Book Review: When the Moon Hatched

Title: When the Moon Hatched
Author: Sarah A. Parker
Genre: Romance, Fantasy, Romantasy

What It’s About: Raeve acts as a demure traveling bard to a local pub in her city, and the guards let her through to the club. On her way up the stairs, she runs into a man wearing a cloak, and when he tries to reach for her veil, she pushes him away, before telling him that this is part of her act. She enters the room, looks around for the man she hopes is there, and makes quick friends with the pregnant musician, Levvi, who warns her against the man that Raeve is looking for. Unfortunately, her cloaked stranger has entered the locale and has joined them. The two start singing and making music together, and Raeve’s voice is captivating enough that it captures everyone’s attention, including Tarik Relaken, the man she’s looking for, and the cloaked stranger.

After playing for several hours, Raeve takes a break in the bathroom to freshen up, where she is told by one of the elementals—some can hear the songs of the four elements and so they wear colored beads that correspond with the elements—that it’s unfortunate she is a Null (someone who can’t hear the songs of the elementals), because she has a beautiful voice and she would have had the Elemental god eating out of her own hand. Raeve thanks her, and heads out after the woman, only to run into Tarik, who has taken an interest in Raeve. He tries to force her to drink with him, and she thinks for a moment that maybe she will be able to get her work done here by locking the door, except they are interrupted by the cloaked stranger.

Raeve says good-bye to Levvi, leaving her with the money that they have made that night as she clearly needs it more. Levvi tries to get Raeve to let her and her mate walk her to her home because of Tarik’s interest in Raeve, but Raeve convinces her that she doesn’t have far to go. So she heads out, and Tarik follows her across the city trying to match his footsteps to hers. She takes him to a section of the city that is high up, and there, she sings Clode’s (goddess of air) song to take Tarik’s oxygen from his lungs when he gets close enough to her. She slices his hand off, and kills him slowly as she tells him how they found out about all of the horrible things that he had done—his own mate had told them about it after he continued to abuse his son. He has criminal businesses that basically use children to fight each other and they are not exactly well taken care of. Raeve needed his hand to open up all of the cages, freeing the children, who were often either stolen or sold off by their parents who couldn’t afford them. She then throws him over the city walls, and he gets impaled on a stone formation in the ground.

Raeve begins walking back towards home, when she gets intercepted by the cloaked stranger, who tells her that he can smell the iron dagger she is holding against his private parts. He smartly steps away, and she tells him that she won’t tell him her name. As she walks past, he makes a comment that someone is impaled on one of the stone formation, and Raeve makes a comment back that she hasn’t seen a man impaled there as she just came from that location. The man agrees that some men deserve to be dead/ killed for their actions, and Raeve decides to let the man live. She walks through the city, throws the hand through a garbage chute where she receives confirmation that the package has been received, and lays down on the ground, thinking about things. She then looks at the letter that she received before her singing stint and it is from Essi—a girl that she saved from the undercity, and who lives with her as a roommate. Essi needs Raeve to bring a couple of things from a store in the Undercity, so Raeve makes her way down to meet with Ruse, who owns a store. Ruse gets her all of the items that Raeve is requesting thanks to Essi, and Raeve uses her money—whatever is left over after Fiur Du Ath (the organization opposing the monarchy that she works for) takes money from her for the operation against Tarik, as it was something that she wanted to do. Ruse tells her that Sereme wants to meet with her right now.

So Raeve heads up to meet with Sereme, who she strongly dislikes, as Sereme had made her do a blood oath that lets Sereme control Raeve through this bottle on a chain that she carries. Sereme does use that bottle a couple of times to cause Raeve some pain, but ultimately tells Raeve that she is ungrateful for the fact that Sereme had saved her life and has uses for her unique powers. Sereme then tells her that they will not be going after Rekk Zharos, a bounty hunter who has come to town in search of Fiur Du Ath, though Raeve desperately wants to because he never fails to come through with who he is hunting. Sereme tells her to lay low, and tells her that the Elding had taken a liking to Raeve quite a bit, which is why she got her mission approved. Raeve walks out before Sereme is done, telling her that she doesn’t care if Sereme tries to use the vial and torture her again. Raeve heads home, which is in a location that is be-spelled by magic to only admit Essi and Raeve into the house. There, she encounters Essi and eats some of the food Essi has made. Essi goes through the ingredients that she had requested, and realizes that one of them is missing, so Raeve explains that it got wiped out in blood spatter in the letter. The two talk, and Essi reveals that she made some glue using ore that comes from a poop of an animal, and Raeve doesn’t want to have the item made for her, even though it would protect her; after all, she has been told to lay low now in town as a result of Rekk’s arrival. Essi then tells her that she sees her as family, and that she cannot lose Raeve, but Raeve is unable to return the feelings because she finds that family complicates things.

