Page 69 of Kingdom of the Two Moons

Melody

They are away for a week.

I paint a lot, adding a new detail every night, breathing more life into the painting. Sometimes it’s the curves of his lips. The shade of his skin, his eyelids. The arch of his ears or the way his hair curls around them. Sometimes the speckles in the gold, the veins of his irises.

In the afternoon of the seventh day, I feel the Fortress come alive with his power again, and I know he’s back. As if his energy affects my very being, too, I feel more alive than I did the whole of the past week.

As if I’d been sleepwalking and now have woken up to the real world again.

Once Nidaw informs us that there will be a gathering to welcome the high lords back, I can barely hide my nerves at the prospect of seeing Caryan and Riven again.

The latter crosses my path as I’m on the way back from my room to shower and change into fresh clothes. I run toward him when I see him, not caring what anyone else will think. Not caring what he thinks.

But he sweeps me up into his arms and holds me for a long while.

“I missed you,” I whisper when he lets me go and gently puts me back down on the ground .

I haven’t seen him since we left for the mountains. His eyes are as stunning and soft as ever, but I can’t help but notice that he looks paler, if such a thing is even possible with his skin already as white as mine.

“I missed you too, my sweet, sweet little villain,” he says. His hand brushes my cheek ever so briefly before I hear servants behind us come streaming out of the kitchen. He gives me a gentle smile. “Later, then.”

***

The gathering is quieter than the parties. There are just a few already familiar faces I recognize, and the mood is somehow more official, although there is still a lot of exposed skin—fae don’t seem to mind that in general, I should know that by now.

I spot Riven joining in a little later, in his usual opulent evening attire. Caryan’s accompanied by that breathtaking, dark-haired elf woman, who doesn’t once leave his side. He doesn’t look at me, though, not for the whole evening, while in return, I can’t help but notice the possessive way the woman touches him and stands close whenever she can.

It’s only deep into the night, when the sun has long set and there are only a few people remaining, that I spot Caryan walking out onto the terrace alone.

“Elderberry wine with lavender ice. Your favorite,” I say quietly when I step up to him.

He regards me distantly, as if he has totally forgotten about me.

“I added a splash of lime. I think you’ll like it,” I add with a shy smile that dies on my face when he keeps looking at me in that serene way. I let my gaze drop to my hands when he eventually takes the glass from me, avoiding touching my fingers.

“You were gone so long,” I add, my voice a whisper.

“I was.”

I glance up at him again, at his stone-gray eyes. Reverent and cold .

I want to say I missed you , but suddenly I can’t find the words. I want to ask Did something happen? , but this too dies on my tongue when he says, “You should lower your eyes.”

I say nothing, just quietly step away, not daring to look up at him again, my heart aching from a phantom pain, pulsing so hard I feel it wants to break my ribs and rip free of my chest.

***

Later, after my shift, the celebrations are still in full swing. I meander down the halls, the music echoing through them. When I hear someone singing eerily, hauntingly, I briefly think it’s coming from the throne room, but then realize the sound is traveling up from the dungeon. A modern song, just a weird interpretation. Kiss me hard before you go.

I stop, consider, and then—fuck it—head down. Down to the prison, to the clammy cold, fragrant with mold. I pause in front of a cell, only to find the woman with the formerly wine-red hair there.

She’s still alive. The woman who tried to kill me, only to spare my life. So Caryan kept his promise.

We stare at each other from a distance. She looks so different now, her hair white as freshly fallen snow. She’s slimmer, too, I realize with a kind of shock. Her torn clothes hang on her. And cold, her cherry-red lips are tinged blue.

“Look at you, Caryan’s little pet,” she snarls, getting up from the ground and walking closer to the bars before easing into a crouch again, as if she’s too weak to stand.

“What happened to you?” I whisper.

She looks feral, the way her amber eyes rove over my exposed flesh, filling up with hunger. Her skinniness does nothing to hide the starved killer beneath.

“I could ask you the same. You reek of desperation,” she hisses.

Before she can say more, I turn around and run up the stairs. I head to the kitchen, and when no one’s looking, grab everything I can find—a tiny apple tart, raisin bread, a duck leg, plums—all leftovers from the celebration. I stuff them into a kitchen towel and run back to the dungeon.

She’s still crouching in the very same spot. I fight my fear and step up to her, putting the towel with the food on the ground so she can choose.

“What do you want, human?” she spits, but her eyes stay on the presented things.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing in the world is free, especially not kindness. What do you want?”

I frown, then shake my head. “You’re starving. Eat. I can get more tomorrow. And eat quickly before someone comes looking for me.”

