Page 51 of Kingdom of the Two Moons

Melody

Caryan walks back without waiting for my answer. I follow him quietly through the nocturnal lushness. My mind is wild. I don’t know what to think. I will get rid of that bargain on my wrist.

Yet at the same time, there is a hollowness in me, as if everything that just happened—the way he drank my blood, the way he showed me the garden and told me a shard about himself—as if this all has served only one purpose.

Yet, why ask? Why, if he could just force me to? Because he needs three relics, or more, and the bargain on my wrist counts only for one? Freedom. He said we could talk about my freedom.

I follow him back inside. It sends an entirely different kind of fear through me when I notice that we are heading to his private rooms.

The flame-eyed face at the door greets him, then addresses me simply as “Melody” before it closes shut behind us.

I stand there like I did two days ago, strangely lost in the huge rooms, my arms wrapped around myself while Caryan strides toward the kitchen, just as the last time after he saved me from that sand worm.

I quietly go after him, reluctant to enter, nervous to be alone with him as I watch him pouring two drinks over ice. The memory of what happened the last time— all those dark things he said to me— still runs vivid in my blood. Or shall I promise you that there is nowhere in existence you could run that I would not find you. That there is nothing I would not do to save you. That I would rip apart every world, every dream and every nightmare for you. I would even rip apart the hells .

I take my glass wordlessly and down it in one go. I’m not sure what it is, but it’s sharp and burns like a whiskey, numbing my senses. Good.

“I guess I’m nervous,” I say with a shy smile and put the empty glass back down on the counter.

Caryan just keeps watching me in that unnatural way of the fae—barely moving, impossibly patient.

I finally ask, “You never get nervous, right?”

“No,” he says, clearly not knowing where I’m going with it.

I point at my glass. “Can I have one more? Please?”

His gaze says no, but then he puts his glass down and pushes it over to me. I grab it, drinking more.

Eventually, the alcohol shows its effect, and I feel a little bit calmer, bolder. Bold enough to ask one of the many questions that ravage my mind.

Let’s start with the simple one.

“What does Kalleandara’s prophecy say exactly?”

Caryan walks over to the open window, his muscled back turned to me. After a while he answers, “As I said—there is a war coming. And you, with your talent, could change its outcome.”

It’s true. Everly said the same. I can see that in Caryan’s aura too, but that’s not all. And I already know it only has to be true enough .

“There’s more to it.” I follow him, stopping a little behind him, not daring to get too close. “It says that I will end the blight, right?”

He licks his teeth while he keeps looking up at the stars. “Prophecies say a lot of things. Things I do not necessarily believe in.”

“They say Kalleandara’s the most powerful oracle.”

“She is. That doesn’t make her predictions any more or any less real. ”

“But a lot of people believe it does,” I push.

He says nothing.

“Is the blight the war?”

“It refers to the outcome of the war,” he clarifies somberly.

“Are my talents the reason the Nefarians want me dead?”

“In a sense,” he admits. Ambiguously. An answer that is none. Fuck him.

I know I surprise him when I ask, “What are the relics?”

He angles his head at that while his eyes scrutinize my face, as if his decision whether to tell me more depends on something he finds or doesn’t find there. “It is bound magic. The elves bound magic to relics back then to hide it away from the world under Gatilla’s reign.”

“Why do you want them?” I ask.

He turns fully to me, a sad half smile on his lips, his eyes pitch black so his pupils are gone. There is no light left in them, not even the golden circlet that normally surrounds his irises. Briefly, the sight of him like this terrifies me. He looks like a demon. “To win this war.”

I shake my head. “No. You don’t need them to win the war.”

He takes a step towards me. “And you can suddenly predict the future?”

“No, I can just see in your aura that you don’t believe you need them.”

“Then I would have just lied to you, wouldn’t I?” His voice has dropped dangerously low; his smile tears into something lopsided.

He takes another step and I involuntarily take one back.

“Which I can’t,” he reminds me, that smile spreading into a terrifying grin as I try to read his aura, searching it for the truth, but it’s veiled again.

“It seems I’m not the only one who can shield herself,” I say, my eyes never straying from his, although everything in me locks up.

Heat enters his gaze, but for some reason it doesn’t make him look warmer, or softer, just even more frightening. Something’s wrong here .

“I learned to do that early on, in the young days of this world. I just happen to be negligent from time to time. At least where you are concerned, it seems.” he says slowly, aloofly, too lightly, as if it is all just a game we’re playing.