She goes into her room, and pulls out a box containing an old letter that says I Need You—it had come to her while she was out and about in town some time ago, but then she sent it off in hopes that it will find its rightful owner only for the letter to find her again when she woke up the next morning. She thinks about why she can’t let herself open her feelings to let people like Essi in and tell them that she cares.

Kaan Vaegor meets with Princess Kyzari, his niece, in the same club lounge that he saw that woman who he strongly believes is someone he once knew. He confirms that Kyzari had escaped her father’s eye, to go out, and she tells him that she fell in love with the man inside the stone; that she wants to free him without dying herself for that reason. Kaan sees her pain and tells her that it is impossible—the stone diadem is only able to leave her head once she dies, just like it did to her mother, and that there is a reason as to why the gods have granted only her family line to be strong enough to carry that diadem.

Raeve wakes up in her room, and hears a thump upstairs, so she tells Nee—her letter, that only shows “Nee” when folded—to stay behind, while she goes up into their kitchenette, where she finds Essi bleeding profusely through the abdomen. Raeve realizes that Essi had gone to the Undercity despite her warnings, and Essi reveals to her that someone wearing a red cape, and walks with a clack is the one who stabbed her in the abdomen. She asks Raeve to please burn her so that she can stop being cold, and as Essi dies, Raeve tells her that she loves her and that she is the only family she never had. Then Raeve covers Essi up with a blanket, heads into her room, where she gets dressed up and then she writes back in the letter, “No you don’t,” before activating the returning rune in Nee and sending the letter out the door. Raeve then leaves the place and burns it all down, including Essi’s body in the room. She realizes that Essi had dropped her bag of things that she brought with her from the undercity, in which she finds a knife from Rekk, where it becomes clear that he has come searching for her. She promptly passes out into the darkness, out of all of the pain of losing someone that she has loved.

The Other stalks the dark belly of the Undercity, and finds the soldiers that had laid a trap—she over hears them talk about Raeve coming to the location with a contingent, only for them to know that Raeve is already there; The Other had inhabited her body and is being very mindful of everything that Raeve does. The Other uses her magic from Clode—the air goddess to kill many of the soldiers in the arena before they even realize what is happening—and later she uses her magic from Bulder—the earth god—when many more soldiers keep coming in and kills many of them. Suddenly, there is a piercing pain in her shoulder, and she realizes that she has been pierced by iron with no one other than Rekk Zharos. The Other gets trapped, and eventually captured by Rekk, though she manages to bite off Rekk’s finger in the process.

Raeve wakes up in shackles, strung up in a room, where it reeks of blood and realizes that she had been captured by Rekk, who reveals that her eyes had changed color—they were black before, and now they are blue. He ask her to give up information on Fiur Du Ath, but she refuses to do so and takes his whippings instead, where he destroys her body.

Raeve then wakes up in a cell, where she is prisoner Seventy-Three, and cleans out her teeth—there was a piece of Rekk’s finger left stuck between two of them. She is in a lot of pain from all of the whipping, as her back is completely destroyed, but when the food cart comes in, she does muster the strength to stand up and sign for the food as well as provide her fingerprint to them. She makes friends with Wrook, a furry creature with claws that is called a woetoe. Wrook is in the cell because he stole something for his master that his master shouldn’t have stolen, and she watches as he digs a hole in his cell, so she gives him her own portion. Suddenly, a Runi—a healer in a white robe—shows up and talks to Wrook about the stolen item, telling Wrook that if he trades the moonshard he stole for a Sabersythe’s tusk, he will get him out. Wrook takes the offer, and the healer starts to head out, only to smell Raeve. When Raeve refuses to come into the light for the man to see her, he breaks open the lock on the prison cell, and enters himself, calls a bit of fire to him, and tells her that she has been mended. He uses a weld with dragon fire that shows a scar on her face that is only visible that way, which is how he knows that she had been melded. He asks her how, but she doesn’t know what he is talking about, and the truthtune who is in prison speaks up telling the King that Raeve has no idea what is going on. Suddenly another Runi comes running in, calling him a Sire, and Raeve realizes that she is talking to one of the Kings, but she doesn’t know which of the three, though she decides that it can’t be the king of the Fade, so it has to be the one of the Burn or the Shade. Soldiers come in and ask the Runi-King what he is doing in that cell because it is forbidden to be there, and he replies that he is checking on her. They reveal that she has two powers—of air and ground—and has killed at least 25 of their men, which is why she is in that cell

