Chapter 36
Grind.
Grind.
Grind.
“You know what?” I lift the tapered bit of bone, examining it. “We’re almost there with this one, too.”
Nee dances close, brushes against the bone, then shoots back to the ceiling and bustles about the sooty moons. One in particular, with its elegant angles, smooth slopes, and the smudge of gray ash to color it.
Her favorite.
Also mine.
A soft smile pulls at my lips as I watch her. The fact that she’s so lured to that drawing brings me a warm sense of peace, like maybe she understands the connection between myself and the big silver Moonplume moon that fell twenty-three phases ago.
With my whole heart, I’ve chosen to believe it. Just as I believe Caelis will never be whole again until I get free of this cell, find Slátra’s remaining shards, and—
Do what needs to be done.
I home my attention back on my task, angling the shard against a smooth-ish part of the ground, removing only the finest layer of bone with each long motion.
Grind.
Grind—
The squeal of rolling cart wheels pitches down the hall.
Nee nose-dives—almost too fast for me to sweep her into my cupped palm and bundle her against me.
“You’re getting better at that,” I whisper, nudging the bone beneath my pallet before tossing the blanket over us both.
I close my eyes, taming my breaths until they’re slow and long, Nee so still against my chest it’s as if her soul just slipped free.
Hard to imagine the sound of those squealing wheels once spurred me with hope. Now, it spurs me with dread. I’m so damn close to getting free without this stoic asshole’s help.
So.
Damn.
Close.
My heart pounds, the wheels rolling nearer.
Nearer.
There’s the clattering sound of my meal being tossed between the bars, and something cold and wet splashes against my bare foot.
“Thank you!” I yell with a little extra oomph, figuring if I don’t continue to boast my gratitude for the moldy slop, he might work out that I’m up to something.
No response.
He pushes the cart from view, and I wait, counting every moon on the ceiling three times before dashing off the blanket. “Ready?” I ask, lifting Nee.
She jiggles her wings.
I flatten my palm and blow.
Nee tumbles through the air, fluttering back toward the moons as I retrieve my bits of bone, inspecting both. Almost identical.
Creators, I’m good.
With a steadying breath, I bring my ankle forward and wedge both picks into the lock, close my eyes, and use the honed tips to feel around the mechanism’s insides.
Like mapping the lay of the land while soaring between Surí’s heaving wings.
Hard to picture without the vision of Pah’s escorts flying either side, boxing us in.
It’s for your own safety, Pah would say every time he caught us trying to leave without them. Are you a princess or a fool?
My upper lip trembles to pull back from my teeth.
I hate that by being here I’m proving him right. A spark of rage I exploit, using it to double my efforts.
Brow bunched, I twist the pin, nudging a metal tab aside—
Nee stops fluttering.
My eyes pop open.
I hide the pins, scoop Nee into my palm, and pull her against my thumping chest, tucking the bits of bone beneath my pallet before I curl into a ball and dash the blanket over us both. Waiting.
I count to one hundred, back to one. Repeat.
Nothing.
Pulling a deep breath, I shove the blanket down and rock onto my knees. “False alarm,” I whisper, then lift my hand and blow on Nee’s wings.
She tumbles off my palm and immediately flutters back to my neck, where she nuzzles amongst my hair.
Weird …
“You’re okay,” I whisper, cupping her with my hand. I place her upside down in my lap and rub my thumb across her name, smiling. “I know change is scary, but it’s going to be okay. I promise. I’m going to look after you, remember?”
I lift the corner of my pallet and retrieve both picks, checking them for damage, when a deep liquid voice boots me in the chest.
“Who are you talking to, Princess?”
My body jolts with such violence that when my limbs recoil around myself—protecting my precious Nee—it likely presents as self-defense.
Hopefully.
“The wall,” I rasp.
My captor emerges from a slab of shadow, stepping close to the bars, his face cast in the darkness of his floppy hood.
The Scavenger King.
“The wall, you say?”
