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.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe every last wisp of a dragon’s cognizance dissolves the moment they solidify, and they don’t decide to fall at all. Maybe something else rips them from the sky.
And maybe that dragon didn’t consider much of anything when it decided to curl up there. Maybe it wasn’t fueled by thoughts of revenge, as I like to believe it was.
Maybe it was just a convenient spot to die.
Gaze still cast on the moon, I wiggle my hand into my pocket, retrieving the parchment lark I received at the Hungry Hollow and lifting it above my face, unfolding its wings, beak, and body until I’m left with a crimped square scrawled in Essi’s handwriting.
I hope you got your hand, since I know you won’t read this until after you’re done. Which is anxiety-inducing, just so we’re clear. What if I desperately need a stick of porthonium to prevent the world from crumbling and you’re too busy carving words into somebody’s chest to unfold my lark still stuffed in your pocket? Think of the world, Raeve. And the hyperfixation I’m currently nursing.
Anyway, here’s a very important list I’m sending because I know how you feel about me going to the Undercity alone. Patience is my biggest and most impressive virtue.
I snort-laugh.
Essi has the patience of a waif hungry for a soul to sink its teeth into, and not a pinch more. But good for her thinking otherwise. Enthusiasm suits her.
? A hand-sized lump of iron
(so I can make more pins for your boot)
? Three shaves of Sabersythe tusk
(ideally from a mature beast well past their tenth shed)
? A 0.0112 etching stick reinforced enough to scour diamond
(just hand this list to Ruse because this probably makes no sense)
“Wise beyond your lifespan,” I say, gaze skimming farther down her list.
? A jar of fluffy sowmoth powder. Or if there’s none in stock, can you catch me one? Please? I’ll collect the powder myself, then set it free. Promise.
I cringe, remembering the last time I leapt around the Ditch, armed with a glass jar and a holey lid.
A full-body shudder almost rattles me to the core.
I’ll never forget the way the sowmoth squeaked. I didn’t even know they could squeak.
“Catch your own damn sowmoth,” I mutter, knowing damn well I’ll catch her a bloody sowmoth if the bloody store has no jars of bloody powder.
My eyes narrow on the last request half concealed by a blotch of Tarik Relaken’s blood.
? And lastly, please go to the Undercity and
— S P L A T —
It’s very, very, very important.
Course it is.
I sigh, trying to scratch off the blood despite knowing full well it’s not going to work.
According to Essi, there are many important things to be found in the filthy, rotten Undercity. Which makes sense for somebody whose world once revolved around the deep, craggy cleft in the ground beneath the wall.
My mind tunnels back to the moment I found her dashing from the miners’ muck hall with a stolen lump of stale bread in her filthy hands, undernourished, dressed in rags, hair shorn because she’d learned that males get heckled less than the females down there.
She’d told me she was born in an abandoned shaft, and that her parents set off for a shift in the mines and failed to return—long ago. That she’d never seen the sky. Didn’t know what the aurora was, or that we wake and sleep in rhythm with its rise and fall.
I was still covered in the blood of a supervisor I’d caught doing terrible things to a miner when I took Essi to meet the sky, then promised to keep her safe. Harder than it sounds when everything she needs seems to come from the fucking Undercity. Contrary to her boast, she’s rarely patient enough to send me a supply list.
Frowning at the flattened lark, I try to scratch the blood off again—unsuccessfully—then pocket it and set my sight on the moon, hands clasped over my waist.
Even if I did know what’s scrawled beneath the splat of blood, I’m supposed to be keeping my distance until I get word the younglings from Tarik’s cells are out of Gore. I can, however, fetch Essi everything else if I stay out past the rise. Best I don’t head straight home anyway, considering I chose not to eliminate the nice-smelling, mysterious loose end who may or may not believe I killed Tarik Relaken.
Creators.
Why did I do that?
I usually cut first, don’t think later. I much prefer myself that way. Now I have to spend a small eternity checking over my shoulder, making sure the decision doesn’t swing around and bite me in the ass.
Mahmi and Pahpi say I’m too young to have a dragon, and it doesn’t matter that the Moonplumes in the palace hutch let me sleep with them. They say wild Moonplumes will drop from the sky the moment I step onto their spawning grounds, snatch me up, shake me until I’m limp, then feed me to their young.
I think that’s a plop of spangle poop. And I don’t think it’s very fair that I should have to wait until I’m eighteen to find out for myself how big that plop of poop really is.
Pahpi said I can put my argument forth once I hear the elemental songs and I’ve learned to speak them properly, but I think that’s a plop of spangle poop, too. Haedeon waited a long time and they never sang to him. And I’ve been listening really hard, every cycle, singing to the snow and the air and the ground and the flames. Nobody’s singing back but Mahmi and Pahpi at slumbertime.
Not that I mind. I don’t want to wear that silly stone, anyway. Mahmi always looks so tired, like her head’s heavy. Pahpi’s crown looks heavy too, but not in the same way. The stones on his are so pretty and shiny and make him look proud and important. The stone on Mahmi’s is so black it looks like somebody could fall straight through it.
Sometimes, I catch Mahmi trying really hard to pull her diadem off while she screams and cries and folds herself up real small. It makes my heart hurt.
I don’t think that stone is very good for Mahmi.
Last slumber, I found her outside, crying in the dark while the falling snow stuck to her hair. Her sad sounds made me cry, too.
I sang a song I’d hoped would make her feel better, but she just cried harder.
She wiped my cheeks and told me she’d be okay. That she lost something important, but that my cuddles made her feel much better.
Pahpi found us then. He picked her up and took her inside, then tucked me into my pallet, kissed me on the nose, and told me it would make sense when I’m older …
I don’t think I want to understand.