My heart pitches.
Dhomm …
So few go to The Burn’s capital and return.
So fucking few.
Probably because they all end up inside the beast I’m currently seated atop. Either that or the city has jaws and claws and teeth much sharper than that of the one I just marginally escaped.
I open my mouth, about to spit a barbed rebuttal, when Kaan reaches past me and grips the tug-ropes. “Guthunda, Rygun. Guthunda!”
The beast heaves beneath us, blowing a steaming breath as he pushes up from his crouched position, making me feel as if the entire world is swaying side to side.
“Hold the leather strap,” Kaan rumbles near my ear, sending tingles down the side of my neck and making my breath hitch.
Snarling, I grip the damn strap. “You know what I hate?”
“Being told what to do?” he answers, quick as a blink.
“Exactly.”
“Well,” he says, giving the strip of leather a yank, like he’s testing my grip on the thing. Something I find deeply offensive, seeing as I don’t do anything by halves. “It’s a relief to know you possess a drip of self-preservation.”
“I’d rather possess that blade down the inside of your boot,” I grouse as the beast folds his wings flush against his body.
I sense the flow of energy building in Rygun’s bunched haunches before he leaps into the sky with a booming slash of his wings, gravity thrusting me into Kaan’s chest so hard all the breath bursts from my lungs.
We propel up …
Up …
Any words I had are swallowed into the depths of my tumbling guts, my grip tightening on the strap. My head tucks back into the crook of Kaan’s throat, his heart a fierce sledge against my spine, powering in unison with the thump of Rygun’s wings.
We whisk through a wispy tuft of cloud, then level out, the entire world seeming to regain its balance.
I pull my first breath since we shoved off the sand, blown out with a shaken exhale.
I miss the dragon’s mouth. It was wet, it reeked, and there was a high chance of being swallowed, but at least I wasn’t clinging to life by a single strap of leather, pressed close to a male who smells too good to flay.
“You okay?” Kaan asks close to my ear, and every cell in my body prickles with awareness.
I dare a peek over Rygun’s side, expecting to be severed with fear as I take in the world below, the barren plains stretching far and wide in all directions like a ripple of rusty water. Instead, something tangible swells within my chest. Something that makes me want to spread my arms, tip my head, and release a deep belly laugh that’s raw and real and so fucking wholesome it makes me want to …
Cry.
“Answer me, Moonbeam.”
There’s an edge to his voice that whips me from my reverie. Reminds me that I’m a prisoner of yet another vicious Vaegor—dancing from one shackle to the next.
The world shreds past beneath us while I mull over Kaan’s question …
Am I okay?
“Yes,” I whisper, cradling the strange, giddy feeling with a gentleness I didn’t realize I possessed, worried it’ll break if I squeeze too hard. “I’m okay.”
The Creators are so quiet now, their voices vacant echoes barely loud enough to grasp.
I’m not sure why.
Perhaps the Aether Stone is taking so much of me there’s little left to listen with.
That’s how it feels. Like my soul’s being suckled through the diadem’s web of tendrils now magnetized to my skull.
I hate it.
How Mah survived this for over a hundred phases, I’ll never know, but perhaps I do understand why it took her so long to bring Haedeon into this world.
Then me.
Perhaps I understand why she was crying in the snow so many phases ago, when my world was small and my heart felt full and whole.
I barely have the energy to breathe, let alone eat. Last cycle, I certainly didn’t have the energy to help with the preparations for the committal. To stand on my own two feet while Náthae and Akkeri blew plumes of aqua flame on Mah’s and Pah’s pyres—committing their bodies back to the elements. Instead, I sat in Haedeon’s chair and watched them burn, my heart so raw from cycles of clutching them close that I almost wheeled myself into the fire, too.
Then came Haedeon’s turn.
Rather than blow flames onto his body, Allume scooped him up, tilled her wings, then tipped her head to the sky and lifted off the ground with my brother clutched against her. She soared unsteadily toward the deep dark where her ancestors rest, then curled into a ball, tucked Haedeon beneath her gammy wing, and solidified before my eyes—giving herself to death rather than live an eternal life without the one we both loved so much.