Others siphon down the path ahead, the stone knobbled with disk-shaped shells. It’s almost flush with the Loff’s lapping surface, the folk traversing it appearing to walk on water as they glide toward the domes, some with crafted wings fluttering in their wake.
Pyrok offers me his arm, and I tuck my hand in the crook of it, my heart a blunt and indomitable hammer against my ribs. We come to the junction where the path splits three ways, sun beating upon my face while we pause.
“The three domes each house a faux representation of the different nesting grounds,” Pyrok says, gesturing from left to right. “Netheryn, Bhoggith, and Gondragh.”
Each path is saddled with an arch—the one on the left adorned with a twist of silver vines and white, frost-encrusted blooms, tendrils of mist leaking from their pointed petals despite the heat.
Netheryn.
The middle one is clothed in a burst of feather-tipped flowers that match the varying vibrant shades of a Moltenmaw’s plumage.
Bhoggith.
My gaze drifts to the one on the right, finding it bound in thorny vines, the rounded black blooms singed at the tips and smelling like scorched wood.
Gondragh.
“Where’s the King?” I ask, and Pyrok gestures to the right, looking down at me with what I picture as a raised brow expression. Hard to see much with his mask on.
“That narrows it down,” I say, gaze bumping between the other two before I tug him to the left, stepping beneath the fall of mist that smells fresh and crispy.
If Kaan wants to dance, he can have fun finding me first.
“Interesting choice,” Pyrok muses as we stroll down the path, stuck behind a couple of slow-moving folk garbed in bustles of faux plumage.
“I’ve never been much further south than the border between The Fade and The Shade.” I shrug. “I’m curious.”
He clears his throat, the folk before us tugging at the waggle of air, parting it like a curtain before disappearing into the dome with a puff of fog. Our steps slow, and Pyrok grips the invisible barrier like he’s handling a tent flap, pulling it back. Another pour of fog seeps out and tangles with our feet, the drumming thump pounding against my chest in rhythm with my thrashing heart.
A flock of … something takes flight within my belly. Something that makes no sense.
Kaan’s not here. He’s elsewhere.
Why won’t my feet move forward?
“You okay? I didn’t take you for the hesitating sort.”
I search for a sharpened edge I can use to throw something quippy back, finding them all blunt and rounded.
Soft and floppy.
I swallow, still staring at that triangular opening to the swirl of dusky motion beyond.
No, I don’t think I am okay.
“I’m fine,” I lie, then straighten my spine, force my feet forward, and shove past the flap—engulfed by a swallow of darkness.
Each step forward is another crunch of my slippers through the layer of fluffy snow. Another whisk of the fog churning about my feet.
I’ve stepped into another world, the sky a stretch of black velvet buttoned with pearly moons, scribbled with ribbons of aurora that cast my eerie surroundings in a flood of silver light. Clusters of hexagonal ice pillars reach for the moons, each large enough to support a nesting Moonplume.
It’s like standing within a painted depiction of Netheryn, minus the deadly chill. Minus the threat of being swooped by a broody Moonplume protecting her clutch from thieves who’d risk the climb up one of those sheer, seemingly unscalable pillars in the efforts to snatch an egg.
The air feels hollow but for the thud of the drums and a harp’s lilting tune—like someone called for Clode to sit so chillingly still within the confines of this dome. A hollowness that nests in my chest. An invisible weight I can’t grasp the shape of.
The origin of.
Shaking it off, I step into the swirl of masked folk tiding to the smooth, ethereal melody, as though they’re caught in some sort of trance.
I clear my throat, whipping a crystal flute off the tray of a passing server. “What’s this called?” I ask, gesturing to the azure liquid spilling milky mist down the sides.
“Moonplume’s Breath,” the server says, his lips tinged blue from the cold, a line forming between his brows as he takes in my scant garb. “There are fur shawls by the entrance …”
“I’m fine.” Perfectly fine. “Thanks!”
I continue on, setting the frosted rim of the glass upon my lips. I take a sip, filling my mouth with sour sweetness—crisp and so cold it’s an icy balm to my tongue, throat, and belly.