Chime’s mouth twisted wryly. “Me, too. Right after it happened, I was just—” He waved a hand. “Upset, and then we found out there was a chance you were alive and Jade sent Balm and the others off to the Reaches and she and Stone left with Rorra and Kalam. Everyone was frantic.”
Moon was still reeling. He had thought Jade was angry at him for getting caught, when she must have been blaming herself for his death. “Stone must have realized that she didn’t have a choice.”
Chime nodded slowly, still lost in thought. “Sure, he must have realized it, but . . . Knowing there was no other choice, and living with it are two different things.”
He was right about that. Still clinging to Moon, Root nodded agreement. Moon let his breath out and said, “Stone and Jade need to talk. Jade and I need to talk.”
Moon caught Jade in the greeting hall, where she was watching Bramble and Bone and a group of Arbora talk with Niran, Diar, and the other Golden Islanders. She stood at the outskirts of the group, a restless, unsettled air about her that would have been a clear signal that something was wrong, if everyone hadn’t been so distracted. It was a noisy group, and so no one noticed when Moon stepped up beside her and said, “We need to talk.”
Jade flicked a look at him. “Not now. I have to—”
Moon said, “Now.”
That did it. Jade turned toward him, spines starting to lift. “Or?”
Moon folded his arms. As a former mentor, Chime had been very helpful with suggestions about what options were available if Jade resisted. “Or I’ll ask Malachite and Pearl to arbitrate, with Heart as a witness.”
Jade took a step back, caught by surprise and completely appalled. “You wouldn’t.”
Chime had pointed out that it wasn’t often that a queen and consort’s birthqueens were both available for something like this, so it would be a shame not to at least threaten to take advantage of it. “I would.”
Jade barred her teeth. “Moon—”
“They’ll love it. You know how much they like to help with things like this.” This was pure sarcasm, because settling an emotional dispute was Pearl’s idea of a nightmare and she was bound to offer a lot of extremely bad advice. Malachite wasn’t much better, though she would just endure it stoically and be a hundred times more judgmental.
“I told them what happened,” Jade snapped.
“You didn’t tell me,” Moon countered.
Jade snarled, grabbed his wrist and dragged him down a passage behind the fountain pool. They stopped in one of the unused bowers.
It had a balcony looking down the lower stairwell to the Arbora workrooms, and had probably been left empty because it was too noisy. Moon sat down beside the cold hearth bowl and watched Jade pace and lash her tail. After a couple of circuits of the bower, she calmed down enough to sit down and glare at him. “So talk.”
Moon said, “You need to talk to Stone, because whatever it is you think he thinks, you’re wrong.”
It startled her, which made Moon wonder what else she had expected him to say. She said, “He told you what happened.”
“No, Chime and I had to pry it out of Root.” Jade looked away, her spines making an effort not to show chagrin. “I’m not angry at you. You had no choice. I would have done the same, if it had been me up there and you with the Hians.”
Her expression was skeptical. “You would have?”
“Yes.” That was a lie. He thought he would have tried to think of a way to trick the Hians, delaying while the weapon spread further into the Reaches to touch Indigo Cloud. He might have saved Jade only to return to a colony tree full of corpses. If he had managed to make the right decision, he would have wanted to flee, to never see another Raksura again, but he would have been tied to the court by his clutch. No telling how that would have come out, except badly. “It was the whole Reaches, Jade. I’m not sure the others understood that, not really. If you hadn’t done it, I would have been angry. And dead, because Lavinat would have killed us all.”
She was quiet, watching a tiny red beetle make its way across the floor. “I didn’t understand it, either,” she said finally. “I was furious when we found that first message and realized you and Stone had kept going south, with no idea if you were heading in the right direction or not, knowing there were Fell out there and at least one kethel following you.” She shrugged her spines. “But you found the Hians and got the Arbora back and I wasn’t going to say anything. Then when Lavinat had you, and it was you or the Reaches, that was when I understood it.” She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. “That’s why consorts are kept protected, why they stay in the colonies, so queens won’t have to make that decision.”
Moon put all his conviction into his voice and said, “But it was the right decision.”
Jade hissed a little. “Do you understand how I would feel if you weren’t here to say that?”
“Yes, but I’m here.”
Jade reached over and caught his wrist, and pulled him to her. She held him so tightly his ribs creaked, but her bite on the skin below his ear was gentle. His return bite on the scales just above her collar flange was much harder. Jade twisted and thumped him down on his back, and talking was done for a while.
Jade lay heavily on top of him. She pushed herself up and said, “That was hard. I don’t want to do it again.” She saw his lifted brows and added, “You know I don’t mean the sex.”
Moon rolled over and sat up on one elbow. There was another thing he wanted cleared up and this was a good time to do it. He wanted everything between them, anything that might keep them apart, to be dealt with. “You want me to stay in the court and be a normal consort.”
“No. Normal is one thing you’ll never be.” Jade sighed. “I want you not to get killed. But after everything we’ve done, it seems ridiculous not to make visits to other courts, like Opal Night . . .”
“And to Delin, in the Golden Isles,” Moon added. “And Callumkal said he would come visit and take us to Kedmar.”
“I hate Kish,” Jade groaned. She considered for a moment, then smiled. “Maybe after your clutch with Bramble.”
Moon thought about five little baby Arbora or warriors with Bramble’s curiosity and stubbornness. It would be more than enough to keep him busy. He nudged her foot. “You want to talk to Stone now?”
Jade sighed and pushed herself upright. “Yes.”
Moon found Stone on the consorts’ level and dragged him down to see Jade. The dragging was much easier than it might have been had Stone actually put up any kind of effective resistance, so Moon figured Stone was more than ready to talk.
It was early evening by that point. Moon looked for Chime, and found him sitting out on the big garden platform on the edge of a group of Arbora and Aeriat from both courts, and the Golden Islanders. This platform had a good view of the waterfall that rushed down from the knothole but was far enough away not to be drenched by the spray. Delin sat nearby, sketching furiously, while Bramble told the story of their journey.
“Did it work?” Chime asked, watching him hopefully.
Moon settled into the damp grass beside him. Spark bugs played between the trees of the fruit orchard on the lower part of the platform. “She’s talking to Stone now.” He nudged Chime’s arm. “Thanks for your help.”
Chime leaned over and nipped his shoulder.
Not long after, Jade and Stone came out, and they sat on the grass until the green light started to fail and Pearl sent Knell to tell everyone to come inside.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I want to thank Nancy Buchanan for the title of this book, and for continued support through thick and thin. And I want to thank Jennifer Jackson, my agent, for not giving up, and Jeremy Lassen at Night Shade Books, for believing in a weird book about flying lizard people called The Cloud Roads. Thanks also to Janna Silverstein for editorial support and guidance on the Books of the Raksura series, and to Cory Allyn at Skyhorse, and artists Matthew Stewart, Steve Argyle, and Yukari Masuike for the beautiful art and cover design.