Page 22 of Kingdom of the Two Moons

Blair

A black, hooded cloak hides Blair’s features from the little people who frequent Akribea’s streets at night. The cold has swept the town empty. Frost is gnawing on windows, icy wind crawling in under doors. Her fingers are already numb from the flight down here.

The ground is muddy and dirty from snow and rain, treacherous ice coats the bridges, her boots soaked and heavy. She pulls the cloak even tighter around herself, not to hide, but against the cold. There’s no reason to hide. Not here. There are only a few witches left anyway, too old to live in Perenilla’s tower and serve. And very few other fae have stayed, despite the threat of being murdered or harvested. Who survived Gatilla’s reign in the first place. The ones who haven’t left are creatures with barely any magic worth slaughtering for.

And anyone who sees her will know better than to utter a word.

Blair looks up and bares her teeth at the sentinel of the collapsed tower rising to her right. The ruins of Windscar, the amethyst stone black in the absence of light, looming over the town like a warning.

Lights are on in only a few of the formerly elegant, now-rotting townhouses as Blair ventures on. Once richly ornamented facades are now crumbling, most of the windows broken or missing altogether, the doors under impressive portals scratched and unhinged, clattering in the wind .

But the worst is the wind itself, which howls through the empty buildings like the lost souls from the Abyss.

Akribea is a ghost town.

As Blair ventures on, she remembers the stories Aurora and Sofya told her when she was still a small child. About what a flourishing metropolis Akribea had been when they were young and came here to study at the great university of witches, open to all races and teaching all subjects. Not only dark magic and methods of harvesting, as it is nowadays.

The streets then were brimming with students and merchants and art shops and markets, beloved by elves and everyone else alike. Aurora’s and Sofya’s stories are so vivid in Blair’s imagination that it’s as if she’d seen it herself. Artists painting and playing instruments and taverns where bards sang lewd songs and Aurora and Sofya danced all night long.

Blair clenches her teeth at the gaping hole in her heart. Music. Dancing.

All fae love music and dancing. Everyone loves to party and dance and sing. Hells, how she misses it every fucking minute. She can only imagine how it must have been for her mothers, for everyone here, when Gatilla suddenly took over these lands, long before Blair was born, and everything fell into darkness.

One of the first things her aunt did as queen was ban all forms of art and music. Those things she viewed as distractions, keeping the witches from focusing on brutality and training.

Taverns and bars closed, along with shops and cafés. Trade dried out. Fae started to move away—first in a trickle, then in a flood, because they could no longer make a living in this kingdom. That was when the harvesting began. Her aunt considered everyone who left a traitor.

After that, Gatilla built the reservoir. Then sent the witches throughout the kingdom to track down all fae with magic worth stealing in their veins and butcher them too. Then she sent them beyond their borders.

For a brief period of time, as Palisandre approached to strike a truce and ask for help to kill the angels, it looked as if things would eventually stop. And they did. Until her aunt managed to enslave Caryan and turned him into her weapon.

The last remnants of a once-glorious kingdom finally perished when Gatilla initiated the devastating, final war—the Witch War—leaving only ashes and ruins behind.

Blair cuts a corner and rats scurry away from her gaze into the dark. She sucks at her teeth, again thinking about what Perenilla said—about her aunt backing the wrong horse.

About Blair being a dreamer.

About why she did nothing to prevent her aunt from being butchered.

Because she’d been just that—a coward. Na?ve. Foolish. Waiting like a love-sick puppy until Caryan made the decision she never dared to make herself.

The truth was, even as Caryan’s blade cleaved her aunt’s bloodless skin, she hadn’t been sure which side to choose. She’d stood there and stared and stared and stared. And then she ran because, by all means, she had been afraid. Terrified.

She betrayed her coven. She betrayed Caryan when she didn’t help him. She betrayed them all.

She pauses, the wave of self-loathing so bad that, for a moment, she can barely breathe.

If only they knew, Blair , that ugly, hideous voice in her head chimes on and on like a chorus. So similar to the reservoir’s magic.

Yeah, if only they knew , she bites back.

What she did was bad, sure, but it isn’t even the worst of her betrayals.

