Page 3 of Kingdom of the Two Moons

Blair

Blair once again camouflages her sharply pointed ears and silver canines with the magic she’s taken from the wolf shifter. It’s now contained in a tiny crystal flacon on a chain around her neck. It will last for a few more days before she will have to refill it with someone else’s essence. There’s no natural magic in the human world that fae can draw from, leaving them more or less vulnerable. The only side effect of the human world Blair doesn’t like. Shifters, like Fenrir, are still able to change forms, but they are not able to wield or summon or the like. Only angels can take their inherent magic with them when they jump from world to world.

But Fenrir’s essence will last until she finds Lyrian and ends him. And should she still need magic after that to stay a while longer for whatever reason, she can just harvest Lyrian himself.

Her pink Porsche Panamera flies over the rain-slicked street. She left the desert shortly after midnight, heading north, cabin door wide open. Let some desert scavengers feed on the body.

At some point in between, the rain kicked in, and instead of seizing, it only got worse the further up north she pushed. Now dusk is already approaching, although the monotonous storm gray of this area barely suggests it. It’s as if, up here, there’s no sun at all.

A strange place on Earth. Depressing. It reminds her of the Blacklands, the wastelands the witches call their kingdom. Fitting for Lyrian .

The whole drive, Blair’s been pondering how best to proceed. There is no denying that Lyrian poses a threat, even to her, and that there will be some of his henchmen around she will have to deal with in order to get to him. Lyrian is dangerous and obviously in possession of so much magic he can hide from even her senses. It’s been almost a year since Blair climbed out of the waters of the fae gap, and she has not felt a trace of him, not even a bristle of incongruous power, though one of her talents is just that—sensing accumulations of power in a range of hundreds of miles.

She’s attracted to it, like a moth to a flame.

But Lyrian she didn’t feel, which is strange, but she’ll find out why. How he does it. One step after the other.

First thing, she’s got to find his hidden domicile up here. The wolf shifter wasn’t able to give her the precise location of Lyrian’s house.

Lyrian, paranoid as ever.

Blair isn’t worried, though. She doesn’t think Lyrian, no matter how much magic he’s gathered, will be able to truly harm her—not here in this world, where his elf powers are practically useless. Save for his reflexes and speed. He can’t even wield a spell while she still has her witch’s silver claws and teeth to fight with.

But what about that girl? Will Melody be with him? Or has he hidden her away somewhere else? No. If the wolf shifter could be trusted, Lyrian was using her special skill—to sniff out magic—to help him harvest. So Melody will be close to him.

Blair curses silently.

Melody. The half-blooded girl the new witch queen Perenilla wants so desperately because of just that—this special talent of hers. To use it to find some ancient elven relics. Objects the high elves stored their magic in long ago. They hid them away under the dark reign of Gatilla, so that if the witches came to slaughter them, their magic couldn’t be harvested and added to the witch’s reservoir under Gatilla’s amethyst tower, Windscar. That morbid tower where Blair was raised and honed into a predator.

The memory of those dark times pushes up unwanted, and she clenches the steering wheel, fighting it. It bubbles up nonetheless. How many nights did she stare at those polished, purple walls? How many times was she chained to the pillory outside on its landing platform and left there night after night until hunger and cold almost drove her mad? How many times was she flogged for talking back, for so much as batting an eye at an order from her cruel aunt, or kicked out naked into the snowstorm when she was still a child?

Too fucking many.

Sure, Perenilla isn’t half as bad as Gatilla. But she is hell-bent on changing that. She even had the collapsed amethyst tower rebuilt further east of Akribea and called the new one—made of polished onyx—Cloudcleaver.

For now, Perenilla’s bad enough. But with the relics adding to her current power… it doesn’t take much to imagine what she will become. Let alone what Perenilla will do to the girl… will make her do in order to find them. And what it means that Blair will deliver her up. Ignoring the consequences...

Blair’s hands tighten even harder around the steering wheel. So hard that the material starts to bend under her fingers like molten wax.

Delivering the girl up to Perenilla... it doesn’t sit right with her for all the wrong sorts of reasons. She’s never cared much about rules, but she cares about these humans.

She knows she’s not supposed to. Knows she can’t ignore an order coming from her queen. But sometimes Blair can’t help but wonder what she would be like if she had been born a human. If she had grown up in the mortal world. She might have gone to school, taken her place in the world for granted. Maybe traveled the world or got a real job, as they called them. Had an apartment. A cat. A fucking TV. Eating ice cream out of the tub while binge-watching some stupid soap with her friends.

