Page 20 of Kingdom of the Two Moons

Melody

I don’t see Riven for the next week, nor Caryan. Only rarely do I spot the other high lords, Kyrith, and the red-haired, quiet one. Ronin, Nidaw called him. Whenever they walk down the hallways, there’s a sudden tension in the air. Servants lowering their heads, bowing and parting, or falling to a knee, keen not to glance in their direction or draw their eyes. I match them, carefully trying not to stand out in the servants’ crowd, until they pass, carefully trying not to stare at their blood-covered swords, remembering my last encounter with the blond, Kyrith, all too well.

This week, I learn more and more about the structure and the way of things around here. I learn to keep my head down, only to look at someone through the curtain of my long hair. I learn that to look someone directly in the eye at the wrong moment will be understood as a sign of challenge or aggression, especially if they have a higher rank. It seems part of their fae communication, as it does when they pull back their lips to expose their sharp, pointed teeth and hiss at each other.

I get hissed and growled at a lot before I manage this new form of language, glad my round ears seem to save me from serious trouble when I do the wrong thing.

One night, after another dreary day of scrubbing the floor on all fours and polishing tiles and statues, I almost sleepwalk to my room, looking forward to a hot shower to ease some of the tension in my sore muscles, along with food and my bed.

But Nidaw awaits me when I enter, standing in the middle of my room. “No sleeping tonight. One of the high lords has requested that you serve at the equinox festivities,” she declares, gesturing for me to follow her back out.

We take the familiar route to the baths I’d been washed in after I arrived. Two other servants are already waiting.

“What are the equinox festivities?” I ask while they strip me down and pull me toward the steaming bath as they did on my first night. I don’t resist this time. I’m too tired to mind my nakedness.

Nidaw steps to the edge of the bath. “Two weeks of nightly celebrations.”

I say nothing as the servants grab sponges. I also accept being scrubbed down without protest, even when my skin itches afterwards and feels raw. I’m so exhausted I can barely move anyway. Two weeks. I wonder how I’m going to survive them without collapsing.

My body is stiff and aching, but when I finally step out of the water, I feel strangely restored, as if I’ve slept for a few hours.

“Healing water, from Avandal,” one of the girls explains, reading my face as they towel me dry and then guide me over to the vanity, where Nidaw waits, perched on that velvet stool again.

Only then do I notice the silvery glimmer and glitter all over her dark, ashen skin, her pearlescent hair laced with matching silver filaments.

“Are you celebrating too?” I ask, watching her in the mirror while she detangles my hair.

Nidaw doesn’t look up when she says, “All of us are, even with the coming war.”

“The war?” My eyes widen and Nidaw bites her lip. “What war?” I ask before the siren can decide not to talk to me at all.

“There’s war in this world. It started fifty years ago in the northern realms but has now spread all over. It reached our borders this month. ”

“That’s why I saw the high lords with their swords bloody,” I gather.

Nidaw’s lips become a slim line, but she nods once, curtly. “Yes. That’s why they are not much around these days,” she confirms with another meaningful glance toward me. Something I don’t understand.

When my hair is done, I want to get up, but Nidaw’s claws push me down again. “You too—it’s a tradition that we dress up and so will all of the servants, including you .”

With that, she pulls out a golden thread, matching the one she’s wearing in silver, and starts to twirl it through strands of my dark hair. When she is done, she forms some tiny stars out of the thread with a talent I find hard to put into words. Then she places them all over my hair as if my head is the night sky I so often watch from the window.

It’s nothing short of beautiful.

Nidaw gets up and brings me a long, black dress—so similar to the one Lyrian gave me that fatal night weeks ago.

I take it shyly, only slipping into it after realizing that all of the servants are wearing the same style of dress. That too seems to be part of the tradition.

The servants step forward, their long-clawed fingers pulling the fabric into place before they start to dust my milk-white skin all over with golden powder. Finally, my whole body shimmers with a gentle, warm glow as I regard myself in the mirror. Some patches look solid gold. Some, like my collarbones, are only lightly dusted. Other parts, like my cheeks, have streaks that accentuate my face strangely, but beautifully.

When I’m done, I find even the servants looking at me differently, as if I’ve transformed into one of them, as tall and slim and beautiful as they are, my hair hiding my human ears.

“Now—let’s go,” Nidaw offers, obviously content with her work.

I follow her, more than a little nervous, as we venture into the main hall. Exotic music’s now drifting through the corridors, reverberating from the high stone walls. Eerie, haunting voices, singing a chant, underlined by a beat that sounds almost electronic—nothing I’ve ever heard before but something that thrums across my skin and along my bones.

“Remember to keep your head down,” Nidaw says as a final warning before we slip through the kitchen and into the ballroom with the huge terrace I ventured through on my first night here. I barely recognize it, though as my gaze sweeps over the room.

