I jerk against the strong hands dragging me forward, thick fingers dug into my wounded shoulder like it’s a fucking handle.
“Stop that,” I slur, trying to lift my chin from my chest and catch a look at my captors. But my head is rock heavy, leaving me stuck watching the gray-stone ground slipping by, uneven bits taking the occasional strike at my poor kneecaps. That, and black boots that kick at the hems of my captors’ sooty cloaks as they power down a dark tunnel through bursts of firelight.
Each thumping step is placed with an agency that makes me shiver despite the sticky magma slugging through my veins.
“I can … walk.”
A lie, of course. I can’t walk. I can barely breathe. But the ensuing silence confirms my suspicions—that the duo dragging me down this underground burrow has questionable intentions.
Perhaps I should’ve taken my chances with the crowls?
My lids drop as the world continues to grate me, long moments slipping by while I note the twists and turns we take. Mentally tucking the directions away until they’re a tangled knot in the back of my mind.
The walls fall away.
I’m lumped on the ground like a bag of bones, though my forehead absorbs most of the blow. “That’s not very … nice,” I wrangle out, clawing at my sheath to find it empty. The one in my left boot is equally so.
No point checking the right.
Instead, I pour my strength into rocking onto my knees, hands flat on the chalky ground, head hung until I find the gusto to lift it.
And still.
I’m in a lofty cavern cluttered with ash-dusted …thingsbarely visible from the scarce light spilling off distant wall torches; broken ornaments, candelabras from a bygone time, dragonscale shields and rusted plates of armor that look as though they’ve been dug from long-forgotten graves. All precisely placed in towering stacks that resemble—
My heart slams to a halt.
Am I in the den of a velvet trogg?
Looking back, I see my two black-cloaked escorts standing behind me with their hands clasped. Both wearing bronze masks that glint in the firelight, tapering to hooked beaks. A visage that reminds me of something I once saw in a picture book many phases ago, though I can’t thinkwhat.
But I know one thing for certain: This tight, squirming sensation in my chest … it’s telling me to get the fuck out.
Now.
I move to stand.
A firm hand slams down on my wounded shoulder and grips tight, immobilizing me with a strike of pain.
I’m hissing a string of curses when a chesty rumble ratchets off the walls, echoing all around. Like we’re in the belly of some great stone beast.
“Hush, Cliár.” The dense voice plugs the cavern, followed by a seething sentence that lifts the hairs on the back of my neck.“Hussah tha vish ui ash, seethen.”
Fire streams from two of the far-off wall torches. Flaming serpents that slither around the many gathered piles ofstuff, igniting the vast shape and size of the treasure-laden cavern, making me feel tiny.
They dive into twin bronze bowls of oil, eviscerating into a rage of flames that illuminate a lofty dais postured over me like a threat. Atop it, a massive throne spikes up in all directions, built from a mosaic of shards I squint at.
Study.
Most are colorful and with the hint of feathered plumage. Some are in comforting shades of the north with bursts of scalloped scales—
Moonshards.
I scour the trove of jagged shards artfully pieced together, recognizing mauve bits of the Moltenmaw moon that fell amongst The Fade recently. Though mostly it’s made from other beasts, scavenged from a past that’s all but lost to us.
The sight makes my heart shudder, but it’s three distinct silver shards that kick the breath from my lungs. Because there are onlytwosilver Moonplumes in our known history, and only one of those has fallen.
Shattered.
