Page 8 of Kingdom of the Two Moons

Blair, two years before Gatilla’s death

Blair’s long, wine-red hair had come loose from her braid during the long and draining flight back on their phantom wyverns—half-solid beasts, looking like real ones, summoned by magic, untouched by the cold or rain or wind as they cut through the night, close to the fae moon, violet up in the witches’ territories. Blair’s face was raw from the biting, wintery cold, and she could no longer feel her fingers in her leather gloves when they finally started their descent back to Akribea, the capital of the Blacklands. Its infamous landmark Windscar, the amethyst tower, punctured the impenetrable fog like a spear.

Blair rode at the front; Aurora, her second, to her left; Sofya, her third, on her right. The rest of the thirty witches of Blair’s chosen coven, the red coven, fell into formation, where they’d flown loosely before. They always fell back into their roles when they neared the tower, because her Aunt Gatilla could be watching. Or someone else might report any slight lack of discipline.

If her aunt ever caught wind of such acts of frivolity, she’d make short work of them all.

Bloodlust. Cruelty. Brutality.

The three principles the witches lived by. Her aunt’s three favorite words, not Blair’s, and she knew her aunt would rip her tongue out with her silver nails if Blair ever said that out loud .

Blair stifled a yawn, then schooled her face into its usual mask of arrogance and superiority. She held on tight to the scales of her wyvern as it plummeted down from the sky on her silent command. Blair didn’t know how it worked, the unspoken connection between her and her summoned, magical creation. It wasn’t like she controlled the creature. It certainly acted on a will of its own, although the rational part in her told her that this couldn’t be real.

It was magic, nothing else. No matter how much she wished her wyvern to be real. Hoped those half-leathery wings would become solid. When Blair leaned in, though, it wasn’t just her wishful thinking… she could feel the beast’s heat seep into her body, smell her scaled hide, and the blood she consumed daily.

Yes, her wyvern ate . Magic shouldn’t need to feed on anything but its creator. But all the wyverns did.

Also, Blair knew in her core that her wyvern was a female. How she would look if she were solid. Rainbow-colored scales and wings where sunlight would shine through. Her head adorned with beautiful, spiraled horns.

As always, her stomach shot right into her throat as the world started to tilt. Her wyvern spread her leathery wings wide at last, riding the wind currents before she banked and landed smoothly on the tower’s platform, which was coated by a treacherous layer of ice. Conditions like these had cost two witches their lives in the last century.

Blair’s knees almost gave out from exhaustion and cold, from three weeks of relentless, arctic torrents, as she slipped from her wyvern’s back. She dismissed the beast with a negligent wave of her numb hand, fingers almost too stiff to move. Gods, she was drained. Days full of snow and bloodshed, nights full of slowly eviscerating the bodies they collected and storing the harvested magic in vessels before collapsing on bedrolls on cold stone ground, their tents tucked into caves they found in the deadly ravines.

But it was where they were safe. Where no one could reach them.

It was this ability that separated the witches’ magic from all other high fae—the talent to summon a hell beast and ride it. It was what made them so utterly dangerous.

Blair heard the other witches touching base behind her, probably as chilled to the bone and tired as she.

Patience was frail these days, and tempers were high because the strain of their missions barely outweighed the amount of harvested magic. Or food.

Their rotations consisted of three weeks in a row. Her coven had three days off for Blair to inform her aunt about their movements, feed the harvested magic into the reservoir, and recover before they’d be sent back out. It was Blair’s inherent talent that made her commander of all the aerial units, her talent to feel accumulations and density of magic. The witches went wherever Blair’s instinct guided them.

This time, she and her coven had been assigned to harvest the last villages at the border to Avandal, where some hard-assed fae carved out their miserable existence, feeding on crops and the occasional mountain goat or snow hare.

Easy prey, those scrawny, thin creatures, the little magic in their veins barely worth the effort.

There wasn’t much left in the Blacklands, barely enough for the witches to still their hunger and fill their bellies with blood. These cycles of hunting had become longer over the years Blair had been flying for her aunt, the villages and targets becoming more and more distant. And dangerous.