“How?” He must have taught Riven too.

“Oh, my little girl, I know so much more about magic than this world itself will ever understand. But I think you learned that already,” he purrs, and gods help me, his magic flares up under my skin, the same mixture of velvet and leashed lightning, as if to remind me of last night. I try my best to ignore it.

“Why do you really want them?”

“So no one else can find them.”

I shake my head. “Not true.”

He snorts incredulously. “All the things you seem to know.”

“You want all the power for yourself,” I say with cold realization.

“Do you know what happens if that power falls into the wrong hands?”

“And yours are the right ones?”

He cocks his head, then straightens. “It’s an old song—history, always repeating itself. There will be war again. There will be a new king, but none of them will lead this world to glory. He will just scorch its soil again. All monarchs are blinded by their insatiable greed. All of them turn decadent, all of them fall. And people, they are like cattle. Obedient until panicked. Rabid when they turn desperate. Look at the human world, thoroughly raped and destroyed.”

“So the Nefarians want me dead to prevent you from getting this magic .”

His eyes flash in a warning, along with his fangs when he says, “Some will want you dead to try to dethrone me. Others will hunt you down to have you find those relics for them.”

I don’t like the direction this is headed.

“I might not tell them.”

As a test, I throw my talent out and ask for the relics, but nothing answers me. Strange. A vague image of a flute appears in my mind, but no direction, nothing about its whereabouts.

I don’t tell Caryan though. Not now, not here. Not when my freedom depends on it.

Not as that strange echo of a smile, like a ghost, brushes his lips again.

He says, “They won’t ask as nicely as I do.”

Again, I wonder why he does—ask so nicely. I saw what he did to Sarynx so easily. What he would have done to those fauns had I not intervened. What he did, and probably is still doing, to the Nefarian warrior in some dark torture chamber.

“You said the blight is the outcome of the war. So—what is the outcome of the war?”

“It depends. As I said, I do not believe much in prophecies.”

“That’s not an answer,” I whisper.

Shadows rip from his strong shoulders, teeming around his head and body and wrists, curling over the floor between us.

“What happens if you find the relics with my help? And what happens if you don’t?”

He stills as he watches me. His eyes again go black like the space between planets. The space that eats stars and worlds and universes. They seem to drink all the light from the room, like his shadows. Drink life itself.

“And here I was, thinking that I’ve already established that the second option is obsolete,” he says, unbearably gentle as he comes for me.

I stumble backwards, banging into the kitchen chair behind me.

“But you might need some more convincing.”

“Were you the same way with my mother? Is this why she ran from you?” The words tumble out of me. Too sharp to veil my fear underneath. “Did you threaten to torture her too if she didn’t help you?”

He pauses briefly, surprised. “No. I didn’t. Your mother didn’t have any of your talents.”

“Why… why did she run from you then?” My voice breaks as I brace myself for his answer. My blood runs cold like water when none comes. “What? Too cruel to tell me?”

“Perhaps,” he admits, but his voice is suddenly rough. His shadows, hovering.

“Tell me anyway,” I say, holding my ground.

He turns his head away, as if considering. Then he says, “Your mother ran and hid, not only from me, but from a lot of other people as well.”

I instinctively retreat another step, and this time he doesn’t follow me. “Why?”

He frowns. “Because of you.”

“Because of Kalleandara’s prophecy. Because of my talents.”

“Yes.”

“But Sarynx…” I make myself say her name, although my ribs feel too tight to suck down another breath. “Sarynx said my mother had been hiding in the human world from you. Because of you.”

My heart almost stops when he says, “It is true.”

“Why?” I scowl at him when he says nothing. “ Tell me,” I push.

Nothing could have prepared me for his next words. “Because she wanted to sell you.”

“What? To who?”

“To a few powerful people. Kings and queens.”

“But I thought she was in the human world.”

“She was hiding there, yes. Though she planned on returning one day…”

“Once she sold me, you mean?” I feel strangely detached, as if we were talking about the wheather.

“Yes,” he says gravely.

I swallow hard. “Why… why did she want to sell me? And what did she want in return? Money?” I spit out the last word. Gods, I want to know what I’d been worth.

“It’s more complex than that. Your mother was an outcast, because of a few things she did in the past. You were her only chance to redeem herself. To buy back her freedom. Her safety.”

