Page 28 of Kingdom of the Two Moons

Melody

He wasn’t there the following two nights for the celebrations. Neither were Riven, nor Kyrith, nor Ronin, although I kept glancing over to the corner where they had sat the other two nights, almost expecting them to suddenly walk in here.

Maybe I should be glad they aren’t around. No, I should definitely. But a part in me feels empty when I still don’t detect Caryan’s power close by tonight, brushing up against my skin, that quiet, dark, yet soothing hum over me and all around, filling the rooms and my very soul. Without it, the whole Fortress feels hollowed out.

I’m mad.

I should be afraid.

I am . I’m terrified—and I’m not.

It’s complicated, and the more I think about it, the less sense it makes to me. I’m not really afraid of Caryan, although I know that all the others are—even the high lords to some level. I saw it in their auras.

“They won’t come,” Nidaw tells me, having suddenly materialized next to me.

I jolt. “I wasn’t—”

“You’re looking. Constantly,” the siren says with a strange, knowing side-glance toward me .

I chew on my lower lip, avoiding Nidaw’s beautiful, pale eyes, hoping she can’t detect the heat under my skin with her siren-senses.

“It’s the war, isn’t it?” I ask.

Nidaw nods once. “You look very tired, girl. Go to sleep. And I think we can do without your help for the next two evenings.”

I’m venturing back down the long, empty corridor toward my room, when the breathtakingly beautiful, blonde eleven woman I’ve seen next to Caryan comes sauntering along. Her long dress is made of two shafts of fabric connected in the middle, exposing most of her belly and her long thighs, making her even more beautiful. But then, I guess she could wear rags and still look breathtaking.

I step aside into an alcove to let her pass, but she pauses.

“Good to meet you, slave. My fireplace needs some cleaning.”

I nod, earning a snarl when I look up into her stunning eyes. No fangs, though, just those elongated canines typical for fae.

She hisses, “Watch it, girl. I might not be as tolerant as some others around here. Come now.”

I follow her into her room; a large, dark hall decorated mainly with daybeds alternating with tiny tables. Jewelry is strewn around everywhere, as are all sorts of cosmetics and dresses and empty wineglasses. It smells of exotic perfumes and oils. Heavy, velvet curtains are pulled shut, candles providing the only light, their wax dripping into the silken carpets.

As soon as we enter, she slumps down onto a massive bed, waving toward an enormous, marble mantelpiece before taking a large sip from the glass of red wine that has magically appeared in her hand.

I kneel in front of the fireplace, looking for fire irons, but find none. I turn to the elf. “There’s no brush, or a shovel.”

“Is there not? Shame. I guess you'll have to use your lovely hands,” she croons, examining her long nails.

I have to bite back a snarl. “Do you have a bucket, or do you expect me to throw it out of the window?”

“You could eat it. Bite the dust—isn’t that what you humans say? Because that’s what you all do at some point. Wither away before you have lived. As if you were born already dead.” She laughs about her own joke, but with a snap of her fingers, a bucket appears next to me. “Oh, and all of it, girl. Be meticulous, will you?”

I crawl deeper into the huge fireplace and start to scoop up charred wood and ash in my hands, throwing it heap by heap into the bucket. But every time I take another heap, it seems that more ash has appeared out of nowhere.

I turn back to look at her.

“Something wrong, human?” she asks innocently, looking insufferably pleased with herself.

“You’re doing this .”

“Doing what?” She blinks a few times with her long, blue lashes.

“You’re summoning more ash, or however it works,” I grind out, earning a shrill, bell-like laugh.

“Don’t be ridiculous. Go back to work, you lazy creature. You should be grateful, you know. You’ll not be his whore forever. You’re nothing but a plaything. A wretched toy. Something he’ll throw away when he’s bored with it. There are so many women vying for his attention you’ll be glad you can come close enough to kiss the hem of his cloak when he’s done with you.”

With another snap of her fingers, all the ash I’ve collected is scattered all over again, dusting even the floor around the fireplace. I’m covered in soot, my hands already sore from scraping over the rough stone.

I glower at the woman who offers me a feline smile in return.

“Is that what happened to you ?” I ask before I can reconsider.

She sits up so abruptly that a little of the wine sloshes out of her glass and seeps into the silken sheets of her bed. “You know, I haven’t yet decided whether you’re just stupid or adorable for being so bold with an elf. Now clean it up.”

“No.” I get up, dusting my hands off on my dress, hiding how they are shaking at the sheer lunacy of what I’m doing here.

She gets to her feet too, pointing a finger at me, her eyes vicious slits. “You little piece of human filth. I should give you a taste of the whip. Soon enough you will beg me for household chores so he won’t throw you to the wolves. Clean it.”

“Or what? You’ll punish me? I don’t think he’ll be too pleased about that. And you won’t do it yourself, since it’s likely he’ll drink my blood and see in it what you did. Am I right?”

She stares at me as if I’ve slapped her awake, blinking at me. Then she curls her upper lip, flashing her large canines. “He’ll probably peel off your skin in strips.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. But the way I see it, I’m free to go.”

