Page 53 of Kingdom of the Two Moons

Melody

I wake up in a bed that’s not mine. I’m alone.

I get up and walk past the open terrace door, the warm wind caressing my naked shoulders. I follow the faint sound of rushing water while I fight hard not to remember snippets of what happened before.

I’m dead sober again, and I suppose my fae blood might process alcohol faster. Or maybe it’s magic, but my head feels clearer than ever. I don’t even have a hangover, although it’s still the deepest night outside.

Maybe it’s just the few hours of soundless, deep sleep like I haven’t had in years.

Not the sleep brought on by exhaustion, but calm, safe slumber.

Absurdly enough, I felt safe when Caryan lay down next to me, watching me in the dark.

Light from a single candle that flickers on the ground dips the bathroom into a warm, restless twilight while my bare feet soundlessly pad closer. There is a bath like the one Nidaw always puts me in. A huge round pool, embedded in the floor, marble steps leading into the water. The ceiling is open and you can see the stars.

Caryan’s in the bath, his arms and upper body out of the water. His head is leaned back, his throat exposed, and the magnificent wings I dream of sinking my fingers into are spread wide outbehind him, a velvet black in the absence of light, soaked from the steaming water.

He must have summoned them, or however that works.

I pause, taking in the scene—him in such a vulnerable, private state. His face, stripped of its usual, lush austerity.

He doesn’t stir, doesn’t open his eyes.

Could it really be that he hasn’t heard me approaching? Hasn’t smelled me?

My eyes take in every inch of him, but rest on a huge scar that runs from the left side of his chest down over his navel to his right hip. I spot magical runes there, but they’re not moving like the rest of his tattoo. They look damaged, brutally maimed by whatever weapon and whatever cruel hand tried to cut him open from his heart down, as if to saw him in half.

“Pretty?”

I jolt. When I glance up, I find him suddenly watching me.

“Who… who did that to you?” I whisper with a kind of cold shock.

“You wouldn’t want to know that,” he says dryly, stating a fact, but his eyes shift back into a sonorous blue at my tone.

I draw closer, too aware of his nakedness. Of my… of whatever happened between us. Was it real? My magic , dancing and playing with his? I pray he can’t see the heat in my face, yet I know he can hear my galloping heartbeat. Sense all the other things that give my nervousness away.

“I see you’re sober again.”

I pull back my shoulders and hold his gaze. “Who did that to you?” I ask again.

“Did that to you, Your Highness ,” he corrects me. I don’t know whether he’s joking.

“Who did that to you, master ?”

His eyes darken slightly at that, but not from anger. “Does it matter?”

“It does to me. ”

He raises his brows at my tone. “Let’s just say a lot of people have tried to kill me along the way, but not even a Nefarian sword could do it.”

My mouth goes dry at the ambiguity in his tone. At the insinuation. What must life be like when so many people want to murder you? “You… I thought you were immortal.”

“I am. But a lot of people have pondered the dreadful question of how to succeed in killing me regardless, and tested their theories, as you can see.”

“But—they failed,” I whisper still staring at the damaged runes. Such violence it makes me sick. Makes it hard to breathe.

“Well, isn’t that the most interesting question? How to succeed.” His tone falls to a dark timbre, as if challenging me.

I reflexively shake my head. “Why would it be?” It’s not at all a question.

He seems surprised by the conviction in my tone. “Do you want to come in?” he asks instead, to cover it, to make me blush even more violently. His eyes are ambiguous and sparkling; so is his tone.

Is that—an offer? Or another game?

I stand there like the girl I still am, unaware of the rules of this world. He was right. I’m no woman. A woman would shrug her clothes off and get in. Maybe just take what she wants. But… what do I want? Again, that dreadful question. Want .

My throat gets dry as I push the thought down. My gaze falls to my feet while I wrap my arms around myself, shaking my head as an answer.

“Then would you mind handing me the towel over there?” he asks, his voice deep and elegant. Another question, not an order to a slave.

