Page 43 of Kingdom of the Two Moons

Melody

As I silently meander through the corridors, I wonder whether the fae ever ache after evenings of wine and celebrations. Are they ever hungover after they get riotously drunk? Do they ever fall into an exhausted sleep like I did the few times I stole wine from Lyrian’s cellar?

I follow the sound traveling through the halls, along with the warm wind leading me out through a grand door and into a garden I’ve never seen before.

A surreal garden. Impossible. Full of green trees and the ground strewn with windfall apples. Surprisingly soft, plush grass under my bare feet, which could never exist in a desert like this if it weren’t for magic.

A thousand fireflies dance between the oaks and willows and cherry trees, illuminating the moss-covered shingles of bark.

I stride through it, trailing after the sound of haunting music and laughter, until candles illuminate a path, two large torches flanking the entrance to a maze, its hedge higher than my head. I look around, unsure what to do. A man appears next to me, stepping out of the darkness. His skin is a pattern of white and black tattoos that seem to blur with the shadows, his hair the deepest blue in the flickering light, his face a masterpiece of classical beauty.

“Are you lost, my lady?” he asks gently .

“I’m no lady—” I start.

But he holds up a hand. “Indeed you are. Lord Riven sent me and wishes you the greatest of fun .” His eyes twinkle as he speaks the last word, his sensuous mouth twitching. We both know Riven would never have used it. “I was sent to tell you that you might find him in the middle. He also mentioned that it shouldn’t be a problem for you to find the right way if you just think of him.”

Before I can say more, or ask for his name, he vanishes as if he was never here.

Fun. The same word twice in one evening.

I eye the maze, unsure, but then step into it. Think of him. Riven wants me to use my special talent to find him, so I will.

It’s suddenly so easy to send my senses out and have them show me the way through the fallacious paths toward the laughing and dancing like a beacon. There are more torches lining the thick greenery of the vast clearing when I reach it. Everywhere, cushions and carpets are strewn in the dappled shade of oak trees and willows, their branches long and slim like ivy vines, shivering in the wind, hiding the naked bodies moving and writhing beneath it.

I probably should be used to the sight of openly displayed lust by now, but I’m not. I quickly look away, unsure where to settle my gaze. My eyes wander on, past naked men to my right, shining with gold paint and playing harps and flutes. I eventually make out Riven at the far end of the meadow. Great.

He looks so decadent and fluid in this atmosphere, as if he was born for this. Then I remember he probably was, as a fae prince. He’s surrounded by breathtaking fae women. One of them has her delicate arms twined around his neck while he’s laughing about something one of them must have said.

For some reason, my heart sinks.

I wrap my arms around myself and just watch him, too shy to approach. Unable to look away either.

The collar of his tunic is jeweled with shimmering onyx, an echo of his ink-drop hair. A ruff of pitch-black feathers hugs his pale throat. Black boots rise wide over his knees. Golden cuffs with serrated peaks cap his pointed ears, and heavy rings catch the light, each of them so big it covers his knuckles.

But the most stunning part of him is still his face, his features so similar to Caryan’s they could be brothers if it weren’t for the warm smile that fades when his eyes drift to mine.

He takes a step out of the woman’s embrace, and with a last word to them, he comes over to me. Before I know what he’s doing, he falls on one knee, his hands pushing up the fabric of my dress. He presses a kiss right on my naked hip.

“What the hell—”

“Forgive me, my love, but etiquette demands this,” he interrupts, his voice smooth as polished stone.

“A little warning would have been nice,” I hiss, ignoring the flush of treacherous heat as his fingers trail down my naked leg, slowly letting the thin fabric of my dress glide back down along with them.

“I’ll make sure to warn you the next time I fall on my knees to kiss you,” he retorts very quietly, so only I can hear.

I stare. His expression stays stern and formal, but I see the corners of his lips tugging up ever so slightly at my incredulous look.

He gets up and beckons to a pixie man with green hair and rainbow wings who’s carrying a tray with wine. Riven hands me a glass of golden liquid before offering me his arm. I shyly take the glass and his arm, and he gently guides me through the crowd.

I try hard not to notice how everyone seems to steal glances at us. I hold on tighter while Riven steers us toward the long table in the middle of the yard, made of polished, turquoise stone and laden with impossible delicacies. Veal, still dripping with blood. Fat, dark grapes, so ripe they seem they might burst if you look at them too long. Stiff, whipped cream in the shapes of animals, rich and yellow like butter, dusted with gold. Edible flowers had been strewn in between all sorts of roasted things I don’t know the names of.

“Eat. It’s hard to worry over delicious food,” Riven says, as if he feels my unease.

