In four short steps, he’s behind me, gripping hold of my skinsuit.
Something cool and sharp slides down my spine.
There’s the sound of splitting fabric as the garment is torn like a sheet of wrapping parchment, my pebbling flesh bared. A blade clatters across the ground—the only warning I get before the first lash rips into my skin like a ribbon of flame.
My body jerks, but I gnaw my scream into submission, refusing to cut it loose.
To give him the satisfaction of hearing me howl.
Another whistling slash severs the air, flaying my flesh from shoulder to bowing spine.
A tremble begins in the pit of my gut and spreads through my organs, my bones, across my ravaged skin as he lashes.
Lashes.
Lashes.
Red sprays, my body splitting over and over, until I can feel strips of me hanging loose, flopping around with every flinch from the relentless storm of blows.
But no matter how hard he whips, the snap of sting is nothing compared to the agony I endured as Essi slipped away. As she released her final breath and the warmth leached from her limbs.
As I looked at her one final time, wishing she’d grow wings and flutter into the sky so she could ball up and take her place amongst the moons where I’d be able to see her always. So I wouldn’t have to say goodbye.
Not really.
So I absorb the blows. Snarl through clenched teeth as my bladder loosens.
Beg that thing inside me not to surge again.
This is my penance for failing Essi—in so many ways. For believing I could love somebody from a distance. Believing they wouldn’t suffer the same fate as everyone who sinks past the calloused scabs on my heart.
I wear the strikes of pain like armor slashed upon my body, the smell of my blood filling the room until I’m certain I’m drowning in it.
Until the darkness clouding my vision finally wins the war.
The biggest Moonplume I’ve ever seen keeps swooping through the sky, screeching. I think it’s a female because the wispy tip of her tail is extra long and sleek like Mahmi’s Moonplume, Náthae.
I think she’s searching for this egg. Mourning it.
Hunting us.
I think that because she’s silver like this egg, and I’ve never seen another Moonplume that’s such a metallic shade of gray.
We could hide in the hatching hut, but we can’t hide here. Not properly. I’m worried she’ll find us soon, then kill us for raiding her nest.
I keep begging the egg to rock so I can pack all the ice around it that I’ve chipped off a nearby pillar over the cycles. Once the hatchling breaks free, I can take it inside the snow hut where it’ll be safe with Haedeon until I work out what we’re going to do next. How we’re going to get back to Arithia.
It seems impossible right now.
Haedeon’s not getting any better, and it’s not just the Moonplume that seems to be hunting us. I can hear a pack of doomquills somewhere nearby, like they can smell death in the air. They make the most horrible rattling sounds that jingle the silence and scare my heart, though I’m not scared for myself.
I’m scared for this beautiful egg sitting in the snow in front of our makeshift hatching hut. It’s like a little silver sun, throwing so much light. I use the light to write while I sit here, holding Haedeon’s dragonscale dagger in my other hand.
I’ve never held one before. Never wanted to. But if the doomquills get brave enough to attack, I’ll have to protect the egg. And Haedeon.
But I don’t like the thought of killing things. I don’t want to kill anything.
I really hope they don’t get too close.
The feel of something splatting against my temple stirs me from a sleep riddled with fire and gulps of poisonous fear, a scream threatening to punch up my throat—
My eyes pop open, teeth clamping down as I hiss breaths and wait for the fiery terror to stop wriggling. The smoky tendrils retreat, revealing my murky surroundings, my vision sharpening on the here.
The now.
My spine locks, blood chilling.
I’m lumped in the corner of a …
Cell.
I’m alone in a cell.
Bars slice up and down three sides of my small box of space, a wall of damp stone at my back, the low ceiling collecting moisture on its jagged face. A single drop-lantern lords over each cell across from me and either side as far as I can see, the air a vile, potent mix of blood, vomit, excrement, and rotten flesh.
Bile threatens to charge up my throat, the enormity of everything that’s come to pass since I woke in my sleepsuite to Nee’s panicked nudges now dumping upon me like an avalanche. A sudden tremble jars me to the bone—a fierce, untamable shake not borne of the cold.