No. She’s done so much worse. Things even her mothers are unaware of, thank the Abyss.

In the days after Gatilla’s death, the second-oldest witch, Drusilla, had taken command and ordered Blair and the thirty-three covens of witches to attack Avandal, the capital of the Kingdom of the Seven Rivers, and its healing spring. Drusilla, an old and vile witch with a humped back, had heard rumors that Caryan was hiding out at the temple there to heal and decided to nip the problem in the bud.

The night before the attack, Blair had flown straight to the temple on her phantom wyvern, to a beautiful healer by the name of Meanara.

That winter-haired elf had been the only one awake, sitting on the stairs and watching the stars. So Blair told her about the attack. Told her to warn her queen. To hide the women and children. To ready their troops.

Blair hadn’t done it for Caryan. Well, maybe a tiny part of her had.

Maybe not.

The angel would probably kill her anyway. Whatever. Fuck it.

But she’s definitely done it for Avandal.

Blair had never been to the glorious cities of Palisandre, but she’d been to Avandal several times, disguised as a lesser fae, before they installed the wall of wards around it. If she ever had the choice to live somewhere else, it would have been Avandal.

She fell in love with it. With the city itself and the seven magical rivers that gave the kingdom its name, running like steaming, glittery silvery-blue veins through it. With the streets made of stone so white the entire city glistens and gleams, even at night. And its people, the kindest she’s ever met, drinking tea at various tea houses, while harpists and flutists play on every corner, and the constant fragrant perfume of wisterias and jasmine fills the air.

She couldn’t allow the city to suffer the same fate as Akribea.

The night of the attack, many witches died. Blair made sure to send the witches of the covens close to her to places she knew would be mild and barely protected. The other ones, the cruel, bloodthirsty witches like her aunt, she sent right into the epicenter as she had agreed with Meanara. The latter covens were called the wild ones, even among the witches. It had become a form of sport among them to impress her aunt by surpassing each other with cruelty. Killing women and children and eating them had always been off-limits among the witches, until Blair’s aunt came to power. Blair couldn’t allow that either. Honestly, it made her fucking sick to her stomach.

She just couldn’t, whatever that made her.

A lot of witches fell, especially the wild ones. Drusilla eventually had to stop the attack and retreat. There had been so many casualties on both sides.

But Drusilla considered the attack Blair’s failure and threw her into the dungeon to rot there forever. And maybe Blair would have, if Drusilla hadn’t died miraculously a week later.

Blair rubs her temples. There is nothing to deny—the deaths of most of the wild ones hang on her shoulders. Yet Blair never regretted it. And never would. But she wonders what fate keeps in stock for her. Whether all those deeds have finally come back to bite her in the ass.

She stops in front of an inconspicuous house, knocks three times loudly, and four times quietly. A blond elf opens the door, his green eyes shining and wide. One of the few men who still live here, if you could call it living. He’s a high elf. She feels the magic in his veins. A high elf who fled his impending execution in Silvander, the capital of the Enchanted Forest, but never made it to the human world and somehow washed up here a few years ago.

She’s the only one who knows about him and his heritage, though, because her talent is sensing strong magic. To all the others, he might just look like any other lesser fae and not the high elf he is.

And he has proven useful in enough ways for Blair to keep his secret.

Though in all these years, she’s never asked what he did to make his kind want to kill him. But then, she doesn’t care. He’s one of the best blacksmiths this world has ever seen. He’s quite good in bed, too, but this time, Blair’s here for a new blade.

“My ruby, I haven’t seen you in a long while,” he drawls, cocking an eyebrow.

She bats her long lashes, smiling innocently. “Sassy. Are you calling me that because of all the gems I bring you? Or because of the color of my hair?”

“Can’t it be both? ”

“Give me the best you have,” she says more sternly, putting five huge rubies on the desk.

He disappears into an adjacent room, only to return with a sword like she’s only ever seen Caryan carrying. Old, glistening runes are embedded in the shaft, flaring purple as she touches it.

The smith says, “Made from mithral ore and sealed with ancient spells. I called it Heartbreaker, because it’s said to never miss the heart.”

How fitting for me.

