When a Moth loved a Bee, page 50
Rage fed through me, immediately becoming nauseous horror as Runa arched in my arms. She cried out. Her head tipped back, and she coughed at the cloud-wreathed moon.
A spray of blood escaped her lips, a crimson mist in the night.
Horror.
Absolute. Fucking. Horror.
No.
I didn’t mean—
“Runa—!”
“Darro….give Runa to me.” Solin appeared, arms outstretched and his face full of panic. “I’ll take her to a healer. She needs a healer. Quickly. Please…let me have her.”
I cradled her close, shaking my head as she choked on another mouthful of blood. Her skin grew cool, and her ever-present faint luminosity dulled.
I’d done that.
I’d been the one to hurt her, not Aktor.
I’d
hurt
her.
I-I couldn’t take it anymore.
All my fury.
All my grief.
It percolated and circulated, growing, growing, growing.
My skin threatened to break apart.
My heart ballooned until my ribs were the only thing keeping it from exploding.
I quaked so hard, the ground beneath me rumbled.
Shadows bled faster,
thicker,
angrier.
They hissed of death,
blood,
and endings.
And I wanted that.
I wanted it so badly my mouth watered, my body tightened, and I lost myself to the killing song.
Runa moaned in my embrace.
Reminding me of what would happen if I let go. Who I would hurt if I freed all the ferocity within me.
“Darro…let her go. You have to let her go.” Solin’s touch landed on my arm. “Please, let her go…before it’s too late.”
Before I kill her…
Spirit-slicing terror tore through me.
Pressing my forehead to hers, I begged my shadows to help. To cut the blood bind. To slaughter Aktor. To rewind time so none of this ever happened.
Please keep her safe from me.
Please don’t let me hurt her.
I never wanted to hurt her—
I couldn’t stand it.
Couldn’t survive it.
My heart fissured—
Get me away from her!
“You summon, Moon Master. We obey.” The voice that’d appeared when I’d been tied with invisible ropes and gagged by unseen power tore through my fracturing mind.
The world turned black.
Absolutely, murderously black.
Runa vanished from my arms.
I was nothing.
In nothing.
Surrounded by churning, chilling nothing.
I opened my mouth to shout.
I raised my arms to fight.
The darkness vanished as quickly as it’d smothered.
I blinked as the world returned, painting a picture of a calm, quiet night. Of pretty trees swaying and luminous insects buzzing from one moon-blooming flower to another. Frogs croaked from an endless lake that was so still and so perfect, the surface reflected the galaxy above as if there were two of them.
Two moons.
Two cosmos.
Two nights where I stood spliced between, neither living nor dead. Forsaken nor chosen.
Looking down at the shadows swirling around my body, I jerked as they settled into a robe of darkness, dressing me with moonlight on the hem and cuffs, swirling like smoke around my feet.
Fear clogged my lungs.
Where is she?
My arms were empty.
I was alone.
No Runa. No Solin. No Zetas, Syn, or Natim.
I spun on the spot.
Panic soared.
WHERE IS SHE?
Where am I?
What is this place?
“You called. We answered,” a smug, slithery voice said. “You walked through air. You travelled in shadow. You are where you want to be.”
My head pounded with pain. “I-I don’t understand.”
“You do understand.” The cool, crisp voice chuckled. “You just don’t remember.”
“Where’s Runa?”
“Where you left her.”
“Take me back.”
“You wanted to get away from her. To protect her from you. You summoned. We obeyed.” A fierce wind rustled in the forest surrounding me and the lake, dislodging a few orange leaves, hinting at the changing season. “We bowed to your command, Moon Master.”
Balling my hands, I growled, “Why do you call me that?”
“Because that is what you are.”
I shook my head as pain banded around my temples.
I groaned as the pain in my head turned into a hammer, smashing at my skull.
I grunted as the agony built and built.
My knees buckled.
I collapsed at the bottom of a towering tree. Its leaves glimmered blue in the moonlight, and the late-summer blossoms attracted a cloud of hummingbirds. Some as small as bees and others as big as sparrows, they fluttered from flower to flower, their buzzing jewelled wings loud and obnoxious in my ears.
Agony kept growing, kept pressurizing, kept burning.
I cried out as I bent over my knees, pressing my forehead to the ground.
What was happening?
Why couldn’t I stop the pain?
“Awakening is pain, Moon Master. Give in to it.”
I fell onto my side as searing, crippling agony flowed down my spine and bellowed through my bones. A wave of destructive cramps worked its way through my muscles.
I cried out.
I couldn’t stop it.
Couldn’t endure it.
I trembled with cataclysmic torment.
Another wave of bone-snapping pangs.
The pressure in my skull became too much.
I was nothing but death-born misery.
“Let go…” the air element whispered. “Give in.”
I groaned and curled into a tighter ball.
Corroding nightmares tore through my bones and boiled my blood.
I plummeted into darkness.
Spiralling.
Falling.
I became the black.
I was an eclipse.
And when I reached the bottom of blackness, the pain wasn’t just pain but slaughter.
I screamed.
I let go.
