Chapter 64
I open the pliers, squeeze the tapered tips onto the metal earring hook, and twist, manipulating it into a more rounded shape, easing small bits of tension from my trembling hands with each slow clamp of the tools.
With each ply of the metal.
My gaze shifts from my task to the closed trapdoor that leads to the treehut’s lower level, then to the thick puddle of mist that’s still drifting across the ground by my feet. Perhaps the longest I’ve ever waited.
Either I’m not getting answers or Borg’s fallen asleep.
Again.
I check that the blood that’s leaking from the pin wound at the back of my arm hasn’t dribbled onto the pallet, then lean farther forward and get back to shaping the hook.
Once it’s acceptably round, I grab Borg’s jar from atop the quilt, careful not to disturb his misty tether as I ease the thin metal loop up the jar’s base, all the way to the nozzle.
I tighten it with angled twists of the pliers, finishing off when Borg rises up, gathering size and mass until he’s flopped backward across the plush seater like a puffy white throw.
“Any luck?”
My voice is gravel, betraying just how fucking rough my insides feel.
“I have the answers you require,” he drolls with the same enthusiasm Rygun has when I’m trying to coax him from his molten burrow.
“Good news.” I set the pliers aside and sit a little straighter. “What’re you hankering for?”
“Sleeeeep,” he drudges out on a gaping yawn—so wide it almost tears his head in two—before he smacks his foggy lips together, bringing his hand up to dash across his face.
“I can still taste the remnants of Roan’s sorrows.
So fresh and zesty, and you want to ruin it.
For what? You know I won’t give you this very important tidbit of information without tasting your worst—”
“You can’t have my worst. Not this dae.”
I can’t stomach that right now.
“Exactly.”
I open my mouth to speak, but he cuts me off, tipping his head to leer at me.
“You want to plug me full of meager nourishment? Wash this deliciousness from my mouth with the taste of gluttonous regret? Are you trying to burst my seams? Soon, I won’t even fit in that ugly, boring ja—”
I unclamp my hand from around his jar now boasting the three beads dangling down its side.
Red.
Brown.
Clear.
With my next blink, he’s gusted up, arching over me like a haunt. “Whose are they?”
His voice oscillates with an eager shudder, lifting all the hairs on my arms as I study the trio of trinkets I’ve been hauling around for phases. Like a macabre war medallion.
“They were Pah’s before I ripped them from his ear,” I murmur as he hunches forward, pawing at the beads with his foggy fingers. Like he’s trying to grab them. “Now, they’re yours.”
“How— How did you know my style?”
“Intuition.”
When Borg looks up, his face is so close it’s an effort to hold his gaze. Slowly, his mouth stretches into a shredded grin so big it dominates his profile.
He chuckles, pulling back to twist and stretch. “Very well, My King. I shall feast on one of your less palatable memories in exchange for the information you desire. What do you have in mind?”
My head kicks back. “You’re going to let me choose?”
He shrugs, splays his fingers, and inspects his wispy nails. “Given your thoughtful gesture, I’m feeling rather charitable. Though don’t expect it to last. The cork still stinks.”
“Noted.” I jostle Pah’s beads with my thumb, thinking. “What about revenge?” I ask, my voice hollow. Tainted with dark thoughts of the memory I have in mind.
Borg wafts forward, billowing against me, sniffing with such gusto I already feel the memory unraveling from the pit of my soul in grating jerks. “Yesss.” He swallows, like he’s salivating, declaring his freshly forged hunger. “This will do nicely.”
“Wonderful.”
“Waaait …” The memory stills its splintered pull from my insides. Borg pulls back just enough to meet my gaze again before he briefly scans the room—something akin to concern shadowing his ebony eyes. “You don’t want to numb yourself with your poison first?”
“No spirits this dae,” I grind out, setting his jar on the pallet before I stretch back across the quilt in preparation for the onslaught, closing my eyes—
And immediately see Raeve knotted in agony on that muddy battlefield as death encroached with a blade in his hand. Immediately feel the jagged slice of panicked fear cut me through.
I snap my eyes open, meeting Borg’s eerie stare. “Do your worst.”
With one final thrash of Rygun’s head, Grohn goes limp, his frayed wings splayed across the cracked orange stone. From Rygun’s saddle, I see the light in the large Sabersythe’s eyes extinguish, blood dripping from his gaping maw.
Puddling on the ground.
If I were in my right mind, perhaps I’d feel bad that Grohn didn’t make it into the sky despite his vicious nature. But I’m not, hazed by lust for Pah’s blood on my hands. For the feel of his bones breaking beneath my grip.