She unsheathes it, weighs it in her hand. Light as a feather, but much, much deadlier. “Sweet. I’ll keep it.”

“I’m afraid it will cost you a little more than a few shiny gems this time,” the blacksmith says, crossing his muscled arms in front of his chest, a charming smile tugging at the corner of his lips.

Abyss, she doesn’t even know his name, or his age. He could pass as eighteen but might be much older than her. And fuck, his dimples remind her of that human man she’s screwed in that bathroom.

“You’re a pervert,” she retorts dryly. “Short of women these days?”

His lips spread into a cocky grin. “Maybe I just missed you, my ruby.”

“Always a charmer. But first I need something more.”

“More?”

She gestures with one silver claw past the heaps of dried wolfsbane and bowls containing blood moss to a faded map nailed to the wall. It’s taken her several visits to figure out what that bleached, old map showed. Then the penny dropped.

Places of power.

He follows her gaze and his expression darkens.

She says, “I need to open up a portal.”

“You will need more power for this, I’m afraid. Even you, witch. Even at a place of power.”

“Stick to your steel, blacksmith,” she warns. “And give me that map. ”

Three witches and a place of power to draw from—where veins of wild magic cross. They would amplify her own. It would have to do. It would have to be enough to open a portal, to bring Sofya, Aurora and her back to the human world. Enough to never return.

She’s been awake for the better part of the night, thinking about what she said to Aurora. About getting them all safely to the human world when she remembered the blacksmith’s map. A fucking epiphany.

When he’s done carefully taking the map off the wall and folding it in a strip of soft pig hide, she says, “Now, run me a bath, because I’m freezing my ass off. And then we’ll see about your other qualities, blacksmith.”

***

Later, she stands in front of the window in his apartment, which occupies the upper floor over his shop. She likes it here—the whole building is always warm thanks to the fire in his forge.

“Who did this?” His voice is hoarse as he looks at the remnants of the scars the iron-tipped whip left—cute mementos all over her back that will only disappear with the help of a very, very talented healer, thanks to the iron.

She looks over her shoulder. “None of your business.”

He steps up behind her, sinking one hand into her long hair and pulling her head back, his large canines scraping her neck. She closes her eyes, a moan escaping her as this feeling evokes the memory of totally different teeth sinking into her.

Fuck. No, not again. Not now!

To hell with fucking Caryan.

“You’ve already had me,” she whispers. “Twice.”

“You said you’ll be going away,” he groans into her ear, his calloused hands starting to circle her nipples again.

“Touching a witch unasked is a dangerous thing,” she snarls, but he keeps his hands there.

“I know, but I like to play with fire. You better hold on.”

With those words he slams his remarkable hardness into her all over again, driving in so deep she almost sees stars.

She grabs the edges of the table, her nails shredding wood, the material groaning at the impact before it gives way under her fingertips. She stifles a cry when he pulls back out and drives into her again. And again. Even deeper.

She arches her back as he licks the sweat off her neck and shoulder blades. A guttural moan escapes his throat, which drives her over the edge. She goes limp, collapsing on the table. He grabs her hips as he keeps pushing into her in ruthless, sharp thrusts.

And just when she thinks she’s too tired to keep standing, his calloused hands find the spot between her legs.

The forgotten kings of the Abyss spare her. Elven lovers. Not as rude and irreverent as angels, but just as potent and thorough. She comes again, this time with a cry that makes him come too. She collapses on the table, him on top of her, spending himself inside her.

Afterward, she takes another bath, soaking in the hot water and watching the flickering candles throw shapes of monsters crawling over the wooden ceiling.

He steps up to her, a long sword in his hand, black as the night, cabochons embedded in its pommel.

She sits up straight, looking up at him wide-eyed. Meteorite ore. A material from another world. The only thing that could cut even through celestial magic, not to mention every other form of magic.

“Where did you get this?”

“I traded it,” he says. His voice is as rough as his hands, his eyes clarion, catching the flame.

“It can’t be. They are gone. The portals closed… the weapons destroyed.”

He shakes his head. “The weapons from back then were destroyed, yes. But they came back. They’re lying low in the Black Forest.”