The soldiers take her to the Guild of Nobles, where the Chancellor reads out her crimes, which only list 21 killings, but Raeve tells him that it was 25 based on the count of the soldier, and that she wants it added to the record that she bit off Rekk Zharos’s finger. She makes other comments that further make the Chancellor indignant, and he has her confirm that she killed the men that they throw around her as proof, showing her signature for the food along with the writing on these victims. She doesn’t argue with it, and then feigns boredom, telling the guy to make a decision on her death. She calls for death by being cut up and there is a huge portion of the room that offers that to her, but another portion calls for her to be killed by dragons. It is split evenly, so it seems to be a tie, until the Runi-King raises his hand in favor of the dragons, which pisses her off.

She is returned to her cell, and gives her portion of the food to the other prisoner near her, telling him that she is to be killed by dragons at the coliseum. The Runi-King comes to her, and tells her to get up and follow him out. She gets up, and follows him out; they start bickering along the way, and he tells her that she has made a mistake in going for the sentence where they cut her, because being killed by Moltenmaws is the correct answer. He leads her to a different room, where a different healer, Bhea, has been compensated to help heal Raeve. Bhea admits that she knows that Raeve is sentenced to be killed by dragons, but still wants to help heal her and make her feel better. Raeve decides to agree to a truce with the King, and strips her shirt off, where Bhea sees more than just the lashes that Raeve has—Bhea has dragon sight, so she sees all the runes and more in Raeve’s skin. Bhea begins to heal her and clean her up, but it is extremely painful and by the time they finish, it is almost aurora rise, which means it’s time for Raeve to be taken to the Coliseum, but they have to get the iron pin that is still embedded in Raeve shoulder. The King makes a decision about how to do it—leave it in Raeve but put on a salve that will disinfect and heal it at least temporarily. Raeve is returned to her cell, finding Wrook gone, and not too long later, Uno shows up. Uno is a creature called a miskunn that is super rare. Uno tells Raeve that Sereme had commanded Ruse to use Uno to get her out of the cell. Raeve tells Uno to get out, and then tells her that if she doesn’t, the soldiers will come after Ruse, knowing that Uno will do everything that she can to protect Ruse. Uno has a vision, where she sees that coming to pass—Soldiers searching for and finding Ruse and Sereme, and killing them, if she lets Raeve out of the cell. Uno leaves her with a mark on her face—the small dragon moon that Raeve loves so much—and heads back to Ruse.

Raeve is taken by the soldiers to the Coliseum and tied up to a stake. There are thousands of spectators, including some that she knows from her time in Fiur Da Ath, though they don’t make any revelations to anyone that they know here. The Moltenmaws start to circle around the coliseum, and at least two of them show up in front of her, but do not do anything to her yet. At the same time, the Queen shows up and Raeve is surprised at the Queen’s reaction—one that seems to be of surprise and recognition—and the Queen starts ordering the soldiers around. When nothing happens, the Queen starts singing Clode’s song to push the Moltenmaws away from Raeve. Suddenly, a massive Sabersythe lands on the coliseum walls, chasing away the Moltenmaws, and he grabs her and the stake into his mouth. Then the Sabersythe flies them, with her in his mouth, getting wet from his saliva, before landing and spitting her out (after nearly killing her) in front of the King, whom she now realizes is Kaan. Kaan cuts her out of the stake, while they trade barbs, though he tells her to please keep the truce for a little while longer, and then out of the shackles, though he binds her wrists with rope. He tells her that he wants to have the iron removed from her shoulder because she is getting an infection from it, though Raeve is stubborn. He finally throws her over his back and gets up onto his dragon, Rygun, before giving her the option of either sitting facing him or having her back against him. Raeve decides to sit facing forward, and then they soar up into the air, which surprisingly brings her a ton of joy. He asks her if she is okay, and when she doesn’t answer for a moment, he prompts again, calling her Moonbeam—something that he has done on and off over their meetings since his discovery of her in the cells. Raeve finally answers and tells him that she is okay, while she wonders at her feelings around being in the air.