“This is not how this works,” she says, and I can see that she doesn’t trust me. Fae rules.

“Well, then tell me your name.”

Her eyes widen for a sliver of a moment. “Blair.”

“Now eat, Blair,” I say.

She goes for the duck leg first. I watch with a kind of horrified fascination as she devours it almost whole. She eats the whole piece in less than a minute, bones included. When all the food is gone, she leans her head back, color creeping back into her skin.

“You look like Gatilla,” I say quietly.

It’s clearly the wrong thing to say because she bares her teeth at me. I see hate in her aura, a second too late. Hate. And jealousy. Pain. Disgust. Fear. Envy. Horror.

“How would you know, little human, huh?”

“I saw it, in Caryan’s blood,” I answer quietly.

She lets out a hissing sound. “Do I look like my aunt, huh? With my hair bleached and white and barren.” She spits the words out, her face torn with fury and pain. She hates it—her new look.

“I’m sorry,” I say quietly, meaning it with my whole heart. She looks away. “But it’s rather beautiful, you know,” I add.

Her head snaps back to me. “Spare me your dewy-eyed sentiment, little liar. ”

“It’s true. You look like a moonmaiden.”

“Shouldn’t you be fucking off or something?”

“At least you don’t look like your aunt anymore. Maybe it is a new start,” I try.

She stills before her eyes glower at me with all the fury I just saw scorching her soul. “Why would I not want to look like my aunt? I loved her.”

I shake my head. “No. You didn’t. You just told yourself that you loved her, but deep down, you hated her,” I say before I can think better of it.

She flexes her clawed fingers. “Is that a challenge?”

“No, I’m sorry.” I shake my head, regretting my words.

“Are you? Shove your psycho-tips up your human ass until they shine out of your mouth. I call that reversed bullshit deep-throat,” Blair growls, slamming her hands against the bars. “Now you better run back to your master before Caryan starts to miss his breakable little toy.”

“I’m not his toy,” I retort with a sudden anger that surprises me.

As if she felt it, she croons, her eyes shining wildly, “No? Should I call you his lover ? Or rather mistress? Or slut?”

I raise my chin. “I’ve been called worse, but that’s not what I am.”

She huffs a laugh, an eerie sound, thrown back by the walls. “No? Are you not? Tell me you haven’t yet opened your legs for him. Tell me that you make the exception and are the one who isn’t under his clean thumb.”

“You’re jealous of me,” I say to my surprise, but it shines clearly over all the other emotions, lacing with her anger. How could anyone looking like her be jealous of me ?

She bares her teeth, the canines as long as Caryan’s fangs, but silver and slimmer.

We look at each other.

“You love him…” I gather, reading her aura like an open book. Caryan. She loves Caryan . I try to understand what I see there, and how that goes along with what I know. “I thought he was your aunt’s lover.” That’s what Riven told me. What I saw in Caryan’s memories.

“My aunt’s slave ,” she seethes, her pale fingers with long silver claws—which match her canines—twining around the bars as if she’d like to grind them like old bones and come for me.

“He broke your heart,” I say quietly. I can see that she’s hurting, so much. Her aura, bleeding sorrow.

“I don’t have a little, breakable, human heart, girl. Let me out and I prove it to you.”

“That’s not true. You care. I can see it. That’s why you spared me, right? Even though a part of you wants me dead.”

“Clearly, a mistake. Now make way, or I swear I’ll try to rip these bars apart and come for you.”

I lift my chin and straighten my shoulders. “Keep going with your threats, but we both know that if you could, you’d have done so by now.”

She snarls. “Bold. But I’d really suggest you fuck off now.”

I take a deep breath, not moving a muscle. But oh hells, she’s terrifying, even behind bars. If her gaze could kill me, I’d be long dead. I do my best to ignore it and to hold my voice steady as I say, “If you were at Gatilla’s court, you must have known my mother.” I saw her in Caryan’s memory, my mother; my features so unmistakably hers. It hurt, to see how much I look like her. The woman who gave me away, who wanted to sell me. She stood in the crowd when Gatilla cut off Caryan’s wings.

“Oh yes, I did know your mother,” Blair snaps, disgust tingeing every word.

I take another deep breath. “Why did she try to kill Caryan? And when?”

Blair’s head perks up, and she narrows her eyes before a cruel smile spreads over her face. “So many questions, little clueless one,” she taunts, clearly enjoying that she has something over me.

“What did she do at Gatilla’s court?” I probe on, ignoring her mocking.

“Why not ask your master? ”

I swallow down my anger at her remark. “He won’t tell me.”

“Huh. That’s how he does things,” she muses, almost to herself.

