Page 29 of Kingdom of the Two Moons

Blair, two years before Gatilla’s death

Blair blocked out everything except for the heart song of the wind as she soared through the night-enshrouded sky, tasting mist and clouds that would soon be filled with the spray of blood and the acrid tang of murder. She ducked into a crouch over the massive neck of her wyvern as the half-solid, half-misty beast under her body spread her wings wide and arced down.

“Very, very quiet,” Blair whispered against the wind screaming in her face. She knew her wyvern could hear her. Knew it in her bones, in the way the creature banked as she spotted the first fires in the watchtowers, just where Caryan had marked them on the maps.

Blair sat up tighter. Her body was still sore from the last night with Caryan. Still sore from what he did after she agreed to go to war for him and for her aunt. A punishment for her snarl. The tone she dared to strike with him before.

She’d known he wouldn’t let a thing like that pass without retribution. She shivered when she thought of the feeling of his body against hers. But she pushed the memory away for now, treasuring that secret.

She glanced back over her shoulder to see her coven falling into formation behind her. The witches like a living swarm of night, silver nails and teeth glinting, the air alive with the beats of wings .

Apocalyptic riders.

Blair felt a stir of nervousness shadowing her impatience. Her eagerness for bloodletting.

To prove herself.

Surprise me, Caryan basically demanded. You’re predictable, he’d said.

Oh, she wouldn’t take that. She’d show him how wrong he was. She’d bring him the head of the cadre stationed here after they’d had their fun killing the high elves. The head of Kyrith, the famous mountain lion of Palisandre.

Yet… that tower was full of high elves. The soldiers stationed up here in the north bore inherent ice magic. Wind wielders and blizzard summoners, Caryan said.

Taking on a high elf was different than anything they’d done before—killing farmers or the occasional, unlucky high elf crossing their path. Here, there were at least a dozen high elves. Trained soldiers. Armed to the teeth.

Dangerous. They were dangerous. Witches could— would —die tonight.

Blair swallowed the lump in her throat and resisted the urge to turn around one more time and cast a last glance at Sofya and Aurora. She knew Aurora would be stern-faced. Her mother had cornered her that morning after battle brief, when Blair had donned her armor and weapons and filled her saddlebags.

“You can’t be serious. You can’t allow this, Blair. The witches barely survived the Demon War. Nor the fight against the angels.”

“Are you questioning my orders?” Blair’s voice had gone quiet as she stared her mother down like she would have any other witch of her coven. Yet Aurora hadn’t backed off. Sofya and Aurora were like day and night, but not in that regard. Sofya was fire, but Aurora was stone. Both unbendable.

“No, I’m questioning your sanity.”

“Watch it, Aurora, or I’ll have you replaced.”

Aurora hadn’t so much as blinked. She held Blair’s stare longer than anyone other than Gatilla or Caryan would have dared to .

Blair had lashed out and cut open her lip, yet Aurora still hadn’t retreated. Hadn’t even flinched.

“Impudence breeds madness,” Blair recitet.

Aurora’s remarkable eyes darkened. “You are not your aunt, so do not repeat her wicked words to me. You can’t lead us into this war. Into a war that will cost so many more lives.”

Treason. It was the first time ever that Aurora had so much as hinted at Blair’s heritage. At her amber eyes and wine-red hair, the heirloom of Gatilla’s bloodline—the strongest bloodline of all witch clans. Blair never particularly cared to learn about her heritage, but she knew that witches came from an alliance between demons of the hells and fae, and that the purple blood in her veins was a testimony to draconic blood. In her, like in her aunt, it ran almost pure.

“What do you want me to do?”

“Refuse. Lead us somewhere else. Stand up against her, Blair. This war has cost us too much. Witches will follow your lead.”

“I should drag you right to our queen for even thinking such a thing,” Blair snarled.

She should have punished Aurora then. Broken her nose, at least. Yet she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She never could. She allowed such indiscipline, allowed that wildness to burgeon. If her aunt knew, she’d have all three of them cut open, dangling from hooks and bled to death while she wore her finest silk and sipped a glass of wine.

“Caryan knows what he’s doing. Now step back in line,” Blair said, but Aurora kept blocking her way.

