Stone grunted agreement and stepped past her into the room. Moon fought down one last urge to escape and followed as the other Arbora made way for them.
The place was large and cave-like, with no openings to the outside except for a shaft in the center of the high roof. Sometime in the past, when the pyramid had first been built, this could have been a throne room, or the central mystery chamber of a temple. Vines had crept down through the open shaft, but they were discolored by a creeping white moss.
Everyone here was in groundling form, and the Arbora still crowded in, filling in the floor space near the door. The Aeriat were already here, standing on two broad stone ledges above the doorway and to the right. They were as distinctive as the Arbora; all tall, the women slim, small-breasted, the men lean. Is that all the warriors? Moon wondered, a little shocked. Stone had said the colony didn’t have enough Aeriat, but there were only a third as many here as the Arbora. And there were still more soldiers, teachers, and hunters who weren’t free to be here.
Moon saw Balm up on the ledge with the other warriors, pacing anxiously. Many of the warriors stared at him, and one dark-haired man glared with a familiar, angry intensity. That had to be River in his groundling form, and Moon was willing to bet the man next to him was Drift.
Chime stood on the floor with the Arbora, further down the wall with Petal and Bell, easily visible since he was nearly a head taller than most of them. Chime spotted Flower and made his way toward her, shouldering people aside, ignoring their objections.
The room went quiet, the murmur dying away. Moon scanned the shadows, trying to see what had caught the others’ attention. Scent didn’t tell him anything, since the whole place smelled of anxious Raksura.
Then, on a stone platform across the back of the room, a shadow moved. It spilled down the steps to the floor until a tall form stepped out of it into the light.
Her scales were brilliant gold, overlaid with a webbed pattern of deepest indigo blue. The frilled mane behind her head was like a golden sunburst, and there were more frills on the tips of her folded wings, on the triangle-shape at the end of her tail. She was a head taller than the tallest Aeriat, and wore only jewelry, a broad necklace with gold chains linking polished blue stones. As she moved into the center of the room, the air grew heavier. A stir rippled through all the assembled Raksura, an almost unconscious movement toward her. For the first time, Moon understood why Stone had said that queens had power over all of them; feeling the pull of it in himself turned him cold. I’m not one of them. I shouldn’t be here.
In a voice soft and deep as night, she said, “Where is he?”
Moon’s breath caught in his chest. Leaving, he thought, turning for the door. He would have made it, but Stone was fast even as a groundling, and caught his wrist.
Rather than be hauled forward like a criminal, Moon didn’t resist. He let Stone pull him to the front of the crowd, to the empty space in front of Pearl. As Stone let him go, Moon tried to shift, meaning to fly straight up the air shaft.
Nothing happened.
Moon’s mouth went dry. So Stone hadn’t exaggerated; she could keep them from shifting. He wished he knew if she was doing it to everyone, or just him.
Stone’s voice was neutral, his tone giving nothing away. “Pearl, this is Moon.”
She beckoned him forward with one deceptively delicate hand. Her claws were longer than his, and she wore rings on each finger, thick bands of gold woven with copper and silver.
It wasn’t until the back of her hand brushed his cheek that Moon realized he had taken two steps toward her, that he was within her reach. Her claws moved through his hair, the touch too light to scratch, and she cupped the back of his head, drawing him closer.
Moon looked into her eyes, heavy-lidded, sea-blue, and fathoms-deep, drawing him in. Her scent was strong and musky, but there was a trace of bitterness under it, too faint for him to place. It brought him back to his senses abruptly, and he tried to pull away from her. But sudden heat warmed his body, the tension flowing out of his spine.
That she could keep them all from shifting meant she was connected to them somehow, through mind or heart or something else, and Moon should have realized that. Should have realized the connection could go both ways. For a moment it was as if he was part of every other Raksura in the room, and he leaned toward her.
Then, as if she had judged it for the exact moment she felt his resistance fade, she said, “This was the best you could do.”
Her tone was calm, the warm purr of her voice unchanged. Moon blinked, so caught in her spell that for a heartbeat he didn’t understand. The whole room seemed to take a startled breath.
In that same tone, she continued, “A solitary, with no bloodline.”
Understanding hit him like a sudden slap. He jerked backward, but her hold on him tightened, her claws digging into his skin. Moon twisted out of her grip, the claws opening cuts across the back of his neck, snagging in the collar of his shirt. He fell back a few steps, out of her reach, baring his teeth.
Her lip curled, showing her fangs, and her tail lashed; growls echoed from the assembled warriors perched on the ledges, as if she was the one who had been insulted.
Moon spun on his heel, hissing up at them, furious and humiliated and ready to fight everybody in the room. The growls stopped as the warriors stirred uneasily. Apparently nobody wanted to fight, at least not while they were all trapped in groundling form.
“I didn’t bring him for you,” Stone said, his voice dry and acid in the silence.
The words broke the spell. Moon took a sharp breath, trying to clear his head and make himself think. He couldn’t feel that pull toward Pearl anymore, that connection to the others. There and gone so briefly, it had still left an empty place in his chest, as if something had been torn out of him. It was pure cruelty to let him feel that, to draw him into that, just to rip him away.
Pearl paced, her tail still lashing, her mane rippling with agitation. Cold edged her voice as she told Stone, “Solitaries live the way they do for a reason.”
Stone watched her, unmoved and unimpressed. “He wasn’t a solitary by choice. I told you how I found him.”
“And you have only his word for that.” Pearl stopped, half turning to show Stone her profile, as if she was reluctant to confront him. “What did you have to give him to bring him here?”
That was another slap. Moon gritted his teeth, looking away. Everything he had taken from them—food, the clothes he was wearing, even Stone’s protection while he was poisoned—flashed through his head. He had accepted it all with the idea that he would act as one of their warriors; Pearl had to know that. She wanted to drive him away, and he knew why.
That Moon was here as a potential consort for Jade somehow gave the younger queen power, taking it away from Pearl. Moon hissed under his breath. If Pearl wanted to drive him out, she was going to have to try a lot harder than this.
As if called by his thought, another voice, sharp with irony, said, “I’ve left gifts. He’s taken none of them.” The warriors on the ledge parted abruptly for a light blue form, the only other Raksura in the room who hadn’t shifted to groundling. She stepped off the ledge and landed lightly on the paving. She was smaller than Pearl, the same height as the other warriors. The silver-gray pattern overlaying her scales was less complex than Pearl’s brilliant indigo, and the frilly spines of her mane weren’t as elaborate. Her jewelry was silver, rings, armbands, and bracelets, and a belt worn low above the hips with polished ovals of amethyst and opal. Moon had only caught two glimpses of her before, but this was clearly Jade.