Page 10 of Kingdom of the Two Moons

Melody

A helicopter waits for us. Always the helicopter for the rare occasions Lyrian leaves the property at all. He hates driving. It is a one-and-a-half-hour flight over nothing but vast, endless forest to another big mansion that lies alone in a valley, frighteningly similar to Lyrian’s own. Most of the events he attends are in similar secluded spaces. I figure it is everyone’s wish at those parties to be as private and exclusive as possible. Why, I have no idea, but the events sure are strange.

I’ve never found out what it is exactly that Lyrian does for a living and what has made him so insanely rich, made him hide away from the world, but my work as a type of bounty hunter must have something to do with it. Nothing came up when I once sneaked into Hunter’s office and ran his name through an internet search. Same goes for the property of his—it showed up nowhere. I wonder whether Lyrian has another identity, or whether people like him simply don’t exist in the normal world.

I wonder whether I exist at all, like on paper. Whether I have a birth certificate.

Probably not.

I look back into the room, a replica of a Victorian ballroom. It’s filled with blackness radiating from auras so thick it is suffocating to just move through them. The sort of blackness I hunt. So many evil, loathsome people. Not all of them, though. Some bring along their wives, but their light auras are so tiny, swallowed by the omnipresent black that feels like wading through a bog. Not for the first time I ask myself how they can stand it—living among such horrible people? Sharing a life with them. A bed.

I shudder and down a glass of champagne, leaning against one of the marble columns. When I was a child, I hid under the banquet tables, eating the fallen leftovers. Those parties were always an opportunity to taste something other than bread. Or I would sneak off into one of the rooms of those mansions, hiding under beds, praying Lyrian wouldn’t notice my absence and that someone else would take me in. I imagined nice, loving parents who’d hug me and let me sleep in their bed, until Kayne and Hunter dragged me away, hissing and scratching and kicking.

Now I just get drunk, or at least pretend to, because the bloodhounds are watching.

No one ever speaks to me, though. No one ever pays me much attention apart from occasional, leering looks down my body and at my face. I imagine the sole reason I’m here at all is that Lyrian doesn’t want to leave me alone at the mansion but doesn’t want to spare Kayne and Hunter either. He’s fucking paranoid.

I take another flute of champagne from a tray carried by a waiter with white gloves. I sip it listlessly, the champagne more medicine than anything else, to dull the void in me while I watch Lyrian gliding effortlessly through the crowd, smiling and laughing and offering handshakes. So different from how he usually is. So different from the ice-cold monster that hides underneath his slick facade.

I startle when I feel a gaze on me, like something licking down my spine.

When I turn, I find a man looking directly at me from across the room. Involuntarily, I stiffen. My instincts register something my eyes need more time to comprehend.

He is tall, slender, not in a suit like everyone else here, but in black trousers and boots and a shirt that yawns wide open, made of a fabric in a shade of midnight blue that seems to melt into his ivory skin. His hair is dark, with an almost bluish tinge, his face shockingly symmetrical and utterly handsome—edgy, with high, gaunt cheeks and a sensual mouth.

But it’s not the mocking symmetry that’s tugging at the painter in me, nor all the jewelry on him, glistening cabochons set in gold that catch the light in a stunning range of colors from deep indigo to azure—but his ears. His ears are delicately arched and on top of them sit golden caps in the form of wings.

Elven ears.

My heartbeat quickens as if I’ve just spotted a predator.

An elf. Like in one of my books. Unreal. There are no elves in the real world.

I must be going crazy.

I quickly look away, but I can still feel him watching me, still looking exactly the same when I glance back at him a moment later. I scan the crowd, but no one else seems to notice him or to give him so much as a second glance.

What the fuck?

I’ve probably had too much to drink. I feel the sudden need to hide, the need for fresh air. I briskly walk out of the room, too startled to look back.

Only outside, on the terrace, when my eyes search through the huge windows for Lyrian somewhere inside in the crowd, does my heartbeat return to normal.

I’ve had too much to drink, eaten, and slept too little. My eyes were playing a trick on me.

But when I finally make out Lyrian in the crowd, I notice something entirely else. Something I’ve never witnessed before: Lyrian’s strange, cold eyes are on the man, too, and for the first time in all these years, there’s… fear in them.

Before I can dwell too long on whatever reason the man’s presence seems to affect Lyrian, I turn and start to run toward the edge of the terrace.

