Page 2 of Kingdom of the Two Moons

Blair

Blair Alaric loves the human world. She loves ice cream, loves the way it tastes, the colors it comes in, like flowers of the elven forest. She loves their clothing too—the neon-hued sneakers she’s wearing with a skintight plastic dress that flatters her lush body. Face it, even the best dressmakers of Palisandre can’t provide a thing like that.

Oh yes, she fucking loves the way that tight, short-as-sin piece of synthetic silver clings to her in all the right places, showing off her ample cleavage, only to end shy of her navel. Setting off the silver piercing there she got from a shady corner parlor.

The young man inside her seems to love it too, nuzzling her neck from behind, one large hand encircling her nipple, the other grabbing at her waist. He’s pounding into her from behind while he keeps whispering all those terribly filthy things in her ear. He’s so good that she almost tears the washbasin from the wall as a wave of release breaks over her. She has to bite the inside of her cheeks so as not to let the whole club know why exactly the door has been locked for almost thirty minutes now.

A tiny moan escapes him at that. She watches him in the battered mirror. The way he tilts his head back, exposing his throat but not stopping his thrusts, spurring her right towards another climax. Good boy.

He’s probably high as hell right now, judging by the smell of his sweat and the way his eyelids flutter. But she doesn’t care. Not her problem.

As long as he fucks like this. Let’s face it, this is the best sex she’s had in weeks. The best sex since…

She hates the fact that she still thinks about the fucking angel every time she orgasms. To hell with that vain bastard Caryan.

Too bad he’s going to kill her the next time she sees him.

Too fucking bad.

Her second climax eddies away and suddenly she really wants to tear that fucking washbasin from the wall just to let off some steam. But then the man grabs her waist with two hands, squashing her impulse as he goes over the edge.

Right, he deserves it.

As soon as he is done, Blair steps out of his embrace, rolling down the hem of that ridiculous idea of a dress, and reaches for the toilet door. Not waiting for him, she stumbles back into the club full of twitching humans. The music’s pounding hard against her bones and over mirrored pillars, melting with her blood.

With her soul, if she has one.

She takes a moment to drink it all in, soak in it. The dancing, the giggling, the music. The music especially. The Abyss, how much she loves music—no, not loves, needs it . It glitters through her veins like a thousand twinkling stars, makes her blood hum, makes her very soul sing with... joy . A feeling she hadn’t known until she arrived in the human realm a year ago and a melody caught her ear.

Music...

A thing long banned in the witch territories by Blair’s cruel aunt, the witch queen Gatilla herself. Just another attempt to suck any joy from the witch lands. Anything worth living for. If you could call it living in the first place.

Since Blair got her hands on a smartphone and some headphones she’s gone nowhere without them, music in her ears from the moment she gets up to the moment she closes her eyes to sleep. Most of the time moving her body to it as if she’d been born to dance. As if her very core is a song and only rhythms and notes can express what she truly feels. All those emotions she hadn’t known she was capable of having. What lies beyond all that darkness and cruelty and emptiness in her.

For the first time in her whole life, she feels like more . More than the cruel witch she’s been raised to become. More than the ruthless warrior. And more than… well, the ghost she’s turned into since Caryan left her side.

She’s been nothing but a shell since the night her aunt died. Since Caryan and she broke up, she fell apart. It doesn’t matter that it happened more than fucking twenty years ago. It tore her in half, a cut so deep that, on some days, only her rage and darkness and pain keep her going, keep her together. She knows it makes her pathetic. Weak.

But she’s become mortal enough to cry.

Maybe this is why she’s feeling that kind of belonging. Those songs the humans write, so full of pain and heartbreak, she knows they understand what she’s feeling inside.

Nothing a fae would ever comprehend. But listening to music, to voices out there sharing her kind of torment… it doesn’t heal her wounds but at least it soothes them. Makes even the darkest hours bearable so that, in those moments when she so much as thinks Caryan’s name, she can at least keep breathing.

Like now, she focuses back on the music. On the notes and rhythms.

It helps. It makes her feel something else. Something other than the emptiness and crack in her heart.

On some days, she even catches herself smiling. On others, a shy part of her dares to imagine what she could be, could one day become, if she was to ever leave her past and the fae world behind.

If.

It is a dream, nothing else. Because she has to return to the fae world. Soon.

But it’s a nice dream, nonetheless. And music’s brought all that to the surface. Music and the sweet little human world.

Blair has no idea how she’s going to live without music once she’s back in the fae realms. Oh hells, it will be bad. She’s not sure she would be able to charge a mobile phone with her magic, but she will sure as death try. Even if a dark part of her knows it won’t work.

Well, she’s not sure she will survive without music anyway, so it won’t matter.