Blair tried not to think about the witch they lost to an avalanche. Ysadora. A witch around Blair’s age—a little more than a hundred years old. She’d been hit by a mass of snow and plummeted into the chasm.

Her death meant a punishment for Blair. Maybe for her whole coven, but not if Blair could prevent it. It had been her mistake, choosing to fly the sharp and narrow formation of rocks because a snowstorm had broken loose and she deemed them safer tucked between the ancient, cruel stone than flying higher over the peaks.

Whipping. Probably. Maybe they’d been banned from flying for a week .

Normally, Blair couldn’t wait to leave the claustrophobic halls of the amethyst tower Windscar, from where her aunt, Queen Gatilla, ruled the kingdom of the witches.

More than two days indoors had already made her restless. On edge. Made her itching to get back out there. Riding the wind, reddening the steel of her sword, and getting a belly full of hot blood—those were the things a witch lived for.

Ambushing Palisandrean villages close to the border was the real deal. Ransacking those rundown settlements—left mostly unprotected because Palisandre would not spare its precious soldiers to guard some lesser fae farmers and a few scattered cattle wranglers—was the highlight of the year.

Those raids were the only fun the witches had—picking some of those men and using them for their needs before sinking their teeth into their throats. Fucking and looting before leaving nothing but death and destruction behind.

It was what Blair had lived for.

Yeah, normally she couldn’t wait to leave again.

But things changed.

Now she found herself secretly hoping for a ban. Anything that would let her stay here a little longer. She told herself that the reason for her change of heart had nothing to do with the black-winged angel Caryan. Knowing it was a lie. Her heart made a treacherous jump only thinking his name.

She lifted her head and took a few deep, steadying breaths to calm herself for the encounter with her aunt as she crossed the frost-swept platform, untying her snow-encrusted braid and running her nails through her hair in an attempt to detangle it.

It was an honor to serve her aunt, she reminded herself, not for the first time. An honor to be commander of all the riders, of all aerial units. An honor to lead the red coven—the deadliest one. Blair was their head, their wing leader. She would one day become queen.

But as she crossed the platform towards the heavy stone doors with the spiral staircase leading deep down into the cold belly of the Fortress, all she felt was exhaustion and cold in every fiber of her being .

And a thrumming need, more of an ache, that started to build underneath her skin. An ache that was constantly there, setting her on edge if she was away for too long and intensifying to the verge of consuming pain the instant she got back and felt Caryan’s presence. She knew that amount of desire was unhealthy, so strong it was soul-eating.

But she couldn’t help it. Just as she couldn’t help the fact that these missions had started to feel like some kind of punishment for something she hadn’t yet committed.

That all of her just wanted to stay a little while longer this time.

The insides of her palms started to turn sweaty at the prospect of seeing the angel again. Abyss, she was nervous like a fucking youngling. But she longed for him. Had longed for him every single day she’d been away. Burned for him with every part of her body. She hadn’t changed her clothes in order to keep his smell on her for as long as possible. She hid it under a wall of magic, though, so none of the other witches would pick it up on her.

If her aunt ever found out, she’d be the blood and meat that fed her wyvern. After she’d been tortured for a week straight.

Hells, she’d be doomed. Not even her mothers could know that she and Caryan were sleeping with each other. Not when he was her aunt’s slave. Her aunt’s lover. Her dark creation.

Her weapon.

Treacherous heat pooled in her core as she picked up the faintest whiff of his elusive scent in the corridor. Along with jittery excitement thrumming along her bones, making her dizzy. They’d been fucking for five years now and still, she felt nervous every time.

Never ever had it been like that with a man. Had she been like that. And deep down, she knew she shared some form of connection with him beyond the physical.

It was so wrong, though. So dangerous. But how could something so wrong feel so right?

She had known she loved him since the moment she set eyes on him.

She had seen angels before they had been hunted down. She had heard stories about them. About their beauty, outstanding even among the fae. About their power. Their wrath.

But Caryan was no normal angel, if there even was such a thing.

No. She knew in her bones that he was different even from them. And it wasn’t just his mesmerizing, ever-changing eyes. No, everything on him was a pure force of nature. Made of undiluted, otherworldly, dark power that sang to her very soul.

The moment she saw him she’d felt the tendrils of fate twirling around her, closing tight.