“You can’t be so foolish as to trust the angel. He is hers, Blair. Her weapon. Hers. He is ruination. To all of us if she unleashes him.”

“He is as much hers as he is ours,” Blair snapped back, her mother’s words and their meaning, their implication, making her lash out again. “He’s our only chance for survival. Our only chance against Palisandre.”

After the Demon Wars had cost so many lives, they were too few. They needed Caryan’s power. Her mother knew that, yet the look Aurora gave Blair then—it still ached like a scar .

Blair tried to ignore it. She also knew if she turned around now, some witches—Sofya, at least—would be grinning in anticipation, not sharing any of Aurora’s qualms. That’s when witches smiled—on the hunt. Right before a kill.

Her blonde mother was a pure witch, pure wildness raging in her heart, always eager for bloodletting. Sofya never backed off from a challenge. No, she threw herself at it, sword drawn.

They reached the outpost and Blair’s mind finally cleared.

She gestured to the witches to disperse and take on the outpost as they discussed while she headed straight for the citadel’s tower.

She sent out her magic—a wall of bristling, biting, red, fire-like energy—the second before her wyvern’s massive claws tore the whole wooden roof away.

Screams had begun to fill the air when a white-haired elf suddenly appeared on the half-destroyed roof, and a wall of ice shot up to meet her magic.

His rough-spun clothes and wild hair suggested he’d been asleep moments ago. Yet he was already armed to the teeth, a long sword in both hands.

Blair silently commanded her wyvern to land right in front of the silver-haired high fae.

She drew her own sword from her scabbard on her back before she jumped down from her wyvern, landing smoothly in a crouch.

“Who of you is Kyrith, the white mountain lion of Palisandre?” she asked, blocking his blows with her sword while their magic writhed and clashed in the air around them like two massive beasts, trying to devour each other.

“In the flesh, witch,” the elf snarled back. His sword came down so violently, it cleaved her sword in two.

Blair just raised her eyebrows, then threw the useless hilt off the tower. Shame. She’d have to use her nails and teeth then. But that way it was much more fun anyway.

She flashed a silvery grin. “How fortunate. I’m going level this outpost and then I’m going to leave with your head.”

Kyrith turned out to be a particularly nasty bastard. He lashed out with his magic again before Blair could use hers as a shield. In a storm of ice and hail so thick Blair had bruises all over her body, he’d brought down the whole tower and summoned a gust of wind so strong it blew both of them down. They’d dropped from the sky in a free fall.

The asshole somehow managed to block his own deadly plummet before he could splatter on the ground. Blair would have been dead if it weren’t for the claws of her wyvern catching her a few seconds before her body would have inelegantly plastered the ground.

Kyrith regained his footing fast and blasted another icy storm against her wyvern the moment he found his balance. Her wyvern had screamed and lunged towards him. Blair dismissed the creature a split second before a sharp cone of ice could have pierced her heart.

She didn’t know whether a phantom could die, but she sure as death won’t let herself find out.

“Touch her again and you’ll burn,” Blair growled, and a storm of her fiery, scorching magic once again collided with his.

It erupted in a bluish-red collision, before it collapsed. She flung out another wave, digging deep into her magic, letting it rush through her veins and shine through her eyes. Only then did she realize how long it had been since she’d loosened the leash, even a fraction. How good it felt.

But the coward didn’t stay to block it. To play with her. No. When she swiveled for him, she found him sprinting towards the woods. The infamous mountain lion of Palisandre… running for his life like a coward.

Well, not so high and mighty after all, it seemed.

“Don’t run, elf. You’ll only die tired,” Blair shouted after him, flicking debris and splinters of ice off her leathers while she made her magic follow him.

A channeled, spear-like flame rushed after him, piercing the night. She smiled. He wouldn’t have a chance to scream before she’d skewered and roasted him like a pig.

All around her the night sky exploded with bursts of magic from similar fights—witches against high elves, the air filled with cracks and snarling.

Blair paused to breathe it all in. It was beautiful in a macabre way. Crazy as it was, part of her had always been more comfortable in chaos. She allowed herself a split second. A split second too long, because that blanched bastard of an elf used it to summon some kind of ice-whip, which slammed into her flesh, hurling her through the air and into the wall of the castle.

