“There, I ate it,” he said finally, shoving the last empty plate away. The meat sat in his stomach like a rock. “Are you happy?”
“Do I look happy?” Stone paced on the far side of the bowl hearth. “I turn my back for two heartbeats and the court falls apart. All that trouble to get us back to our home colony and then this happens, you miserable, ungrateful children. I should never have bred in the first place.”
This had been a recurring theme since leaving Malachite and the others in the queens’ hall. Moon was right: Stone’s view of Opal Night’s request for Moon’s return was radically different than anyone else’s. Stone seemed to think that Indigo Cloud had had the option of simply refusing and had only given in out of some desire to personally irritate him. Moon had earlier pointed out that he had suggested simply refusing and the others had said it was impossible, but by this point he had given up trying to argue rationally. He just said, “I’m not related to you.”
“And I should have known your whole bloodline would be crazy.” Stone stopped and glared down at Moon. “Did any other queen touch you?”
“Sort of.” At Stone’s expression, he explained, “Tempest hit me in the face. But I threw a kettle at her and made a joke about her dead sister, so I was asking for it.”
“That’s all right.” Stone resumed pacing. “But don’t tell Jade. We’ve got enough to worry about.”
“She’s really coming?”
“Of course she’s coming—” Stone stopped pacing again, frowning. “You didn’t think she was.”
Moon looked down at the hearth. His throat went tight. “We had to stop when one of the warriors was hurt, and we were three days late. Jade said she’d start the day after we left, and when she wasn’t here when we arrived…” He was still having trouble believing this was really happening. He had been trying to make himself accept the fact that he had been discarded again, that he would never see anyone from Indigo Cloud, and then Stone had walked in and the world had changed. Not very different from how the world had changed when Stone had first found him with the Cordans in the eastern jungle.
Stone sat on his heels so they were closer to eye level. “Why did you think she wasn’t coming?”
“I told you, she wasn’t here.” That didn’t really answer Stone’s question, but then Moon couldn’t answer it. Not in any way that made sense to anyone other than him. “And she had Ember.”
Stone looked honestly baffled. “Who?”
“The consort Emerald Twilight gave her to replace me!”
“Oh, the kid.” Stone dismissed Ember with a wave of his hand. “He’s your problem. I’ve raised enough kids, I’m not doing another one.”
Moon sat there a moment, too floored to respond. He shook his head impatiently, trying to get his scattered thoughts together. “You said there was an accident but no one was hurt. What happened? Was it another platform collapse?”
Stone’s sharp gaze didn’t waver, for long enough that Moon started to feel like prey and had to fight the urge to growl. Then Stone finally relented and said, “No, it was a hunting accident.”
Relief made Moon break out into a sweat, then he realized what Stone had said. “A hunting accident?”
“Two young hunters went exploring on one of the platforms a couple of trees away and walked right into a hibernating predator.” Stone absently scratched the back of his neck. “We used to call them ‘snatchers.’ They look like snakes, but with long arms. Not much scent, and don’t make a lot of noise when they move. This one wasn’t moving until the idiots woke it up. Fortunately the warrior patrol heard them and held it off until Jade got there.” He added, as if it was an unimportant detail, “Bone said it was a good forty paces long.”
“Forty paces? But what—” Moon had the feeling Stone was leaving something out. “Why did that keep her from leaving? Did she think there were more?”
“She killed it, but she broke her right arm and cut up her shoulder.”
Moon shoved to his feet. “You said no one was hurt!”
“I didn’t want to tell you in front of them.” Stone jerked his head toward the doorway. “I preferred your crazy bloodline thinking I had a queen on her way to back me up.”
It was Moon’s turn to pace, to fight the nervous urge to bust out of here and head back to Indigo Cloud immediately. “I should have been there.”
“That was actually my point,” Stone said, his voice dry.
Moon ignored that. “She can’t fly? For how long?”
“Getting the break knocked her out and she went into her Arbora form. Heart was afraid if she shifted before she healed, it would translate to wing damage. From the time we got back to the colony…” Stone looked thoughtful. “She should be almost healed up by now. If I can get your damn birthqueen to let us leave in the morning, we can probably meet her on the way, before she gets too far.”
Moon stopped, staring at one of the wall carvings without seeing it. Leave in the morning, go back to Indigo Cloud, go home. If someone had said that to him yesterday, if he had thought there was any real chance of it, he would have sprung at it like a starving predator at fresh meat.
And Jade hadn’t lied about coming after him. None of this changed the fact that Moon hadn’t produced a clutch yet, but maybe with Ember there now, Moon’s shortcoming in that area didn’t matter as much. Whatever it was, the smart thing to do was to get back to Indigo Cloud as soon as possible, and work on becoming so entrenched there that getting rid of him would be far more difficult.
But he couldn’t. He said, “I can’t go back. Not yet.”
Stone said, ominously, “What?”
Moon faced him. “There’s a Fell flight heading for a groundling city. A groundling city so unprepared they won’t even know to run away until it’s too late. And it’s only a day’s flight from the outskirts of the Reaches. We just can’t ignore it.” He couldn’t believe Stone didn’t see that.
Stone growled under his breath. “I know, I know. I just don’t want Indigo Cloud involved with it.”
So Stone did see it. “What, were you going to take me to Jade and then turn around and come back here?”
“I was considering it,” he admitted. “If one Fell flight succeeds here, the others will follow. We’ll have to deal with them sooner or later.”
He was right, and the thought made Moon’s insides cold. “So we should stay and help.”
Stone pushed to his feet and stepped close, and made his words an emphatic order. “I want you out of this, and I don’t want Jade anywhere near it.”
“Why? We’ve both killed rulers. And Jade—”
“You idiot. This flight is probably coming here because it wants to make crossbreed Raksura.” Stone hissed. “A few ruler-queens like Ranea would make it easier for the Fell to take on the Reaches again.”
Moon turned away, sudden tension making his back teeth ache. More reason to make sure this flight was destroyed utterly. He muttered, “Stop calling me an idiot.”
“Stop acting like one,” Stone said, but without much heat.
Moon leaned his shoulder against the wall, making himself think with his head and not his claws. “Maybe this flight is related to the one that came after Indigo Cloud.” The flight which had destroyed the groundling city of Saraseil, who had used their cross-breed mentor-dakti to track Moon across time, to predict that he would one day go to Indigo Cloud. Maybe one of the mentor-dakti escaped and predicted I’d come here. The thought didn’t help his still queasy stomach.