Page 64 of Kingdom of the Two Moons

Riven

Riven’s heart jumps in his chest when his ears pick up the sound of a car traveling far across the desert. He steps out onto the balcony and watches the cloud of dust trailing behind it.

One car. Only one.

No flare of Caryan’s power to announce the king’s return. Something is wrong, he’s felt it over the last few days.

His mouth is dry by the time Ronin and Kyrith, faces grave, enter the throne hall, dragging Blair, Gatilla’s niece, in iron cuffs behind them. Ronin stays with Riven while Kyrith takes the witch to the dungeon. The red-haired witcher tells Riven everything that happened. They suspect that Caryan flew to the Emerald Forest to Queen Calianthe as soon as the snow stopped because Melody had fallen into a strange state of nightmares. This was three days ago. They haven’t heard anything since.

“Calianthe hates Caryan. She might—” Riven starts.

Ronin grabs Riven’s shoulder as he runs his fingers through his hair. “Caryan wouldn’t have taken Melody there if he thought she would.”

“You can’t know that,” Riven snarls, too agitated to rein in his temper.

Ronin regards him, his hazel eyes clarion and his voice that soothing, ever-calm melody. “I do. I’ve never seen Caryan like that before. He carried her in his arms, Riven, the whole time, as soon as we set foot on the holy mountain. Melody was slowly dying from what we thought was just the cold. She couldn’t stay, so he shielded her with his wings. Caryan held her the whole time, not once leaving her side. He left with her as soon as the storm was over, not once looking for the relic.”

Riven watches Ronin’s face closely; the witcher is obviously as unable to make sense of it as Riven himself. Ronin also tells him about Blair, who tried to kill Melody, but, in the end, for some reason they haven’t yet learned, decided against it.

Eventually, Ronin mentions what Melody did when Caryan wanted to kill the witch—that she threatened to jump from a cliff—her threat based on the very knowledge Riven shared with her on her first night here, not thinking she would ever use it against Caryan.

Damn , this girl.

When Ronin has finished, Riven nods, thanking his friend and mumbling an excuse to leave before Kyrith comes back from the dungeon. He hasn’t got the stomach to deal with Kyrith, who, according to Ronin, has been raging on and on all the way back here.

***

His private quarters are calm, so unsettlingly calm. Riven walks over to the marble bar and pours himself a glass of raspberry wine before slumping down on his bed, closing his eyes to the scent of Melody that still hangs in the sheets.

She almost died.

Caryan almost let her die.

And now none of them knows where in the Abyss’s name Caryan has gone. They are probably lost in the Emerald Forest, at the mercy of Queen Calianthe, famous for telling her nymphs and dryads to greet every stranger with an arrow to the heart before asking any questions… and never to take prisoners .

Caryan could easily raze the Enchanted Forest to the ground, that’s not the problem. The problem is that there’s no way he could protect Melody while he did it.

Riven sits up, eyes wide, a snarl coming from his throat as he hurls the glass against the wall. Shards rain down and ruby liquid scatters, the drops as red and thick as blood, staining the sofa below. He should never have let Caryan go alone with her. He should have stood up to him.

He gets up and walks out, striding straight to the dungeon.

He finds the witch sitting with her head low, leaning against the wall. Now, with her fire-hair bleached like old bone and her shredded, bloodencrusted clothes, she looks more like a noon wraith, safe for those menacing silver nails glowing in the dark.

“My, my... isn’t it the beautiful elven prince, Riven? Or should I say the arrogant prick?” she asks without looking up, having either sensed or smelled him since he’s stepped soundlessly out of the dark. “Tell me—did Caryan leave you here out of fear you might break a manicured nail, or are you just the most useless of his lapdogs?”

“No wonder Caryan grew tired of your mouth. It’s quite big and a bit filthy,” Riven counters coolly, crossing his arms.

She hisses at him, the two silver canines catching what little light is down here, vying with her deadly claws.

Riven looks right back at her, flashing a grin that shows his fangs.

“What do you want, Riven? Free me and have some fun. Lonely up there, isn’t it? Have you ever fucked a witch?”

“No thanks.”

She stands up and steps closer, her fingers closing around the iron bars. Her full lips purr, “I saw the way you used to look at me.”

He picks an invisible flick of dust from his shirt. “Yeah? With aversion and slight nausea?”

“You’re an arrogant asshole,” she snarls.

He ignores her. “Why didn’t you kill the girl?”

“Why don’t you bring me some decent food to start with?”

“You can have water. ”

“Fuck you.”

“Now I see why you seem to like the human world so much. A penchant for their language” he says. “And other… amenities .”

“Something we have in common, don’t we, princeling? A certain… weakness for them, am I right?” she shoots back.

“How do you know?” he asks dryly.

She makes a show of looking up at the ceiling. “Melody’s scent clings to you—of her… you know.” She waves a hand. “And it’s not just the worry about your darling king Caryan that brought you down here to me, I take it.”

“Well, I just wonder—do the other witches know how much you enjoyed yourself in the human world, Blair Alaric?” Riven counters.

Her gaze shoots back to him, her eyes narrowed. “How do you know what I did and didn’t do in the human world?”

Riven’s heard about Blair kicking up quite some dust there. He answers smoothly, “I’m Caryan’s right hand. It’s my job to know a lot of things.”

She looks away from him, offering her beautiful profile. Her jaw is a hard line, working.

He expects another sharp retort, but instead, she just shrugs tiredly. “It no longer matters, any of it, does it? So there’s no reason to pretend I’m not terribly thirsty and hungry.”

“Like you’d ever drop that hard facade, Blair, and reveal a feeling creature beneath.”

