Page 63 of Kingdom of the Two Moons

Blair, two years before Gatilla’s death

There was nothing left. Nothing but piles and piles of bodies and scorched soil and wafting ashes. The rain had slowed to a drizzle as night had fallen. Her aunt had long retreated to the amethyst tower, as soon as she’d seen the outcome of the battle, along with one coven to protect her.

Caryan had killed them all. All their enemies.

Blair stood there, unmoved for hours, at the cliff’s edge, watching. Watching Caryan and his never-faltering magic. Watching him fight and kill. Now she watched him walking between the corpses and smoldering ashes.

He knelt beside a body in the mud, his black wings carefully lifted above the ground. He didn’t look up when her wyvern landed next to him and she dismounted, her boots sinking into the mass of flesh and mud.

He was dripping blood from a cut on his wrist into the open mouth of a soldier. A white-haired soldier, his features sharp and vaguely familiar. Blair watched with a kind of cold horror as the soldier opened his eyes, his former blue irises tinged red.

Kyrith, the mountain lion of Palisandre.

“I will make you an offer.” Caryan’s voice was calm, and the not-so-dead Kyrith tilted his head as if to listen. Like an animated puppet. “Swear yourself to me, and I will bring you back from the dead.”

Blair’s heart stopped for a beat, with awe, with dread, with horror—she wasn’t yet sure—as the dead nodded.

***

She didn’t wait. She just ran. Her body was exhausted. Drained. Close to a collapse, but the shock made her fast and strong. Behind her she could hear her wyvern take flight, while her feet flew over the scorched soil, over steaming cinders and debris and death.

She wasn’t sure, but she might have started crying. Or maybe it was just the rain.

She fell. At some point, her legs just gave out, and she landed face-first in the dirt. Then gentle claws lifted her and carried her away, up and up and up. Away from the blood. From the carnage. To a clearing surrounded by a beckoning abyss where wildflowers bloomed. Away from death himself, until the soothing scent of moss and camphor filled her nose and she could see the stars above her.

Her phantom wyvern lay down next to her, her long, deadly tail protectively curled around Blair while she just lay there like a corpse.

She lost her sense of time. It was deep into the night when her wyvern stirred and Caryan landed next to her. He stood in the clearing like a statue. The moonlight dancing over his head and gilding his wings made it look like he wore a crooked halo over his head.

Broken in the middle.

As if two horns protruded out of it.

He shifted and the illusion vanished.

Blair sat up. She found herself scanning him for injuries, knowing he had none. “You… you killed Kyrith, only to bring him back.” She got to her feet and met him halfway. “He knew. That’s why he didn’t kill me,” she pushed on. Her words flushed out. They needed out. The truth. Finally .

Caryan just stood there, unmoved, and waited.

“You promised my aunt an army. You… a doomed fae army.” She spit the words out, still unable to fully wrap her head around what she’d seen. Impossible. Necromancy was impossible. But then, so was Caryan. He was a necromancer. And he would bring them all back.

“You wanted the reservoir’s magic to grow that army,” she continued.

When he still said nothing, Blair turned her head to the side, to her wyvern who was watching Caryan carefully, her daggertail swishing restlessly.

“You… did you kill Riven too?”

“No, Riven accepted the pact without losing his life.” Caryan’s voice was smooth as polished glass when he finally spoke.

Blair scrunched up her face. It should have made things better, but somehow it didn’t. That Riven accepted this. Knew of his fate and still chose it.

“Why? Tell me why, Caryan.”

“Does it feel good to be shackled, Blair?” was all he asked back.

“What do you want? To march that army over the whole planet?”

“I thought this is what you feared most—to lose the ones you loved. There is no more death. This way, war can’t bring more death.”

She let this sink in.

“You made monsters, right? They drink blood. They need to be controlled.” She saw it in their faces. That wildness. That feral stare and hunger. And fangs. Kyrith grew fangs before she left.

“Like me. Like you. I will control them until they learn.”

“They are—abominations.” She started to scream, her voice reverberating from the high peaks, being thrown back at her like a mocking echo.

Caryan just waited, his perfect face so blank. So empty. His eyes were as black as the gaps between stars.

“Say it, Blair. Say what you think I am. Come. For once. Be brave enough to voice it.” He stepped closer, his black wings huge and vast behind him, blocking out the moonlight, a shadow falling over her. “Say it,” he said again. Calm. He was so fucking, eerily calm.

“This… where will this lead?”

“The world thirsts for dominance. Always has. Always will.”

“And my cruel aunt on the throne?”

“That throne could just as easily be yours.”

She shook her head. “This is against everything we know. Everything I believe in. Against tradition.”

“Tradition is the illusion of permanence, Blair.”

She took a step back. He followed. They danced like that through the dark.

“This… this destroys every rule of the natural. Disrupts the order of things. The balance of nature and magic.”

“Believe me when I say those rules were destroyed long, long ago.”

She did believe him, although she couldn’t understand what exactly he was saying. Wasn’t sure she wanted to.

But there, in the moonlight, he looked more ancient and timeless than ever.

She whispered, “This is… bad. Wrong.”

They stopped at the edge of the cliff, the abyss yawning around them.

“Maybe I’m not the villain you think I am, Blair.”

Blair gazed down into the darkness. Such an irony that her aunt was afraid of heights. And slept with an angel. Such an irony that her aunt built a tower like Windscar, made for creatures born into the storm, yet she couldn’t even bear entering the platform, couldn’t bear looking out a window. Never rode a wyvern.

Blair kept her gaze to her right, staring down into the bottomless pit. She wondered how it would feel to tumble into it. Down, down, down.

Caryan’s words reached her at last, and she leveled her gaze at him. He wasn’t just beautiful. He was horrifying and otherworldly and more than vaguely threatening .

He was a dark king. Eternal and almighty. She felt his power roiling in her soul, endlessly.

“Maybe you’re much worse,” she breathed.

“Or maybe you made me yours.”

“You’re a monster,” she breathed.

“It takes a monster to destroy a monster.”

Her aunt. Did he mean her aunt? She didn’t want to know. Didn’t want any of this.

She shook her head and finally touched him. She longed for him. Burned for him. Whatever he was—is—she always would.

She stepped closer and whispered against his chest. “When’s a monster not a monster?” He stiffened, but said nothing until she raised her chin to him and breathed, “When you love it.”