“Please, Blair. I saw so many things in his blood, so many bits and pieces, but they make no sense to me. I need to know more.”

Blair’s eyes go briefly unfocused before they fasten on me again. “Very well then, it’s not like I have anywhere to be. Your mother was an outcast. She came to Gatillas’s court because my aunt offered her refuge in exchange for Caryan’s runes. Your mother painted them for her. She and Gatilla were best friends—”

“What?” I breathe but Blair holds up a silver-clawed finger. “Nuh, nuh, nuh, don’t you dare spoil the moment. I’m not done yet. They were best friends, or so it seemed. But, in truth, your mother came to infiltrate my aunt’s court and destroy her.”

Blair makes a pause while I don’t dare breathe.

Then she says, “Your mother had guts. And she was good at what she did—so good no one suspected a thing while she secretly sided with Riven and Caryan.” Blair lets out a sad, choked laugh. “Even I didn’t see it coming. But Ciellara was the one who helped free Caryan from Gatilla’s shackles in the first place. She worked on him for months, right under Gatilla’s nose, yet even my aunt didn’t feel it. Didn’t realize that she tampered his runes, made them able to cut through her leash.”

I startle. Those magical shackles I felt when I was in Caryan’s body, in his memories.

“But why did she do it? Help him in the first place, only to turn against him?” I ask.

Blair gives me a look as if I should know these things. “Because everyone wanted to get rid of my aunt, she was that bad. And your mother did the math. She helped Caryan, who was strong enough to kill Gatilla, but he was also severely wounded and weakened from that fight with her. I guess your mother just saw a chance and tried her luck.”

“But… why?”

Blair snorts and rolls her eyes as if I’m truly stupid. “ Why what? Why she wanted to kill him? Because he already was the most powerful fae. With Gatilla’s magic… well, he became what he is today. Unmatched in power. I guess she killed one monster but realized she unleashed another.”

“And he still wants more,” I say quietly. “He still wants those relics. He said he needs them for the war.” Blair smirks at me, and for a moment, she looks so human despite her beauty, it’s startling. Then she says lightly, “Of course he does.” Too late do I realize that she’s being ironic.

“You don’t believe that?”

She shrugs. “I just believe in what I know.”

She doesn’t say more. After a moment I grow restless. “Calianthe also said it corrupts the mind and soul of the person who claims it.”

Blair throws me an endlessly bored look. “And?”

“He still wants it.”

“What is it you want, little confused human?” she drawls with a sigh, tilting her head back, peering at the ceiling and the bats who have gathered there as if she was contemplating whether to snatch one as dessert. “Other than riding my last nerve?”

“I just want to do the right thing,” I whisper.

She laughs at that, truly laughs, throwing her head back. “Huh. That’s adorable and the funniest thing I’ve heard in a long time. Heartwarming, really. You just made my day.”

“Everyone here seems to love Caryan as a king. They… adore him,” I say carefully, ignoring the barb.

Her gaze cuts through me. “And you don’t. Was he mean to you, little human?”

I take a deep breath. “I think he can be dangerous. Is dangerous.”

Her face changes as she takes me in, as if seeing me in a different light. “You’re an interesting little creature,” she murmurs, seemingly more to herself again. “I must say, you do not have much of your mother. Yet .” The last word sounds like a warning.

“You haven’t answered my question,” I say.

“You haven’t asked one,” she says back, her tone like a knife.

I grind my teeth and make myself ask, “Is Caryan bad? ”

Blair’s eyes rove over me again, from head to toe. I wonder what she’s thinking. Her aura is a mess of too many hues, too many streaks, like the palette of an artist after finishing a painting. Messy.

Then her eyes snare on my wrist, on the tattoo there. “I think it doesn’t matter anymore when you were stupid enough to bind a part of your soul to him. I hate to say it, but you’re already doomed.”

“He promised me freedom in exchange for three relics.”

Her bleached eyebrows rise high before she cackles again. “You truly are adorable. You do know it is all about semantics in our world? Freedom might indeed mean that he lets you walk out of his Fortress as a free woman. But—” she shrugs demonstratively, “It could also mean you find your freedom in death.”

For a second I don’t know how to breathe. She just turns her back on me, walking to the other end of the cell, slumping down against the wall.

A second later, I hear someone behind me and whip around. Ronin stands there. He’s approached silently, and briefly, I’m stricken by the similarity to Blair—his hair is the same, coppery red that hers used to be, his eyes hold the same amber. Only his pupils are like that of a cat’s.

“I’ve been looking for you,” he says, and I think I hear a touch of remorse in his voice, see it mirrored in his aura. “The Dark Lord sends for you.”