When a moth loved a bee, p.34
When a Moth loved a Bee, page 34
Runa’s hand stuck to mine with shared perspiration.
The sun seemed to erupt with blanketing brightness, searing my eyelids and turning the unseen world gold.
Anger replaced my disappointment.
Frustration made my teeth clench and muscles lock with annoyance.
I’d had enough.
I’d put too much hope into a fire that I despised. Perhaps that was why it didn’t want to help me. It knew I would rather douse every flame I ever found than use it to worship and live by.
Exhaling with terse temper, I wrenched open my eyes.
And choked on fire as I fell onto flame-licking knees.
Coughing, I scrambled upright, wiping at my face, jerking in horror as I studied my hand.
I was no longer flesh and muscle but coal and cinder.
I reeled backward, only to be yanked forward by a woman blazing brighter than any flame I’d ever seen. My eyes narrowed against her blinding luminescence, barely able to see her form, feeling the uncanny urge to kneel before her golden power.
My lips parted in shock and awe. “Runa?”
She nodded, her fiery hair sparking and glowing with air eddies around her head. “Don’t panic. When I first stepped into the flames, I struggled to breathe too. The shock will pass. You’re okay.” She smiled with glowing teeth. “The fire listened.” She waved her free arm around the flickering, sizzling landscape. Trees burned in a ring around us. The river that’d babbled before us was now a lake of molten ore. “Ask what you want to know. It has granted you its ear.”
I winced as the soles of my feet seared and charred, burning, burning, burning.
Gritting my teeth against the building agony, I fought the urge to bolt across this nightmarish world and find water in which to plunge.
The longer I stood on flaming coals where grass used to be, the more I hurt.
Fire carved its way through my flesh and into my bones, becoming a part of me against my will.
I didn’t think I could stand it.
I trembled as it grew too much to bear.
My hand struggled in Runa’s, seeking a way free, needing her to let go of me so I could run. My temper gathered, calling forth my shadows, desperate for them to lift me off the smelted earth and fly me into darkness.
But nothing answered.
No blotting night. No comforting shade.
I was blinded by light.
Burning—
A hiss slithered inside my skull. “You are not welcome here, Moon Master. You trespass where you don’t belong.”
I froze.
Runa caught my eyes, looking more like the cosmic sun than a woman birthed by fire. “Are the flames speaking to you?” She squeezed my fingers, making me groan under my breath as cinders from her touch sliced open my flesh, pouring pain directly into my blood. “Speak back,” she urged. “Ask them your name.”
But I was past conversation.
I was dying.
Suffocating.
“That is the cost of earning what is lost.” The flames laughed in my head, showering me with sparks.
A wind howled over the blazing world, kicking up ash and embers, throwing the heated hurricane into my burning eyes. “We will not be kind or guide you. You forgot for a reason. Just like her. That reason is all that prevents you from destroying life.”
I folded forward as fire poured down my throat, searing into my lungs and tearing fiery holes through my insides.
Runa cried out as I fell to my knees.
“No—what’s happening?” She stroked back my flaming hair. “You’re okay. Don’t fight it. The fire—”
“Is killing me,” I choked, ripping my hand from hers and clawing at my chest. “I can’t breathe.”
“Don’t let go of me!” Her shout was lost beneath excruciating pain.
I scratched at the coals that made up my ribs. I attacked myself, tearing off ribbons of flame-flesh, trying to protect my heart before the fire found it.
But I was too late.
I screamed.
I tumbled forward into ashes.
Pain.
So much blazing pain.
Runa collapsed to her knees beside me. “Stop it!” She yelled at the fire. “Let him go!”
“He does not belong,” the answering hiss was the last thing I heard as my eyes snapped closed and darkness sucked me deep.
* * * * *
Death welcomed me with soothing arms.
Blood to shadow.
Moon to stars.
I sank until there was nowhere else to go.
Darkness cocooned me in a soft, endless nothingness.
For an eternity, I hovered in that void.
I no longer needed to breathe or blink or beat.
I was back in that eternal peace where silver orbs existed, tasting of citrus, rain, and nectar.
I recognised this world.
This ceaseless, infinite world.
And it welcomed me back with a roar that shuddered the entire galaxy.
Asteroids plummeted from the cosmos, burning up in a blaze of rock and flame, bringing light to this world of limitless shadow. Comets slammed into mountains. Stars plunged into rivers. And brimstone glittered on the moon.
And through it all, I clutched at my gaping chest, holding a bleeding heart in my palm.
Blood as black as pitch.
Lifeforce as rich as oil.
I tipped my hand, sighing with relief as the undead heart, the unwanted heart, rolled off my fingers, smearing ink and darkness until it plopped onto the grass.
Grass withered and died where it touched.
Blood sank into the dirt with a hiss, soaking the earth just as the sky lit up with blazing blues and purples. I looked up to the galaxies where I belonged. Clouds spun, and the entire cosmos blurred as the earth rotated with sickening speed, faster and faster, causing the stars to streak silver in their haste.
