Chapter 98
I turn the dial on the lantern dangling from my hand, filling the cramped sleepsuite with warm light.
Illuminating Ahvi, curled in the center of the large pallet that’s pressed into the corner of the room.
Looking peaceful, safe … were it not for the bulky Fate Herder coiled around him like a fluffy silver nest.
I sigh, set the lantern on a small side table, and toss out a folded blanket.
Leaning over the beast’s twitching tail, I drape Ahvi in the thick throw, tucking it up over his shoulders.
As I do, the Fate Herder pulls a deep breath, released with a low rumble.
Earning himself my seventeenth side-eye since I discovered he’s wedged his way into our unorthodox family.
Just when I thought I’d shaken the troublemaking asshole, Ahvi informs me he’s a sort of pet of his. Now I guess we’re stuck with him.
Ahvi yawns, his voice still thick with sleep as he says, “Hi, Raeve.”
“Hey, kid.” I sit, reaching over to tuck messy swathes of silver hair back from Ahvi’s face—still too pale for my liking. “You feeling okay?”
Beside him, the Fate Herder opens both eyes, looking at me from beneath heavy lids.
“Not you,” I clarify. “You’re on parchment-thin ice. Eat him and I’ll turn you into a floor rug. Or a taxidermy.”
Ahvi smiles. “I told you, he won’t hurt me.”
Lucky for him. I, on the other hand, might have to start sleeping with one eye open, if our past encounters are anything to go by.
Ahvi digs his fingers into the Fate Herder’s ribboned mane, and the beast closes his eyes, easing into a saw of purrs. “He’s a friend. I promise.”
I frown.
“How did you become friends?”
He glances at the silver tendrils tangled around my hands, bright in the dull light. Tendrils that overrode the nullifying runes in Arkyn’s battle pit, as I assume one did in Bothaim.
Tendrils that saved us.
“It’ll make sense soon enough,” he whispers, his smile going from warm and bright to … something else. Melancholy, perhaps.
Something I don’t want to consider too deeply. Not when everything feels just a little bit steady.
“Okay.” I smooth my hand over his cheek. “I’m right through the doorway. Get some more sleep.”
He nods, cranks another yawn, then closes his eyes and immediately begins breathing long and deep. Healthy inhales, thanks to the purifying runes etched all over the walls, shimmering in the low light.
I dim the lantern, casting them in near darkness, then move through the arched doorway separating the two sleepsuites, into the larger space.
Two lanterns offer enough light for Pidra to do her job—the white-robed Fleshthread fussing about Kaan’s still unconscious form on the closest side of the massive pallet. Over its far side, Kyzari’s beneath the pale furs, also unconscious. Kaan’s wounds, visible; Kyzari’s … not.
Pidra presses a fresh bandage to Kaan’s chest, covering one of two wounds having to be mended in increments. Courtesy of weapons that penetrated more than just muscle and skin.
I lean against the doorframe and watch every movement she makes with cutting precision, picking the skin down the sides of my nails.
She looks over her shoulder at me through pale-green eyes, skin pinched at the corners, dark dents beneath them. Tribute to how hard she’s been working since … everything.
“How’s Ahvi?”
“He has a little more color.” I take her pallor in, now almost gray to match the thick, wiry braid that falls all the way to her hips. “The purifying runes have helped a lot. Thank you. I’m not sure he would’ve had the energy to do them himself.”
A tight nod before she turns back to her task. “I’m almost done here. If you take a seat in the corner, I’ll work on your wounds—”
“Not urgent.” I cross my arms, hiding the shabby bandages I used to wrap the burns on my hands. “You need rest. I’m fine.”
A lie, of course. I’m not fine. But my biggest ailments … she can’t help with those. Of that, I’m certain.
Pidra sighs as she knots off the bind. “As you wish.” She tucks her tinctures into an ash-smeared satchel, begins gathering the bloody rags lumped beside the pallet.
“Leave them, Pidra. I’ll discard them.”
She frowns, though her eyes quickly soften. She offers a small smile and nods, perhaps aware of Sereme’s caustic vial.
Of how viciously it’s been used.
Arkyn may be dead, but I doubt all his followers were spurred by fear or coercion. Some believed in him. Believed he was going to better the world.
When options are slim, even the most rotten meat seems palatable.
And beneath this mountain lives an army of Fíur du Ath we haven’t begun to pick through. Not to mention we’ve yet to locate Sereme. I’m not letting a single drip of Kaan’s blood out of my sight, lest the bitch find a way to sink her serpent fangs in him.