I look at the food, at all these enticing things I help prepare every day but only taste occasionally when Chef lets me. To help myself to it all—it feels forbidden. Like back at Lyrian’s house, where I’d sometimes sneak into the kitchen at night when Lyrian wasn’t around or was busy with other things. I’d ransacked the fridge, starved from either getting nothing or just plain bread and butter day in day out.

I don’t stir, so it’s Riven who takes one of the plates and starts to load it with a bit of everything. We stroll over to some cushions under trees, strings of gems interwoven with dried flowers dangling from the branches, dancing in a breeze.

Riven leans back, braced on his elbows, his throat exposed, his long legs outstretched.

I try not to look at him or marvel at how stunning he looks. Instead, I scrutinize the strange food on my plate. Eventually, my curiosity wins and I take one of the cream animals. He watches me as I bite off the head of a fox. It dissolves on my tongue, its taste citrusy and sweet, along with words You will not know who tried to kiss you in the dark.

Riven laughs at my wide eyes. “It’s a game, a spell woven into it, whispering nonsense. What did yours say?”

I look down at my plate again, for some absurd reason remembering the feeling of his lips on my hip. It feels wrong to tell him, but also wrong not to, so I do.

He nods. “When I was a child, we imagined they held some meaning. Some truth, important to our lives. Some hint at the future.”

I fully look at him then, trying to imagine him as a child. He looks barely older than twenty-five, and at the same time, he does. All of them do in some strange way. They look young and at the same time eternal. Ageless. Their eyes ancient.

I pick up a tiny cream bear and hold it out to him. “Your turn.”

“Very well then,” he says and puts it into his mouth.

I raise my brows at him. “And?”

“A riddle. You can see your self in me, but you can never see mine, and in time, you can see no one at all .”

“A mirror,” I say. “Its silver tarnishes over time.”

He tilts his head and looks at me. “Maybe. Or maybe someone who has forgotten how to love. Who can only ever find himself in others, until he can do not even that anymore.”

His voice has fallen low again, and the way he looks at me changes. For a moment, there is no facade. There is no vicious glint in his eyes, nor the infinitely amused expression playing around his lips. For a moment, there is his real self, exposed, revealed. The grayish mist around his aura vanished, torn. Just like the other night, when he let me. When he told me that he’d once been a slave too.

Again, I try to make sense of what I see there, in his aura. He’s talking about himself, and also not. There is pain and desperation, but also, somewhere, hope and joy. Love.

“If there’s, indeed, truth in the saying, what would it be?” I ask, suddenly too aware of who he’s really talking about as I spot the golden band again.

“Whatever we want it to be,” he retorts, too casually. “Because it’s just a riddle. Like a fairy tale. It’s not real, so it only holds as much meaning as we give to it.”

“But what if it is real?” I push.

“Then I would keenly wish it to be the mirror because what would life be without the ability to love? How empty, how dull. It must feel like a curse.”

He’s telling me something. Too much and, at the same time, nothing. I register somewhere in the back of my mind that the music’s changed. People are starting to dance in a circle.

Riven gets up, too, holding his hand out to me, his somber mood wiped away.

“I can’t dance. I mean, not real dancing. Not like that ,” I confess, mortified. Briefly afraid of what I’ve agreed to in coming here as I watch the swirling and spinning couples. Some move so preternaturally fast that the ground underneath them begins to spark and steam, leaving burned soil. How they exchange the mouths they kiss, along with their partners.

Riven gives me one of his smiles, so well-practiced and ruthlessly polite. But it doesn’t match the seriousness in his eyes when he says, “We’ll take it slow.”

I entwine my fingers with his when he steps up, his cheek at mine, his hand at the small of my back. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the disappointed faces of other women, envy all over their auras.

He follows my gaze. I stiffen. “You don’t have to do this. You can just leave me here and dance with them,” I say quietly.

“I do not wish to.”

I watch our feet, my bare toes close to his boots. I should not ask, but I can’t help it. “Why? Because we’re still pretending?”

“What else would it be?” he asks darkly.

“I don’t like this game, whatever kind it is,” I say, more harshly than I should. But suddenly, being here in this dress makes me feel more vulnerable than ever.

“It’s not a game.”

“Well then, what is it?”

“I want you to enjoy yourself, Melody,” he says, catching me gently when I make the wrong move.

“So, we’re doing all of this just to make me feel… good?” Sarcasm rings in every word.

“I admit it might be a little bit selfish too,” he whispers, close to my ear. “But yes, I would do a lot of things if they made you feel good .”

My breath hitches at the way he speaks the last word. I wonder what we’re doing here. It feels dangerous.

“Should I tell you how pretty you look?” he asks as he spins me around.

Our eyes meet.

He turns me so my back is pressed against him, his hard body. Just then he murmurs into my neck, “I cannot. It would be a lie.” I shiver at his breath over my skin, at his words running over it like slow-dripping honey. “Because you look breathtakingly beautiful.”

If I didn’t know fae can’t lie, I would know he just did. So dangerous .

