Page 65 of Kingdom of the Two Moons

Melody

Magic hums through me, scalding hot, pushing the cold back. It burns. The cold, not the hot. Two different forms of magic, clashing in my body like two mighty, fanged, and taloned beasts, one blue and one golden, both as ancient and raw as the other. The gold startles my heart back to life, shielding it from the cold that wants to make it stop.

I blink to life, looking up into the familiar, breathtaking, golden eyes. The same magic reflected there that’s in my heart now, swamping every part of me like a dam that has broken, filling everything, where before there was only a shy trickle.

Then the cold sweeps back in, claiming me again.

The pain. The agony, slamming into me.

But that isn’t the worst of it.

The worst are the nightmares, feeling so vivid, so real. As if I’m witnessing everything myself.

I’m on a battlefield, looking down on an army full of glorious elven warriors in shining white and gold armor, mighty black wings on my back pushing me on, keeping me above them. Razor-sharp instincts make me dodge the arrows that sing past my ears, my reflexes so fast that I can see them flying by like doves in the sky.

Then there is magic. Dark, agonizing, black shackles invisible to observers, cutting deep into my flesh, leaving imaginary wounds that feel so real I clench my teeth against the pain.

The scene jumps, and I’m on the same battlefield again.

Where that gorgeous army was before, there’s only fire and corpses, the smell of blood so overwhelming, so omnipresent, tingeing everything, that I feel myself cry out in pain. A sound my unconscious mind registers, echoing somewhere outside the walls of this dream. But I stay there—I, the ancient creature with black wings don’t cry out, but instead plummet from the sky, the long, blue-glinting sword in hand, cutting through more bodies, as if the blade is an extension of my body.

I will myself to stop. I fight it, but I can’t. The magic that once enslaved me is a force in my blood, sending excruciating pain down those shackles as if they were liquid iron, trying to melt into my flesh and soul.

I whine, plead for the magic to stop, but this is not me, not the creature with wings who slays warrior after warrior until the chopping sound turns to a hum and a mist of blood drenches everything so profoundly and devastatingly I know I’ll never get rid of it.

The scene jumps once again and blood’s running down my throat, thick and delicious, sparked with power that melts with the golden force in my veins, while the eyes in front of me lose their shine. Yet I drink on until the heart of the man whose wrist I’m holding in my hands—no, not my hands, but elegant and strong and violent ones—stops, his body a dead weight falling to my feet once I let go.

No. No! I’m no killer. I didn’t do this!

I…

A bedroom. A woman with long, deep-red hair sprawled around her over silken cushions like a puddle of blood. Her head bedded on her arms, her naked body sweat-slicked like my own, the smell of sex heavy in the air. I watch the woman beneath me, wanting to get up, wanting to crush her throat with my bare hands, but I don’t, knowing those shackles of enslaving magic will prevent it, will cut so deep. Knowing I will pay if I so much as try, knowing it is better to play along. Give her what she wants. He— I —sit up when it’s over. But the woman slides closer, leaning over my muscled back that’s familiar and is not mine, her deep-red fingernails scratching over my chest, her lips whispering, “That was a hell of a ride, Caryan, but I am not done yet.” And he—no, I —turn, obedient, pushing that beautiful woman back down onto the bed while I keep looking into those cold eyes I hate so deeply, so fiercely that the hatred eats away at me. I whisper in a deep, lilting voice that costs me, “Oh, I will make you beg this time.”

Darkness.

Pain. Hellish pain jolts through me. It goes on and on and on while magic claws and bites into my skin, black magic lacing with the gold of my own. I want to die. I just want to die, not knowing how to hold on any longer but not knowing how to escape either.

There’s nothing I can do other than bear it while the pain lasts forever, leaving me gritting my teeth, straining against the iron shackles that bind me to the table I’m lying on. The red-haired woman from the bedroom is bent over me, guiding a knife carved from bones and inked with blackness over and over into my flesh .

Snap.

Music. Naked bodies everywhere. Gold. Smoke of foreign herbs, intoxicating my senses. A woman over me, straddling me— him , the angel. Her body glides up and down, her sensual mouth parted, a moan escaping. I—he, the angel—leans his head back, glancing over, and there’s Riven.

“Riven. Riven!” I scream, or at least I think I do. But he doesn’t look at me, doesn’t react at all, his beautiful face a mask of anguish, his violet eyes so terrifyingly empty as he kneels over the same red-haired woman I just… Riven! Riven!

More blood.

Blood in my throat blocks my screams. Humming in my bloodstream as it seeps in, power coming along with it, the heat of it the only feeling left in me. The woman whose blood is running down my throat is already dead, her body chalk-white without the vital fluid. I feel nothing when I look at my own naked body—the perfectly defined muscles of a man—then at all the other naked bodies around me. They are not only naked—they are dead . I killed them. I stare, repulsed by the horrors, but the body I’m in takes it all in, unfazed.

Taking life means nothing to him. Never has. Never will.

The darkness swooshes back in, and I’m grateful for the break, grateful for the change of scene.

Riven. Naked. So utterly beautiful, his eyes no longer so empty, so hollow, so dead inside.