How the fuck did he get here so fast? He must have teleported, because another second later, she was pulled back up to her feet, her head pushed so hard against the wall all over that her teeth ate stone and her jaw sang with pain. His body was close and unrelenting like steel, pressing so hard against hers she couldn’t move. Her clawed hands somehow already pinned against her back. Useless.

“Game over, bitch,” he snarled too close to her throat.

“I’m a witch, you fucker,” she hissed. “Believe me, that one letter makes a big difference.”

“I believe that dead, you’re all the same,” he seethed right back, ready to rip her throat out with his teeth, she knew.

“Yeah? I’d think twice about that if I were you. Might be a big mistake. Or probably not so big in your case,” she said.

He froze as he felt the sting of her dagger pressing against the inside of his thigh. She’d flicked it free from her sleeve with a tiny twist of her wrist. He’d anticipated her claws, but not a knife.

She grinned. “Your favorite part might be an even better trophy than your head, and I reckon you even use it more often.”

His answer was nothing short of a deadly growl, yet he didn’t move a muscle.

“Right. Who’s a good boy?”

“Shut your trap, witch.”

“Why? Since we’re obviously stuck here, we might as well get to know each other a little. Why don’t you start by telling me what you did to get sent to a godsforsaken outpost in the middle of nowhere. Tell me, what did you do to piss off your little elven king?”

“Shut your mouth, witch. ”

She almost laughed at how on the spot she was. Almost. If her cheek didn’t hurt so much, she would have.

“I’ll rip out your throat before you can so much as twitch a finger,” he hissed, accentuating it with another brutal shove.

“Will you?” She angled the knife at his groin slightly, so the tip bit into his skin. “I love a challenge.”

“What about you tell me which outpost Caryan’s planning on attacking next, and I’ll let you live.”

He knew Caryan, she could tell, by the way he used the angel’s name so casually. Strange.

Blair let out a laugh, but it got choked by an icy wind that started to fill her lungs, smothering her fire, freezing her insides so fast she couldn’t move.

A wildfire made of pure ice. What in the hells?

“So, witch. Which outpost? Dare lie, and your arm holding the knife will be the first to break off your body like a frozen twig. Snap, snap.”

For a brief second, true panic stirred in Blair. She’d never been trapped like this. She tried to summon her magic, but the warrior’s magic coated it all with a blanket of eternal ice. Her magic—it was muted, subdued. Silent.

“What in the hells have you done to me?”

“Don’t like that much, do we, huh? Which one, Blair Alaric? Tell me before I run out of patience.”

“Go to hell! Just kill me.”

“You think your mighty aunt wants her only heir dead?” he asked instead.

She frowned. “Why leave me alive?” It truly interested her. Why stall instead of just finishing her off?

“I have my reasons, but my patience is running thin. Tell me, or I will deliver your head to my king. Your choice.”

She believed him. As much as she hated it. Still, she made herself laugh. “Then go ahead, taste my blood, elf. And suffocate on it.”

“I’m offering you a chance, you mad creature. ”

“What you don’t understand is that, if you don’t kill me, it will be my aunt’s hands ripping out my innards.”

“I see. Gatilla’s famous generosity. Then don’t tell your aunt. Go and only tell the angel, since it’s his bed you’re warming, judging by his smell all over you.”

What the fuck? How did he…? How could he smell Caryan on her beneath all her magic? It shouldn’t be possible.

Her voice sounded strained even to her ears when she asked, “You think Caryan will spare me?”

She realized the moment the question left her mouth that she had no clue how Caryan would react to her failure. Yes, she shared his bed, but Caryan was cruel and cold in a different way. Different from all other fae. He had no reputation for mercy. She didn’t really want to find out whether this held true for his lovers, or whether she was going to be the exception.

Or whether he would just report her to her aunt because he was her slave after all.

A deep, dark part of her was afraid of the truth. Afraid to find out.

“Only one way to find out, witch,” the elf blurted, reading her thoughts, so self-righteous she’d love to smack his teeth out.

“Fuck you.”

“Tell the angel this is a gift for him. A gift he shall not forget. The way I know him, he will see reason,” he seethed right into her ear before she was shoved so hard against that wall she saw stars.

By the time her vision cleared and she swiveled around to pierce his flesh, he was long gone.