When the Moon Hatched (Moonfall, #1)

by Sarah A. Parker

“Elluin.”

“The cuff was a kindness, Moonbeam. There is little need to weaponize yourself here, but it storms. Often. Violently.”

Still, he hums . . . threading me together one familiar note at a time until I can draw enough steady breaths to sing along with the tune. Words I’ve only ever heard murmured through the hollow of my mind—distant echoes I’ve never been able to grasp the dusky origin of. Words that have given me solace in times I’ve felt alone or uncertain. Brought me peace when my soul screamed the opposite. Words I think might’ve belonged to somebody special . . . once. In another life. Another time.

“You know my song,”

“How, Kaan?”

“Don’t want me to see your jar of mist?”

“Not particularly,”

“Keep your secrets,”

“Believe me,”

“I’m under no false assumption that you’re even the slightest bit interested in my secrets.”

“Realistic expectations ar...

“But just so you know, I coaxed your guard into swapping an empty crockery dish for his dagger that’s currently strapped to my upper thigh, and I’m not afraid to use it.”

I don’t tell him the deeper we’ve drilled, the less tentative I’ve been about this decision to follow him down a twirling tunnel into a dark abyss. I certainly don’t tell him the growing cold feels a lot like . . . Home.

The carvings meld together much the same way as the dragons on Kaan’s málmr, though the extravagant mural pales in comparison to the massive silver moon the cavern cradles like an egg—the ground dipped in the middle like cupped palms, no doubt keeping it from rolling around.

Something within me settles, nuzzling into a comforting curl that makes the backs of my eyes sting for the second time this dae—so overwhelmed by the moon’s rounded beauty that I feel like the world is tipping.

I stagger forward, hand outstretched, the tips of my fingers aching with the need to touch. To trace the divots and mounds of the fallen Moonplume forever tucked in a sleeping curl, head half nudged beneath the fan of a frayed membrane. The dragon’s silky tail is woven up beneath its winged embrace, spilling out in tufts about its neck and head like a once-soft pillow.

I reach forward, brushing my hand across the Moonplume’s once-leathery hide now fossilized. So hard and cold it’s like caressing a frosted mound of ice.

“Your moon,”

“Her name was Slátra,”

“I’m yet to find her final shards. You can’t see on this side, but there’s a small crevice around the back of her I still need to fill.”

A chill climbs my spine, and I trace a hairline fissure with the tip of my finger, looking up to see so many more webbed across the metallic beast—proving she smashed into thousands of shards upon impact. Shards that ha...

“You did ...

“I did,...

My rage—my rabid thirst for revenge—was blinding. I thought Kaan was a tyrant. A heartless monster. But he has such a big, warm heart I’m surprised it fits in his chest.

“Why?”

“Because it hurts knowing she’s...

I ease up onto my tiptoes, peering over the cleft of her wing to the small hollow it’s shielding. Not sharp and jagged like bits are still missing, but a smoothed ingress close to the tip of the beast’s wide nose, as though Slátra gave her final breath cradling . . . something bundled within the silken tendrils of her once soft tail. Shielded by her cupped claw.

“Are. You. Familiar with it?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,”

“See, I think you’re lying.”

“I think you know this moon better than anyone else.”

“I think this beast cradled you for a hundred phases, breathing life back into your broken body until you both fell from the sky. I think you broke from Slátra’s tombstone like a hatching dragon—”

“You’re fucking mad,”

“A...

“Because I knew a female who died. Tragically. Whose lifeless body was sailed into the sky by the adoring beast at your back with my torn-out heart in her fucking fist,”

“Her name was Elluin, and she laughed with the wind, cried with the rain. She angered with fire and bellowed with the ground. Her heart thumped in synchrony with—”

“Eno...

“You look me in the eye, Moonbeam—right in the soul—and tell me you don’t hear this fire’s hissing shrieks. Look me in the eye, sharpen those words, and don’t fucking blink as you plunge them through my heart.”

“Crush your flame, Sire. Or I’ll crush you,”

“That’s a promise.”

“Who hurt you?”

“I do not hurt, King Burn. I harden. And no—your pet flame did not sing to me. Not even a little bit. Otherwise I would’ve sung it up the hall and ordered it to suicide itself in a puddle.”

“Don’t lie to me, Moonbeam. Lie to the world, but please don’t lie to me.”

“Stop talking to me like you know me. You don’t. Even if I did fall with your precious moon, I owe you nothing. Elluin is dead.”

“S...

“Saving my life, dragging me away to your big, bright kingdom where everybody fucking loves you is not going to reincarnate her. I’m not yours, and I never will be.”

I don’t believe in much, but I do believe that the unknown needs to be handled with caution—much like a dragon. Leave them alone, and they rarely decide to attack. You can exist in harmony for eternity, so long as nobody makes any sudden movements. Try to climb on their backs or steal their eggs? Well. Chances are you’re dead. I happen to like living in my blank oblivion. It’s lonely, but lonely folk have nothing to lose. That suits me perfectly.

landing me in a cavern with a deceased Moonplume he thinks was mine. The same Moonplume he has drawn on his back—a realization that threatens to cleft me straight through the heart, leaving me with another package to discard in my icy nether.

“Chase death, Elluin Raeve.”

A gasp cuts down my throat like a blade—whetted edges goring deep. Elluin Raeve . . .