“Humans call it badass—and yes, I’m tired of games, believe it or not. Although not of all games…” Her amber eyes are deep with hunger. A hunger Riven doesn’t want to contemplate too closely—her appetite has little to do with eroticism. Rather, it’s as if she wants to break open his bones for marrow and contemplates the fastest way to do it.

“Why didn’t you kill her?” he asks again, a bottle of water appearing in his hand.

He hands it to her through the bars, and lets her drink. She gulps the water down as if she can barely do it fast enough. Hells, that bastard Kyrith probably left her without water for days.

“More?” he asks, handing her another full bottle he’s conjured up. She downs this, too, then he throws her an apple.

She frowns at it.

“It’s not poisoned.”

“Huh, funny one, aren’t you? Definitely too much time at the court in Palisandre,” she says, taking a hearty bite, letting him, once again, see her silver, enlarged fae canines and what she’d gladly do to his throat and other parts.

Riven looks down to his fingernails, bored by her games.

“You know—those fangs suit you, princeling,” she eventually says, not one part of the apple left. “They give you an edge.” She steps closer again, her clawed fingers twirling around the bars once more. “I like men with an edge.”

Her voice is a seductive purr that has no doubt lured many men into her bed… and to certain death.

“Is that why you slept with Caryan? Or was it to outdo your lovely Aunt Gatilla?”

She pouts her coral lips. “It’s nothing like fucking a high elf, and I’ve been with some. He’s dangerous, and he lets you feel it. With him, you never feel safe,” she whispers, an erotic timbre in her voice that crawls under Riven’s skin whether he likes it or not. Her amber eyes flare. She knows.

“That’s a good thing?” he asks indifferently.

“A thing some women like,” she says, tilting her head, her long hair grazing her hip as she does.

If he didn’t like the way she looked at him before, he certainly doesn’t like it now.

“That might be why Melody feels so… attracted to him.”

“Who isn’t?”

“Oh no, don’t pretend you’re not bothered by that.” Blair’s eyes flare and her eyes turn vicious. “Or I could tell you how he made her kneel and beg while he—”

Riven’s hand shoots out and grabs the witch’ s neck between the bars, so hard she makes a choking sound. He steps close, so close he can see the tiny speckles of silver in the amber of her irises.

“Enough of the games now. Tell me why you didn’t kill her.” His voice is a growl—letting her see that side of him. He loosens his fingers just enough to let her catch her breath to answer, only to realize that he mistook her laughter as gagging. Insane creature. “Tell me or I’ll hurt you.”

“Maybe I’d like that,” she whispers back. The witch has the nerve to underline her words with a grin.

Riven’s nails turn into dark claws as he wills them to, digging into her neck until blood leaks.

The witch’s laugh stops, but her eyes turn hollow. “ Interesting. Go ahead. Hurt me. I have nothing left to lose anyway.”

Riven lets go of her then, pulling his hand away, stained with her blood. She straightens too, bringing her fingers to her bleeding neck, looking at the crimson on her fingertips before her eyes turn back to him.

“What are you? You’re not just a high elf.” She squints at him as if seeing him for the very first time.

“I asked you a question first.” Riven makes a show of licking her blood off his fingers.

She holds his stare, then says, to his surprise, “Perenilla knows I didn’t help Gatilla when you and Caryan killed her.” The words hang between them. “I lost my coven. I can’t return. She’s already made my life hell in the last few years. But now the fun’s really over.”

“You could fight her,” Riven says quietly.

She shakes her head. “No. Caryan took my magic.” She looks at her hands—once such cruel, powerful tools, which now are supposed to be just… hands. It’s hard to believe it.

“Do you want to know a secret, little vampling? One my sisters would decorate the ground with my innards for? I’d have traded my magic without a second thought just to be like them ...” she says, self-forgotten, still looking at her hands, as if seeing them for the first time. “Just to be like one of those ridiculous mortals.” She huffs a laugh. “And now, the dark irony is that I ended up having neither. I’m a toothless monster.” She frowns at herself before her eyes focus back on him. “The girl, Melody—she shouldn’t have stopped him when he wanted to kill me,” she adds, and for once, Riven reads the exhaustion on her face.

“Why didn’t you intervene, Blair? When we killed Gatilla?” he asks with true interest.

It’s a question that has long burned in his mind. Caryan killed every witch present, Riven and Kyrith hunted the fleeing ones down, but not Blair. There just wasn’t the time after Ciellara slit him open with that sword. In that moment, Blair, who had just been standing aside, watching with a face empty of everything, turned and jumped out of a window, her phantom wyvern flying by, carrying her away.

Riven doesn’t know what Caryan would have done if she had stayed. Whether he would have killed her too for idly standing by, or whether he would have offered her to join his court.

Maybe this is why Blair fled. Because she had not had the courage to let herself find out.

She says, “You first.”

“I’m a half-blood. My mother was a Nefarian.” Have it out. Let her know what he is.

She stares at him. “Do the others know? I mean, like, do the people of this kingdom know? Or Palisandre? Gatilla never knew.”

“This is another question, I suppose.”

She nods slowly, to herself. Then she says quietly, an unusual frown on her face, “I don’t know why I didn’t fight for her. Or for Caryan, for that matter.”

“You do, deep down,” he says, but she shakes her head vehemently. Yet pain flits across her features.

When she looks back up at him it is gone though, her gaze focused once again. “I didn’t kill Melody because she spared my life in the human world. She warned me that Lyrian was coming for me. She helped me escape by leading his lackeys away. I figured I owed her.” She pauses and shakes her head again, that frown deepening. “And now she’s saved my life once more. ”

She opens her mouth again, as if to say something else, but catches herself, and says instead, “If you want to do me a favor, tell Caryan to make it quick and painless. I know he listens to you, lordling. I’ve suffered enough.”

With that she turns her back on him and steps into the darkness, returning to the spot on the floor.