At the balustrade, I stop and drop my glass. It shatters on the marble tiles. I carefully choose a large, sharp shard—a cheap stand-in for a knife, in case Kayne and Hunter come after me, but better than nothing.

Oh, I would fight back this time.

Not wasting another second, I slip out of these ridiculous high heels and jump off the veranda, my bare feet touching soft, mossy grass, cold and soggy from the never-ending rain. Then I sprint off as fast as I can. I’m a good runner. Very tall, slim, and athletic from all the long runs I’ve taken since I turned six, desperately pushing, trying to understand the edges and boundaries of Lyrian’s property.

Keeping to the shadows of large hedges, I bolt over the meadows, closer to the seam of a forest that borders it. The ground under my feet shifts suddenly when I dive into the protection of its canopies. It changes, turns hard and solid and treacherous.

Soon my bare soles hurt, stones and thorns digging into my flesh. My lungs ache as if they are on fire. Low branches slap me in the face, leaving scratches on my cheeks and arms, but I barely feel them.

All I can think of is my escape, the tiny window of freedom that’s just opened up. It occurs to me that I have no idea of the terrain. No idea of the property’s layout. I have only the memory of an outline in my head, the land I saw from above from the helicopter. We were heading south. There was a street somewhere.

Still, I have no clue where the hell I am.

But that doesn’t matter. I can make it. I feel it, for the first time in my life—that I will escape for good.

I push deeper and deeper, probe further and further into the thicket of the trees and bushes. I lose my last sense of orientation when darkness enshrouds me so thoroughly I can barely make out my surroundings. It sends me stumbling more often than I’d like.

Just the faintest sound of occasional cars somewhere far in the distance above the rustling of leaves gives me any sense of my location. The road I saw from the helicopter. I must stay away from the road!

I veer sharply to the right. More stones bite into my bare flesh like nails, but I ignore them. Eventually, the sound of the street grows quieter, and soon all I can hear is my blood rushing in my ears. My own heartbeat, thudding and feverish. The sound of my feet on the ground. My vision is blurred from sweat and rain and exhaustion.

I don’t know how long I’ve been running when I finally sink down to my knees, desperately gasping for air, every inch of me strained, every muscle protesting. The strip of fabric that is my dress is soaked through, clinging to my skin like a layer of ice. Tears well in my eyes so unexpectedly I’m not sure I know where they come from. Whether it is just the rain.

I close my eyes, trying to calm down, trying to calm my ragged breathing and push back the exhaustion a little while longer. I’ve made it this far. I need to go further.

I brush back a sweaty strand of hair, then get up. Only to stop dead in my tracks.

Right before me stands the man from the ballroom. His gaze holds the same, gloomy shine as he looks at me with a cold, calculating expression.

What the hell?

He can’t have run like me. No. There is no trace of exhaustion on his body. Not a drop of sweat. Not a strand of hair out of place. Yet I got far away from the mansion—or have I been running in circles?

For a second, desperation clutches my throat so tight I can’t breathe.

No! No way. I haven’t. Can’t have. He isn’t real.

Again, my sleep-deprived mind is making up strange things.

He is not real.

But then I hear his voice, as real as it can be, melodious and deep as he asks, “Are you trying to run from me?” His words cut through the surreal, sudden silence, as if the forest, too, has stopped for a couple of seconds to listen.

I stare at him, at the eyes that shine through the fallen darkness like frozen violets. Surreal, stunning eyes. For a moment, I don’t understand his question. Then the meaning hits me—the latent threat in them—and I instinctively take a step backward.

I jut my chin upward and ask, sounding as unafraid as I can, “Why would I?”

He tilts his head slightly, almost curious at my tone. Clearly not used to it. “I wonder—from whom are you running then, if not from me?”

What a weird question. What a fucking weird conversation.

But I’m arrested by his gaze, drained beyond the point of a breakdown. That’s probably why I answer automatically, “From Lyrian.”

He seems to consider this. Then he glances down to my bare, savaged feet. I seize the moment and sprint off to the right. I will outrun him. I will never turn back. To no one. Real or not real. I run until my lungs hurt more than ever.

A hand grabs my wrist and I’m brutally wrenched backward, caught in a sprint. I scream when my arm twists, and I’m hurled to the ground.

How? I didn’t hear any steps behind me.

Before I can think, I’ve clasped the shard of glass in my palm tighter. Driven by sheer instinct, I lash out, putting all the fluidity and speed I can muster into the movement. The shard catches the moonlight before it slashes into finely woven fabric and skin.