She’d reached the huge, double-winged door to her aunt’s council chamber.

“Do you want me to come with you?” Her mother’s voice sounded behind her, startling her. Not Aurora, but Sofya. Always blonde, beautiful Sofya, who was reckless and brave.

Blair turned and met the deep-blue eyes of the white-haired witch, her hair the color of moonlight on a lake. “Go have some mead in the hall. I’ll do this alone.”

“You know you don’t always have to lay your head on the block, Blair. Not alone. Let me be with you.”

“What happened to Ysadora was my fault and mine alone. I’m your wingleader.”

“I’m your mother.”

“You are my third, flying under my command. Leave. It’s an order.” Blair’s tone had changed, turned cold and distant.

Every other witch knew better than to jut her chin up, but Sofya had never been that way. Her eyes shimmered with determination. “I will stay with you.”

Blair’s hand shot out so fast, her silver claws digging into Sofya’s neck, drawing blood that even Sofya seemed surprised about it.

Blair pulled her nearer so that her silver teeth got close to Sofya’s tender skin. “Do not question my orders, ever, Sofya.”

She pushed her mother back and turned on her heel, striding through the double-winged iron door without looking back.

Blair stared at the violet wall opposite her with her hands clasped behind her back. Gods, how many hours of her not-so-mortal life had she been staring at those walls? At the suffocating, monotonous, violet stone, hewn and forged and polished by the enslaved dwarves her aunt kept deep, deep below the tower in the mines.

Too many.

Today, it took a solid hour until the door to her aunt’s chambers opened. Seven of her aunt’s closest witches poured in, their heads hidden under heavy hoods, their robes’ hems gliding over the shining floor. None of them so much as acknowledged Blair’s presence as they sat down at the long, black table. It was an honor for a witch to be recognized by one of the seven, and Blair hadn’t earned that honor yet.

Not in almost a century of serving.

Nor with her cruelty or the name she’d gained from it—the Scarlet Death.

It took another half an hour before the door on the other side of the room, leading to her aunt’s private chambers, opened and her Aunt Gatilla came striding out, followed by Caryan. He walked close enough to her to make it clear he belonged to her, as her aunt demanded.

His short, black hair was messy, his remarkable eyes black, save for his irises. They were a bright red, tinted by her aunt’s blood, Blair knew. The rest of his too-perfect face was void of emotion.

Blair sometimes wondered how he could bear it. How he found the strength to go on. Bow to her aunt. Fight for her. Serve her in more ways than Blair wanted to think about.

She pushed the thought away and kept her face impassive while Caryan took her in.

No feathery wings—he rarely had them out. Just black battle gear clinging to his strong, tall body, accentuating every rip and pane of sculpted muscle. But the sheer feeling of his gaze on her was more than enough to make Blair’s knees turn weak. Make her heartbeat pick up a notch. The slight incline of Caryan’s chin told her he had heard. He knew.

A warning flashed in his eyes before he looked away .

Blair straightened when her aunt finally took her seat at the head of the table. Blair had always believed her aunt was the less good-looking version of herself. Gatilla was beautiful, by human standards, with the same symmetrical face, alabaster skin, and luxurious, dark-red cascade of silky hair, but Blair was outstanding. Outshining her aunt in beauty.

Yet, the longer she took in her aunt, the more she started to think differently. Her aunt possessed features and a demeanor that made her not beautiful, but alluring.

That made everyone fall silent when she spoke. Made everyone pause and look at her when she entered a room. She had that kind of presence. Of dominance.

And Blair couldn’t help but feel suddenly ordinary.

It didn’t help that her aunt’s scent still clung to Caryan like an assault. She knew exactly why her aunt had taken so long and why his black hair was disheveled.

It took everything in Blair not to scrunch up her nose, not to snarl and bare her teeth at her aunt.

It was ridiculous. It wasn’t as if Caryan had a choice. She had never been jealous in her life. Not once. Not even a hint.

But now the full wave hit her like an avalanche. Like that avalanche that had made Ysadora plummet from the sky like an angel with shredded wings.

“Blair,” her aunt eventually addressed her, her features limned with disdain as if Blair was a stain on her embroidered damask tunic.