Kaan takes her to a lake, where they wash, and the water heals her. He also removes the iron pin in her shoulder, and tells her to let it get healed by the water’s healing properties. When Raeve leaves the water, she comes across a dragon scale, and hides it in her hand. Kaan then walks her around the area, picking up vegetables before taking her into a hut, one that was his mom’s hut. He makes a stew for them both, and at first Raeve is pretty sour about it all, but eventually she realizes that she’s being a horrible houseguest in his own mom’s house, and that usually there are gifts given in The Burn for visiting a house. Kaan tells her that she can give him her name as a gift, and she tells him Raeve without a last name, causing him to blanch. They end up laughing while eating, but then he spoon feeds her the stew so that she doesn’t make a mess as he has kept her wrists tied, though he had taken off three of the four iron shackles around her arms. Kaan gives her the room that belonged to him, and tells her that she can try escaping but the only door out will be the one at the back, and that is if she can make it past him. Raeve lays in the room, cuts apart the rope binding her wrists using the dragon scale, and when she’s certain that Kaan is asleep, she goes down, only to end up on top of him. They are close to having sex, when she tells him that she doesn’t want it to mean anything, and that shuts him down, with him telling her to get out. Raeve runs back to her room, and then escapes out through the window of the hut, into the trellis, before running back to the location where they had left Rygun. She decides to climb down the sheer cliff to walk down the river side back to the Fade where she wants to kill Rekk Zharos, after she hears a roar coming from the cabin—she doesn’t have a lot of time to escape and run away. As Raeve scales down the sheer cliff, she gets swept up in the rain, and later finds herself picked up by two men from a clan in the plains. She vomits out a lot of her food, and when she decides to head back into the water away from these men whose language she does not speak nor understand, she is stopped by a Fate Herder—an animal that is invisible until it makes itself known to show you your fate and does actually push you. The animal corrals her in the direction of the village, which she soon realizes belongs to the Johkull Clan, who had taken over the crater made from Orvah’s fall.

In the village, everyone drops down to their knees upon her arrival, and when she tries to step out of line, the Fate Herder pushes her back, so she has no choice but to go forward until she is greeted by the King and Queen, who is feeding her babe. They have her cleansed, and one of the women helping her clean tells her everything that they are doing and what is going on—she is to go through a Tookah Trial. This makes Raeve nervous, but they walk her to a tent, where she lays flowers next to Orvah’s sleeping form, and when she reaches out to touch him, she gets the feeling that she shouldn’t touch him and he wants to be left alone—so she walks out and never looks back again. They walk her to the ring, where two men give her their necklaces called màlmr, and then they go to fight each other. It turns out that they are fighting each other to the death in order to win her and get to procreate with her, as the seer had seen that the children borne of this warrior and Raeve (who is being referred to as Kholu) will be the ones who stop the moons from falling and ensure that the Johkull Clan survives. Hock wins the battle, killing his opponent, and brings the head of his opponents to Raeve, thinking that she will accepting him, as the female explains what his strengths are and what he will do. Raeve gets upset and rejects him, asking that she get to fight for her own freedom. The Fate Herder does not stop her from fighting, so she goes ahead and fights against Hock, and she manages to frustrate him. He plays dirty though, and throws a venomous snake at her that bites her and causes her to see double. Still, Raeve manages to choke him out, and she knocks him out. While she goes searching for her blade to kill him, he comes after her and tries to get her to yield—he only has to get her to yield to him, while she has to kill him in order to earn her own freedom. Raeve refuses, and he keeps straddling her, yelling at her to yield.

Suddenly, Rygun shows up with Kaan on top of him, and Kaan strides into the battle ring, pulling Hock off her, and they go to yell at each other. Raeve gets brought back to the dais, where the lady tells her that Kaan is yelling at Hock to let her go because she did not yield, while Hock is yelling back that she did, and not backing down to the king, even though Kaan is Hock’s superior—he had been king of the clan before his father had died and he stepped down to give the crown to the current king and to take his place as the King of the Burn. Hock challenges him, and the Seer basically tells them that one of them have to be the victor, and become the male tied to Raeve before she walks out of here. Kaan goes up to her, gives her his malmr—a necklace containing a Sabersythe and Moonplume together—and tells her that he would do anything for her, including making her the highest ranking member of the clan, giving her the freedom to walk away no matter what the outcome of the battle is. Raeve accepts both the malmr and the position, and Kaan goes to fight Hock, coming out victorious and bringing Hock’s head to her. Raeve, who has by this point taken a herb to counteract the poison from the snake, is elated to be free and he takes her onto Rygun, though she passes out from her wounds.