The question is a torrent of magma splashing against me.
Burning me.
“Yes.” Working to steady my voice, I say, “I guess the loneliness has taken a toll.”
“Ah.” He reaches into the pocket of his frayed cloak, pulls out a chunky key, and clunks it into the lock.
Shit.
I nudge the picks beneath my bum, watching every slow movement of his lithe body.
He opens the door to the squealing protest of rusty hinges, packing the space with the smell of dust and ash as he moves forward like a spill of ink, making me feel too small and shackled.
Too fucking helpless.
He drops to a crouch before me, his hot, fetid breath souring the air. Turning my stomach.
Though his face is still caught in shadow, the flame of my lantern glints off his eyes, making them look like bloodstone.
“For you,” he murmurs.
I look past the crisp white parchment lark dangling from between his pinched fingers, breath catching at the sight of the ravaged skin down the sides of his nails. Like he’s taken to it with his teeth over and over again, leaving them bloody and raw.
He’s bloodlusting …
My gaze drops to the lark, beating its little wings with frantic might. Like it’s trying to reach me. Noticing the fine black flecks of dried maalí bloom dappled through the parchment, my heart stills.
Pah …
“It somehow made it through the Moving Mists and was intercepted by one of my guards.”
“I’m guessing you read it?” I ask past the swelling lump in my throat. Such a weak surge of desperate emotions. Wasted, when I’m ninety percent certain that lark contains nothing that will bring me any sense of peace.
Any hope.
Any love.
The Scavenger King offers a single slow nod.
Right.
I clear my throat and take the lark. Unfold it.
Kyzari.
I had a Bloodlace tether the well-being of my last lark to one of your maids. Something you would’ve realized had you read the message. Since Marci went up in flames, I can only guess you’re angry with me and that you’re intent on drawing this out.
I suggest you stop this charade and return to me immediately, or Surí will begin to feel the pain of each passing cycle that you’re not here where you belong.
Pah.
A sound moves up my throat unchecked—raw and aching.
I sink my teeth deep into my lower lip to stop them from chattering as I reread that fateful line:
Since Marci went up in flames—
My breath shudders free.
I should’ve known he’d do something so conniving and cruel. Should’ve been more careful. I wasn’t, and now Marci’s dead.
I swallow the pool of saliva that’s gathered beneath my tingling tongue.
She was so young and sweet and innocent. Her mah and pah will be broken. The daughter they tried so hard for … gone.
Because of me.
“Tough love, Princess?”
I ignore his question, working hard to void my emotions—stuffing them away like pushing junk beneath my pallet.
But it doesn’t stop my hands from trembling as I refold the lark precisely down the lines already pressed into it.
Taking care to move slow enough that my shakes don’t rip the parchment or bend it in any unnatural places.
Coming to the stage where the lark is flat—only a few folds away from the opening stage that gives it life—I hold it out. “Can you be gentle with this, please?”
Silence endures for a long while before the Scavenger King takes it and tucks it into his pocket.
He doesn’t move or show any signs of leaving until, slowly, he extends his hand toward me.
My heart plummets, gaze dropping to his open palm, all the blood leaving my head so fast I’m struck with a dizziness that threatens to plunge me into oblivion.
Assume he doesn’t know!
I place my hand in his.
He drops it. Flicks his palm up again. Open.
Waiting.
My soul droops in unison with my shoulders.
Sighing, I reach beneath my bum, grab the picks, and hand them over.
He inspects them long and hard, then tucks them away. “You have more fight than I believed possible,” he murmurs, his words slow-flowing. His head tilts to the side. “Seems we’re more similar than I thought.”
I don’t fucking think so.
“Though I respect that,” he continues, “my miskunn has foreseen your escape even without the picks. Forgive me, Princess, but hope is a powerful weapon in the wrong hands. And I can’t afford mistakes.”
I frown, wondering what he’s talking about.
Again, he reaches out a hand.
Every cell in my body stills, then begins to shudder so violently I’m surprised I can’t hear my bones rattling against each other.