A giant fissure pulled the ground apart, splitting between my unmortal legs, splicing through my shadows that cloaked me, devouring soil, seeds, and secrets.
A vortex spun toward me, full of glittering asteroids. It sucked me deep and blew around me, plucking me from the mortal realm and carrying me high, high, high into the heavens.
I had no control where the star-wind took me.
I spun and twisted, growing sick with speed and blur.
I no longer knew what was up or down.
Clouds whipped around me like frothing waterfalls, and black blood dripped from the spritz of shooting stars.
My blood.
My blood that was as dark as death and as endless as forever.
The winds suddenly stopped spinning.
I hovered there in absolute silence, gleaming with starshine and moonglow.
Weightless and speechless, I slowly descended through the thick, vast blackness until a lacy web appeared below me.
A web that cast from one corner of the galaxies to the other, slicing through the worlds and binding so many realms into one. Each thread was as fine as a wolf’s hair, gleaming a precious molten silver.
I hovered above it, studying the strands, noticing dewdrops that danced with life, clinging to the net. In each iridescent sphere, images danced and glimmered, giving glimpses into a mortal’s hopes and horrors, following their savages and successes.
So many dewdrops.
So many ways to watch from afar, peering into a spyglass of their existence. Occasionally, a droplet fell, raining from the frosted filigree that made up the cosmic web.
And I somehow knew that whoever existed in that drop was now dead. The sphere was no longer needed to grant sight as there was no longer a spirit to watch.
I didn’t question how I knew that.
I just did.
My fingertips burned to touch the gossamer web, drawn to its knowledge. Every string held deep, dark secrets far greater than any I could remember. Each cord contained past, present, and future, and I only had to pinch its lace to be given everything that I’d lost.
I tried to float onto the tapestry-web, looking toward the dark horizons where the lattice vanished into black.
But whatever held me hostage didn’t release me.
I remained aloft and adrift, bound by invisible ropes.
I struggled.
I kicked and fought with a body that wasn’t real.
But then, the moths arrived.
Their fluttering wings created an eerie drone, growing louder and louder as they thickened the everlasting sky. Their strumming echoed through the stars as they gathered as opaque as the darkness around me.
I gasped for breath.
I blinked for sight.
I couldn’t see past their torrenting tumble.
Every moth in the world cloaked me, some as large as birds and others as small as flies. Some as colourful as the peacocks I’d seen roaming in a valley, while others preferred to stay as monochrome and pure as the moon.
I flinched as their feathery feelers tickled my mind and spirit. Their legs treaded over my shoulders and down my spine. And their wing-dust coated my skin until I glowed like they did, powdered with luminous shades of emerald, ochre, and pewter.
They flew closer.
Their wings batted against me.
Their whir grew louder and louder until my ears throbbed with noise. They were in my hair and on my eyes. They pulsed on my arms and weaved around my ankles.
And then the cloud cleared just a little, the winged creatures parting for a single moth to flit toward my face.
I studied the beast.
Its wings were white as Runa’s hair, gently curved and fuzzy with incandescent powder. With every flutter, it shed colourless glitter, leaving a shimmery silver trail in its wake. Its black feelers were bushy and long, its twitching legs banded with black and white stripes, but its eyes were what froze me.
They glowed like the full moon with pinpricks of night and stars.
They were full of every memory I’d lost and every event yet to pass.
We stared at each other.
I smiled as recognition slowly warmed my forgetful emptiness.
I didn’t know this dark dynasty, but I did know this moth.
I knew him because I was him.
Something clicked into place within me.
Something finally slipped free.
A name.
Just a name.
Nothing more.
But it was more than I’d had in so very, very long.
I opened my lips to speak it.
Swelling with gratefulness and joy.
But the moth flew toward my mouth.
It fluttered onto my tongue, preventing me from speaking my true identity.
It slipped down my throat.
Gagging and cruel.
Its wings choked me.
Woke me.
I screamed—
Chapter Twenty-Seven
. Runa .
THE FIRE HAD SNUFFED OUT hours ago.
Its ashes were cold, and the sun slipped closer and closer to bed, yet the stranger still wouldn’t wake.
I hadn’t left his side.
Natim hadn’t left my side.
And the wolves had moved to lie next to their fallen pack member, lying stiff and afraid, their yellow eyes locked on the corpse-stillness of their friend.
Tears had dried into salty tracks on my cheeks, and I struggled to swallow back my sobs.
The trance had been a stupid, stupid idea.
I wasn’t skilled enough, powerful enough.
Who was I to believe I could request such a thing from an element that’d only delivered warnings instead of welcome?
It’s my fault.
All my fault.
His skin was greyish and as cool as the river. His lips parted and eyes closed. When he’d screamed in the fire’s vision and torn his hand from mine, our link had snapped.
We’d lost each other just like I’d lost Solin.
I’d tumbled through the flames.
I’d spun and tripped and woken explosively on the riverbank.
But the stranger? He’d collapsed onto his back and never stirred.
