Root had asked Moon that once, what felt like a lifetime ago. Chime had countered the question with “what is the wind like?” but Moon wanted to give Shade a better answer. But summing up the totality of the wind would have been easier. He said, “It was hard, but…it wasn’t all bad. I saw a lot of different places, and people.”
“But there weren’t any other Raksura?”
“I didn’t know where to look for them.” He turned back, and Shade’s baffled expression almost made him smile. “The Three Worlds is a big place.”
Shade seemed as if he was having trouble imagining it. “Did you live with a groundling court?”
“Sometimes. But when they realized what I was, I always had to leave.” Shade’s confusion deepened, and Moon explained gently, “In the east, where I was living, the groundlings are afraid of Raksura. They think we’re Fell.”
“But we—you don’t look like a Fell!”
“To them we all do.”
Shade’s brow furrowed as he turned that over. “I see. But…you must have been lonely.”
It was a surprise that Shade saw that so readily. He had always been surrounded by his court, protected by a powerful reigning queen who had fought her way through a Fell flight and killed a progenitor to retrieve the last of her dead consort’s offspring. But maybe he was aware of what could have happened to him.
Still considering it, Shade said, “The only place I’d like to see outside the court is Aventera. The warriors described it to me, and it sounds very strange. But I’m not sure I want to meet groundlings, if they’re going to be afraid of me.”
“Aventera.” Moon hadn’t heard the name before, but he could make a guess. “Is that the groundling city that Celadon went to?”
“Yes.” Shade yawned, and got to his feet, the book tucked under his arm. “I’d better go back now.” He hesitated, shy and uncertain and very like an ordinary young Raksura. “Can we talk again?”
Moon hesitated, but he was surprised to realize what his answer was. “Yes.”
Shade nodded and disappeared down the passage.
Moon waited until Shade’s steps had faded, then he went down to his own bower. Stone hadn’t moved, and Moon lay down beside him. The fur still held the shape of his body, though he had been gone long enough for it to lose the warmth. Stone didn’t comment, and after a moment, Moon said, “Did you hear all that?”
“Yes.” He was silent for so long, Moon thought that was all he was going to say. Then Stone added, “Not sure I would have done it, in their place. It would have just made it that much worse, if they’d turned wrong when they got older.”
It was a strange thing that Opal Night had done, that Malachite had done, raising these changeling children instead of killing them. Moon wondered how many courts would have done it. He thought most Raksura would have considered it mercy to kill them. Moon might have thought it himself, if he hadn’t met Lithe and Shade.
Hard as it would have been to kill something that must have looked very like a baby Raksura, it would have been much, much worse to watch it turn from a child into a monster. But Opal Night had taken the risk. Maybe Malachite saw it as another path to victory over the Fell. Raising the crossbreeds as Raksura, to show that Raksuran blood was stronger. “So you think they were right?”
Stone rolled over, clearly putting an end to the conversation. “I think they were lucky.”
Moon woke at dawn, when Stone was stirring. Russet and two other Arbora must have been listening for them to move, because they brought a kettle and pot for tea immediately. Russet lingered as if she wanted to say something, but left when Stone glared narrowly at her.
Moon picked up the pressed cake of tea and the wooden tool used to scrape it off into the pot. “What was that about?”
“I don’t like interfering Arbora.” Stone took the cake and the scraper away, and moved the pot out of Moon’s reach. He was particular about tea.
“The Arbora at Indigo Cloud aren’t interfering?” Because that hadn’t been Moon’s experience.
Stone sniffed at the tea dubiously, then set it aside and got his own out of his pack. “It’s different when they’re related to you.”
Moon waited until Stone had the first cup down before he said, “I want to stay. I want to find out what Opal Night is going to do about the Fell and the groundling city.”
Stone hissed in pure irritation and deliberately set the cup down. It was a delicate blue ceramic, with bands of silver gray and dark green, in a complex pattern that would probably make the Arbora at Indigo Cloud sick with envy. “Are you going to say that to Jade when she gets here?”
Until last night, Jade’s arrival had felt like something from a Hassi creation myth: much longed for but expected to be apocryphal. Even knowing that she would be here soon, Moon was still having trouble thinking logically about it. He didn’t answer, and Stone continued, “And if I can’t get you out of here, do you think your crazy mother who had you dragged all the way across the Reaches is just going to hand you over when Jade asks?”
When Stone said “mother,” Moon still thought first of Sorrow and not Malachite, and it took him a moment to answer. “She doesn’t have any reason to keep me here.”
A voice from behind him said, “You don’t want to know us at all, do you?”
Moon twitched around. Celadon stood in the doorway. Distracted, he hadn’t heard her arrival, but he felt fairly certain it hadn’t gone unnoticed by Stone. Irritated at being caught unawares, at her for existing, at Stone, he told her, “No, I don’t. Why should I?”
Celadon stepped forward, spines flicking in agitation. “We’re your bloodline. We’re responsible for you—”
Moon shoved to his feet. “You left me to die in a forest. That’s what you’re responsible for.”
“That wasn’t me, I didn’t leave you! I was a fledgling myself, whether you remember or not.” Celadon’s spines snapped up, trembling with fury. “I lost you, I lost our clutchmates, the others in the nurseries, I lost our father, I lost Twist and Yarrow, the teachers who took care of us, almost everyone I knew.” She turned away, and her tail lashed angrily. “You are the only thing I’ve ever gotten back from that time.”
“It’s too late!” Moon snarled at her. He knew he wasn’t being fair, but the mix of anger and pain wouldn’t let him admit it. “I can’t be him again, I’m something else.”
“I don’t expect you to!” She rounded on him, baring her fangs. They glared at each other, then Celadon took a deep breath, forcing her spines down, deliberately calming herself. “I know you’re different now.” Reluctantly, she added, “Do you hate us so much?”
“I don’t hate you,” Moon said, though he wasn’t sure if that was true. “I just don’t know why you want me here.”
She hissed, exasperated. “Because you’re part of us.”
“It’s too late for that, too.”
She watched him, her spines going completely flat as the last of the anger left her expression. Finally, she said, “Malachite wants to see you.” She tilted her head toward Stone. “And the line-grandfather.”
Stone set his teacup down. “Good.”
Celadon led them to the queens’ hall, where they had argued last night. Moon was assuming this was the queens’ hall for Malachite’s bloodline, and that Onyx and her daughters had a separate set as far away as possible.
In the day, shafts of light fell down from the well high overhead to light the carvings winding up the wall. Malachite waited for them, sitting to one side of the bowl hearth with several Arbora, including Lithe and Russet, behind her. Also present was Malachite’s warrior Rise, a few other older female warriors and, surprisingly, Shade. Shade was the only one who smiled when Moon walked in.