Page 32 of Kingdom of the Two Moons

Blair, two years before Gatilla’s death

Blair strode towards Caryan’s war tent. Her claws slashed through the heavy fabric of the flaps as she shoved them aside violently.

Then she stopped dead. Caryan stood there, his back to her, his powerful, male body totally naked. But Blair’s gaze snared on her aunt sprawled all over his bed. The scent of sex and blood assaulting Blair’s nostrils too late.

Blair blinked before she bowed her head and dropped to a knee.

“My queen. My commander,” she gritted out, too startled and tired for much diplomacy.

“An interesting way to enter the tent of your general, Blair,” her aunt chided, fabric rustling as she sat up, her eyes narrowed at Blair. A snake ready to spread her venom, strike and kill.

“Forgive me, but I have news that cannot wait a second longer,” Blair answered dryly. Half true. True enough that the lie could pass her lips. She prayed that this was enough for her aunt not to probe further. Keep them focused only on the essential parts , that’s what Caryan once told her.

Her aunt waved a hand. “Then, by all means, report, Blair.”

Selective truths , Caryan also told her. What was she doing here? She should tell her aunt everything, shouldn’t she? But this could put Caryan in peril… What Kyrith said, it changed things. She co nsidered it on her flight back. The white mountain lion of Palisandre knew Caryan, even confirmed it. How? From where? Things she needed answers to before she spoke to her aunt. Fuck. She hadn’t known Gatilla would come here, or she wouldn’t have walked right into this trap.

Blair said, “The outpost is destroyed, my queen. No casualties on our side.”

“Yet?” her aunt snapped.

Blair felt her aunt’s magic bristling through the room. Impatient.

“Yet the mountain lion of Palisandre escaped.”

“How?”

“He… ran when I attacked him. He can teleport.”

Blair kept her eyes trained on the wood-paneled floor. Teleporting, so rare a gift beyond high elves. Some, like Riven, could step in and out of shadows, but it took up a great deal of their magic. But traveling through rips in the world and cover great distances without tiring, that was another thing entirely. Hells, she prayed this would be news enough for her aunt not to push, to distract her.

Blair found herself forgetting to breathe while she waited. Eventually, she heard the rustling of fabric as her aunt got up from the bed.

“This is definitely new.” When Blair glanced up, she caught her aunt exchange a long look with Caryan. “It might reduce our odds in this war.”

The angel nodded once, not even sparing Blair a glance before he surprised her by saying, “Not if he’s fighting on our side.”

“Explain, angel,” her aunt demanded.

Caryan ran an eye over Blair then—his black-red eyes holding nothing but boredom and disdain—before he looked back at her aunt. “I’ve found a way to grow our army. Yet I need more magic for that. But then I’ll gladly put my theory to test.”

Blair could have sworn the silence that followed was laden with death.

Games. Dangerous games, the ones Caryan played.

Her aunt straightened her neck, adjusting the golden chains there. “Very well, take as much as you need, angel. But do not disappoint me,” she said finally.

“I would not dream to, my queen,” Caryan said, the slightest hint of mocking in his words while he kept holding her aunt’s gaze.

Blair caught her aunt’s cold eyes glistening with menace before her lips curled into an amused, awful smile. A private game they were playing, Blair realized. Dangerous and fucked-up and private. She tried to keep her face passive as the scent of her aunt’s arousal filled the room once more.

Eventually, her aunt turned to Blair, as if she’d all forgotten about her and only now remembered. “Blair, you reek of blood. Leave us and wash it off.”

Blair didn’t allow herself a shudder until much, much later when she’d long since bathed and was back in her tent, which had been moved as far away from Caryan’s and her aunt’s tent as possible.

She couldn’t bear to hear them, even if Caryan did it just because he had to. She could barely stand him watching her aunt that way. With the same, dark promise in his eyes and words she knew so well and that made her blood sing and her legs weak.

She undressed completely and slipped between the silken sheets of her bed. No luxury had been spared for her war tent, just as she had ordered. It might well be her last night, so hells wouldn’t she sleep in her silken sheets.

But sleep wouldn’t come. She kept tossing and turning. Every time she closed her eyes, she felt Kyrith’s magic suffocating her own, her own power slowly recoiling like a startled, frightened animal, trapped in the cage of her body.

She’d never felt more helpless. More vulnerable.

Abyss, she needed Caryan right now. Needed his experience, his wisdom, his unfaltering focus, the heat and hardness of his body. She needed to be held. She needed to talk to him.

Her aunt shouldn’t be here.

And what Caryan said—a theory, to make Kyrith fight for them? How ?

And Caryan… having just been granted free rein over the reservoir’s magic…

Eventually, Blair threw back the sheets and got up, still naked, stepped outside her tent, and summoned her wyvern. She rode off into the night, with nothing but the wind and her wyvern all around her naked skin, her long, red hair flying unbound.

She couldn’t deny that it was beautiful here. So different to the Blacklands. The air smelled of moss and camphor trees, was warm and soft and she could see the stars, clearer and brighter than ever.

No storms to veil them, to ravage these lands.

No, she realized with a cold kind of shock.

Here, she was the storm. Beautiful and haunting and terrifying. With rain in her eyes, ice in her heart, and chaos in her veins.

Craving nothing but lightning under her fingertips.

And one day, she was going to break loose. She would rage, the sky would split, and the wyverns would dance.

And this world would change forever.