I start to move, watching the blonde elf who looks like she wants to jump at me and rip out my throat. But she still stands rooted to the ground when I reach the door. Streaks of envy curl around her like thorned vines.

The door swings open as if it knows I’m there.

“I’ll show him what you did when he comes in here to fuck me,” the woman says to my back.

I pause, turning my head slowly, sniffing the air delicately. The same way my movements have gotten faster, my sense of smell too has become more accurate. I shrug. “You mean if he comes here. Which he never does. Because I can’t smell him anywhere.”

With that, I’m out the door.

I start to shiver as soon as the door has closed behind me.

What have I done?

What will Caryan do?

You won’t be his whore forever. Is that what I’d become? Why he’s keeping me. Why he made me kneel over him for everyone to see at that party.

My skin burns all over at the memory, but I swallow every sensation down. Smother every other thought that flares in my head, unbidden. Unwanted.

I won’t go down that path . Not now. I don’t plan to stay here long enough to find out.

I slowly walk back to my room.

There, I grab the book Caryan gave me, but it’s fallen silent and motionless, no sign of it flapping its pages. I carefully open the first page, its paper waxen and foreign under my fingers. So old.

Runes. Runes of the elder language, that’s what I said, right?

You might want to read it one day. Caryan’s words. I’d been so nervous I didn’t realize their meaning.

How’d I be able to read them? I, of all people here. A girl from the human world. A book about silver elves , he said.

I turn the pages, looking at those strange symbols. Strange, but so beautiful. But the feeling I had last night, that I could read them if I only tried long enough, doesn’t stir. Maybe because I’m too restless.

Just as I’m about to close it, the text suddenly starts to make sense. I recognize words, then whole sentences, as if I’ve always known the language.

I flip through the pages. It’s the history of the silver elves. Silver elves or moon elves inhabited these lands a long, long time ago. Most of them had been killed by a raid of specters from the hells. There are a lot of descriptions about various well-known silver elves, and at which courts they lived and worked, about their work itself.

I pause on the last page. It seems to flicker and suddenly words that haven’t been here moments ago appear. My heart makes a leap, only to beat faster.

This is a message. A secret message. Written in the same runes. It takes me longer to make out the drawings because they’re clearly handwritten, and the ink has already faded.

It says, Unravel the truths, star-struck and moon-kissed one.

And then below three places. Library of Niavara . Archives of Evander. Ruins of Khalix.

I stare at the drawings. What does this mean? That something is there? The truth? But the truth of what?

“What do you want to tell me?” I ask the book, remembering how it flapped its wings and wanted to get to me. I get a ruffle of pages in answer.

“You meant for me to find this,”I say. “It wasn’t about the book’s content, but about that message.”Again, the pages flap in agreement and I let out a long breath, gently stroking the book’s spine.

Then I look to my right, at the lights that shimmer below at the bottom of the desert. Niavara , the town I can see from my room. Nidaw’s words flare in my mind, and I touch the page. My mother had been an elf, a daughter of Evander.

My heart still beats fast in my chest. You’re unique to this world. I look back down to that book in front of me, nestled in the sheets.

“You want me to go to Niavara?” I ask carefully. Again, it stirs, its pages humming in agreement. I suck in my lower lip. Why did Caryan give me this book? Because it called for me? There’s no way he can read those runes, or can he? If he’s old, very old, he maybe can. And why can I read it? “Can Caryan read you?” I ask the book.

It stays silent, the ink of the message fading back into oblivion. A no.

“So only me then,” I say quietly. A gentle flap of a single page. I run a hand through my hair. I need to go to Niavara then. I close the book and carefully place it under my cushion before I get up and walk into the bathroom.

I turn on the shower and start to scrub the filth off my skin before I walk over to my bed, exhausted. But when I lie down, I can’t rest. My mind’s too full of all the things that happened. My mother… an elf. And my father… human. I, able to read runes. Runes I’ve never seen before. A half-blood. It still sounds surreal.

Instead of falling asleep, I find myself looking up at the eerie sanguine moon and the glittering stars around it. I grab one of the sheets of paper and start to draw. Before I know what I’m doing, what my own hand’s performing, I find myself looking into Caryan’s chiseled, picture-perfect face. But those eyes feel lifeless without their colors.

I get up and open the duffle bag, only to find all my colors dried out from the desert heat.

** *

The next day in the kitchen, I peel violet and deep-yellow potatoes and carrots, their colors so vivid that I sneak two of them into my trouser pockets, determined to use the pigments of the flesh that stains my hands to make a paste.

The next night, before I leave, I ask Nidaw for some goose fat. Back in my room, having the evening off, I grind those potatoes and carrots and mix them with the fat and some water.

I’d need the biggest palette of colors one could possibly have to paint Caryan’s eyes.

Since I don’t have any color safe for the pastes of slight purple and golden ochre I just made, I take out one of the sketches I made of Riven’s face and paint his eyes and some of the cabochons that dangle from the rings in his ears, until the picture looks so real I have the feeling he’s indeed watching me.