I feel a jolt of relief. I—not the body I’m still in—to see him like that . The body I’m in, bristling with golden and black power so endless, so immense there are no words for it, no boundaries. But the relief is short-lived because Riven’s eyes—those beautiful, violet eyes—are wide with pain because of what I have just said, I realize as they come into clearer focus.

“You can’t, Caryan. There must be a way…” he whispers.

Don’t cry. Please don’t cry I want to say as he falls to his knees, resting his forehead against my thigh.

Cut. Darkness.

Riven again, but dressed, no longer naked but in a half-sheer shirt gaping open almost to his navel, revealing his muscled chest as he lounges on a sofa with his usual dramatic flair. But the nonchalance of his posture doesn’t match his eyes, which are trained on Melody before me on the floor. My voice reacts to a thing Kyrith said before a sharp command down that bond forces Kyrith into submission.

Yet my own gaze strides back to the girl, taking in the fine features of her face, her delicate body. The unpointed ears. Those deep, brown eyes are so wild and lost when they glance up at me, knowing she shouldn’t, holding mine a touch too long before she looks away again, down at her hands. Her rush of fear is so strong it’s palpable, so real it’s as if he— I —am feeling it myself as a resonance in my veins.

Yet it’s those eyes that have arrested me ever since. Everything is so open in them, as if I could look right into her innermost being.

Those eyes that make me want to touch her. Make me want to …

I, the angel, lean forward to her and whisper, “Come here,” watching how the girl shakily gets up, confusion and terror all over her; again the reflection of it in my own body—the sensation of feelings so strange, like a long-forgotten memory.

Curious.

Unnerving.

I say, Amuse me , just to see what the girl will do, what it would do to myself.

The effect of her blood in me when I tasted her in that dungeon still haunts me.

Ciellara’s daughter—no, I —I’m looking at myself kneeling over Caryan through Caryan’s eyes. The thought dawns in my mind before it slips away again; before I slip away again into that memory. She kneels over me, and my golden magic flares up like a flame in an unexpected gust of wind when she touches me. Melody’s body singeing my skin where her thigh brushes against mine, twin to the flame her hands leave on my chest. He—I—clench my teeth, fighting the instinct to push her off, to throw her back into that dungeon.

To have her so close is pure agony; letting her stay only prolongs it.

Her smell is everywhere—this permeating smell of lilacs, woods, and vanilla, evoking the memory of the taste of her blood. It’s like physical pain not to drink her in again. To see more of the memories in her blood, even if they are heartbreaking.

I want to, though. I want to see everything of her. Taste her. Consume every inch of her. Own her.

What is this? The thought cuts through me… no, through his memory—not for the first time.

Nemesis: that’s what she is. His—no, mine —my personal nemesis.

I clench my fingers to fists when Melody’s full lips brush ever so gently over my skin.

The need to touch her, to taste her—to just take her—

I can no longer keep my hands to myself. More wildfire of magic erupts when he—I— touch her, so intense it’s soul-burning.

Her skin is like silk under my fingers. Her full lips. Her elegant face up so close. Her scent mixed with fear, trepidation, and arousal.

Her eyes again, so wide, so open, so deep, overflowing with everything.

Those eyes. They undo me. Haunt me.

Make me want to do all sorts of things to her. Dark things.

It needs to stop. Stop right now, or…

The angel grabs her slender wrists, barely forcing the words out. “That’s enough.”

The picture dissolves once more like a waft of smoke, spilling into tendrils of nothingness, and I’m in a throne hall, a different sort of agonizing, hellish pain striking me like lightning when the whip comes down on my back once more, splitting skin open, the iron end digging deep through flesh and into bones and magic.

Riven in my peripheral vision; his face a solid mask of pain as he watches me.

The crack of the whip stops, and that red-haired woman gets up, strolling closer, her cruel face looking at me with a half sneer that holds no amusement. Gatilla.

“You disobeyed me, Caryan. Now kneel.”

“No.”

“Kneel or the punishment will be worse, angel.”

“I will not kneel, Gatilla. Not even in front of you.”

The invisible shackles of dark magic pull tighter, cutting flesh, and I bare my teeth. It’s all pain. There’s no distinction anymore, yet I remain standing, my magic fighting hers. The red-haired woman steps even closer and cups my cheek with her silver-clawed hand. Sweat has gathered on her forehead, though, from the strain as she tries to push me to my knees. In vain.

Her voice drops low, only for me to hear as she leans in. “You’re disobeying me in front of everyone, Caryan. I cannot let that pass, you know that.”

Only then does the audience in that hall become clear. The room, full of women and bristling, dark power and glimmering, amber eyes. The witch pulls back and claps her hands, an axe appearing in them.

“I will take your wings, angel, for this disobedience,” she declares, loud again. Then she swings the axe, and unspeakable pain sears through my back.

I scream, instead of the angel, who just endures the pain. I scream and scream and scream.

Light. There is light when I open my eyes. Arms still hold me, and I turn to the side just in time to vomit. Not that I have anything in me, but those pictures, the sight of the dead wings, severed from Caryan’s body, that pain prickling through my own…