Oh hells, she would have friends .

She would be nice and laugh and joke. She definitely wouldn’t rip a girl out of that to put her into a world that is cruel, ancient, and raw. Give her to creatures who will make her serve and suffer .

Better Perenilla has her than Caryan, she tells herself, not for the first time. It sounds hollow.

Blair forces herself to focus on the rain instead. On her mission. On her fucking breathing. She cranks up the music, and Eminem jumps to life in her car, cleaning out his closet and doing a damn fine job at it. Oh, how much she can relate to all the anger in his voice...

As darkness falls, she reaches an accumulation of houses and stops the car in front of the only bar in the deserted greenery. Alarmingly close to the fae gap, and she still isn’t feeling a thing. Weird.

She gets out, her sneakers getting wet as she strolls toward the battered door with a blinking neon sign saying Open.

Blair hasn’t bothered to change her outfit since that night in the club. Just patted the shifter’s blood off. Sloppily, she realizes, as she looks down at herself and finds some dried stains still there.

It’s not the blood that’s a problem, but her dress.

Not changing into something else might have been a bad idea, because everything stops when she enters. She can hear it—their breathing, damn, even their heartbeats—stopping before picking up. All the men ogling her and the dress that clings to her curve-gifted figure. Her lush waves of wine-red hair. Her eyes gleaming in an unnatural, shocking amber.

She suppresses a grin and might even be swaying her hips, just a little. These mortals, devouring her with their eyes. She should be used to it by now, but Abyss save her, she isn’t.

These humans, fawning over her beauty, are unable to sense the danger in her, the wrongness that should make them shrink back in horror. So they don’t. They’re solemnly haunted by the desire to see her again. Unable to see that she is a beautiful, fully grown, flesh-devouring monster. Her teeth so sharp she can open up their skins like a razor blade.

On a deeper level, she knows that fae beauty is different from mortal beauty. Elemental. Painful to look at, even with her glamour up .

And she is a looker, even among the fae, so can she blame them?

She slips into a booth at the far end. From here, she can overlook the bar, waiting until the humans recover and get back to whatever it is they were doing before. The table in front of her is filthy, covered by a patina of grease. Probably beer and frying fat judging by how sticky the laminated menu is. Not to mention the heavy, sour scent of old sweat that hangs in the air. Blair licks her teeth so as not to cringe.

Sometimes the acute sense of smell is a burden, especially in the human world. She envies those mortals who wear the cheapest, artificial crap on their skin and still are able to call it perfume, while it smells like some sort of detergent they use to wipe the floors with. Not to mention all those other smells they seem to be immune to.

A shy waitress pads closer and Blair orders three extra-large burgers with fries, the meat still bleeding, and some red wine, before she props her sneakers up on the bench opposite her, listlessly following some silly game where a lot of humans chase a ball over a field like dogs.

As she said, silly but adorable. In the way pets are adorable.

Her red wine arrives, and Blair tastes it, pulling a face. Watery and already off. She downs it anyway and orders another one.

The staring only intensifies when her burgers arrive. The whole bar turns to her, the stupid game forgotten, as if to see whether a woman like her is truly able to eat this much.

Blair grins at them while she takes a hearty bite. She wolfs down the three massive portions of food in record time, before she makes a show of licking the remnants of sauce and meat off her fingers.

Then she sighs theatrically. Abyss , she loves their food. Pizza and instant noodles and vanilla sauce straight out of the can.

She orders one more burger before she leans back on the hard, wooden bench, thinking of how best to find Lyrian because the bastard sure as fuck won’t be running around here blurting about his whereabouts. He will be hiding like the creep he is.

At that moment, the door flies open, and a dark-haired girl strides in. Her face has the angular beauty of a mortal, but there’s something else there aiding her attractiveness. A delicate face, dark eyes, and full, red lips. Her skin looks dewy, but at the same time lacks the absurdly picture-perfect, smooth skin of the fae. Her long, dark hair is lush but without the oppressive mass and shine of all fae that can be suffocating. And it vies with the moon white of her skin. She’s taller than the average human, slim, athletic, dressed in all black. A leather jacket hangs on her shoulders, rustling with every movement. Black boots hug her ankles.