A bolt of power ricocheted outward.
It rippled like a droplet in a pond, cutting through air and night, silent and deadly. The moment it shot free from my shaking body, the pain ebbed. My bones transformed from pounding misery into lightest moonshine.
Sitting upright, my vision returned, just in time to see the shockwave of my power I’d unwittingly released. It sliced like a scythe, tearing through the living, not picking favourites, not saving those deserving—offering no salvation or mercy.
It snuffed out the life of every single innocent creature close by.
The hummingbirds froze mid-flutter, their feathers gleaming with iridescent blues, purples, and greens as they tumbled to the earth. An owl dropped from the tree above me.
The night music performed by crickets, cicadas, and frogs screeched into silence, leaving nothing but the sensual blow of air through the leaves and the heavy, awful pounding of my heart.
Dead.
Everything that’d been close to me was dead.
“Now, do you see?” Rivoza licked around my ear, its cool breath as fresh as air blown from the heavens. “Now, do you remember?”
Grief clutched the back of my throat as I blinked at the death littering me in a morbid circle. Not a single pulse or aliveness. Blank eyes and still chests, dull scales and broken feathers.
Tears stung my eyes.
How?
How had I done that?
And how did I prevent it from ever happening again?
“It’s time you dust off your memories, Moon Master. Before your power decides to rule you instead.”
Gulping back stomach-churning sadness, I stumbled to my feet and scooped up a tiny hummingbird. Its neck lolled lifelessly as I stroked its plumage with my thumb.
It was still warm.
What a waste.
What an awful, sickening waste!
Fury roared through me.
Sick, sick fury.
What sort of monster could kill so many creatures in one swoop? What sort of demon had the power to stop every heart?
Temper tore through my fury; I snarled at the empty night. “I’m a killer.”
“You are death, not a killer.”
“I just ended countless lives.”
“And now you will see them again.”
My eyes widened. “What? How?”
“Just wait.” Air danced through my unruly black hair. “Just another breath and then—”
My head fell back as the pain I’d pulsed outward into the world returned a hundredfold. The quake of death I’d delivered snapped back into my blood, burning and crippling, throwing me back to my knees.
I barely heard the air laughing as wake after wake of agony fed red-hot through me.
A rush of silver lights.
A crush of pulsing orbs.
I jolted as they slipped through me, kissing my spirit, travelling through what I was.
And I suddenly remembered a vital part of who that was.
What I’d always been.
Rivoza was right. Quelis had been right. Every entity and creature that claimed I was death was telling the truth.
Life diminished into dust…because of me.
The hummingbirds slid through my psyche first: their feathers shed and no longer needed. The owl flew on silent wings made of ether, and the hundreds of crickets, cicadas, and frogs that I’d silenced with just a ripple of power sprinkled through my spirit, tiny flashes of silver and light, returning to the source from where they belonged.
Tears blinded me as I slowly lifted my head.
The final spirit licked through mine, saying goodbye, whispering hello, recognising that this wasn’t the end but the start of a new beginning.
Their release and acceptance broke my mortal heart.
Their wisdom and freedom shared a memory that I’d forgotten.
I didn’t need the air element to tell me what to do next.
I opened my flesh and bone arms.
I fell backward onto the bracken-littered forest floor.
I followed the spirits of all the creatures I’d so callously killed, fading into the ever after, descending into the darkness where so many were cradled and comforted.
The web I’d seen in one of my visions unspooled beneath my feet. A cosmos-covering tapestry made up of strings of light and consequence, glittering with droplets of presence and sight.
For a moment, I just stood in the centre of that web and breathed. I flexed my hands and slipped back into the ancient role I’d forgotten. No other memories came to me. Every hidden part of who I was didn’t suddenly unravel, but for once, I was content.
Content that I’d remembered this much, and I was finally home.
With another flex of darkness, I stepped onto the first thread and searched for the droplet that would show me what I needed to see.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
. Runa .
“HERE, DRINK THIS.”
I opened my eyes to sunlight and Olish. The healer’s pale skin and vibrant blue eyes were so different to the smokiness of Darro’s.
“How are you feeling this morning?” Olish smiled with white, slightly crooked teeth. “Do you know where you are? Remember your name? How about what happened last night?”
Remember my name?
Of course, I did. I would never forget again, thanks to Solin drawing an intricate ash bee onto my hand. Frowning a little, I went to raise my arm to show him that his worry about my faulty memory was misplaced, only for a hiss to escape clenched teeth as every muscle in my body smarted.
I stiffened and moaned, sinking back into the soft furs that cradled me in the usual corner where I slept in Solin’s lupic. Sunshine shone through the smoke hole in the roof, and the Spirit Master himself sat cross-legged beside a cool ash-filled fireplace.
How did I end up here?
How long have I been sleeping?
Olish cupped strong, warm fingers beneath my head and helped guide me up a little. Placing a carved wooden cup against my lips, he repeated, “Drink this. It will ease the rest of your aches.”
Aches.
I definitely suffered those.
But why?
What did I do last night?