It’s been transformed into a twilight revelry, unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. Almost naked, painted bodies flash everywhere, lit by a thousand candles.

Some fae stand, some lounge in chairs and on low benches that have been carried in. There’s a lot of naked skin on display, lithe figures with skins in all ranges of the palette—from sapphire to topaz green to a subtle amethyst. Gold and silver dust covers the bodies, flickering and glittering in the light, the wild colors singing to the painter in me.

In the semi-darkness, I spot hooves and curled horns coated with gold and adorned with jewelry, and the same sort of filaments I wear in my hair.

In a corner, there’s the group of sirens singing to the strange music, next to two naked men playing on harps and two fauns beating various drums. The air’s heavily fragranced with the smell of jasmine and orange petals that some green-skinned men with those beautiful pixie wings crush under their bare feet to disperse their scent. Others burn incense that blurs the outlines of the room, the brown wood smoke curling in the air like filaments.

Everywhere in between, servants glide through the crowd, carrying plates stacked with goblets of wine and laden with overripe fruits and other strange delicacies.

I know some of these flavors from the faun cook who slips me some things to try when no one’s looking. Today it was a raspberry so delicate and sweet that tears filled my eyes. And a tiny bird, its skin honeyed and crackling with fat, stuffed with crushed nuts and pomegranate seeds .

I watched the cook and Nidaw eating them, too, bones and all, spitting out the beak.

Nidaw seizes my arm to steer me back to the kitchen. There, she orders me to grab a plate of food and follow the other servants. I obey, taking one of the trays laden with macadamia bread, adorned with a ball of cinnamon butter, sugared violets, and those bittersweet cocoa-coated, summer-ripe raspberries, and venture out. I struggle to find my way between swaying bodies, trying hard not to bump into anyone while I avoid faces, just as Nidaw told me to.

But a moment after I step out of the kitchen, several heads turn to look, and a murmur goes through the crowd. Some even gape at me with their mouths wide open.

Everyone seems to stare at me, bathed in candlelight.

A wave of heat and sensation crushes over me, and I fight not to look up. Fight my suddenly racing heart and sweating fingers. I want to run straight back into the kitchen and hide.

Do I look so alien to them?

I doubt it. Doubt my round ears show through my long hair at all.

Maybe it’s my smell ? Maybe I smell human?

I force myself on, concentrating solemnly on my task, and eventually, everyone turns back to dancing, conversing, or other things. Only occasionally someone still points a finger and whispers.

Times runs differently while I serve, on and on, round after round. Watery red wine that smells of cloves and lemons, powdery wine that looks like champagne. Then dove confits on a bed of bursting figs coated with maple syrup. It is only when the light dims and the strange music fades into a deeper, darker and slower rhythm, that the smell of sweat and sex is suddenly everywhere, thick and heavy. Bodies start to move rhythmically in corners, and my ears pick up the softest sighs and moans.

I hurry back behind the bar, as if the marble counter might shield me from the world. Only from there do I allow myself to take in the room, the dimly lit, meandering figures.

I feel someone looking at me .

The need to turn around and see who’s watching me is suddenly so overwhelming, as if something’s calling my very blood.

I turn. It’s not Riven’s gaze on me.

My heart stops for a few moments.

Dark, loose shirt, dark pants. Combat boots. Cruel cheekbones.

Black, callous eyes.

But it’s the hungry look in them that makes my heartbeat return faster and harder than ever.

He’s back, then.

Caryan.

He sits next to the other high lords, astonishing women by his side. Yet he’s watching me from across the room with an intensity that burns right into my innermost being. In this moment, I know that no man has ever looked at me like that before, and maybe never will again.

I feel naked.

Stripped down. Brutally.

Claimed.

Consumed.

Turned over.

Vulnerable in a way I can’t describe.

Only slowly does my sense of reality kick back in, and I look away. Closing my eyes against the already familiar undercurrent that flickers in the air, that clearly comes from his presence, and that should have warned me if I’d listened.

Suddenly too restless, I need a break. I need to get away, to get out for a moment.

I disappear into the kitchen, eager to busy myself there, piling more food I’ve never seen nor tasted before on trays the cooks conjure out of thin air, until Nidaw shoos me back outside.

The night ventures on as I carry more plates, the tinge of sex and lust becoming even more oppressive. I try hard not to look at the flashing skins but at the floor ahead, where tails curl and feet and hooves threaten to block my way. People lounge on cushions and low sofas, licking golden dust from collarbones and sipping wine from bellybuttons. I’m so absorbed in the task of blocking it all out that I almost bump into the chest of a tall man.

I don’t dare to look up, only whisper my apologies, when a familiar voice drawls, “There you are. Bring some elderberry wine and whiskey over to our table for all of us. Oh, and mix some lavender ice in one glass for the Dark Lord.”