I don’t know what I’m feeling anymore. The woman I believed had loved me. She would have sold me like some object. Like Lyrian.

“But it never got to that. Because Lyrian found her,” I add quietly.

Caryan says softly, “Not exactly. It was she who went to Lyrian when she found out she was pregnant with you. It was Lyrian who managed the negotiations for her.”

Negotiations… about me. About who’d buy me.

My throat feels dry, my heart too heavy. I take a deep breath, trying to somehow wrap my head around that. “Why Lyrian?” I whisper. “Of all people, why would anyone seek out Lyrian out of their own free will?”

“For one, because he was powerful enough to shield his existence from everyone through the magic he harvested. Even from me. And because he was not always that evil. The stolen magic corrupted his soul over time.”

I look down at my feet. “Who… who killed my parents?”

“Your grandfather, Regus. The right hand of the king of Palisandre.”

My head flies up. “What? He killed his own daughter? How? Why?”

“They weren’t exactly on the best terms. And as for how—your mother was negligent. Arrogant. She stepped out of Lyrian’s magic shields. That is when he found her. Lyrian fled with you while your grandfather interrogated your father and her,” Caryan explains somberly.

“How do you know?” I ask before I can take it back. The words fall almost soundlessly. I’m not sure I really want to know.

Caryan’s eyes glitter otherworldly as he says, “Because I found him afterward. But he could not give me the answer I was looking for.”

My mouth feels dry. “Is he… still alive? My grandfather?” Murderous grandfather.

“He is. Although some people say he lost his mind.”

“Lost his mind after you… released him?” I ask, not knowing why .

“It depends on who you ask,”is all he retorts. I glance away, sucking in a deep breath while I try to detangle the mess of my thoughts. The mess of my feelings.

“So Lyrian kept me. But… at his house, he said he kept me for you . Why?” I ask, my mind still reeling, confused. I know so little, and all I can do is puzzle together the pieces. Lyrian, not always a monster. My own mother, trying to sell me to save herself. And well… the rest.

Caryan keeps watching me through his long lashes, his eyes gray, unreadable again. “In this world, people are superstitious. As you already know, there are seers and other oracles who give prophecies all the time. He received one that said you were meant for me, and he was to hand you over if he wished to be kept alive.”

Meant for me. I don’t like the sound of it at all, but I don’t find the sharp response I wish to throw into his face. Telling him that I’m not meant for anyone, in any sense. Not after everything he just told me. I just look away instead, grinding my teeth so hard they hurt. My eyes probe through the room while I try to process everything he just revealed.

Caryan gives me time. Waiting. I know he’s watching me closely. Know he can hear the uneven beat of my heart.

After a long moment, I ask, “Did my mother… did she get pregnant on purpose?”

“Fae rarely get pregnant. It’s not a thing you can plan on.”

I nod, not knowing if that fact makes it any better. “But if she was going to sell me anyway, and already had bidders… why not to you?” I sure as hells can’t look at him while I say it.

“I wasn’t yet the king I am now. I could not offer her what so many others could.”

I swallow hard. My mother. The woman I had dreamed up so many nights alone in the darkness. I know Caryan’s words should hurt, but they don’t. All this information should rattle something in me, but for some reason, it doesn’t.

Where I maybe should be heartbroken, there is just numbness. A void. An absence .

I take a deep breath and then I move on, as I always do. I have to.

I say with a bravado I do not feel, “You know, after all that gloomy talk I think I need another drink.”

I slink past him, walking around the kitchen island to avoid his path, heading straight for the fridge. I open it, looking for that bottle—whiskey. I find it and pour more into one of the tumblers.

Caryan remains standing on the other side, his expression unreadable. Cold.

I watch him over the rim of my glass, wiping my mouth after I’ve downed another glass.

“Is it wise to get that drunk?”

“I don’t know. Is it wise to keep whiskey in a fridge?” I ask back.

He runs his tongue over his teeth. “We fae do have different palates. I like it that way. The opposite goes for little girls.”

I raise my brows at him. “You don’t like them cold?”

His upper lip curls back, annoyed. “I don’t like them drunk, for obvious reasons.”

“As you just said—I’m a little girl and reckless and audacious and… right, enigmatic. And you have no feelings anyway. So I guess this is what reckless, oversensitive little girls my age do when they want to have some fun. Or as you’d put it in that elaborate way of yours, I might have a tendency toward volatility at the worst possible of moments. ”

I’m drunk. There’s no other way I’d have just snapped at him like that. Mocked him like that. But a part of me is threatened to drown in desperation if I didn’t.