“Please…” I murmured, repeating the same plea I’d spoken all day until my throat was hoarse. “Please let him go. Wherever you’ve taken him, please let him wake.”
The fire didn’t answer. The river didn’t sing. The wolves whined and pressed their muzzles harder against their outstretched paws.
Natim crushed closer against my thigh.
“It’s my fault,” I whispered. “Take your wrath out on me, not him. I’m the one you chose to receive your gifts. Take them away if you must. If he isn’t Quelis born, then I cannot be either. We are the same…so please, let him wake.”
But just like all my other pleadings, the fire didn’t reply.
Dusk slowly snuck over the world, stealing sunlight.
As the day faded, the night chill settled, turning the stranger’s terrifyingly still form ever colder.
Is he…
Was he…
I buried my face into my knees.
I couldn’t even think the word.
If he was…dead…I didn’t know what I’d do. I’d only known him such a short while, yet he’d become so important, so real.
The sun began its descent into the earth, painting the thin drifting clouds with vibrant colours. Searing pinks and bruising purples, all slowly bleeding into cloaking navy blues.
As the sun finally snuffed out, saying farewell to this awful, awful day, I looked over my shoulder toward the cave on the other side of the woods.
I should go get Salak. The alpha would know what to do. He’d cared for the stranger when he was hurt. He’d cured him of fevers and wounds that should’ve killed him.
If Salak could do that.
He could fix this.
He has to.
Shifting from my rear to my knees, I swiped at my salt-sticky face. Natim bleated at my standing. The two wolves that’d guarded us all afternoon raised their giant horned heads, narrowing their eyes on mine.
I sucked in a stuttered breath. “I need…I have to go get your alpha.”
One of the wolves, the smallest of the two, cocked its head. The other lumbered to its feet and yawned, revealing a row of perfect, piercing teeth. Shaking its bulk, it padded closer to the stranger and nuzzled his breathless chest.
I wanted to push the predator away as prickles of unease filled me.
If the stranger died, would they…
Will they eat him?
I choked on sudden sickness. “Don’t touch him,” I commanded, my voice harsh in the stillness.
The wolf licked the stranger’s shoulder before huffing and moving to the river for a drink. It lapped at the water, reminding me I hadn’t eaten or drunk since this morning. Since I’d stupidly agreed to summon a fire that I had no business summoning and dragged the stranger into a vision that wasn’t safe.
The other wolf followed, dropping to its belly, and lapping at the swift crisp current.
Ignoring my own thirst, I looked back at the unconscious man beside me.
I froze.
As darkness descended all around us, darkness seeped out of his skin. His shadows appeared, misting and whispering, silent and stealthy.
I stopped breathing as the shades swirled and eddied, blurring the stranger until I struggled to see him.
His left hand twitched.
I gasped.
The shadows reformed, no longer soft clouds of blackness but thickening into dense ribbons. They floated over him, coiling and tightening into shapes.
Panic drove me to my knees.
Natim ran away from the shades, vanishing into the trees.
I crawled closer, daring to touch his cool shoulder. “Wake up.”
He didn’t.
But the shadows flickered in response to my touch, finishing their black designs, painting him from head to toe. The wolves kept their distance as I traced a mark on his lower belly, following the wings of a shadow-drawn moth.
I followed the stencil of another.
And another.
The wings of more appearing all over his chest.
More and more moths appeared until his entire form was covered in hundreds of tiny, shade-given creatures. Every inch of his skin, every scar, every mark was covered with pulsing shadows in the shape of moon-loving insects.
I reared backward as more shadows poured out of knotty hair, curling around his cheeks before scribing another moth right over his mouth as if barring him from speaking—a gag made of night butterflies.
My heart pounded as the shades flexed and fluttered, imitating moths in flight, making it seem as if the stranger’s shadow-tattooed flesh came alive.
I wanted to swipe them away.
To tell them to stop.
But the longer the shade-moths flew against his skin, the more my mind sank into their spell. I became hypnotised by their flickering. Enchanted with memories I wasn’t fast enough to grasp.
The words I’d used to speak to the fire—using the Nhil’s native tongue of Firenese—vanished from my head, replaced with the unknown dead language that the stranger and I shared.
Just a word.
Only one.
The one for moth.
A rush of heat flowed through me.
Darro.
A nudge of knowing made me gasp.
Something deeply buried and eternally sleepy woke up, clawing its way through my memories, granting me a tiny pinprick of truth.
Darro.
Tears welled.
Just as I’d known my name was Runa the moment I heard it, I knew his was Darro.
My shoulders rolled in thankfulness.
Tears leaked down my cheeks.
I leaned over him, brushing my fingers ever so softly through his hair. “Darro…wake up.” The shadow moths on his skin suddenly dissolved, soaking back into his skin.
My heart tripped, and I grazed my hand from his hair to his cheek. “Darro. Please. Open your eyes.”
The wolves shot to their feet as the stranger’s spine suddenly arched toward the sky, wrenching his back off the ground leaving his arms to dangle by his sides.
I cried out, scrambling backward.