His blue eyes narrowed with healer commands as he waited for me to obey. Opening my lips, I drank down what he poured into my mouth, wincing at the sharp, sour flavours. I recognised lemon balm and willow bark from the previous concoctions I’d drunk when the Nhil first found me.
My eyes widened as my throat throbbed with bruises, just like it had the night after Aktor had strangled me.
Swallowing the last tart mouthful, Olish gave me a cheery smile and sat back on his haunches, taking the empty cup with him. “There, you’ll feel better in a bit.” Holding up his hand, he speared three fingers upright while curling the rest into a fist. “How many fingers?” He kept his stare on mine, assessing me carefully.
I scowled. “Three.” Bracing myself, I eased upright, groaning a little but refusing to lie there like an invalid.
Bits and pieces of last night slowly returned: Darro’s blistering blackness. Aktor’s scream as the shadows threw him into the clouds. The shock of Aktor tumbling from the sky and smashing against the ground followed by—
I gasped and looked down at my body.
Outwardly, I had no injuries. No nicks on my neck from a shadow that’d drawn Aktor’s blood and no ligatures from the shades that’d strangled him. But I’d felt them. I’d cried out with mirroring pain that’d slammed into me the moment Aktor had crunched against the ground.
The bloom of agony on my shoulder and hip. The throb of my knee as it hit something hard. The crack of my skull as if Darro had tossed me into the galaxies, not Aktor.
“Take it easy today,” Olish murmured, interrupting my rapid recollections. He folded away packets of medicines and dried herbs before stuffing them into a rabbit skin bag with tassels made of bison mane. “I’ve already given you a restorative drink when Solin first summoned me. That will have brought down any swelling internally that you might’ve received. Aktor has been treated too, and apart from a few cuts and lesions, he’ll be fine.” He licked his lips with a wince. “His heartbeat is strong, just like yours. And your skin is flushed with life instead of illness. Apart from the sore throat and perhaps some tenderness here and there, you and Aktor will be perfectly recovered in a few days. Neither of you will suffer any adverse effects or need to fear that one of you will die from—”
“Thank you, Olish.” Solin raked a hand through his long black hair. His tone made the young healer shut up, hanging his head in contrition.
“Sorry, Solin. I just…it’s new for all of us. None of us have lived with a flame-bound pairing before. I don’t know how much she’ll feel from Aktor’s pain or him from hers. I’ve done my best to treat both exactly the same, so there will be no complications in the future.”
My heartrate climbed as Solin caught my gaze.
The rest of the night came back in full colour, noise, and horror.
The mating promise. The blood bind. The grief I’d choked on as I ran and Darro’s heartsick kiss as he chased after me.
With a small shake of his head, Solin stemmed my questions. Glancing at Olish, he raised an eyebrow. “If you’ve done all you can for now, I need some time alone with my acolyte.”
Olish beamed. “Of course. I can’t tell you how excited we are, Runa.” His blue eyes met mine. “For Solin to finally claim a successor. He mentioned that you are interested in learning our craft, and it would be an absolute honour to—”
“Later, Olish.” Solin smiled gently. “Give Runa a few days to…come to terms with her new standing and then she can request whatever learning she wishes.” His shoulders remained slouched and for the first time since I’d shared Solin’s lupic, he wore no braids, no beads or feathers. His glossy strands were tangled and chaotic down his back as if he’d not stopped tugging it in worry all night.
“Happy to help.” Olish grinned as he stood. “Teaching your acolyte in any gift she wishes to know would be an honour.” Tying his medicine pouch around his waist, he smoothed it along his bison fur-clad hip. His slight build and light skin made the ash-tattoo of a spider squatting on his shoulder all the more glaring.
His tussock pale hair swung around his jawline as he chuckled, catching me looking at it. “Spiders are revered by healers, did you know that? When Solin told me that the spider had chosen to be my spirit guardian, I couldn’t sleep for a week, I was so filled with joy.”
Solin crossed his arms, his patience thin, but he didn’t kick out the young healer.
I wanted to talk to the Fire Reader in private. I needed answers to what’d happened last night and find out where Darro was, but I smiled at Olish’s eagerness and rubbed at an ache on my elbow. Swallowing past the lingering pain in my neck, I asked, “Why are spiders revered?”
“Because their web has proven to be one of the best dressings for bad wounds. Before, a feverish cut or injury would often spell death, but thanks to learning how to stitch flesh together and then binding the wound in spider silk, the likelihood of survival is much, much higher.” His eyes lit up with knowledge and passion for his calling. “The body accepts the web as part of its own. It provides strength to the blood to fight off fevers and dissolves as the wound heals so you don’t have to damage new tissue to remove it. Pallen has been sampling the use of spider silk for decades—using it in topical uses and tonics, dried and fresh. She has a basket in her lupic where she keeps a family of spiders that have been paramount in evolving our level of care and progress in healing.”
I smiled, infected by his eagerness, drawn along with the promise of learning those secrets for myself. I didn’t know how I felt about spiders living in the medicine woman’s lupic, but to know what he did about such creatures and their gifts almost overshadowed the pain I felt.