The battle rages in the distance, smoke and screams billowing from Dhomm’s scooped shore north of where we landed while I pull my lungs full, tip my head, and look to the powdery-blue sky.
No clouds.
Just a scatter of moons, the scorching sun, and a churn of wind to bear witness to what I’m about to do. Even so, I pin it all to memory. Each moon. Every breath of wind. The smell: a violent mix of scorched flesh, sweat, and leather.
Rygun loosens his grip on Grohn’s neck, letting his head thump to the ground with the clatter of loosening scales shaken from Rygun’s dripping maw. Shards of red and bronze that glint in the sun’s harsh rays.
Over the sound of my dragon’s deep, billowy breaths, I hear Pah cough and sputter from where he slipped off the saddle, now over the other side of Grohn. Out of sight. Sure sign he’s still alive despite the blast of fire he just endured and the blood smeared across the back of his perished beast.
The tips of my fingers itch.
Slowly, I bind Rygun’s reins around one of his spikes, toss my leg over the saddle, then move down the ropes. I leap the final few feet, landing heavily.
The ground shudders beneath my boots, like Bulder sees straight through my skin into the violence corrupting my soul.
He understands just how little it would take to tip me over the edge; over the weakening barricade holding me back from stepping into the void in my chest and crumbling the world. The perfect sequence sits heavy on my tongue. A violent command with enough force to wreck … everything.
I could do it, but I no longer want to make the entire world bleed.
Just the male who sired me.
Rygun shifts back with a ground-shuddering heave, making space for me to move around Grohn’s lifeless body. Pah bludgeons out a few mangled commands to the God of Ground, his words echoing on the dry air as blunt blisters of stone bulge up from the otherwise flat terrain—chasing my steps.
He’s trying to spear me, but convincing Bulder to sharpen into a fine point takes eloquent precision. A sharp tongue.
Something, it appears, Pah no longer has.
I step around the spiked tip of Grohn’s lax tail. See a trail of blood I follow to where Pah is spread flat across the ground, clawing at it with jagged motions, dragging himself toward a large rock he’s probably hoping to hide behind—his legs limp.
Useless.
Guess his lower spine was impacted when Grohn hit the ground. Bit into his tongue, too, going by the blood leaking from his mouth and the way he’s shaping Bulder’s language with such lapsing precision.
I almost laugh at the irony.
He looks back at me over his shoulder, the tips of his bronze crown folded over like bent stems—melted like some of the fire-licked flesh on his once handsome face. Despite it, his eyes still hold the same antipathy I’ve seen since I reached the age of ten and only spoke to Ignos and Bulder.
The same antipathy I’ve seen as he’s buried me, fire-lashed me, beaten me. Done everything in his power to break me.
I won’t give him the satisfaction of admitting how close he came to succeeding. Would’ve, had Rygun not patched me up. Strengthened me inside and out.
Another scurried scramble, more blood spitting from his lips with a disfigured command.
I sidestep another blunt squirm of stone punching up from the ground. Another failed attempt to kill me.
Gripping his scorched arm, I feast on his agonized roar as I drag him across the ground and lump him against a rock, wrangling his body into a sitting position. Right in the sun where the fierce rays can nip at his raw, weepy wounds visible through the rips in his red-and-brown leathers.
I crouch, elbows on my spread knees. Watch him cough and sputter for breath before he finally meets my gaze.
A smile lifts his bloody lips; something that must hurt with half his face scorched to the bone in places. “I didn’t know you had it in you.” His words are so weak, rasped and slurred, they’re hard to make out. “To do what it takes to be a king.”
“You and I have different definitions of the word.”
Another wave of screams plagues the air, battering us from afar.
His twisted smile broadens. “Sounds the same to me.”
He’s correct. It does.
The difference is, I take no pleasure in the blood I’m having to spill to scrub the stain he created. Nor will I when it’s gone, because my own stain will linger.
A dying scream echoes for eternity. This war, no matter how necessary, will burden me forever.
“The Burn will be cleansed of all traces of superiority you’ve imbued it with.” I fist the beads dangling from his ear and rip them free.
His seethed scream echoes across the plains.
“Folk will be valued on their morals, not the beads they wear,” I say, pocketing his. “When I eventually pass from this world, the crown will go to Veya, who has vowed to the Creators and shall not pass on the Vaegor heritage.”
I take small pleasure in his widening eyes. In the way his upper lip trembles, pulling back from his bloody teeth.