Chapter 82
Arkyn moves into his suite, its walls obstructed by near-toppling piles of treasures he’s scavenged over the phases.
Mostly things other folk wouldn’t blink twice at were they to stumble across them.
But Arkyn knows better than most that some of the world’s more precious treasures are often things that have been lost or tossed away.
Forgotten about.
He pockets the scavenged copper weald and stops before a stout cage, crouching to flick a metal bar. The miskunn coiled at the back twitches, digging deeper into itself as it turns its head, silver eyes wide.
Despite the bars protecting it from the bloodlusting male, it tremors.
Arkyn chuckles low.
He rubs his hands together. Palms still tingling with satisfaction from armoring his Fire Lark for the first time in phases, he moves through a doorway, into his overstuffed office lit by a raging hearth.
Pauses when he sees Sereme perched on a pale wooden stool before his desk—back straight as an arrow, hair coiffed, coat clinging to her body like a closely shaved pelt.
At the sound of his footsteps, Sereme stands, spins, and drops into a low curtsy. “Elding.”
For a long moment, Arkyn scans the space, noting that there is less dust in the air. That his desk has been tidied, one of his scavenged vases now polished and displaying a purple spray of dried lacyloom blooms—so at odds with his muted surroundings.
Before his ornate seat is what he assumes to be a meal capped with a shiny silver dome, another on the table before Sereme.
Very presumptuous.
Arkyn moves around the desk like a seep of ink. “Those don’t grow this far south,” he murmurs, flicking one of the lacylooms. Some of its petals break free, dusting the table.
“No. I picked them near the wall and dried them on our journey here,” Sereme says as she sits, tone rich with saccharine devotion. “A gift, from my post to yours.”
Draped upon his chair, Arkyn reaches forward to dance his fingers over the pointed tips of his crown sitting atop the desk—something he came to retrieve on his way to the fighting pits. Now he’s growing itchy with the unwanted presence of the female seated before him.
“Given this is, in fact, my post, you seem to have made yourself quite comfortable.”
Sereme opens her mouth, closes it. Clears her throat as she leans in, lifting the dome from Arkyn’s meal. “I thought we could enjoy a—”
“I’ve eaten.”
Her cheeks redden.
Slowly, she sets the dome back down, bringing her hands to her lap. She weaves them together, struggling not to fidget beneath Arkyn’s shadowed gaze. “Forgive me, Elding. I presumed—”
“Wrong.”
The rest of Sereme’s sentence sputters behind pinched lips, something brewing in her keen gray eyes. Something Arkyn recognizes—an emotion that often brews in his own chest despite his efforts to hide it.
Insecurity.
She lifts her chin, sitting impossibly straight. “I understand you’re upset about—”
“Your failure to keep me properly informed about my Fire Lark’s trial? Her supposed execution?”
“Incorrect,” she’s quick to push between pinched lips, her tone bitter-tinged. “I struck her name off on the ledger. It’s the fault of others for not passing the message on.”
“Is that so?”
“It is,” Sereme snips. “Besides, I knew she’d find a way to claw back. She always does.”
“Interesting.” Arkyn’s eyes narrow on the fluttering point of Sereme’s carotid as she sits otherwise statue still.
“My Elding Squire sent a lark I’ve just recently received.
Reported you appeared surprised when he hand-delivered you my latest orders.
But perhaps he was mistaken?” he asks, tossing her a bone she eagerly snaps up—face softening.
Posture easing.
If only a little bit.
“Indeed.” She huffs out an exasperated sigh, reaching up to smooth her perfectly coiffed hair.
“Despite Raeve’s … burdensome ways, it’s been a trialing time functioning without our sharpest Elding Blade while she’s been off enjoying her sabbatical, given the many preparations you’ve kept us busy with.
” The slightest lift of her chin. “When do we plan on moving forward with the invasion?”
We?
Arkyn arches a brow, digs into his pocket, and pulls out the small smog-filled jar he found amongst Kaan’s belongings, setting it on his desk for later inspection.
“After the moonfalls,” he murmurs, flicking the beads dangling down the side.
An action that draws Sereme’s keen gaze. “Once the dust settles.”
Falls prophesied to be any dae. Maybe even this dae.
Anxious to end this before the big event, Arkyn dashes his hand toward the exit. “Now find somewhere else to be. I’m about to host a battle the world will sing about for eons.”
Sereme hesitates, her attention darting to the other door. The one that leads to Arkyn’s sleepsuite. A door she no doubt anticipated him herding her toward after they finished their meal.
Something she shouldn’t have expected.
As Arkyn knows, expectations are often the cause of great pain and disappointment. A lesson he learned when his pah brought down his boot upon a most precious egg.
“And what of Raeve?”
A tilt of Arkyn’s head as the fire writhing in the hearth seems to lean into the conversation. “She will be the main act, of course.”
Sereme’s eyes harden. “And after that? What will you do with her then?”
Arkyn raises a brow and sits deeper into his seat, deciding the fight can wait, given this conversation suddenly grew intriguing enough to pique his otherwise frayed interest.
He lets the silence speak for him, waiting for Sereme to grow uncomfortable enough to submit herself into elaboration.
It doesn’t take long.
“You’ve gotten what you wanted,” she snips past tight lips. “I feel it’s time to cut her free, before she turns her blades on us.”
Again, Arkyn dances his fingers across the tips of his crown. “Your attitude has shifted since you lost control over her.”
Sereme scoffs. “The word control is one I’d use lightly. Yes, she’s been a valuable asset, but everything has a shelf life. She’s grown bold from the lengthened leash. She’s powerful, unpredictable, dare I say rabid at times.”
