fault that I got pushed down a flight of stairs, or when I ate lunch alone and the table full of my former friends started to moo. I didn’t cry when their names hurt me. When I was lonely.
I never allowed myself to feel safe enough to cry.
But I cried now, holding this ring, knowing my mom was missing me. I couldn’t die. I couldn’t let this be my end. I had to keep fighting, because I wanted to go home.
The boots fell off my feet, like I’d released them.
Ryo put on my boots and then crawled to my side. He traced my cheek with his metal fingers, bent closer, and kissed me. Brief as a goodbye. “I expect confetti when I return. Perhaps a parade.”
He would never let me forget I let him save me. “You’re the worst. Drink some hibisi.”
As he stood, his cheek creased in a grin that felt like a dare. “Make me.” Then he raised his gaze and jumped.
And the boots transported him away.
34
RYO
The boots clicked on.
Run tutorial?
Nah, I got this.
I didn’t need a tutorial or Dagney’s directions to know where the Breastplate of Healing was hidden. I had a story.
I glanced up. Hope the moon was only one step away.
100 percent. I leapt straight up.
My father had told me the story of the sultan of the three moons.
Once there was a little boy, loved beyond measure, but born without a soul. He’d been formed with clay and wax, tears and prayers. His mother molded his cheek with porcelain, his father made his legs with a soft pine. They pulled all the ghostlight they could to make his gears turn, but the ghostlight always used up and he would turn back to a lifeless thing.
If he were a real boy, he wouldn’t have needed ghostlight. His own soul would turn those gears. But he needed a little extra help.
So his parents used their magic to form armor to keep that soul in. His father was a healing witch, and the spell he used to form that Devani breastplate cost his life. The boy and his mother mourned the loss, but eventually lived happily together as mother and son, until old age hunched her shoulders and sent her into the Undergod’s embrace. The mechanical boy lived on.
He collected gold. He collected titles. He even tried to collect the moons. But his gold and his titles and his moons collected dust. And all those who served him fell away to old age while his gears kept spinning.
After he lived a thousand years, he took a trip to the favorite of his three moons. He watched the sunset behind the world that loved him, and then he removed the breastplate. His pine legs petrified, his porcelain face cracked, and the ghostlight that had spun his gears for so long it had turned to a soul seeped from his wax heart. His ghostlight soul found his mother’s and father’s ghostlight. They mixed together until it was one. One heart. One soul.
Loved beyond measure forever after.
I missed my father’s stories.
The Breastplate of Healing was hidden on one of the moons. And the only way to get there was to use the Traveling Boots.
Or invent NASA. Whichever one was quicker.
I glanced down through the rippled upward step. I was high enough to see my castle, see the ruins of my city. I saw the long line of glitched sky, wrapped around the curve of the world. I had to hurry.
I looked up at the quickly approaching moon. Growing larger. Closer.
The rush of traveling tickled against my skin and sent a surge of adrenaline. I fought against gravity as the air became colder. Thinner.
Still. I had to admit my mom’s game wasn’t boring.
I more crashed than landed on the surface of the moon.
I stood. The desolate silence wrapped my neck, the ground crunched like hard gravel, but the view … the view was incredible.
The world was a moon too large for the sky. White clouds spiraled around the globe and torchlight sparkled like stars from the cities. I could see every playable country from here, cut through with rivers and oceans. Beyond the lands I knew were small peninsulas and continents I’d never heard of.
I only knew my own side of the world. If I’d seen the planet laid out like this I’d have notice that the continents spelled out my name.
My mother had formed the world as an Easter egg for me.