“I just came from there, and I saw no male.” I keep my dagger steady, muscles poised. “All I saw was a monster.”
I hold his gaze, perched upon the sharp edge of indecision. Waiting for his response to stretch between us before I decide which way I’ll fall. Whether I categorize this male in the same box as Tarik or a different one.
A safer one.
His eyes bore into me like he’s excavating bits of my soul as he says, “On that, I heartily agree.”
I frown, open my mouth, close it.
Safe box it is.
“Don’t follow me,” I bite out, then pull my dagger from his crotch and stalk off down the nearby staircase without looking back.
Idump Tarik’s hand down a scarcely used, predesignated rubbish chute, waiting with my head pushed through the hole until I hear a whistle from another member of Fíur du Ath deep in the Undercity. Confirmation the package was caught. That the others will now work to free the younglings.
Being an Elding Blade, I kill. Nothing more. I certainly don’t rescue—that task left to others not so comfortable getting bloody. But part of me almost … yearns to this time.
This mission has been so personal to me. A large-scale passion project I fought hard to have approved. One that tunneled the Ath’s resources away from our regular missions that focus on implicating The Crown.
I turn, lean against the wall, close my eyes, and smile, a pleasant warmth spreading through my chest as I imagine the light igniting in those younglings’ eyes when they realize they’re free. Truly free—in a way I doubt I’ll ever fully understand.
Make yourself indispensable and folk dig their claws in. Doesn’t matter if they’re good or bad or somewhere in the middle. If there’s anything I’ve learned from this life, it’s that.
Still …
I hope those younglings like it at The Flourish. I’ve never been to the underground safe haven ruled by the Elding, and though I’ve heard it’s somewhere in the south, I don’t think I’ll ever know for certain.
See it with my own two eyes.
That would be considered retirement, and I doubt the leader of the Fíur du Ath has any interest in relinquishing my usefulness, instead plying me with placating missions I’ll happily accept. Especially ones that end like this, filling me with this warm feeling of momentary contentment. Like I’ve just scrubbed one of the many stains from this big, beautiful world I so desperately want to love.
Besides, I’m not so sure retirement would suit me. Not the sort that would undoubtedly come with a one-way trip to The Flourish. I think my fingers would get itchy.
There’s too much trash to take out.
Istep out onto one of the perilous skybridges that stretches between both halves of the wall—the silent city so far beneath me. At thirty-three levels up, this one is the highest, never used by others and crusted in layers of snow that crunch beneath my boots.
Reaching the middle, I lie on my back—as close to the clouds as I can get—letting the cold sink through my gown. Into my flesh and bones.
Deeper.
My eyelids flutter shut.
Fat flakes of snow patter upon my face and the lax scoops of my hands, and I focus on each icy point of contact, loosening the muscles beneath, releasing some of the tension I’d collected throughout the slumber.
Picturing myself as a dragon, wings outstretched, I tip and churn through the puffy pink clouds, so far above the world that all I hear is my heartbeat and the heavy thump of my imaginary wings. All I feel is the flexing strength of my body. Untethered.
Free.
An icy calm settles within me like a nesting beast, and I wiggle my toes, my fingers, slowly bringing myself back to reality.
Opening my eyes, I look through a gap in the clouds to the moon of a perished Moltenmaw resting above the city. Perhaps the biggest one I’ve seen—bound in a tight ball, head tucked beneath its wing, its stony plumage brushed in shades of purple, pink, and blue.
I stare at it, recalling the time Ruse mentioned the sad story about how that dragon got there, not that I probed for details. In fact, I think I turned around and walked straight from her store without looking back.
Sadness is like stones that stack inside you, making it harder to move. Ignorance is my self-preservation tonic, and I’ll swear by it until I die.
Sometimes, however, when I’m lying on what feels like the top of the world with a sleeping city beneath me, I wonder if that moon is ever tempted to fall. To crush Gore in a strike of spite for whatever caused it to soar up there and perch atop The Fade’s decorated capital like a lingering threat.