She swallows hard. Usually, she manages pretty well to block out the fact that she has to go back at some point. But there are moments where it is especially hard. Moments like this, when she’s surrounded by people who just party their heads off because, fuck it, why not?

In moments like these, she wishes nothing more than to be a human. To shed her immortal skin. To just walk onto that dance floor, slide amid those sweat-slicked, delicate bodies of adorable humans with glitter in their hair and glow sticks around their wrists, and reduce herself to the beats. Just knock back some drinks and dance, dance, dance until her legs give out and be back at it the next night.

For a heartbeat, her sight turns blurry before she swallows the hint of emotion. Smothers it. Locks it into the endless, black void inside her, reminding herself why she’s here in the first place. She’s got work to do.

With a last, longing glance towards the dancing throng—people writhing as if to worship a forgotten king—she pushes her way through the crowd that flocks the bars. Wild, colorful lights flicker over her, confusing her witch senses. That’s probably why she only notices the man when he grabs her wrist.

She keeps telling herself that it’s not her despair that sometimes makes her lame. Distracted. Negligent.

She swivels around, briefly caught off guard, suppressing the sheer reflex to pull free and send him flying across the room. And wreak havoc on that club. She clenches her teeth, just in time, reining in her violent instincts—a painful reminder of just how different she is to them.

Abyss, she almost killed him with a flip of her wrist.

Humans—so delicate. So breakable. So… ridiculously weak, but sweet .

She also suppresses the instinct to snap her long, sharp, silver canines right in his face as a warning. Well, a good thing those teeth are currently hidden by the magic coming from an enchanted bracelet that camouflages her pointed ears, silver claws and teeth. The latter the trademark of the witches.

She knows the young man means no harm. Humans rarely do.

She snaps at him nonetheless. “You might not want to do that again.” Or I might bite off your head and call it an accident.

He quickly lets go of her and pulls his hand back, as if he could hear what she didn’t say. But it’s shame coloring his absurd cheekbones and not fear. “I—I’m sorry,” he stammers, scratching his neck. “It’s just—I don’t even know your name.”

Blair tilts her head, her long, wine-red hair gracing her hip. Then she arches a brow. “Your mom taught you to be polite, asking for a girl’s name after you’ve screwed her in a bathroom?”

Sarcasm—another adorable trait all fae lack but that she’s adopted over the year she’s spent in the human world.

He frowns at her, blushing even more violently before the corner of his sensuous mouth twitches up. His eyes light up while he runs a hand through his messy, blond hair. “Nope, I guess my mom would have told me not to fuck a girl in a bathroom in the first place.”

Abyss save her, those dimples. As she’s said—weak but adorable. Her fury eases a little. It’s not their fault they are so clumsy and na?ve. Not his fault she is an emotional mess. Certainly not his fault that the thought of Caryan ruined her second orgasm, and not for the first time. That this young man is all she wants to be, with his round ears and easy smile.

She pouts her full lips, crooning, “Huh, too bad. You’d have missed out on so much fun.”

“Yeah. Want a drink or something?” He gestures to the bar, hope shining in his eyes.

Hmm, maybe she should keep him for a while. But she can’t. She’s got work to do. She tells him so.

He frowns, obviously confused. “Oh wow, can I… I don’t know… at l east get your number?”

That’s the thing about human lovers. It’s such fun to fuck them.

Granted, they can be a little unreliable as lovers, but there is no denying they are terribly cute when they are nervous—and they always are, even the older ones. Not afraid or arrogant, but insecure—something no fae would ever be. Especially no fae man, let alone an angel. The arrogance of a fae man is unbeatable. An angel is the very definition of that word.

Humans even fuck differently. Kind and gentle and generous. Fucking her as if she’s the answer. A revelation. Never bored. Never just out of sheer need and drive instead of real affection.

There’s never violence. No, they rather tend to freak out when her teeth come near their necks. Once, she whispered to a man that she would like to try his blood—well, that didn’t end well, and she hasn’t done that since.

She sighs. She could drag him right back to that bathroom for round two, trying to forget about Caryan and her mission and about fucking everything else.

No, she can’t , she reminds herself.

She steps up to him and gently pats his cheek, careful not to bring her sharp, silver claws anywhere close to his delicate skin. “I would love to, but I’ve really got work to do.”

He frowns, then blinks a few times before even more red starts to creep over his handsome face. Oh yes, now he’s thinking she’s a hooker. She should go. Find that wolf shifter, a creep nicknamed Fenrir, who uses this club as his hunting ground, and flay him alive—literally.

She needs to get a hold of him and torture the information she wants out of him. Others sang his name after she’d finished with them, said the guy has direct contact with Lyrian, high elf and magic harvester. Lyrian, with the girl, Melody, in tow—the actual reason the witch queen Perenilla has sent Blair to the human world in the first place. She needs to find her and bring her to the fae world. Then her mission will be accomplished. Fun over.