Blair sits up straight, her eyes following the girl through the bar. There’s something off with her. With her demeanor, the fluid way she moves.

The girl doesn’t so much as glance toward Blair as she slides onto one of the barstools at the counter, which is also odd. Blair’s sitting right in the line of sight of anyone who enters, and she is definitely something to look at.

But the denizens of the bar sure as fuck ogle the girl as much as Blair. Because something about her is odd, Blair realizes.

It’s something that sets even the humans’ underdeveloped instincts off.

Blair squints and smells the air. The effect is not a magical glamour, or Blair would feel it on her. No, this girl possesses about as much magic as a stray cat, but the same grace when she moves. Like a fae. All instinct and fluidity.

It should be enough to light up Blair’s own instincts. But it is only when the girl dips her head back and the light hits her face at a certain angle that Blair’s hackles rise.

Fuck.

How could she have not seen what is so obvious? This is the girl.

Must be.

The half-blood. Melody.

The daughter of that haughty, murderous, silver-blooded elven princess Ciellara. The last silver elf who infiltrated Gatilla’s court. Who Blair wished someone would impale on a stick, so she wouldn’t have had to keep up with her yappery and arrogance all day long.

Sitting at the bar is her half-human daughter. Must be. They look so alike.

Blair stares at her, so focused that she barely notices the shy waitress shoving the fourth burger over to her, as if afraid her hand might make a good side to her dinner. If Blair wasn’t so distracted, she would have congratulated the waitress on her appropriate intuition. Instead, she ignores her and keeps staring at the girl like a raptor who’s spotted a mouse.

A strange-looking mouse.

This can’t be a coincidence. Witches don’t believe in chance. And the girl she’s been searching for has just walked straight to her. But then, in the middle of nowhere where you can count the people living here on one hand, it might not be so odd after all.

Eventually, Blair grabs her burger and sinks her teeth into it, savoring every bite while she keeps watching the girl. Melody sits with her legs crossed, swirling her glass of the same cheap, warm, red wine.

Blair almost laughs when she tilts the glass, drinks, and scrunches up her face just as Blair had done, apparently coming to the same conclusion. The wine tastes like shit.

The girl orders some ice and throws two cubes in it before emptying the glass to the dregs and ordering another one.

Blair takes a sip of her wine, washing the slightly tangy, rancid taste of cheddar and old meat away while at the same time liking the idea that she’s tasting the very same flavor on her lips as the girl.

Fuck. The girl she’s been hunting for a year. Combing through every city from north to south. And now she’s sitting right in front of her.

Melody glances at her phone before putting down money. She slides off the stool and walks straight toward Blair. Blair briefly thinks she will head straight for the bathroom through the door next to Blair’s table.

But when she passes Blair, the girl’s eyes meet hers—depthless, dark eyes—and she whispers, “Run. Lyrian’s coming for you.”

Then she’s through the door and gone .

Those six little words clank through Blair. What the hell? Lyrian, coming for me? Bullshit.

Yet Blair jerks up, her senses straining. Her fae hearing picks up the sound of another door opening. She smells a waft of wet, moldy breeze that tells her there must be a second exit back there.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

She slams a hundred-dollar note on the table and heads after the girl.

She opens the first door. Washrooms to her right. The girl’s scent betrays her, and Blair stumbles through an inconspicuous door to her left, outside into the rain.

Right on time.

Blair catches Melody’s wrist right before she can get into a black, sleek sedan. She wrenches the girl back, pushing her face-first against the wall of the bar. One hand slides around the girl’s neck, the other over her lips.

Melody fights her, trying to throw elbows and land kicks, which Blair parries easily.

While she keeps the girl’s slender body against the wall, Blair feels how delicate she is. How breakable. One wrong move and Blair could snap her bones.

It is not fair, the useless voice in her head whispers.

Blair tries hard to block it out. But she can’t help but notice the smell of desperation that clings to the girl, going down to her very essence as Blair leans in, parrying another elbow blow that came pretty close to her temple.

Fuck, how old is this girl? Maybe twenty? Twenty-five maximum. Reared by a monster.

It’s not my problem , she reminds herself, but that useless sympathy stirs in her anyway. Everything reminds Blair too much of her own fucked-up childhood.

Too bad Blair has been ordered to bring her to Perenilla, or she would have mercy. Would let this rare half-fae go.

The girl bites down hard into the palm of Blair’s hand. Blair lets out a violent hiss, her sympathy vanishing into thin air .