Kaan shows up at the Imperial Stronghold in Dhomm, were Veya comes running to greet him, and is curious as to who he is carrying. She gets surprised when she learns that it is a woman who looks like Elluin—a woman that Kaan loved, and who had left with a letter that broke his heart. Kaan tells her that her name is Raeve, and she is Elluin but that she doesn’t remember any of her past life, though she still has to be there if she is using her middle name. They take her to a Runi named Agni, who is Bhea’s sister—and get Raeve healed, though Agni has to undo the damage to Raeve’s skull, and reform it before she can heal her and thread her flesh. Kaan goes to the fighting ring to let off some steam with Grihm, while Veya stays by her side. When Agni and Veya settle Raeve into her old room—the one she knew as Elluin—Veya tells Agni to not tell Kaan about some of the scars that Raeve has, at least not yet. She then goes and plays Skripi with Pyrok, to whom she reveals that Elluin had a diary and suddenly it seems to be important to find it, so she’s thinking of finding it.

Raeve wakes up, and looks around the room—getting a memory of herself hiding a journal behind the mirror—when suddenly a woman comes into her room eating fruit that makes Raeve’s mouth water. The woman says a few harsh words to Raeve, who lashes back out, and though Raeve has no recollection of this woman, as the woman stomps away, she calls her Veya. This causes Veya to turn around and ask her if she remembers her, though Raeve tells her that she does not, and closes the door on her, while Veya tells her through the door, that she will figure it out and help her. Raeve gets dressed, grabs a candelabra, and then leaves her room, where she eventually finds two men playing a game of Skripi. One of the men offers her a bag, which she gracefully accepts, and she also takes all of the chips that they are eating because they are good. She then follows the man’s directions to find the door, where she encounters guards and she gives one of them the dish from the chips. She then takes the sword from the man, but decides that it doesn’t work for her, so she instead takes the dagger from him, returning the sword. The man from earlier catches up to her, and introduces himself as Pyrok, before telling her that he wants to show her the area as the game got boring.

Pyrok takes her around, and they walk on for a very long time, to the point that Raeve begins to think that he has taken her on a tour. He does grab them a drink, and but then takes her to the Curly Quill, where he tells her to give his regards to Vaughn. Raeve goes in, and encounters Vruhn, who is blind but who is a MindWeft—having the powers to read her thoughts, and mind. He is able to discern what she wants from her thoughts alone—all the weapons, and the regular looking purchases that she wants as well to make it look legitimate. But he also delves deeper into her—seeing her icy lake and the fact that she has suffered so much. He tells her that she can only heal by dealing with the trauma basically, but Raeve is unable and unwilling to look deeper—she does not want to know because it’s all too much for her, and she certainly doesn’t want to have Rayne’s powers. He gets her a bag, along with a notebook and a pin to get the iron shackle off of her, and he offers to send her a letter when her items are ready—making sure to keep them off her books because she doesn’t want Fiur Du Ath to know that she is alive—at least not yet. She then walks out to Pyrok and the two of them go to a bar, where Raeve tries and fails to take the shackle off. Pyrok goes to get more Mead, but Kaan returns with it, and then he takes the shackle off of Raeve’s wrist, as they talk.

Raeve doesn’t want to continue talking with him, and plans to leave through the Charter, so she leaves the bar, and gets caught in the rain. Never having experienced rain before, she is so upset by all of Rayne’s singing and starts crying. Kaan finds her and tells her that he knew another who used to cry with the rain, and tells her that the iron shackle was there as a kindness because it rains so much in this city and he didn’t want her to suffer. He takes her back to the Imperial Stronghold, and into his own room, because he has something to show her. Once they dry off, he takes her down a path to a boulder—at first Raeve doesn’t want to enter because this type of cave is exactly what she would use to assassinate someone, until Kaan tells her to listen, and she hear’s Bulder’s song, which is quite happy and content. She follows Kaan down the stairs, where the air gets cooler and colder, reminding her of home, and finds herself in front of the calcified remains of a dragon. Kaan tells her that this is Slatra, and that he is trying to restore the dragon back because it had shattered apart upon falling down from the sky. She walks around it, and realizes that she had been protected by Slatra—Kaan tells her that most likely Slatra had fed her healing energy all this time before they fell down, and protected her, which is why she is alive. Raeve has a few memories of waking up and seeing someone cart away moonshards, but she does not want to face it, and tells Kaan off, before heading back up the stairs away from him.

