Her breath was hot and humid, smelling of raw meat.
Everything was dark.
I don't have the courage. I can't open my eyes.
The sound of sharp teeth chewing muscles with relish. Crunching of bones and cartilage.
Come on, Arek. One. Two. Three. Open!
Amber eyes, so large they filled my entire field of vision.
"Mh, awake?"
Lirka. Little Lirka. Her pointed nose brushed against mine; she pulled back sharply, taking a fierce bite of the chicken leg she held tightly in her hand.
The back of my neck and my head were warm. I blinked twice to make sure this wasn't a dream. I was lying down, my head resting on her legs now, not on Cora's.
I threw my arms up, wrapping them around Lirka's small waist. I squeezed with everything I had, as she might vanish any second. Her gaze seemed... no, she just took another bite of the drumstick.
"How are you?"
"I was better before, honestly." I answered sharply.
The world flipped and hitting the wooden floor was almost a relief. I wasn't dreaming after all.
My hands were shaking. My whole body was shaking.
I couldn't make them stop.
Lirka jumped to her feet on the bench she'd just dumped me from. Chin high, ears perked upward.
"You was better in Cora chest, mh? Rude! Tsk!"
She leaped out of my view with a predator's grace, chicken leg stuck in her mouth.
"No, I meant before getting knocked out for the second time in a row. How long was I out this time? Ahh... never mind."
I brought my hands to my eyes, pressing my palms against the eye sockets.
My breath was short and way, way too fast. It burned in my throat.
Calm down. Calm. You're here. Not there.
The floor under my hands was solid. Cold.
I let out a long breath, deep, almost controlled except for a small tremor at the back of my throat.
Were they dreams? Terrible dreams. At least one was.
The floor beneath me was hard, even, steady. This was reality, cold just like the blade that, in the dream or in a future I refuse to accept, pierced through my ribs. Or was the past? Another life?
Emma. Sipar. Dead. And Lirka... Lirka transformed...
My breath caught in my throat. The images of the massacre wouldn't leave; they stuck to the insides of my eyelids like ink stains.
When? When does it really happen? Think.
The dream. The Red Moon stark against the sky, the tall tower. A shiver ran down my spine.
The Red Moon rises every six years.
The pressure on my eye sockets was too much. Images of eyes exploding in a glob of blood and slime kept tormenting me. I shot upright, barely missing the massive wooden table next to the bench I'd just fallen from.
The Red Moon. I need to know when it rises next.
I looked around the room. The kitchen was shrouded in evening dimness. The smell of roasted chicken saturated the air along with the sharp scent of the herbs from the garden bed. The ones with thin green leaves. Rosm... something.
Mom. Doesn't matter now.
The thought of my mother moved my fingers almost by instinct. They slipped into my pocket and found that shape, reassuring and terrifying at the same time. The fang was still there.
I looked around the room. A pot bubbled lazily over the fire.
Sipar will know. He always knows everything. Is he okay? Yeah, yeah, nothing's happened yet. Cora or Tyeron must know for sure too.
Lirka was leaning at the window, standing on a chair because she was still too small to reach without help. She gnawed on the chicken bone, now cleaned of every trace of meat.
"Lirka, can you tell me when the next Red Moon is?"
"What's Red Moon? Moon white," she said, going back to staring at the dim light outside the glass.
Her profile lit up repeatedly. Strange lights came and went from outside, flickering reflections dancing on her pale skin.
Obviously, asking her wasn't the solution.
"Listen, do you know where the others are? Sipar?"
"Mage went away. Other fool like you is in library with blue girl. Emma is outside, makes fire. Angry. Very so." She gestured vaguely outside with a tilt of her chin.
Blue girl? So something is real in these dreams…
Emma was outside. I got up and went to the window, ignoring the lingering pain from the collapse earlier. Every movement, a small agony, the cuts I'd gotten during the battle still burning.
"Other fool like me, you said? Who's that? Sipas?"
"Yes, he said wants to study together blue girl. Emma very angry. Right." She nodded sagely, with the solemnity only children have when judging things important to them.
I leaned toward the window. The glass was warm under my fingers.
Emma was in the center of the garden, right next to the brazier. Her gaze was intense and her sleeves rolled up over her strong arms. She was so...
Alive.
Seeing her there, whole, without that crimson stain choking her breath, nearly stopped my heart.
She threw her arms toward the brazier in unison, then separated them with a sharp gesture. Two tongues of flame broke away from the burning coals, rising toward the sky that was turning black now, that uncertain color between azure and deep blue where the first stars already dotted the darkest part.