“No—” I tighten. Curl instinctively around Nee wriggling against me, like she senses my welling distress. “Please don’t take her. Please. She’s not hurting anyone. Her return fold is already spent. I beg you—”
“Or I’ll destroy the one in my pocket.”
Shards of ice spear through my veins, my breaths coming hard and fast despite the sense that a hand is wrapped around my throat—squeezing.
Choking me.
I almost shove Nee through the bars and scream for her to go. To fly. To forget about me and flutter free of this fucking place. But there’s a very high chance that the life of another one of my maids, or the well-being of my beautiful Surí, is tied to that lark in the Scavenger King’s pocket.
I drop my gaze to his hand, up again. Stare at those bloodstone eyes. “What if I—”
“The answer is no.”
I whimper, tightening.
Nee somehow flutters free, darts straight for my neck, and nuzzles in.
Sucking a choked breath, I bring my hands up and scoop her into my grasp. Her wings thrash against my palms like a captured sowmoth.
My face crumbles, eyes burning with tears I can’t plug. “You won’t hurt her, will you? Please. She’s all I have of my mah—”
“Now, Kyzari.”
His voice is brutally cold. Unwavering. The voice of someone who seems more dead than alive.
I realize, with chest-crushing finality, that nothing I say is going to change his mind.
That I have to let her go.
“Before I order the lantern flame to burn her in your hands.”
A small sob before I force my face smooth, my next words wobbly. “Can I— Can I say a quick goodbye? Please?”
For a moment, he just stares at me, then offers a single dip of his head.
Doing everything in my power to stop my chin from trembling, I murmur a quiet “thank you,” then rest my lips against my curled fingers caging my little Nee. Something I’ll never forgive myself for.
But I don’t think about that right now as she bats against her confines—likely confused. Trying to nuzzle between my fingers so she can dart back to the safety of my neck.
Her favorite place.
Instead, I soften my swollen throat and sing to her, my words slow and gentle.
A song that’s been with me for so long I don’t remember where I heard it first. All I know is, for some unknown reason, it means more to me than almost anything else.
A lullaby I’ve only ever uttered to myself and with no risk of others listening.
Singing it before this monster breaks my heart, but it’s not for him.
It’s for my little Nee. A lilting goodbye so she isn’t taken away without knowing how much she’s loved.
Liu ath na, juu ta ne guile no …
Too la too. Too la too.
Liu ath na, juu ta ne guile no.
Eeah to ail. Eeah to ail …
Nee quells her fluttering and relaxes into my grip. Trusting me.
My next breath burns.
Slowly, I move my hands forward, then lower them to rest against his … trying to force myself to loosen my hold.
To let her go.
But all I can see are those three little letters. The blood splotch. Her crimped beak I desperately want to smooth.
All I can feel is the physical and mental fissures prying me open, shattering me in slow motion.
Han dui garl, igath da se se marth.
Eeah to ail. Eeah to ail—
The Scavenger King sighs, then dashes my hands apart.
He shoves to a stand with Nee caught between his ravaged fingers, wiggling more than she ever has, wings batting to the same tempo as my smashing heart. Slitting her captor’s palm with a papercut that drips blood on the ground.
“Please, be gentler with her. She doesn’t like being held that wa—”
The sound of ripping parchment severs me as he tears her down the middle, stilling her in one smooth, apathetic motion. I feel that same rip tear through the fibers of my heart, cleaving both chunks apart.
A guttural groan dredges up my throat, contorting my face on its rush to freedom.
He drops her lifeless halves and spins, storming from the cell before she even hits the ground.
I fall upon what’s left of my beautiful little Nee, touching her torn edges, her blood splotch, the crimp in her beak. I pull her against my chest, press her close to my heart—rocking.
Screaming.
I don’t hear the cell door close.
Don’t hear him leave.
Don’t hear any other sound save the unending howls that shred my throat and make my ribs feel bruised.
Until there’s nothing left.