“It occurred to me,” she said, her voice a little wry. “Well?”
“No.” His earliest memory was of sleeping in the bole of a tree, warmly tucked in with the four young Arbora. Leaf, Bliss, Light, and Fern. He hadn’t let himself think their names in a long time. “I don’t remember anything. I told Shadow that, too.”
“Hmm.” Using her claws with delicate precision, Jade picked a pit out of a piece of fruit. “Maybe Ice just wanted a close look at you, then.”
“Why?”
“She might have thought she could recognize what court you came from. Sometimes queens and consorts from the same bloodlines have a strong resemblance to each other.”
He looked at her closely, trying to see it, but she just looked like Jade. “You don’t look like Pearl.”
“To another queen, I do.” She straightened, frowning. “What’s this?”
Moon pushed himself upright to see someone glide over from the platform where the unattached queens had been seated. Moon recognized the gray and green pattern of her scales and cursed under his breath. It was Ash.
By the time she landed all the queens were alert, the consorts and warriors startled and a little wary. Tempest’s spines twitched in agitation.
Ash stopped in front of Jade, spines aggressively lifted. “I’m Ash.”
Jade regarded her steadily. “And why should I care?”
Ash bared her teeth. “I spoke to your consort in the greeting hall. I said I thought he was a pretty thing and was surprised that you left him unprotected among us. But then I found out you were desperate enough to take a solitary.”
Moon didn’t move, though he dearly wanted to jump right off the platform, whether he could shift or not. The greeting hall had seemed private compared to this, with the queens and consorts staring and the sound dying away above and below as the rest of the court gradually realized something awkward was happening.
With unstudied calm, Jade sipped tea and set the cup aside, her extended claws clicking against the pottery. “Your bitter envy of my fortunate choice of consort is your shame, not mine.”
Ash snarled. “Your consort offered to fight me. If you aren’t afraid—”
Jade shoved to her feet and shifted to her winged form in a blur of motion. Moon rolled away and landed in a crouch, braced to shift and leap. Jade halted barely a pace from Ash, spines flared. Ash jerked back in reflex, but all Jade did was say, “I accept your challenge.”
Ash growled, but it was unconvincing; she had given ground by flinching away. Trying to make up for it, she looked at Moon and said, “When I win, maybe I’ll take you.”
Moon bared his teeth. “If you win, I’ll eat your guts.”
Ash stared at him, incredulous. Jade said, with deceptive mildness, “That’s not an idle threat.” She flicked her spines. “Do you mean to fight me now or at some undetermined point in the future?”
Tempest’s deep-voiced snarl cut across Ash’s reply. “Settle this outside.”
For a long frozen moment, the two queens didn’t move. Jade stood like a statue, a coiled threat. Ash was breathing hard and, Moon realized suddenly, struggling to keep her spines flared. Maybe she hadn’t realized Jade was older. Or used to facing down Pearl, he thought.
Then Ash stepped back, spines quivering. She said, “Outside, then.”
Jade eyed her, then turned deliberately and stepped to the edge of the platform. Collecting Moon with a glance, she jumped off into the well.
Moon shifted and jumped after her. Three platforms down she dropped onto the balcony where Chime, Balm, and the others sat. Moon didn’t stop, spiraling down toward the bottom of the well. At least Ash had waited until they were finished eating.
Jade must have only spoken briefly to the warriors, because she landed just a moment after Moon. She started immediately for the archway that led out of the well. The tilt of her spines said she was furious, and he was starting to feel a burning resentment of his own. This is not my fault.
Moon followed her into a wide foyer, where several passages met. Jade stopped beside a fountain that cascaded down carved rocks into a flower-strewn pool. She faced him and said, flatly, “You offered to fight her.” The growl grew in her voice. “What were you thinking?”
He knew he should shift to groundling; it was dangerous to argue like this. But he cocked his head, deliberately provoking. “I was thinking I was offering to fight her.”
“Queens don’t fight consorts.”
“That’s hard to believe.”
Her eyes narrowed, conveying cold threat. “When I fight her, don’t interfere.”
Resentment turned into fury, and he flared his spines. “If she leaves a scratch on you, I’ll rip her apart.”
He could tell it was taking a good deal of her control not to just slap him in the head. “Moon—”
“You knew what I was when you brought me here.” He hissed in pure frustration. “I’m not like them. I never will be.”
Jade’s tail lashed, but his words seem to strike home. She regarded him steadily, and the growl had left her voice when she said, “You can pretend to be like them while we’re here.”
Stricken, Moon looked away. That was… not an unreasonable request. He just didn’t know why he couldn’t grant it. You provoked Ash, and you’ve walked into enough strange places to know better. But he had spent so many turns trying to fit in to whatever group he was with, trying to conform to expectations he barely understood. It was as if he had used up all his patience for it, and had none left for his own people. “I can’t pretend anymore.”
Jade shook her head, her tail still twitching. But she sounded resigned. “Ash is young.”
He faced her again. “So are you.”
Jade tilted her head in irony. “I’m bigger. I’m stronger. And I’ve fought in earnest. She hasn’t.”
A warrior landed on the floor of the well and shifted to groundling as she walked through the arch. It was Willow, who had welcomed them in the greeting hall. She stopped a few paces away and addressed Jade. “Tempest wanted me to speak to you.”
Jade’s mouth set in a grim line. “Go on.”
“This wasn’t planned.” Willow twitched, uncomfortable. “Ash is the youngest daughter queen in the court, and rash with it. She was goaded by her sisters and their warriors, who are just as foolish as she is.”
Jade’s spines twitched uneasily. This had to be a generous admission of fault on Tempest’s part, even if it was being made through her warrior. Apparently it required an admission in return, because Jade said, “My consort is accustomed to defending himself. He didn’t realize she meant to make a childish insult, not a real threat.”
Moon looked down, resisting the urge to dig at the floor with his claws. He had realized it; he just hadn’t cared.
Willow hesitated, then added, “I know Tempest would rather this challenge not take place.”
Jade inclined her head. “Tell her if Ash doesn’t appear, I won’t pursue her. If she does appear… I won’t kill her.”
Relief flickered in Willow’s expression. “I’ll tell Tempest. Thank you.”
They went through the colony’s greeting hall, outside to the open platform they had landed on when they had first arrived. Stone waited there in groundling form, his opaque expression somehow conveying a deep disgust with all of them, but especially Moon.
There was no one else on the platform, and only a few warriors in flight, circling near the outer barrier of thorns. Jade walked forward, crouched, and took to the air; hard flaps of her wings carried her out away from the colony’s platforms. She banked before the thorn barrier and began to circle. The patrolling warriors stayed well away from her.