I’m going to need to find three relics for him. Relics that don’t call to me on top of that. But even if I manage to find them, even if he gives me my freedom, I’ll be safe nowhere. I’m not foolish enough to think that I’m safe with him either, now or ever.

He licks his lips, and I hate that I follow the movement of his tongue. He retorts dryly, “ This hardly looks like fun.”

Something unholy flickers in his eyes, but he doesn’t intervene when I refill my glass another time and drink some more .

I secretly fight against the burning in my throat, like hot water, but force it down anyway. Then I give him an innocent look. “No? It could be, you know.”

I fill the second glass and shove it, the way he did before, glad it slides elegantly over to him as if I planned it that way all along.

“That is, if you decide to let go for once.” I shrug, trying to say it as nonchalantly as I can. Hells, I’m drunk.

“You don’t want me to let go, believe me.” His voice has dropped, but I opt to ignore the warning in it.

“Maybe I do.” I lean against the counter, looking him in the eye while sipping some more, although it already feels too much.

He doesn’t reach for his glass, just watches me in that stoic, serene manner of his. But his eyes flicker again, some deep purple entering the gray. It reminds me of Riven.

“So what now?”

“What do you mean what now ?” he echoes sharply.

“Will you just stand there and watch me getting hammered?” I take another sip of the sharp liquid and then I walk around the island, stopping right before him.

I try not to think of how tall and intimidating he is as I hold my glass out to him, a daring smile on my lips.

What the hell is wrong with me? Am I flirting with death? Winged death, that is. A very, very bad idea. Yet part of me wants to go further. Feels it like a pull under my skin. I want to see how far I can go and what will happen if I cross that line. I want to know why he treats me differently than all the others. There must be a reason for it, I know it in my soul.

I want to find out. Tonight. Maybe I’d come too close to death too often over the last few days.

He stands unmoved, like a man made of stone.

“Kyrith said that you don’t have any sense of humor. Now I get it,” I push.

“Kyrith would never dare.”

“Doesn’t mean it’s not true. ”

He just glowers at me, and it takes everything to keep my face blank.

“Good. Since you don’t want it,” I say, deciding to empty his glass, hoping it will numb me sufficiently.

I’m about to reach for the full one still sitting on the counter when he grabs my wrist. The very wrist his lips had been on just an hour ago. When I saw that gold in his eyes that I know, deep in my bones, means something more.

I felt it back then in that dungeon, and felt it at the fountain, clearer than ever. Something that horrifies him. Something about me.

I know it. It isn’t just in my imagination. It’s a clue. A lead.

He says with a growl, “That’s enough.”

I try to wrench free, but he holds me.

“You say that very often, you know?”

His eyes flare. “I mean it.”

“I’m not a girl anymore.”

“You are a slave ,” he says, baring his fangs. “My slave, that is.” His voice is sibilant. I feel the leashed rage underneath like a pulse.

“Yes, I know I’m your slave,” I reply, unfazed, right into his face, looking deep into those surreal eyes as if I might drown in them. His absurdly stunning face. The face that has the lethal, gentle beauty of snow.

I want to say you could have me, you know. You could have everything if you just say it, and I hate that.

I hate that I’m his slave.

Hate that he doesn’t let on anything.

I tear free from his grip and sink onto my knees. “Is this how you want your slave, my lord ? Your Highness ?” The mocking sounds bad, even to my ears.

He goes utterly still. I glance up at him, daring the gold in his eyes to return. Or the blue. Anything . But instead, the violet-gray only darkens. A storm is gathering, ready to break loose. I have no clue what I’m doing when I put my hands on his pants. When I let my fingers glide upward to undo his belt .

His hands close around my wrists again, stopping me like he did at that party.

The way he says “Get up” feels like a slap. No. Worse. A part of me wishes he would just slap me.

“Isn’t that what you did last night?” I taunt.

There it is—a flicker of that furious red that announces doom. Finally. I almost feel triumphant.

“Get up, Melody.”

Again, he looks like he’s restraining himself. I feel it, the tension. Fight it when he yanks me up as if I weigh nothing. When he holds me tight as I try to wriggle free again. I hiss at him, baring my teeth the way I did at the fountain. More red is bleeding into his irises now, and I feel some revolting satisfaction in having finally pushed him over the brink. At least there’s that. Just a little more, I know.