Kyrith’s vicious voice rakes down my spine like a slick, cold tongue.

I only nod, not daring to look up or over to them, to the niche where Riven and Caryan are probably still lounging. Not daring to remember the expression with which Caryan beheld me earlier.

***

I return with what Kyrith requested, trying hard to steady my shaking fingers. I gently put the tray down on the glassy table in front of them, trying hard not to glance at Caryan, who’s sitting right in front of me. Or at the stunningly beautiful blonde woman with pistachio-colored lips next to him, staring daggers at me. Another woman with cerulean skin is straddling Riven. A breathtakingly beautiful satyr sits right next to Ronin, his hand on his bare chest, delicate fingers playing with a thin, golden chain around Ronin’s neck.

My peripheral vision picks it all up, whether I want it to or not.

It’s Kyrith’s voice that startles me once again. “Look who we’ve got here. Why don’t you get down on your knees when serving the Dark Lord?”

His words are so drenched with hate, mockery, and cruelty that they cut through all my senses while I fumble with the bottle. He stands to my right, in my blind spot.

I sink down onto my knees as I’m told, right in front of Caryan, and start to pour elderberry wine into glasses. Kyrith’s evil laugh makes me shudder once more.

“So docile. The very opposite of Lara, don’t you think?”

A laugh ripples through the crowd, especially from the women, while I struggle to keep my hand steady. Lara. Who the hell is Lara? Another human perhaps?

“Why don’t we see how far your docility goes? Since you’re already on your knees, you could give our Dark Lord a little demonstration. Make yourself useful , so to speak. Like a good slave,” Kyrith mocks, not yet done with me.

Another round of laughter spills over me, but I can feel the sudden tension, can feel everyone looking at me now, as if they haven’t caught a glimpse of me before.

Everyone can hear my racing heart, I’m sure.

Instinctively, I glance up at Caryan, only to find him looking right back at me, his irises like shaded onyx, circled by a rim of gold. Depthless. Unreal. His expression would be a mask of boredom and latent disinterest if his eyes weren’t as ravenous as earlier when they took me in.

I glance down again, blushing violently as Caryan says, “That’s enough, Kyrith.”

“Why? If you don’t want her, why not give her to me, my king? I promise to make a woman out of her. Teach her how to be a good girl, so she’ll be fun when you get her back.”

“As far as I remember, she’s still mine,” Caryan answers casually, but there is an edge to his voice now, followed by a subtle prickle of power that runs through the room, whetting itself as it goes.

“It’s just a little fun. Come on. You could use some. It’s equinox after all, and you must admit, after what was done to her, she doesn’t look too hard on the eye. Some might even call her beautiful with all that gold on her. Mistake her for something other than half-human scum,” Kyrith goes on unperturbed, seemingly ignoring the warning. The charged air. He bends over me and twirls a strand of my hair in his fingers as if to make a point.

I stop dead. The marks on my neck bristle at the touch. It takes all my self-discipline not to pull back, not to drive my elbow into Kyrith’s nose.

I truly consider it and maybe would have done just that if there weren’t a growl coming from Caryan’s throat, so deep and frightening that it makes my blood freeze in my veins.

Kyrith laughs it off, but I know he, too, feels the effect of Caryan’s power, because he lets go of me as if I’m hot iron.

Caryan’s voice is leashed lightning as he snarls, “Take your hands off her.”

“I was just kidding, my king,” Kyrith says, but his voice sounds a little shaky. Betraying him.

“Were you just kidding ?”

I can’t read the shadows in Caryan’s eyes when I dare to glance up. Liquid night fills his eyes before shadows erupt.

Bones crack. Kyrith screams.

His right hand, the hand that just touched me, is fractured, his fingers disintegrated and at odd angles.

Caryan’s still lounging on the sofa, but his voice has taken on a horrible calm. “Next time you decide to speak like that to your king, or touch something that’s mine for that matter, you’ll find yourself without a head. Now go and see a healer.”

There is a primal dominance in every word. And for a second, everyone seems to stop breathing.

When my eyes shift to Riven’s, he gives me the slightest raise of his eyebrows, utterly unfazed by the violence. A gesture that seems to say, the bastard deserved it .

Caryan waves a hand. “Help yourself to the drinks.” An order, not a suggestion—a king has spoken—and they all scramble to their feet, reaching for the bottles and glasses as if they can’t oblige fast enough.

I watch them, still kneeling. The darkness of Caryan’s magic is like dew on my skin. My fear, a wild sea within me.

Caryan leans forward, bracing his arms on his legs, and says to me, “Come over here.”

I tremble, willing my heart to calm. I hoped I’d be beneath his notice. Quick to forget. Not interesting enough.

I don’t trust my knees when I get up and approach him.

“Closer,” he orders .