I obey and grab an immensely huge towel I suppose can dry his wings off too, before walking over to the steps, keeping my head trained on the tiles.

I want to bend and place it down at the edge of the pool, but he says, “Bring it over here.” An order this time .

My head jerks up. He’s right opposite me now, all of him even more striking up close.

I want to open my mouth, to decline, but instead, I keep watching the faint amusement in his face, biting down my lip.

“So bold, so sassy—and now so shy.” His tone is lilting. Vicious.

I feel shame and heat, and so much more, slither down my spine.

I cast a glance over my shoulder as if to calculate how fast I can possibly make it out of here.

He just laughs, coolly, as if he’s read my thoughts again. “The door won’t let you out. And you don’t want to push your luck any more tonight, believe me.”

“The door likes me,” I reply.

He raises his brows, watching me with predatory intent. “Does it now?”

“It will let me go.”

He smiles at that, but to himself this time. I’ve never seen him really smile, and it affects me. It’s a thing of savage, dark beauty. It makes his face so handsome I can barely stand the sight. But I can’t look away either, and I know that, for some reason, he’s in a strangely mild mood.

The smile fades when he says, “The whole Fortress is an extension of me.”

My heart jumps at the revelation. What does that mean? That he likes me? That the door really won’t let me out? That the door was only nice to me, only showed me the library because he wanted to show me? And if so, why?

“Now be a good girl and bring me the towel,” he repeats somberly, power rippling unmistakably around the edges of the room and over me—a bittersweet resonance in my bones. His darkness, like a song something in my veins wants to answer.

With a last glance toward the door I obey, my bare feet stepping one step down into the water, then another one and another one, until water starts to claim my dress, steam clouds my face, and I’m in it up to my ribs.

Caryan pushes himself away from the edge then, drawing closer to me. I wait, mortified, my heart beating so violently I must be shaking from it alone.

I look down at the water, then at his wings slowly being pulled through it behind him with every step he takes with that unnerving grace. He stops in front of me, the darkness and the water hiding his lower body from me—that marvel of muscle and power.

A shiver of premonition goes through me when he takes the towel from my hand and carelessly throws it aside before he closes the last distance between us.

The world stops. Only to return faster and clearer than ever when his fingers trace an invisible line over my cheek, over the flowers that might be still there.

I shudder against the touch as his fingers move down to my neck where he bruised me before.

His voice is quiet when he says, “I didn’t mean to hold you that hard, Melody.”

Melody. My name is like a beautiful song from his mouth. A chant that runs along my skin.

“It doesn’t matter.”

I know it was the wrong thing to say when he grabs my chin and makes me meet his gaze. “It does matter. But sometimes I forget how delicate you are. How vulnerable. How breakable.”

I don’t know what to say, disarmed by the honesty in his eyes. Instead, I reach out and run my fingers over his wings. They are as incredibly soft under my skin, just as I dreamed them to be, those feathers like silk, so soft and fluffy I want to wrap myself in them.

His eyelids flutter when I stretch up and, ever so gently, run my fingers over them, tracing the mighty muscles of his wing arches under the feathers. He shivers under my touch. When I look at his face again, a golden fire burns in his eyes.

Raw and aching.

When I look around, I find the water has turned into a gleaming, silvery pool of liquid starlight. Black magic spreads in its middle, its inky vines brushing up against me. Above us, I find the same tiny little sparks of silver fire in the air, whirling like snowflakes around curls of shadow light, playing around my cheeks and through my hair like the gentlest of breezes.

I glance back at Caryan’s face, only to find his irises again a molten silver, surrounded by darkness, like a star lost in the universe.

“This… you’re doing this,” I whisper, awestruck. Yet there is a hollow echo of disappointment in my bones I can’t deny. That I could even think something so beautiful could be mine . Could come from me .

“No. This is all you,” he says back. When he notices my gaze, he adds, the same admiration I saw before in his face now lying in his voice, “You are the one allowing it to do this. I could not, even if I wanted to.”