There’s only air, where a split second ago there was this man and his shirt.

Impossible.

I stare, breathing hard.

When I swivel around, I find him standing right behind me.

Unmoved. Untouched. His lips curled in faint amusement.

I must have gone mad. Fighting my own demons made flesh. Beautiful demons, I have to give him that.

“Let me go or I’ll hurt you. I don’t want to. All I want is to get away from here,” I say, hating how my voice trembles, betraying me.

He angles his head as if weighing my words. “I’m afraid I can’t.”

Not hesitating, I lash out again, aiming for his neck this time. Lyrian taught me that when you fight, you have to be ready to kill, or it makes no sense to fight at all. If you are not prepared to kill, you are predestined to die.

There’s another blur of movement, white skin flickering in the darkness, and the shard once again cuts nothing but air.

Then it all happens too fast for me to react, and I’m standing with that very shard held to my neck, so close I can feel the cool glass pressing down on my delicate skin.

How he’s done it, I have no idea.

But he’s standing so close now I can see his eyes in the gloom, can feel his breath brushing my lips. They are indeed still bright, as if they are radiating from within in a simmering, dark purple.

It is beautiful and terrifying at the same time. I almost forget about the shard at my neck. That I’m pinned against a tree.

“Don’t do that ever again.” His voice pulls me back. It is laced with an inhuman calmness that slithers along my bones. Then he lowers the shard and throws it somewhere behind us, deep into the forest.

“Why—why is Lyrian afraid of you?” It is all I can muster. I’m still numb. Dazed from the exhaustion, from the surreality of it.

“He has every reason to be,” is all I get in return.

Yet there’s the weight of truth in his words. A threat. A hint at brutality. Only then do I notice his aura. It is dark, but not too dark. The same midnight blue as his shirt, laced with black and purple tendrils like the aura of the wine-haired woman in the bar.

My eyes come to rest again on his pointed ears. On the rubies and emeralds that dangle from long, obelisk-shaped gems in his lobes. At the golden wing-shaped cuff that covers the peak of those ears.

I say quietly in a way that sounds almost like a plea, “You don’t need me. I mean nothing to Lyrian.”

“You are wrong. You mean everything to him—you are his life.”

** *

I follow him wordlessly through the darkness. I should ask where he is taking me, but I just can’t muster the courage. Instead, I watch his movements, so graceful and quiet through the forest that he looks almost feline. Inhuman. Like his ears.

I shiver in my flimsy dress, the air cold and biting, but I barely register it. I feel too numb.

I was about to escape. I would have made it.

I ask again, “Why is Lyrian afraid of you? Really?” The question churns over and over in my head.

“Not of me.” A clearer answer this time, and yet he’s still told me nothing.

I push on. “I saw it in his eyes, the fear when he spotted you.”

To my shock, he lets out a quiet chuckle—a rolling, sultry sound. “I just stand for someone Lyrian is very afraid of.”

“Who?”

“Someone on whose behalf I am looking for you.”

My stomach tightens. Every instinct screams at me to run again, but it would get me nowhere. He is much faster, much stronger than I’ll ever be, I just found that out.

“Are you real?”

That earns me a sidelong glance with raised eyebrows. Then another chuckle, deeper this time, as if he finds the whole thing funny. “Do I not look real to you?”

“You have elven ears.”

Now he snarls, curling his lips back, exposing two fangs . He doesn’t seem to notice what he’s doing, but I keep my gaze trained on those long, sharp teeth.

“That means I am not real?”

“In my world, yes.”

“This is not your world ,” he replies, matter-of-factly.

I ignore his remark. “Why was no one else looking at you? At that party?”

He stops so abruptly I almost bump into him. He turns to me, scanning my face—for what, I don’t know—but my heartbeat quickens involuntarily. His eyes start to gleam as if he can hear it. He probably can.

“Lyrian never told you, then. And probably never showed you his true self either.”

“Told me what? Showed me what?”

“About us. About the fae gap,” he says calmly, unfazed by my sharp tone.

“The fae gap?”

“Have you never wondered why he lives here, in this—” he makes a sweeping gesture with his hand, disgust limning in his features “—remarkably remote area with its particularly enticing climate? Why he chose this nowhere land to carve out his miserable existence?” I’m surprised by his bitter tone as he goes on. “Why all those creatures you hunted down were here, never more than three hundred miles away from his house?”