Kaan follows her, and tells her that if she wants, she should go, before giving her a bag of Bloodstone—something that is not mined in the Burn and forbidden to do so in this area, though it is the currency in the Fade and the Shade—and tells her to go get her revenge, while calling her Elluin Raeve. She leaves, but before she heads out to the charter hutch, she heads to the western edge of the city, one that continued to draw her attention since her arrival. In the meantime, Kaan gets called away because there is a rabid dragon—the result of a tick—that is killing animals and people in a village. This is his way of giving space to Raeve, after that failed visit to Slatra’s tomb, as he explains to Veya when he runs into her in the hutches. She reveals to him that she is going to the Fade to get Elluin’s diary—one that she had kept all this time—to see if it would help reveal some secrets. He mentions a bracelet to her, and Veya tells him that yes she did let go of it, but she will get it back before she goes to find the diary. He approves her mission and flies off with Rygun to the village, where he kills the rabid dragon and helps the locals with setting things back up. Grihm had gone with him, and at the village, he tells Kaan that he wants to go to Gondragh to get an egg from the silver Sabersythe dragon because he cannot continue without his own, who had died. Kaan agrees to drop him at the hut nearby so that he could go hunting for the egg. Veya, in the meantime, finds herself sitting in a wagon with a woman who travels mountain trails—her only quiet way into the Shade to do what she has to do. Once she is in the city, Veya makes her way into the trash chute and meets with the Velvet Trogg, where she makes a deal—giving her own father’s malmr to the Trogg, in exchange for the bracelet without the chain. The Velvet Trogg accepts it and then asks Veya if she wants to see the vision that she had from eating the chain, to which Veya says no, and heads out.

Raeve finds a sign warning people away from the area, but being the only one that had come face to face with a hushling, she goes past the warning signs and walks down the path until she comes across a tree with a knob. There she finds a statue of the Sabersythe and Moonplume together, before walking forward until she comes across a building—a home—where she realizes it was their home—hers and Kaan’s together. She begins living there, fixing things up and taking care of the place, while at the same time journaling a bit and finally believes she is living, something that she had promised Fallon that she will do.

Kaan returns from the village to the Imperial Stronghold after dropping Grihm off near Gondragh, and meets with Pyrok. He tries going through all the missives that he had received while they talk, and he informs Pyrok of Grihm’s decision to go looking for a new dragon. Pyrok tells Kaan that Raeve is still here—in the western part of the city, at the hut, and that he has seen her around the markets buying things that would make it seem like she is inclined to stay. He offers that Kaan ask her to the Great Flurrt, the upcoming festival, and Kaan, at first, declines it because the last time he was out and about during the Great Flurrt was with Elluin before she disappeared out of his life for good. Pyrok leaves, and Kaan takes a scope out to see Raeve jumping from rock to rock nearby their home.

Raeve falls asleep and has a vivid dream of her life in the house with Kaan—including their sexy time—when she is awoken by screams. She scrambles out of her bed with weapons and goes outdoors wondering if there is a war happening because the dragons are in the sky, the aurora is so bright as if it was broken, and there are gongs going, but then realizes that everyone is merry. As she turns around, she finds a basket on the knob of the tree—inside is a mask, a dress, slippers and a letter from Kaan containing his Malmr along with the question, “dance with me?” She decides to play pretend and give him the goodbye that he never got from Elluin, who she realizes had deep secrets of her own and painful ones too. She gets dressed and meets with Pyrok, who takes her through the festivities. They come across three platforms signifying the three dragon races—Moonplumes, Moltenmaws, and Sabersythes—so Raeve asks him where is Kaan, and when Pyrok answers that he’s in the Saberysthes’s tent, Raeve chooses the Moonplumes, heading there and eventually finding her way to the high fliers table. She joins the table on her owing favors to some of the men there, which upsets Pyrok and he wants to go get Kaan, but she asks him to wait. She ultimately ends up beating all of the smug men at Skiripi at the table, and taking all of their money—making more than what she took from Pyrok, so she can repay him with interest, and have her own money. The men start walking away, and Kaan shows up telling the remaining ones to scatter, leaving the two of them at the table. They talk and she tells him that she can either walk away from the table with all of her winnings right now, or they can have a wager—one that if he wins, she will answer his questions truthfully, and if she wins, they will spend a night having a good time, with her getting one wish after Aurora rise, when she plans to erase him from her memories, having decided that she cares for him too much to let him get hurt because people she loves have a tendency to get hurt. He agrees to the wager, and they have to battle—though she does try to walk away, but she is bound to the table by the wager—and at first it looks like Kaan is going to win, only for her to win with her last hand.