Blair made the fatal mistake of looking at Caryan again. Foolish. Her treacherous heart skipped another beat before she caught herself.

“My queen. Caryan,” she answered along with a bow.

Caryan. What in the hells? The angel lifted his chin the same moment she realized her mistake. Icy claws raked down her spine and her heart started to thunder with real panic.

“My commander. You will address me as my commander, witch,” Caryan corrected, his tone like a lash of lightning .

Even the seven lifted their heads to look at the angel, vulpine smiles on their faces, their eyes hungry.

So they did respect the angel enough to acknowledge him. Fabulous.

Blair made herself hold his stare, longer than was wise for anyone. But she’d messed up. She needed to clean up her mistake. There was no backing out of this now. They had to keep up appearances.

She lifted her chin and sneered. “You are not my commander, angel.”

Her aunt flitted her blazing eyes to Blair’s, and Blair knew it was a test.

She added, baring her teeth, letting her eyes shine with outright disgust. “We witches bow to no one except our queen, angel.”

“On your knees, witch,” Caryan purred, a smile soft as silk on his lips.

“Make me,” Blair growled back, but in truth, she was holding her breath. No one ever outrightly challenged the angel and walked away from it.

A moment later, black magic filled the room, her own rising in answer.

“Enough of these antics. You will address him as your commander from now on, Blair.” Her aunt’s sharp voice cut through the room, her command leashing Caryan’s power until it collapsed.

Commander. This was something new, yet Blair knew better than to question her aunt’s decisions. She had barely survived this mistake.

She schooled her face once again into a mask of indifference as Gatilla waved an impatient, heavy-ringed hand, and ordered, “Report.”

Caryan’s eyes betrayed nothing as Gatilla’s silver nails slashed over Blair’s cheeks when she’d finished, leaving deep, violent cuts all the way down to her collarbones, even cutting through her riding leathers.

“A witch. You lost a witch. A blood price must be paid. Every witch of the red coven is going to receive ten lashes. ”

“It was my mistake, my queen—and mine alone,” Blair said, keeping her voice carefully neutral.

“Is that so? How noble,” her aunt mocked, her poison-green eyes flaring.

Blair would pay. She would do anything to spare Sofya, Aurora, and the others. “I chose to fly through the gap. I will take the punishment.”

Her aunt sat down and leaned back in her chair, her long, still-bloody claws clicking on the table. “Negligence breeds indolence. And indolence breeds madness,” her aunt recited. Words that defined her aunt’s whole, bloody reign. Words Blair had grown up with.

Blair dipped her chin in a nod. “I understand, my queen. Please let me atone for my deeds.”

“Very well. Thirty lashes then,” her aunt ordered, her cruel eyes taking in the cuts in Blair’s flesh with a dark kind of satisfaction.

Thirty, not the average twenty. Blair knew then that this was more a retribution for her previous insolence—for addressing Caryan the way she had—than mere punishment.

Her aunt turned to Caryan. “Go, get the pale elf. He will administer the punishment.”

She got up and strode back to Blair. Blair didn’t flinch as she lifted her hand again and patted Blair’s unharmed cheek.

“After all, pain must be delivered by a measured, loving hand to truly take effect. Mine would be the wrong one.”

Her aunt smiled as the door swung open, and Caryan returned with Riven, the pale elf of Palisandre, following on his heels. As always, the similarity to Caryan struck Blair. They could be brothers, twins even, if it wasn’t for the deep despair etched into Riven’s beautiful face and the bottomless sorrow in his remarkably lilac eyes. An elven prince Gatilla had enslaved and in whose suffering she seemed to take special delight. Such soulless, dead eyes.

“Well, elven prince,” Blair’s aunt crooned. “Take my niece up to the platform and flog her. And when you and she are done, you will bring her back down. We have matters to discuss concerning the war. ”

Blair’s outright confusion must have shown on her face, but she no longer cared to hide it. Caryan’s dark eyes told her nothing, and her aunt didn’t even bother to look at her again. She blurted, “What war?”

“The war against Palisandre. Caryan will be your general, Blair. You will do as he says. Take a night to rest. You will gather your coven. Tomorrow night, we are going to paint their cities red.”