Her mind catches on the word they. Nefarians. Hellborns. Sub- breeds of an elven race from another world. Basically high elves who formed bonds with shadow demons from the Abyss. Connections so deep the demons’ magic left traces of it in their own bloodline, causing the offspring to be born with huge, black, taloned membrane wings and claws.

Legends say they were born after the angels had come to this world. That they are the result of a power imbalance because the angels were too dominating. Too powerful, so the demons intervened, merging their bloodline with that of the high fae.

Blair read a similar theory once about where the witches came from—from an alliance with demons, high fae, and dragons, but no one really knew, and most of the books were written in languages long forgotten.

She frowns at the black sword in his hands, brimming with danger. Meteorite ore is deadly for every fae, not only angels, and her own being wants to bare her teeth and hiss at it.

The Nefarians entered this world back then through a portal, bringing meteorite ore with them, knowing its value and how to craft it into weapons. They allied with Gatilla and the elves from Palisandre and traded the ore for a place in this world as they rebelled against the angels.

And swept the soil clean of them.

Afterward, though, her aunt and the elves broke their word and hunted the Nefarians down almost to extinction because they feared their aerial units and strong warriors. Some of the surviving Nefarians fled back to where they came from, and with the portals closed, Blair never thought it possible that they’d return one day.

Everything made of meteorite ore was destroyed before the Witch War, her aunt made sure of that. Abyss, Caryan himself had led the raids on Palisandre’s armories, cleaning them out one by one. Due to the toxic energy meteorite steel emanates, one that weakens magic in its direct proximity, Palisandre kept them at the outposts and never in the cities. Big mistake.

Water splashes as Blair rises, foam dripping over her lush figure as she holds her hand out. The smith obediently puts the sword in it. Blair weighs it in her hand. It is heavy—heavier than it looks—as if its dark nature adds to its heft.

Shit, that elven bitch Ciellara cut Caryan open with a thing like this. With one of the few blades secretly stashed away that remained in this world. Ciellara let her moon magic flow into that sword as she tried to cleave him in half.

“And you know this for certain, that the Nefarians are back?” she asks, guiding the sword a few times through the air. She swears the blade starts to sing a dark song.

The smith nods once. “It was a Nefarian man who gave it to me.”

“I don’t want to spoil the moment and ask why you went to the Black Forest. It’s not for innocent elven boys.” She holds his gaze, his bottle-green eyes.

He just laughs quietly. “You never asked what I used to do, Blair. Maybe I’m not so innocent after all. But I went to see the seer dwelling there. You might want to seek her out too.”

She angles her head, her long, soaked hair swaying. The predator in her rears up its head. “How do you know my name?” she asks sharply.

“I wanted to know who you are. The seer told me your name is Blair.”

“Why?” Her voice has become strained.

He takes a step back from her, as if he’s sensed the danger suddenly coming off her. Her magic starts to whisper through the room, ready to rip into him like her phantom wyvern.

“You never cared to learn mine, though.”

She snaps, “Skip the banter. Why give me this sword?”

“Because I have the feeling you’ll need it in the near future.” His voice is calm, fearless, and he holds her gaze unperturbed. He’s brave. Bold. She might have asked him for his name, his heritage. About his former profession. But not if she’s going to leave this world forever. Which she is. Not when she’s not sure whether she’s going to kill him.

“What did you do to get it? It’s…”

“Priceless,” he finishes for her. “It depends how much your life is worth to you.”

He chuckles at her puzzled expression, and she flashes her teeth at him. He doesn’t flinch. The smile stays, only his eyes darken a shade.

“Some would call fearless boys like you stupid.”

“I’m not so much a boy, Blair, however I look. I think I’ve got a few more years under my belt than you. And have stared down creatures that are much more wicked and ancient than you.”

And walked away from it. She tries not to dwell on it.

“And what in Abyss’s wrath did you do to get this sword?”

“I saved a Nefarian’s life—I was there for business, and I found him half dead. I collected herbs and cured him of a deadly wound. He gave me his sword as his sign of gratitude.”

“That was kind of you,” she says, meaning it.

He brushes it off with a casual shrug. “You’ll never know when enemies might turn into allies. But what I do know is that no one ever forgets an act of mercy and kindness.”