Ouch. This half-human thing bit her.

“Don’t fuck around or I’ll kill you right here,” Blair snarls, bringing her head close to Melody’s neck, her bleeding hand sliding to the girl’s right arm as she tries to slam her elbow back another time, pinning it to the wall.

What a little fighter.

The girl’s voice comes breathless, desperate. “He’s coming. He’s coming for you. He knows you’re here. You need to let me go!”

“Keep dreaming,” is Blair’s only response.

The girl manages to get a leg free and kicks hard against Blair’s left knee. Blair bares her teeth against the searing pain.

Little bitch.

Melody must have damaged Blair’s knee more than she thought because it gives way when she tries to step back, her fae healing not able to knit joints and fibers back together so quickly.

The girl takes advantage of it and twists in Blair’s grip. Those wide, brown eyes stare directly into Blair’s, the look in them haunting. It is what makes Blair hesitate for a second. Makes her really listen this time.

“Lyrian is coming. He sent me to find you. He’s going to kill you. I’ll lead them away, but you need to run! Now!”

The truth hits Blair in the face then. Lyrian is coming. For me. He knows I’m here.

The girl doesn’t wait for her reaction but shoves her and makes for the sedan.

While Blair watches the girl flee her senses pick up a cloud of undiluted, dark energy pushing closer. Fast. Something that has managed to veil itself from her senses until it came that close.

Shit. She halts, watching the girl jerking the gear into place and reversing, as Blair’s magic strains to identify what exactly is coming her way.

An army of renegade fae. Enough to kill her.

The girl wasn’t lying.

Blair tests her knee again, and this time it holds. Without losing another precious second, she sprints off to her car while the black sedan shoots down the rain-wet street and is gone.

A few minutes later, Blair steers the Panamera in the opposite direction, the car flying toward the fae gap a few miles from here.

But that black wave—it’s on her heels. Drawing closer by the second. Way too fast. Lyrian must have gathered an army of renegades around himself. Things have gone sideways here, but Blair won’t think about that now.

Not when she spots a bunch of wolves running through the woods next to the road, way too fast and big to be natural wolves.

More shifters.

She pushes the gas pedal, and the Panamera roars, but those furred and fanged beasts keep up, undoubtedly fueled by Lyrian’s magic.

Shit, I’m doomed.

One wolf jumps, landing on her car with a solid thump, denting the roof.

Long talons scratch the metal, trying to hold on, but failing as Blair yanks the steering wheel around, sending the car sliding.

A black mass of fur rolls off the hood, but another silvery one has already taken his place, running and jumping, its deadly claws missing Blair’s window by a hairsbreadth.

Instead the wolf hits the back window and shatters it, sending shards raining over her as she jerks the steering wheel to the right.

Another one down. But at least a dozen more coming.

Blair floors the gas, the landscape and the wolves chasing her turning into a blur of green and brown. She can already smell the sea which connects the two worlds—the fae world and the human world—with each other. And the fae gap a bit off the coast. All she needs to do is get there.

The only problem is the elevated coastline.

No, that’s not the only problem, she corrects herself. A heavy thud shakes the car. Another wolf has landed on the roof of the car, denting the metal before huge, sharp claws tear it open like a tin can.

If Blair could summon her magic, she’d send all those furry mutants into the afterlife, but she can’t because her magic doesn’t work here.

The claws miss her head by an inch when she veers off the road again, bumping over open fields of grass now before sliding back onto the road. But the wolf’s holding on, and more are jumping toward her, the one on the roof so close she can smell his rancid breath.

She throws one last glance at the pack that’s trying to encircle her before she steers hard to the right and… off the cliff.

If they want to kill her—fine. But no fucking way will they get her magic.

The car is flying. She can only pray to gods she doesn’t believe in that her body will survive the collision with the water. That these wolves can’t swim.

She turns back in her seat to see the pack pausing at the cliff, fangs flashing. But not following. The one on the roof must have either jumped off at the last minute or is tumbling to his death.

Blair throws a last, melancholic glance at the smartphone next to her in the passenger seat. All the music stored on it will die along with her. Music she will now never be able to show to Aurora and Sofya.

Because she will never see Aurora or Sofya again. Will never be able to say goodbye.

It’s her last thought before she mashes her eyes shut.

Then, her world shatters as the car collides with the surface of the ocean.