Determined.
“But Kyzari and Veya—”
“Won’t make it out of that cell alive unless we break them out ourselves. I’d stake the fucking world on it.”
There’s no sadness in her tone. No uncertainty. Nothing but potent abhorrence for the male on the terrace above, now leering down at us, skewered by Raeve’s bladed stare.
Arkyn leans sideways, passing some words to one of his masked followers, stilling as Raeve begins to raise her hands—both looped in those luminous silver ribbons.
She makes twin fists, flips them over, then lifts her little fingers. A universalfuck youthat causes a collective gasp.
“Raeve—”
“Guthh in thaissah vaugh, Ignos!”she belts out, a sizzling sentence that pitches my pulse—every word executed with the perfect hissing vitriol of Ignos’s ravenous accent.“Geist shooth baghh, shekin tah!”
Her words echo, chased by a listening quiet pebbled by the odd mocking laugh. But she has their attention.
So they all see the exact moment every ember or smoldering stoneignites, throbbing with glee. The hungry chuckle of a Creator unleashed, preparing to sink his teeth into a meal … answering Raeve’s call to arms.
Meaning they all realize, at the exact same moment, that they’re caught in the cage with a beast unleashed.
Gloved in the silver tendrils I scavenged from my Other’s den, I hold Arkyn’s blazing stare. Flash him a sharp smile I hope he feels all the way to the bone—thefuck.
With Ignos poised, waiting for me to point him in the direction of his promised meal, I stretch my internal sound snare, making room for Bulder’s song that batters me like a rockslide.
“Buth du dunth, Bulder. Hoth-ot túe!”
He makes a grumbling sound, like he knows what I’m planning and isn’t at all interested, but reluctantly abides.
The ground jolts, then begins to shudder.
A densecrackrends the air.
The crowd screams, folk scrambling as the arena splits before us. Like invisible claws just grabbed hold and pried it wide. With a firm grip on each other, Kaan and I manage to maintain our balance, perched right on the crumbly edge of the gaping, red-hot wound blowing hot breath and smoke into the cavern.
Seems my directional coordination still needs some work.
Kaan urges me back a step, away from the hungry promise of an endless, scorching fall while I listen to Bulder drone on and on about Ignos feeding on him like a parasite, still shuddering. I commiserate, threading him words of relief. Promise to tend his wounds with a smoothing song once we’re done busting up this fucking place and saving my family.
He releases a rumbly sigh, but lulls, opening wider.
I smile, offering Ignos a willing meal of yummy stone down in the guts of the crumbling gorge deep beneath the mountain. Request that he feasts with a ferocity like never before, not that he seems to need encouragement.
Every ember in the arena blinks out like a tiding wave swallowed down the ravine’s gullet, casting us in a near darkness that sends a screaming storm of unease through those who are yet to escape the overpacked balconies.
Kaan’s lips brush my ear, his voice crackling as he says, “I know what—you’re doing, Moonbeam …”
He should.
He taught me a lot of the words I just used.
“I know my directions are shit, but I don’t have time to get them exact,” I say, voice not my own, but rough. Tribute to the tremble shaking me from the inside out, like an addict hungering for a hit of blood-bubbling revenge. “The entire crowd was chanting for your death. I could hear it from—”all the way down the bottom of my lake.“Never mind. If a few die from the splash, they deserve it.”
“It’s notthemI’m worried about.”
Oh.
Oddly sentimental, given everything.