The flames spun high, chasing each other in a wild dance, then collided and burst in a shower of sparks that lit the entire garden for an eternal instant.
Emma brought an arm to her forehead, wiping away sweat. Her breathing was heavy, almost visible in the evening chill.
The door behind me opened; its creak was new in this still-too-new house.
"I need to put some oil on these hinges."
Father Tyeron's unmistakable voice gave me immediate reassurance. It was a solid sound, capable of chasing away for a moment the smell of blood that still haunted my nostrils.
"Father, could you tell me..."
"Arek, I'm in a bit of a rush, I just need to grab... ah, there it is."
He opened a drawer in the small cabinet near the door, pulled out a large brass key, and shut it with a sharp sound, wood against wood that echoed in the room. He disappeared quickly, leaving the door wide open behind him.
"I guess I'll have to ask someone else, then."
From beyond the threshold, his voice echoed down the hallway, calling me.
"Arek, come. We can talk while I get things done."
I followed. The question was already forming in my head.
I couldn't exactly say I'd seen the future; they'd think I was crazy or assume some weird effect from the Mark. Or the fall. Or the… whatever.
I'll just ask about the moon. Simple.
Once I know if I have time or not, I'll decide what to do.
My hands seemed big, bigger than these. My palms. Garden dirt still stuck under the nails. Yet in the dream they were dirty with something else. My fingers tingled at the memory. Like the blood was still there.
From the hallway I had entered, I turned left, finding the door leading to the adjacent church wide open.
"Come, Arek, I'm here." The priest's voice echoed between the precious marble walls. The air was colder between these marble walls.
Light filtered through the large stained glass window, still intact unlike in my dream, where I'd heard it shatter into a thousand pieces. That evening light cast strange and distorted shadows in the church, stretching the shapes of the pillars on the floor. The great five-sided altar, placed right in the center of the room, loomed taller and more imposing than usual.
"Father?"
My voice echoed between the pews and the marble. I finally saw him near the great entrance door and rushed toward him.
"Father, do you know when..."
"What impression did he make on you?" he interrupted me, without turning.
"Who?"
"What do you mean who? Magnus, obviously."
His fingers searched for the lock on the wooden box hanging from the wall near the entrance. He raised the large brass key and slid it into the lock; they fit perfectly.
"Slimy, petty, opportunistic..."
"Ahaha!" His laughter echoed between the five walls of the great hall. His big green eyes moved from the lock to me, while his hand stayed still on the key.
"He didn't make a good impression on you, did he?"
"Let's just say the attack didn't help. After that, the fact he knocked me out using Eteria magic, despite everyone telling him no, made things worse. But what really pissed me off was that stunt with the coin purse. Waving it around in front of everyone, then putting it back in his pocket and blackmailing us just because maybe he can help us... I know he's your friend, Father, but excuse me for saying it: he's disgusting."
For a moment Father Tyeron froze and I was afraid I'd said too much. But the smile that lit up his face shortly after and the laugh that followed reassured me.
"Ahahah! You're right, Magnus has always been terrible at first impressions."
The key turned and a metallic click cut off the conversation.
"I remember when he met Cora's mother he took a punch straight to the nose."
They knew Cora's mother? Didn't she die years ago? Didn't they come from Lumia?
That piece of information lodged itself among my thoughts, distracting me for a moment from my urgency.
"See, Magnus likes to show off and has too high an opinion of himself, I admit." He opened the lid of the wooden box.
"His methods are unorthodox and he doesn't care in the slightest what others think."
His hand entered the box naturally.
"But his intelligence and his knowledge are respected even by the King. And I, who've known him for at least five or six moons, can tell you that, looking past his rough edges, I've rarely in life found a person with higher morality and loyalty than Magnus."
He pulled his fist from the box. Inside it was a bulging leather sack. He opened his palm in front of me; the appearance and the metallic jingle were unmistakable.
"But this is Magnus's coin purse?"
"He doesn't like to appear generous. He must have slipped the purse in here when no one was looking." He then rubbed the back of his neck, looking at the thin slot through which the faithful could insert offerings.
"I think he even used magic to get the whole purse through. It never would've fit otherwise."
Of course. Leaving the purse and using magic made it way too obvious it was him, a noble gesture hidden behind a bastard's mask.
"I think I can tell you with certainty that you can give him a bit of trust, at least until proven otherwise." He closed the box and pulled out the brass key with a resolute gesture.
"What did you want to ask me, Arek?"
It might seem strange. But I had to know.
"I was curious when the next Red Moon is."
"The next Red Moon? It's three days from now. The whole city is preparing, are you impatient?"
My heart was clasped by cold invisible fingers.
Three days. We die in three days?