“What do you want for this sword?” She’s already talked to him too much.

“Nothing. It’s a gift for you.”

“Why?” She frowns.

“You don’t remember me, do you? I was there the night the witches attacked Avandal. I’d been living there for quite a while, hiding out from the assassins after Palisandre put a bounty on my head. I saw you at the temple that night, Blair. I saw you warning Meanara.”

Blair gapes at him. He even knows the beautiful healer’s name. How is it that she didn’t pick up his scent on the wind that night?

“I’ll never forget what you did for my kin. Neither will I forget what Caryan did.”

My kin . He said he was from Palisandre, so he must have some family in Avandal.

But Blair’s mind catches on Caryan’s name. She snarls, “What did Caryan do? ”

“You’ve never heard, I see. Interesting. Caryan stayed there for two years. He brought back every single man and woman who fell that night at the slaughter in Avandal. Avandal suffered no losses because the angel brought them all back. That is why it took the angel two years to recover—because he spent so much of his energy bringing back all those souls.”

Blair stares at him, her eyes wide. Caryan did what in Avandal? Of course, she hadn’t heard because she’d been too busy sleeping and hiding from the world.

She doesn’t want to ponder what it means, though, that a lot of cursed creatures are now running free in Avandal, stronger and more vicious than they were back then. How could the witches not know about this?

The blacksmith says, “You have a good heart, Blair, no matter what they say about you. About the witches. You have a good heart.”

She brings the blade to his throat so quickly all he can do is blink. She steps out of the bathtub, keeping the point of the blade at his throat, watching him retreat with every step she takes forward like a shadow dance, until his broad shoulders hit the wall.

She sneers when she spots fear in his face for the first time.

“Don’t ever make such ridiculous assumptions again, friend of Avandal. I would also strongly advise that you never breathe a word to anyone about that night, or I might come back and cut you into tiny slices before I eat you for dinner to prove to you how good my heart truly is.”

“I would never breathe a word to anyone, Blair Alaric. But I do wish you to come back one day.”

She narrows her eyes. “You’re a fool.”

With that, she lowers the blade, only to lash out with her clawed hand, cutting his abdomen before licking his blood. She keeps looking in his eyes the entire time, the slashes on his skin gaping wide open, as if a wild animal has attacked him. Good energy. She almost spits it out because it tastes so disgusting on her tongue.

“Don’t you see what your true nature is, Blair? Why you like the taste of rotten souls so much but shun the good ones?”

She hisses at him, her claws around his broad throat, her lips only inches from his.

She allows her powers to stir, to flare up in her like golden, deadly curls of wildfire. Let it gnaw at his skin like aurum frost, like tiny hellhounds, ready to rip into skin and tear him apart. Let it shine through her amber eyes.

To his credit, he doesn’t budge. Makes no move to fight until she lets go of him. She turns on her heels, grabbing her clothes from where they fell to the floor and starts to don her riding leathers and, at last, her dried red cloak.

He’s still standing there, watching her every move, when she eventually turns to him. “Never push me again, blacksmith.”

With this, she sheathes the two new swords in the scabbard on her back and walks to the door. She reaches for the doorknob but pauses, turning to him one last time.

I shouldn’t care. I should just walk out and forget about it.

To fucking hell with it.

“What utter fools you fae are. You have no idea what you have brought upon Avandal, accepting the curse.”

“Caryan offered help in the darkest hours. Without him, Avandal wouldn’t have recovered. It was an act of altruism.”

That is not like Caryan.

She throws her head back and laughs. A vicious sound. “An act of altruism? Can you hear yourself? Have fun waking up one day and finding out how terribly wrong you’ve all been. You know Caryan can control the creatures he brought back—his spawns, right? He and his high lord lapdogs. All he has to do is give them the command to shred their own people apart with their teeth… and they will. He has no mercy, the same way I have no mercy.”

The blacksmith’s face doesn’t falter as he says, “Maybe. And maybe he will never do so, Blair. I guess all we can do is wait and find out.”

“Naivety’s a fool’s blessing. Thanks for the fucks,” she says, opening the door and disappearing into the night. The bad taste in her mouth lingers.