“I’ll be back once I’ve had a meal and slumbered. Then I should be fit to rethread his muscle fibers back together.” She lumps her bag on her shoulder. “I’ll check in on Veya on the way to my suite.”
“That would be good, thank you.”
She offers me a knowing dip of her head as I move to open the door for her. The moment she’s out, I clonk it closed, then slide the dead bolt shut, releasing a slow, shuddering breath.
The slightest fissure.
I clear my throat, steady myself, and move around the pallet. Crouching beside Kyzari, I lean close and whisper against her ear. “I need you, too …”
She doesn’t respond, tucked somewhere deep. Perhaps hiding from things that shouldn’t have happened. From hurts that should never have happened.
The tips of my fingers tingle as I study the slants of her beautiful face, certain I would do anything to take her pain away.
Anything.
I sweep her hair back from her brow, feeling around the diadem latched to her forehead like a fucking parasite, wishing I could rip it off. It’s supposed to be some great honor to guard the Aether Stone, but I can’t shake the feeling that this is no honor at all.
That despite everything I saw atop that mountain, bearing the diadem’s weight is somehow hurting her.
I try to move the feeling aside, but it continues to gnaw.
Lips pinched, I reach into my pocket and pull out little Nee. Still just as lifeless as she was the moment I found her in the cell, but in one piece again—stitched together with a fine white thread I pulled from the cloak Kaan gifted me.
Unfolding her, I reveal the words inside …
I pleat her back into shape, pausing after I press the final fold in place, breath held as I wait to see if she’ll take flight this time. But she just lays there, unmoving in my hand.
Gone.
I take small comfort in the fact that although Nee is lost, Kyzari and I found each other. I think that’s what Nee wanted from the moment she was first folded into existence.
The thing that made her special.
She was the quiet stitch urging us together, gently tugging. I just wish she was here to see all her hard, fluttering work pay off. To be with us as a family.
I tuck Nee into Kyzari’s loose grip, then ease a pelt up to her chin. Moving around to the end of the pallet, I climb on and nestle between her and Kaan, resting my head on his shoulder.
He shifts, and my heart hitches as his arm comes up, reaching over his abdomen to settle on my waist, compacting me with so much solid emotion it aches to breathe. He tips his head to the side, opens his eyes. The first time I’ve seen them since we said goodbye in the pit.
My chin begins to shake as our gazes meet with such tender force that capturing a falling moon would feel less significant.
A dense, choked sound catches behind his trembling lips when his gaze shifts past me to where Kyzari is. To where our daughter lies—breathing.
Alive.
He squeezes his eyes shut, face crumbling. Though he doesn’t make a sound, I hear it all.
His relief.
His pain.
“Rygun—”
“Not now,” I murmur, bringing my hand up to cup his jaw, his beard thick beneath my fingers. A rough unkemptness I gently smooth.
His throat rolls before he nods, silence slipping by. When he finally opens his eyes again, he looks at me with a gaze full of ache. “Slátra wants you to know that her heart still beats with yours,” he says, the words thick like syrup. “And that she’s waiting.”
I try to respond. Swallow.
Try again.
“I know,” I finally rasp, moving my fingers farther up his face until the tips of them brush his bruised and split cheekbone. One of too many wounds. “You should go back to sleep. You need it.”
His face threatens to buckle again, every muscle in his body tensing hard like this rocky mountain we’re entombed beneath. “I’m afraid I’ll open my eyes and this will all be a dream,” he rasps, voice cracking. “That you’ll both be—”
“Sleep,” I implore, painting my finger down his nose, over his cheek again. Mapping all the slants of his face. “Please, Kaan.”
He searches my eyes, a line forming between his brows. “Those words hold too much power on your lips, Moonbeam.”
“Really?” I offer him a smile that’s much lighter than I feel. “I hadn’t noticed.”
“Lie,” he murmurs with the slightest lift of his lips. The ghost of a smile, gone in a beat.
He reaches up, brushes his calloused thumb across one of my dimples as his body loosens, features softening.
He finally closes his eyes.
I lean forward and kiss both his lids, and a dense sound moves up his throat before slumber pulls him away, somewhere he can hide a little longer. That’s all I want for him right now. For his soul to have a chance to breathe before he faces the harsh realities of everything that has come to pass.
Again, I look at our daughter, her chest rising and falling in slow but steady beats. Again, I wonder how I missed it all.
Everything.
How it came to be that she resorted to writing those three lonely words on a parchment lark she sent to someone who had long since passed. What pain she must’ve been feeling at the time. What horrors she must’ve gone through.