another wobbling shift forward. Another.
Every step is a burning strain, the skin on my cheeks pulled back, hair threatening to strip from my scalp the closer I get to Kyzari.
But I don’t stop. Don’t falter, even when another boisterous assault whips all the breath from my lungs.
The winged being shifts. Turns his head to look back over his broad shoulder, past the wake of his fluttery cloak and the pitched arch of his silver wings, eyes striking me. Bold.
Challenging.
His mouth moves, inaudible to me. Though I think maybe she can hear him … remembering the way she was looking up at the being. With eyes full of love, hope, and relief—
He’s soothing my daughter. He’s singing a song that’s bringing her comfort.