Yeah, okay. It’s my fault.
“Can’t you see you’re made for this?”
“Sure,” I deadpan. “Nothing quite like the constant threat of a casual torture session to make you feel right at home.”
“It’s nothing personal. Everybody puts their blood in the vial—”
“Except you.”
“—benefiting from its many advantages. Remember how quickly I was able to heal you?” she continues seamlessly. “You would’ve died without it. Besides, you’re the only one I’m forced to punish.”
“And what do you do for the cause?” I ask, brow raised. “Besides sucking the Elding’s metaphorical cock.”
Her cheeks flush, painted lips falling open. Not that any words come out.
My brows bump up.
Not so metaphorical, it seems.
“You chose to live,” she seethes. “Sure, it’s no longer on your terms, but at least you’re breathing. I’d think you’d be more humble toward the one who saved your life.”
I click my tongue, trying to imagine a world where someone would deign to help another without expecting something in return.
Failing.
Thousands of times I’ve been pieced back together. Only once was it for my own benefit—but Fallon’s dead, her light extinguished, all that goodness gone from the world.
Sereme may think she saved my life, but all she did was cage me again, carving Fallon’s death into an even deeper tragedy.
I’d rather be back in our cell, looking up at the moons Fallon sketched on our ceiling with blunt bits of coal. Would rather be listening to her vivid explanations for the colorful clouds draped across The Fade, her words so descriptive my mouth would water—like I could taste the colors, feeling their textures puff against my tongue.
She made freedom sound so exquisite with her big, beautiful vocabulary. Made it sound so magical.
I couldn’t wait to taste clouds with her. To lie on our backs, side by side, and look upon the real moons.
Together.
But she’s dead, and I’m here, shackled to this purple-scaled serpent. Doing none of the living I promised Fallon I’d do before I lost her. Before I woke to find her cold.
Unmoving.
The barbed memory is an icy spike hammered into my hardened heart, all the way to the soft core, pitting me with a twinge of raw, familiar pain—
No.
I sink into my inner self, landing upon the crumbled obsidian shore of my immense frozen lake, struck by the eerie silence that always makes my skin pebble. I pinch a fist-sized stone I use to bind the offending memory around, then creep out onto the smooth, frosty expanse that soothes the bare soles of my feet.
Kneeling, I carve a hole in the thick ice, cold water oozing up the moment it cracks free. I tip the lid, plop the heavy thought down the gap, and rush away, the hairs on the back of my neck lifting as I blink back to my external reality.
My next breath is a blow of icy air, Sereme’s earlier words still echoing through my mind:
You chose to live.
Sure, it’s no longer on your terms …
At least you’re still breathing.
I look at the female watching me down the line of her nose like she’d love for me to drop to my knees and kiss her purple shoes.
“My life has never been on my terms.” I stand, wrap my veil around my face, then gather her quills off the ground and lump them on the desk, rearranging them in order of size. Just the way she likes. “And I refuse to accept this as living.”
I grab my bag and turn, moving toward the door.
“I didn’t say you could leave, Raeve.”
“Drag your nail down my rune again.” I shrug. “See if I care.”
I slam the door on my way out.
Haedeon leaves early next cycle to try and steal his own Moonplume egg. He has to sleigh there and spend many slumbers in snow huts on the way, even though it’s dangerous beyond Arithia’s walls.
Seems a bit silly to me, since Pahpi’s Moonplume could carry him there so fast. But Haedeon keeps saying that’s how it’s always been done. That he wants to prove himself.
I don’t think Mahmi and Pahpi want him to prove anything, because I overheard them beg him not to go. Not that it worked.
This aurora fall, Haedeon smiled big and made lots of jokes while I was helping him fold his clothes and tuck them in his bag, but I can tell he’s scared. I can tell because he gave me three butterberry chews from the jar he keeps beside his pallet.
Normally, he never gives me more than one at a time because he says they’ll give me a bellyache, which is a lie. I ate all three and my belly feels fine.