She nips that thought in the bud .

“My treat, sweetmeat,” Blair purrs instead, before turning on her heel and vanishing deeper into the club. Her acute sense of smell chases after the peculiar stench of wet dog among all those humans.

She smiles when she picks up the trail on the upper floor and walks straight up to the bar.

Time to play. Show him who’s the real shark in the water.

***

“Please.”

Please. That word always passes their lips in the end. Blair doubts a sadistic, murderous prick like Fenrir ever used that word before.

She leans closer to the body hanging upside down from the ceiling, held by chains she put around his ankles. He tries to wriggle away from her—and fails miserably. Blair flashes him a grin. She can’t deny that she delights in the fear that crept into his haughty face the moment he learned her name. She’s drinking it in now.

Raw fear when she dropped her glamour and revealed what lay under the magical facade she’d put on. What really lurked behind the long, blonde hair and brown deer-eyes she’d taken on just for him—Fenrir’s target group.

He let out a whimper when they arrived in his psycho-hut in the middle of nowhere—this was the cabin he used to kill all those girls in, for fuck’s sake—and she eventually dropped the act, along with her glamour. Revealed her shocking amber eyes, long, deadly, silver canines, and matching, sharp, and utterly deadly, silver nails. Oh, yes, and her red, wavy mane, flowing down her body.

The Scarlet Death—that’s what she is. That’s what some call her. One of the most feared witches in the whole fae world. And beyond, it seems.

So feared that even Fenrir, the wolf shifter who was banned from the fae lands because he couldn’t control his bloodlust, almost shit his pants.

This little piece of filth fled his execution, carving out a living in the human realms like so many others of his kind. A wolf without a pack is either a dead wolf or a crazy one. Since there is no alpha around to control creatures like him, he’s turned out to be the latter.

Here, he’s just another unleashed carnivore who preys on young women with no one around to stop him. Shit, without the angels guarding the worlds, all kinds of monsters have started to roam all too freely, too unchecked, and the humans are utterly helpless.

Well, until now. She would end him and Lyrian and his shady trade along with it.

Oh, she’d gladly wipe them all from the face of the Earth.

Maybe it isn’t too bad to be a monster sometimes, as long as you are the biggest one in the aquarium.

“Where’s Lyrian?” she asks, not for the first time.

“I don’t know where he lives, witch.”

Blair licks her lips in annoyance. Lyrian, the underworld god of the fae in the human world. A necessity for those shunned ones to hide their fae features, but a perverse one.

“I know you’re one of his best deliverers,” Blair drawls, studying her nails and the dried blood under them. “I know that keeping your existence hidden in the human realm requires a bunch of dirty, shady work to trade for harvested magic. The kind Lyrian sells. So tell me where you delivered all those people to. Must have been a lot over the years. I’m sure you have a secret meeting spot. Not easy to get rid of so many and harvest them. Even harder without anyone noticing. Must be somewhere secluded. So where?”

Fenrir only whimpers again. Blair rolls her eyes before she punches him straight in the face. Bones crush, followed by a nasal sob.

But the heat is getting to her, making her impatient. Not that patience has ever been her strong point. But it takes a lot not to lash out and go for Fenrir’s throat straight away.

She needs to get to Lyrian—the elf she’s been hunting and searching for more than a year now. He’s barely more than a rumor. But all the scum she’s tracked down and tortured so far have led her to Fenrir, and Fenrir would finally lead her to Lyrian. She is so close. She can feel a tingling sensation in the tips of her fingers. The ache for bloodshed announcing itself… a prickling before she gets to the real deal.

Over the last year she’s gleaned so much information on Lyrian—the worst kind… what he did to the ones he hunted and how he did it and so on—that her whole essence burns to end his life.

It’s become personal for her.

After all, Lyrian is hunting her kind—all fae, witches included. Admittedly, the girl she is to retrieve for Perenilla—Melody—has become nothing but a side mission. But killing Lyrian... sometimes she dreams about that at night.

It hasn’t been easy to get on Fenrir’s tail. But once she found out where the wolf shifter’s hunting grounds were, all she had to do was dress up in that flimsy thing and look blurry-eyed and drunk.

She let him buy her another drink. Let him guide her to his car. He didn’t even look that bad. Nothing to suggest he was a creep who got off on raping girls before killing and eating them.

But even worse, he frequently wipes the memories of the police clean with more magic. He literally erases the girls from the memories of their families and friends, as if they never existed at all.

“Please,” Fenrir breathes again, the sound more like a pup whining. Blood clogs his nostrils, making his breathing hard.