She then offers for them to dance, and he promises her that he will get her money taken from the table, with some of it returned to Pyrok to pay him back. Then they go to the dance floor and she mostly dances around him, while he stands realizing that he will do anything for her, even when she breaks his heart, though he doesn’t want to let her go again. Suddenly, there is some screaming as two dragons fall towards the tent, and there is some dragon flame involved in this incident that causes Raeve to hide from the dragons, who flown back to the moon by this point and Kaan‘s wards had held and protected everyone. Raeve runs away from the fire, confirming one of Kaan’s suspicions—she was afraid of fire and potentially hurt by it, but there is something about dragon flame that makes her extremely skittish, even reminding himself of how she was in front of the dragon flame wield that he has. He follows her through the maze, and calls out to her, but she refuses to come out until he closes his eyes, which he does. She then comes up to him, kisses him on the throat, face, and even on the eyelids—something that he had come to cherish with Elluin. Raeve then tells him to meet him by the moon, after counting to ten, and so they meet there, where they talk a little bit, before Kaan kisses her fully.

Raeve wakes up in bed with Kaan next to her, and decides to steal away during the night, but Kaan grabs her, and brings her back to bed. He tells her that they have to have a serious conversation—something that he had whispered into her ear as she fells asleep, though she had hoped that he wouldn’t remember it. They end up having sex, and she enjoys it thoroughly, never realizing that she had the sensitive spots that he hits just right. She does promise Kaan to not have him removed from her memories, under a new deal that he makes with her. Later, Kaan sends a letter to Pyrok telling him to take Vruhn to a safe house that Raeve will not be able to find, in order to ensure that she sticks to their agreement. They have breakfast and he asks her if she is ready for the serious conversation because he wants what is good for her; that there is someone who needs her, besides him. Raeve doesn’t want to have the conversation, so she distracts him by putting up a wind barrier and making herself come while he watches. Suddenly, there is a scream, and they go running out where they see two Moltenmaws holding Arithia Emissiaries, and a Moonplume that is flying with none other than Rekk Zharos—all three of them are waving the white flag of truce. Raeve sees the abused Moonplume and sees red—so she goes to the house, into the bedroom, and starts strapping herself with all of the weapons she purchased so that she can go ahead and kill Rekk. She only stops when Kaan causes a block of the ceiling’s rock to fall, blocking her path. He tells her he had to do it in order to get her attention, and then explains to her that she cannot go out and kill Rekk while he is flying the white flag because this would mean war—one that she knows very well that Kaan cannot wage because he told her before when they were in the bar after her first introduction to Drohmm. She agrees to wait while he goes deal with the emissaries and Rekk.

Kaan goes with his guard who tell him where they are. He finds Rekk being cruel to his Moonplume, screaming at it and trying to stab it with his spurs. Rekk tries to order him to get a Fleshthreader to heal his Moonplume, and Kaan tells him that he will see about it, but that if he doesn’t stop, the dragon won’t live for much longer. Kaan orders him to get off and has him shackled in iron shackles. Rekk tells him that he’s here to find Princess Kyzari, who had gone missing, and Kaan tells him that he’s welcome to search the city while under guard of his own soldiers, but that she is not here. He puts the emissaries under guard, without allowing them to leave their rooms, while Rekk searches. He also tells Rekk that he will leave the dragon behind, and that he will find him a charter out of the Burn because the Moonplume is not able to handle this kind of heat.

Raeve cannot wait for Kaan to come back with information, so she makes her way to the dragons, where Rygun is basically protecting and guarding the Moonplume, by scaling up the cliff and almost falling off of it. She breaks down in front of the Moonplume, whose name she later finds out is Liri, and tells her that she too has a lot of trauma. They manage to move Liri to a hutch and cool it off with wards so it feels more comfortable for the dragon. Agni comes by and starts fleshthreading the dragon’s wing, one of the more painful procedures that she will have to do, so Raeve does what she can to keep the dragon occupied and talks to it in the tongue of the Shade, as if she was a natural at it. She tells Agni that she doesn’t want to talk about what Agni saw and to keep it away from Kaan. Agni faints while healing Liri, and Raeve helps her up, before sending her on her way. Kaan shows up in that moment, having overheard Raeve tell Agni not to share something with him, but she does not want to tell him either. He eventually tells her that he found out information on Rekk—he is going to Blothaim, the neutral city where the Tri-Council is based, after this search, and he tells her to go, but to always come back to him and to them.