“That’s enough now, Melody. I warn you.” His voice is laced with a growl, the silken menace unmistakably announcing coming violence.

“Yeah? I think you should just discipline me,” I whisper right into his achingly beautiful face. I’ve probably gone insane. But a dark part of me is sick of these rules. Sick of being told what to do. Sick of all the selective truths and no one telling me what’s really going on.

For a sliver of a second, I think he will—discipline me. That I’ll pay for this when he says, “This is the last time I’m warning you.”

He lets go of me, but his whole unholy essence whispers around me, sizzling in the air, remnants of power flickering along my veins.

I let out a cold laugh. “I see. Yet you didn’t seem too repulsed by a little girl like me sitting on your lap at the party.”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Is it because I’m talking back?”

“Hold your insolent tongue!”

“The tongue you—”

His fingers are around my neck again, harder this time. I find myself pushed against that counter before my mind can catch up with his speed, his momentum. He’s standing between my legs, his teeth mere inches away from my lips, so close we would be sharing breath if he let me breathe.

I meet his stare, those eyes burning right into my innermost being.

Hold your tongue. Your insolent tongue. I’d laugh at his choice of words if it didn’t hurt so much. But the hell would I show him.

Just then his fingers ease slightly. I draw in a breath and hiss, “Ah, I forgot that you only like real women .”

He shoves me even harder against the counter. So hard my head smacks against the cupboard, his body pinning me, grinding me against the stone, his shadows crawling up my skin. He’s all animal now, his eyes not gray but a bottomless black as his free hand slams into the cupboard next to me so hard the material splinters. So close I can feel the whisper of air on my face, his hand only missing me by an inch.

I swallow hard as I stare at his hand next to my head, swathed in midnight smoke.

All I wanted was to push him, even if it meant that I made him angry, and now I’m terrified.

I feel myself struggling for air, his fingers digging too deep into my neck. A little tighter and he could just snap it. Tears I can no longer hold back fill my eyes while I look up at the all-consuming blackness in his.

Just then, like in the desert, something silvery flares up all around me, swirling around his shadows. I stare as it glistens and gleams, Caryan’s magic reacting to it—his shadows twining and untwining all around us, laced by that silver, sparkling light. I’ve never seen anything more beautiful, as if the night and the stars had changed their shapes just to dance with each other.

Caryan holds me a moment longer before he lets me go. His eyes, like mine, focus on the strange light curling around his darkness.

When I look down at myself, I find my skin alight with it. The magic streams out of me, trailing off me like smoke infused with stardust and liquid moonlight.

For a second, I think I’m imagining things. That I just drank too much.

This can’t be real.

But then Caryan’s eyes glide to mine, and I find them as silver as the magic, as if some of it has just melded with his very being. The fury in them is gone, and too much lies in them now. I see my own surprise mirrored there, caution, pride and… admiration.

He goes to step away from me, but I dig my fingers into his shirt, burying my head in his chest like I did two nights ago. My head is spinning too fast to allow any clear thought, the floor wonky under my feet, unreliable. The whole room swims as I turn my head to the side. The light, my light, is still everywhere, flickering over the high ceiling and the walls, still curling in the air like smoke, now brushing up against Caryan’s magic, teasingly, almost playfully… and his answering, carefully, curiously.

I’m still staring at our magic as he gently lifts me up. He carries me, and I let him. My light fades until only remnants of it flicker through the air like fireflies, before they wink out, my skin white and pale again, only his shadows still brushing around me like the gentlest of touches.

I barely register another door opening into darkness before Caryan lowers me onto cool, incredibly soft pillows. Then he’s over me, laying me down, bracing himself on one arm above me.

“Please don’t leave now,” I whisper. He hesitates. Our eyes lock.

Then I feel him pulling back and my heart sinks.

But he just walks around the bed and lies down on the other side.

I turn to him in the dark, looking at the soft blue stars that now dance in his eyes, all the blackness dissolved, as if it was never there in the first place. I feel his hand gently stroking my hair and close my eyes. His scent, which clings to his sheets, engulfs me like a soothing lullaby .

I’m not sure I hear right when he murmurs, “You look like a child when you’re afraid,” more to himself than to me.

But I’m already asleep.