He spins me again until we’re face-to-face. He smiles at the confusion all over me. Another private smile only meant for my eyes.

Then he leans into me and says with midnight smoothness, “Look at them. They can barely keep their eyes off you.”

“Because I look human,” I retort quietly.

“Oh, I assure you this is not the reason they’re staring so unabashedly.”

He spins me again, and I look over my shoulder to study his face. Heat flushes my neck when I find him glancing down at my dress for a second.

We spin again and he suddenly stops. “You still do not understand,” he says, almost frustrated.

I shake my head, my heart beating a little too fast. No, I don’t understand a lot of things. The way my skin feels more alive when he touches me, the way I feel differently. Bold, maybe, but in an entirely new way.

“They envy you because you are much more beautiful than they will ever be,” he says.

I still cannot follow him. His eyes warm as he takes in my features. I look away. “They, you…”

“We are perfect, yes. All of us, blessed by eternal perfection. But perfection dulls the eye over time. It is our flaws that make us special. Our broken parts that make us unique.” He traces the memories of scars on my face before he leans in again. “You are very beautiful, but you are also wild, and alive, and feeling. More alive and feeling than many of them will ever be.” He says it with a touch of sadness. With a touch of melancholy. With a kind of longing.

And for a second, I don’t care whether this is a game. I don’t care what I am or who I am. Or was. A part of me just wants.

I let my gaze stray, afraid he can sense exactly what effect he has on me. Afraid of myself and what I want to do.

Black eyes catch mine. Under one of the willows lies Caryan, his head cushioned on a silken pillow.

The last angel. The face of dreams and nightmares.

He’s wearing a long, loose, black hunting shirt that reveals a lot of his white chest. Two stunning women sit on either side of him, one undoing his pants while the other kisses his lips, which are ripe with the color of wine.

His eyes are barely open, but I can feel him watching me, his eyes glittering black as fresh tar through his thick lashes while he keeps kissing the woman. A woman with skin as light as mine and hair equally dark and long.

I try to shake the thought off…

But can’t.

All the things he whispered to me suddenly run too fresh in my blood. Make my ribs cave in on my lungs. And just like that, it’s as if I feel that collar again, cool and eternal against my delicate throat.

Horrified I tear my gaze away from Caryan, back to Riven. It takes everything I’ve got not to touch my neck to see if it’s really gone. But I feel raw, my heartbeat stuttering, uneven, my breathing fast. Before I know what I’m doing, I’ve slinked past Riven and am running toward the hedges. Deeper into the maze, into its shade and dark niches.

Riven follows me. I hear him behind me. Only there do I look up to him. “Is Caryan… is he going to keep me forever?”

“Forever is a strong word, Melody,” Riven starts, but I cut him off, still breathless.

“Do not… do not evade the truth to spare me. I deserve to know.”

“I think so,” Riven says gravely, his eyes losing their shine.

I can still feel the lingering touch of that collar that was never there. And yet the skin on my throat keeps burning with its otherworldly cold. “And if I don’t obey whatever he wants me to do?” When Riven doesn’t answer immediately, I take a step back from him. “I can never leave?”

“Melody,” he says, reaching out to me, but I only step back further.

The blaring of a horn cuts through whatever he was about to say. His face looks tormented as he peers back over my head towards the center of the maze. “The chase. We cannot stay here,” he says then, his eyes gliding back to me.

“The chase?”

“It’s a midnight game. People will chase each other through the labyrinth,” he explains somberly, then offers me his hand. A silent truce. Like in the woods. Like back in front of Lyrian’s house, when he said he would protect me.

I take it.

“Who will chase whom?” I ask.

As if on cue, a tiny pink paper bracelet appears around my hand, a blue one around Riven’s.

When we step back into the clearing, everyone has gathered, each one with a subtly differently colored bracelet around their wrist. “Your bracelet has a twin. But you don’t find out until the person with the matching bracelet finds you, or vice versa,” he explains when the horn sounds again. “But we won’t participate. Just stay close to me and we’ll get out.”

His voice is serious, and he almost pulls me along, as if something about the game is dangerous.

The horn sounds a third time and at that, the crowd begins to run toward us like a herd of game chased by lions. We step back against a hedge to let them pass.

When I briefly let go of Riven’s hand to flatten myself against the labyrinth’s edge, some huge fauns grab me and pull me with them.

“Melody!” Riven shouts, eyes wide.

He’s trying to get to me, but the fauns are like a stream, and I’m pushed by them. All too quickly I’m swallowed by the darkness we just came from. Only there do I manage to wriggle free, to step aside and let them pass.

But when I try to get back to the clearing, there’s suddenly a hedge, sprouted out of nowhere before me, blocking my way.

The entrance to the center is gone.

When I turn, I’m all alone in the maze’s path.