He stretches his hands out at that, and the silver magic, my silver magic, curls around his fingers like a snake, seemingly of its own will, gliding along his fingers and around his wrist, intertwining with his shadows, dancing over his mighty wings.

I put my hand against his, palm against palm, shuddering against the effect of being so close to him. Against that spark deep inside I feel every time he is near. The silvery lights burn even brighter as our bodies touch, as if my skin on his intensifies it.

I say, “But you… your magic triggers it.”

“It amplifies it,” he corrects darkly and, indeed, my light fades when I pull my hand back, when I’m no longer touching him.

“You will learn to call it on your own,” he says.

I glance down at myself, at the slightest shimmer of stardust still glistening over my skin. “Your magic, it’s… calling mine,” I say, wondering whether this can be true. But I can feel it. I feel him everywhere, more acutely than ever, as if a part of him is running along the inside of my veins, dark and velvety, singing and humming.

Darkness, calling light.

He lifts his chin, his irises pitch black, rimmed only by that silver circle.

“As I told you, you and I are unique to this world.”

With that he pushes me against the edge, wings splayed wide behind him, making me feel incredibly small. His thumb grazes my lips then, his own lips so close to mine as he whispers, “Tell me what you want, Melody, and I will give it to you.”

Everything. I want to have everything , and yet I’m terrified of it.

I don’t say anything when he lifts me, his hands on my butt. I shiver when I feel him hard against my belly, pushing. I spread my legs for him as he runs his hand up my bare thigh. Further and further, pushing the seam of my dress up and slipping past my underwear, his magic like dew and midnight, twining around me, lacing with cascades of stardust that flow out of me.

“Tell me to stop and I will,” he whispers against my lips, but I just shake my head.

I gasp when his fingers glide between my legs, and into me, while at the same time he sinks his teeth into my neck. My body starts to melt away from within. From his talented fingers that feel too huge, while I feel too small, too tight. From the overwhelming sensation of him inside me, pushing, sucking, drinking in my very essence. From his hard body against mine, hot and hard under my flat palms. From our entwined magic, burning together through every inch of my body.

It feels elemental.

It’s too much, and not enough. My skin is too tight, every part feels raw. Aching.

He pulls back then, his gold and silver eyes never leaving mine as his fingers glide a little deeper. It’s more intimate than being touched like that—the way he’s looking at me. I arch against him, my nails digging into his flesh as his fingers go even deeper than I thought possible.

I gasp as my thoughts splinter. As I rip apart and shatter.

It feels like a relief and not. It’s not enough. It leaves me trembling and strangely empty.

I lower my eyes, self-conscious of what we’d just done. Of what he has done to me and made me do.

My skin still gleams otherworldly. My very blood is still burning, ablaze. I’m suddenly too aware of a part of me that wants more. Wants and wants and wants .

Another is terrified.

I whisper, “Please let me go,” into his shoulder.

He keeps me locked against the edge, one hand still around my neck. I startle as I read the same desire in his absurdly silvery eyes when I look up and search them.

Panic floods me, swamps me when he doesn’t move. “You promised,” I whisper too quietly. “You promised to let me go.”

“I promised to stop,” he replies sternly, so darkly it makes my blood freeze. “Nothing more.”

My innermost being turns into liquid fear so overwhelming it makes me shake in his hands. His eyes have darkened into a beaten gold I’m drowning in.

He won’t. Won’t let me go. He will make me stay. Will…

“Please don’t…” My lips shape the words against his skin. My palms push against his chest as if I could do anything against him. “You said I should tell you what I want—I want to leave. Please.”

I’ve never hated a word more. But it’s all I can do.

His fingers loosen from my neck, from my thigh. He lets me go. I don’t dare breathe as I slip past him, past his mighty wings that brush against my naked skin like a last caress I barely feel.

As soon as my feet meet the solid ground, my whole body dripping wet, I storm through his living room. The door swings open to let me go, as if already awaiting my departure.