Rekk finds himself at a bar in Blothaim, where he purchases a dinner for the man who had flown him to Blothaim—Torr—as he wants to kill the man and steal his dragon, who he thinks is a better dragon than his previous one, Liri. He thinks Liri is a pain in the butt as she cannot fly where he asks her to, and he thought Moonplumes were supposed to be better than that. He goes up to his room, where he had ordered a whore—one who is preparing the fire in the room, and he loves her curves. But then she stabs him with an Iron pin, and when he tries to leave the room, he is unable to. He gets knocked out at the door. The Other has him tied up in the bed, and slaps Rekk awake—she knows that she cannot push Raeve yet on some things, including the fact that Raeve is able to wield fire, and she decides that she won’t be doing anything of the sort of eating Rekk as tasty as he smells, because Raeve doesn’t like it. When Rekk wakes up, he realizes that he’s tied and has no chance of escape, plus he’s not able to cry out for help, as the Other scorches him—returning what he has done to the Moonplume by having it fly through the Burn to the hutch, by burning him with fire.

Veya makes it into Arithia as Ayda, a servant in Tyroth’s palace, whom she had knocked out in order to use her bracelet that allows her to change into another’s form. She gets stopped by another servant who worries about where she is and tells her that she has to hurry up to Tyroth’s room, because she knows how he is. Veya makes it there, and gets paralyzed when she sees her brother—who is pissed at Ayda, and tells her that even though she carries his bastard child, she is still required to show up on time and clean the place. He tells her to not make the mistake again, and get to cleaning the space or else he will have her punished. There is a lark that finds it way to Ayda—Veya—and he snaps it up, but finds it empty, before throwing it out, and once he is gone, Veya takes it back because she and Kaan have a way of communicating through invisible ink when they are outside the borders of Drohmm in order to keep them both safe. She rushes around trying to figure out where Elluin could have kept her diary, and realizes that she must have had it within easy reach of the bed where she was bedridden with her pregnancy. She finds it in a nook by the head of the bed, and flips through, reading through the diary’s last three entries because she doesn’t have the patience for it. This is where she finds out that Elluin had gotten pregnant with Kaan’s child—Kyzari—and had been scared off by their father threatening to have Kaan killed if she didn’t go marry Tyroth, which is why she had left that note for Kaan.

The Scavenger King, who is named Arkyn, looks at his prisoner, who reminds him of his Fire Lark, but who is much more talkative than the Fire Lark, talking to someone invisible to him but who appears to be in his head. He asks the Princess to sign a piece of parchment in exchange for her freedom—she does that but also adds in a line to kill this sadistic bastard. He doesn’t want to hurt her, as after all, she is his niece too—he is the half-brother to Caddok,Tyroth, Veya and Kaan, after all—but he wants the lands of the Burn, which he believes are rightfully his. He decides that maybe Kyzari will be able to withstand the Fire battles just like the Fire Lark, after all. As he sends out his lark to Kaan, another lark flies in heading towards Kyzari’s cell, where it bumps against her, and then flips onto its back, where it bears three small letters on its belly—Nee.

My Thoughts: The world building in this book is absolutely marvelous and the characters are very interesting. I would say that this is sort of a slow burn between Raeve and Kaan in terms of romance—he clearly doesn’t want to do anything that would be too risky, while Raeve refuses to face the past, she just hides it beneath the ice of her inner lake. Based on the ending, it looks like Raeve’s past might be on a course of collision with her present, and I’m curious to find out in the next book in the series, which is coming out next week, just what that will look like. How does Raeve and Kaan’s relationship look like? How does Kaan change—what does he do—once he finds out that Kyzari is his? Will he go to war? Will Raeve finally face her past and accept all of herself—including embracing her powers from Rayne and Ignos? Will she choose to fight for herself, and Kaan instead of submitting to what others want, just like Elluin has wanted all this time? Who is the Other, perhaps it’s Slatra?

To be fair, there were some things that made it very clear to me as I read on that Raeve and Elluin are one and the same person, so this was not much of a revelation when it did become a revelation, but I loved just how the author broke that revelation—not by having Kaan tell Raeve, but rather by Kaan confirming to Veya that it is Elluin, but that she doesn’t remember, and softly bringing Raeve to her dragon, Slatra. I can see some elements of Throne of Glass in this book, specifically with Caelana Sardothien being an assassin and being found in a prison—this is one of the first things that I thought of when I read that part—but everything else is just so different and unique specifically in how the world is built, like the Fade has cities built in levels, and the fact that there are three dragon species, but only one can go into all three locations of the world while the other two would either burn or freeze. Overall, this was a delightful read and I can’t wait to see how this story continues!

If you would like to read this book and the series, you can purchase it here: Romantasy Recommendations. Please note by using the link to make a purchase, I will make a small commission at no cost to you.