I step even closer until I’m standing between his long, spread legs. He looks at me and then says, more quietly now, his voice deep and raw over my suddenly feverish skin, “Even closer.”

I move until I’m climbing on top of him, straddling him, my senses swamped by his sudden proximity. At the feeling of my body connecting with his.

Until his voice is nothing more than a murmur shaped by his lips against my neck. Cold, as if he feels none of what I’m feeling at the closeness. “Good girl. And now—amuse me.”

Amuse me. How? I have no experience at all.

One sidelong glance over to the woman who’s straddling Riven tells me enough of what he expects me to do. I blush deeply when I spot another one who’s settled between another man’s legs and is performing some up-and-down movements with her mouth, moaning softly every time she takes him in deeply.

I quickly look away again.

Amuse me.

I have no clue how to seduce a man. How to hide my inexperience. I’ve never been with a man before. Only with David, but that—

I force myself to place my hands on Caryan’s chest, trying hard to ignore the sensation of lightning and heat that jolts through my palms, as if I’ve immersed myself into an electric current.

It’s almost too much, almost painful.

He leans his head back against the sofa cushions, watching me through lashes nearly as long as Riven’s, his voice cold with cruel amusement as he whispers, “More.”

More.

I lean over him, shaking all over. All I manage to do is let my long hair fall into my face, shielding myself from his knowing gaze. As if I can hide behind it.

I wish I could hide as I let my fingers slip under the seam of his shirt, finding surprisingly smooth skin. His heat and power crawling into me. And then, tracing his sculpted collarbone, with fingers trembling even harder than before, I open one button of his black shirt. Then another one. Exposing more skin, smooth and white as marble, stretching over chiseled muscles.

I fail to rein in my trembling as the third button follows. The last one. His shirt gapes open, revealing a torso that looks like that of a statue. A god forged of marble right under me.

I close my eyes against the sensation of his scent that engulfs me when I lean forward, closer to his neck. He smells like something wild, uncontained. Like a forest, like moss and sandalwood and pines and citrus and wet gravel, as if I’ve fallen into a magical, evergreen, enchanted forest. A scent that seems to speak directly to my soul.

It’s too much, too overwhelming. His closeness. His power, writhing through me like a living creature. His scent; swamping all my senses.

I no longer know what I’m doing when I gently let my fingers glide over the bare stretch of naked skin, down over the hard, muscled plane of his belly.

I forget that I’m a slave. Forget about where I am. Forget about everyone else.

Suddenly, all that matters is his touch, his scent all over me, around me. The whole world narrows down to the feeling of skin on skin.

I glance down at his face. At his lips specked with flakes of gold. Finding that the black behind his silver-rimmed lashes has morphed into liquefied gold as he beholds me.

Then something feral enters his gaze as he whispers, “More,” in a way that shifts me all over. His voice, deep and husky, almost a moan.

I bring my lips to his neck. Kissing the golden trace of paint on his exposed throat. His unringed fingers roam over my body before they dig into the naked flesh of my thighs where my dress must have slid up. Unrestrained now, as if he is no longer able to keep his hands passive. Bruising me. It sends another rush of heat through my veins that merges with the hum of his power.

I gasp slightly when I feel him pressing hard against me, when I feel myself spreading my legs further, terrified by my own reaction.

But my senses are dizzy, flooded and unstable, as if I’m riotously drunk.

I shift a little to breathe more kisses onto his chest, my hands gliding further down to the seam of his pants.

He grabs me by the wrists and stops me midway.

For some precarious moments, we are face-to-face, his eyes on my lips, before he says, “That’s enough. You can go now.”

His voice is iced over, the total opposite of just moments before. But the same lucent, blazing gold still swims in his eyes, betraying him. The way they were when he drank my blood. It makes no sense.

“Did I do something wrong?” I whisper, my eyes wide with shock and fear. I need to ask. Need to know.

“No, you didn’t. Now go to bed,” he replies, even more coldly, as if he can’t get rid of me fast enough. As if I’d done everything wrong. Again.

Then he raises his head and says to no one in particular, “Get me a real woman.”

I scramble off him and away, my face burning hot with shame and fear and a swirl of emotions I can’t name. I don’t dare to look at anyone, not even at Riven, as I turn away. I try hard not to run through the crowd before I finally slink into the seclusion of the kitchen, the feeling of his hands around my wrists lingering like molten metal. Tears are streaming down my face even before I reach the deceptive security of my chambers.

Get me a real woman.

His words burn into my mind, echoing over and over.

I don’t know why it matters so much. I should be grateful for having been dismissed.

But when I curl up on my side, watching the eerie blood moon, all I can think about is the feeling of Caryan’s skin under my lips, of his scent all around me, of his hands around my wrists, on my thighs.

Get me a real woman.

I bury my face in my hands and cry until darkness and sleep claim me.