Creatures. Not men. Not people. Lyrian used the same term to refer to me.

And he knows. Knows I hunt them. What else does he know?

“What is this fae gap and where is it?”

He snarls again, but not angrily, or at least not at me. Then he looks down at me as if he has just realized something about me, because his face softens. “It is the only portal left to our world, to the fae world. Everyone who wants to cross to the human world or back must do it here.”

“And at the party… why didn’t—”

“Why did no one seem to notice my pointed ears?” he finishes my question. As an answer, he taps his earrings. “Magic. A spell. It camouflages my appearance to the eyes of those who are not meant to see them, glamours them. And to all unfae creatures in general. To them, I look like a normal man in a normal suit.” He smiles at that, as if the idea truly amuses him. An utterly devastating smile that makes him less scary. Unfae.

“Normal? So no one can see your ears and— ”

“And?”

“Your beauty?” I add quietly, blushing against my will. I quickly look away, sensing that he can feel my embarrassment.

His widening smile tells me does. “Do you pity them?”

There’s teasing in his words now. I scowl at him. I won’t forget that he just brought that shard to my throat. That I am once again a captive thanks to him.

“Why would I?”

His tone stays too soft when he says, “Because they can’t see what you see and indulge in the sight of me.”

“Be careful or people might think you’re a little self-obsessed,” I bite out.

He laughs now, a soft and honest sound I like despite myself. “I know how handsome I am, but it never hurts to hear it.”

I decide to ignore this. “But why can I see your true form when others can’t?” Why am I meant to see it if he said to all unfae creatures in general …

He moves so fast I don’t register it before his fingers brush against my tender skin, over the still purple swelling hidden underneath my makeup. From the gentleness of his touch, I know he can see everything there. I shiver when his fingers glide down my cheek, stopping just above my lips. An unfinished motion.

His tone is sweet as honey, his eyes liquid, as he whispers, “Have you never wondered why so many men stare at you? Women too, I suppose? Because the fae blood runs through your veins as well as through mine.”

For a moment, there is only his touch. Only the feel of skin against skin, the heat of his body close to mine. So unfamiliar.

Fae blood. What the hell? I have gone mad, for sure.

I take a step back, and he slowly lowers his hand. When I lift my gaze, the same gentleness he applied now lies in his face. That and something else entirely.

I’m not sure I trust my hearing when he says, “You are as beautiful as they said you would be. But, for now, let’s go.”

“Where?”

“Back to Lyrian’s house. ”

I shake my head reflexively, knowing that the terror in my eyes is showing because the hint of what I just saw in his eyes gives way to pity.

“He will hurt me. He’ll hurt me badly. I can’t.” Only a whisper comes from my lips now.

“He won’t,” he replies, still soft.

“How do you know?” My voice is louder now, shriller. I take a few steps back. I will fight. Fight until the end. But I will never, ever go back to Lyrian.

His answer is not angry, but calm and firm. “Because I will not allow it.”

“You can’t take me back to him.”

“I won’t bring you back to Lyrian.”

All the things he’s told me. All the things he hasn’t told me. I read them in his face.

“What? Why are we going back then? Where are you taking me?”

“I’m taking you to the High Lord of Darkness,” he says, and I hate the remorse in his face.

I can’t bring myself to ask what that means. He holds out his hand to me, a silent offering—a silent threat , because it means that he will force me to come if I don’t obey.

I glower at his hand as if it’s a poisonous snake.

He says, his voice suddenly solemn, “I hereby swear that no harm shall come to you from Lyrian’s hand and neither from mine. And that I will always protect you.”

I stare at him, wide-eyed, as a strange prickle runs through my body, as if something has just been branded right underneath my flesh. I wonder whether I imagined it. But that strange sensation, it stays.

“And that… High Lord of Darkness?” I ask, my voice coming out a little bit breathless.

His remarkable eyes flicker, as does his aura. “I will do everything in my power to ensure that my king will not hurt you either. ”

I look back at those violet eyes, unsure what to make of that statement. I can always tell when people are lying, thanks to my talent . Their auras betray them. He’s speaking the truth. Despite my better instincts, I nod once and follow him through the woods. Not that I have much of a choice.

“Can you at least tell me your name?” I ask his back.

He pauses briefly, then looks back at me over his shoulder. “Oh, darling, I thought you’d never ask. I’m Riven.”