Little does Sereme know, that’s exactly what Arkyn loves about his Fire Lark. The moments her eyes ink over and she unleashes that savage bloodlust in its full glory. Something that always makes him feel as though he’s a little less alone in his depravity.
There’s a reason he makes his disciples wear masks: so he can’t see the emotions that sizzle in their eyes, nor the way they twitch when he opens his mouth to speak. The opinions of others burn almost as much as the phantom sear of his scars that often haunt him in his slumber.
“I know what you have planned, Arkyn. But I fear it’ll only rile the beast.” Sereme reaches across the table and flattens her hand on it, brow pinched. “So long as Raeve’s here, we’re both in danger.”
Arkyn tilts his head. “What would you have me do?”
“Put her down,” she snarls, as though the words were already coiled on her tongue, ready to pounce. “Once she steps into that pit, don’t let her out again. Keep summoning the razah until there’s nothing left of her.”
Arkyn looks at the ornate bottle hanging from the chain strung around Sereme’s thin neck, wondering if she mourns the loss of the bind. As Raeve’s handler, she was indispensable. But now?
She’s nothing but an easy target his Fire Lark is itching to sink her claws into. Sereme, it seems, has realized that.
“This is the moment, Arkyn. Everything we’ve been working toward these many phases.
You have the Burn King. A powerful army prepared to overthrow the capital that now stands with no crown.
Coffers full of bloodstone and gold.” Her other hand comes up to grip the bottle.
“You have your queen, ready to take the throne beside you.”
Arkyn’s fingers still their quiet strum.
Sereme doesn’t seem to notice the way his eyes darken. If she did, she’d do as he earlier suggested and leave.
Fast.
“My queen, you say?”
A firm nod. “But there’s no room for three on that throne. I will not share an armrest with Raeve. It’s time to take what’s yours by birthright and keep the monsters stuffed in the dark where they belong.”
The commanding clip of Sereme’s tone does nothing to soften his regard. Instead, it deepens the hole she’s shoveling.
If she despises monsters so, she shouldn’t have climbed beneath the covers with one.
“You’re right.” The words are slow. Contemplative. “There is only room for two.” Arkyn shoves to a stand. “Take off your necklace and follow me.”
Sereme’s eyes widen before her brows pull together. “Why?”
“Because I said so,” he jabs, moving through to his slumbersuite with an air of nonchalance.
A brief hesitation before Sereme follows in the wake of the Scavenger King’s tattered cloak, pausing to primp herself in the tarnished reflection of an ancient bronze breastplate, seemingly expecting him to lead her to his fur-laden pallet.
Slowing when he walks straight past it and strides through a doorway at the back of the suite, through a shadowed tunnel.
It takes too long for her to voice the question Arkyn can sense squirming behind her lips. “Arkyn … where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”
The answer is gobbled down like scraps tossed to a stray, their footsteps echoing off the close walls. His heavy and thumping; hers the persistent tap of heels clipping against stone.
The tunnel finally opens to the outside world—a solemn stretch of thick white snow lit by the luminous Moonplume moons hanging overhead, the odd puddle of mist drifting with the lazy breeze.
A mild slumbertime, quiet aside from a pack of chitterlings bickering in the distance. Even so, Sereme shivers, rubbing her arms from the bitter cold. “What are we doing out here?”
The question loosens from her blue-tinged lips with puffs of breath, making her appear vulnerable.
Weak.
Things Arkyn finds offensive. This female thought herself fit to be his queen, but here she is, cowering from the cold.
The world will eat her up.
“We’re here because I no longer have use for you,” he states with a sigh, picking dried blood from beneath his stubbed nails. “Your mouth is warm but your assumptions itch more than my fucking fingers do, and I’ve grown bored of your presence.”
Each foreboding word leeches more color from Sereme’s face until she’s as pale as the Moonplume moons, eyes round to match their shape.
She reaches forward and grips his bicep. The right one, which was almost entirely eaten by dragonflame so very long ago. “Arkyn, please—”
“Get your hand off me.”
She recoils from the fire now brewing in his eyes, a tremble taking her over that’s not born of the brisk, biting wind—perhaps falling into the realization that she’s being discarded. That the male renowned for scavenging things, for treasuring the trash of others, is tossing her away.
Arkyn lifts his chin, looking down at her beneath lowered lids, wondering how she’ll fare out there in the cold, dark world. If she’ll fall or thrive.
If she’ll drop to her knees for someone else and try to suck her way back to the top.
“Long ago,” he utters, flicking another curl of dried blood onto the snow, “the male who spawned me cast me onto the plains and told me to run. He, too, saw me as a tool to be sharpened for his own ambitions and nothing more.”
Sereme sucks breath to speak, hushed by a flippant dash of Arkyn’s hand.
“You, I see, care only about what I can provide you,” he states, tone cold and bland—the words hanging moons between them … jolting. Threatening to fall.
To destroy.
“Given you no longer have anything I desire in return, it’s your time to run.”
Sereme wobbles back a step, her purple boot punching a hole in the unblemished snow stretched behind her. “Arkyn, my love—”
Cliár erupts free from her burrow in the mountain—a blast of flame, screeching as she cuts through the sky. Her splayed body eclipses a moon like a blazing smear, leaving a wake of ruddy stardust.
Sereme staggers at the sight of the ancient, mighty beast, hand to her chest while puffs of panicked breath all but cloud her face.
The Elding Bird slices sideways and banks, the slumbering world awakened by the heavy drum of her feathered wings.
She tucks tight. Plummets toward the mountain’s rocky base.
Arkyn catches Sereme’s bulging stare as a hooked grin peels across his face. “I said run.”