Blair wriggles her long nails in front of his eyes, tracing one along his cheek, leaving a gaping cut in its wake. “Did they say the same to you when you raped them?” Blair’s voice is sweet and thick like honey, but she knows her eyes are not. Her eyes shine with unveiled hate and disgust. Utterly lethal.

Normally, she tortures her prisoners quickly to get the answers she needs about Lyrian and his whereabouts, but she’s been taking her sweet time with this one. Carving him up slowly, bit by bit. She’s let him hang here from these chains, head down so he has to swallow his blood while she works on him, over and over.

“Please, witch. Please, just kill me.”

He is no longer begging for freedom. Just for death. She must be doing something right after all .

“Do you think you deserve it? The sweet oblivion?” She shakes her head to answer her question, running her tongue over her silver teeth before she leans close to his ear. “You know, if I had more time on my hands, I’d take you to one of the oracles and throw you into the cracks of time and space, broken and wounded as you are, so that you would feel like this forever. Luckily for you, I don’t have the time, so I’ll just drain you. Give you a taste of your own medicine. After all, that’s what you do for Lyrian—trade live goods on the sly, right?”

When he looks at her, confused, she clarifies, “Collect fae so he can drain them.”

“I told you—I don’t know where Lyrian lives—” the shifter starts again, but she cuts him off with another punch to the face.

“Oh, drop it, fleabag, because it’s getting ridiculous. I know every tiny dirty little bit you did, you piece of shit. And I know that you know where I can find Lyrian. There’s nothing you can do to prevent me from getting my hands on him. Tell me and I promise that I will let you off the hook.”

It is indeed ridiculous, but she’s purposely let him draw this out. Partly because she delights in torturing him. But the real reason she’s left the bastard hanging there the whole day, left him rotting in the unbearable heat of this tiny wooden cabin in the middle of the desert, is that she went to find a crystal flacon to store his magical essence in.

She needs his magic before she goes on, since what she’d stored in her bracelet is already used up, and she can hardly run around in her witch form. She could bind the shifter’s magic to an object, but that would take up more time she doesn’t have. Easier to decant it into a vessel.

That the bastard deserves every second of it, and far worse, sure makes it much more enjoyable.

But now she’s got the flacon, she doesn’t need to play with her food much longer.

“In case you were wondering what Lyrian does with all the people you bring him, there is your answer,” Blair purrs while she runs her nails over the assortment of carefully selected knives, laid out before her on a table.

Better to bring across the truth, because there’s a good chance this prick, like most fae, still has no idea how black magic works, despite the fact he collected fae for Lyrian. Judging from his stubbornness, this dimwit has no inkling what she’s been working up to so far and how exactly this is going to end for him.

“This is exactly what I’m doing here—I’m harvesting your magic, just as Lyrian did. Draining or harvesting magic is a slow, excruciating procedure. You have to carefully drain the magic out of every fiber of a fae. It takes a long time and a lot of patience. It’s all about carefully placed cuts and peeled-back layers, or the magic would just dissolve, you see. It’s easily considered the peak of the dark arts of magic. Because magic, once freed, is a terribly fleeting thing. Prone to bind itself to the strongest fae around. You have to be quick to gather it up before it dissipates.”

Blair smacks her lips as she picks up a crescent-shaped knife. “But you’re lucky. Since I’m Gatilla’s heir, I know very well how to harvest it.”

It is satisfying to watch pure, undiluted fear enter the wolf shifter’s eyes as the penny drops.

She laughs. “Uh, just as I figured—you, moron, had no clue, right? You probably thought I’d just play around a little bit and then finish you. But no, the best part is yet to come.” She leans over him, the knife catching the light. “Just so you know, we’re getting to my favorite part—your organs. I have to take them out while you’re still alive.”

“Wait, witch! Wait! I’ll tell you where I think Lyrian is.”

He tells her everything. Of course he does. And all the while, Blair watches him with a cruel smile plastered on her face.

When he’s done, she asks, crooning, “Was that really so hard?”

He pants, sweat glistening on his forehead. “Will you let me go now?”

“Let you go? Oh, boy. Did I forget to mention? We’re playing my game now. ”

“But you promised you would let me off the hook.”

“Yeah, I did. And I will. I didn’t specify when though, did I? And whether you would still be alive. I’m afraid I do indeed need your organs first. They won’t work for my purposes once you’re dead.”

Blair makes a show of glancing up at the metal hook in the ceiling holding his chains. Then she puts the knife away.

Fenrir lets out a sigh of relief.

She turns back to him. “That was just for show. Do you know what I found to be the fastest way into a man’s heart?”

She pouts her lips and reaches for a crowbar.

“Tearing a hole through his ribcage.”