Page 10 of Kingdom of the Two Moons

In all these years, I’ve never hunted a woman.

A strikingly beautiful woman. Her burning amber eyes are still on my mind, matching her strange aura. That dense fog of grayish black, laced with streaks of emerald-green and purple.

Horror sluices through me at the memory of what Lyrian does to his victims—and what it makes me for delivering them up.

What the hell has she wrought to deserve Lyrian’s wrath and hate? She looks barely older than me.

I let her go. As I let so many others go.

The only reason I sometimes tell Lyrian who and where my targets are is that they are bad too. Their auras are a solid black, almost like Lyrian’s own. I figure the world will probably be a better place without them. They are murderers, or worse, I know.

Not that the end justifies the means.

Lyrian tortures them in a hall next to the woods. Far enough away from the mansion that I can’t see it from there, but close enough that their screams and pleas keep me from sleep.

Why Lyrian does it? I asked once. All I got for an answer was to be thrown into the bunker for two nights.

The woman from the bar is dark yes, but not dark enough, by far, to kill her. Not nearly bad enough that I want her blood on my hands.

It is all I can do—spare the good souls.

Even if it costs me.

Lyrian makes me pay every single time I let someone escape. It gets worse each time. Last time I let someone escape, he had the bloodhounds—at least that’s what I call Hunter and Kayne as a reference to their ugly faces, bald heads, and towering masses of flesh and muscle, and for their unrelenting ability to chase me down wherever I go—beat me up and leave me without food for three days straight.

In the distance, the first flicker of lightning splits the sky, followed by thunder that growls like an earthquake. Electricity runs along my skin like an undercurrent of power.

I shift the car down a gear, flooring the gas, accelerating as the familiar tingle of a panic attack bristles along my bones. It is the only thing I know, the only thing I’ve ever known: to conquer anxiety with madness.

I don’t care whether I die. Never have.

Dying might be a hell of a lot better than what Lyrian would do to me. What Hunter and Kayne would do to me.

The moment my car cuts past their SUV, they make a full spin and come after me. They’ve been trailing me from a distance like they always do. Ready to sweep in to collect their target.

The only reason they don’t go with me is that I once told Lyrian I can’t track down my targets properly with them in my space. So they keep their distance now. It’s the only resistance against Lyrian I’ve ever succeeded at.

The lie cost me, but I paid that price gladly. Two weeks trapped in total darkness. Continuous beatings. Lyrian waited for me to relent, waited for me to break. Eventually, the bastard gave up and ordered his henchmen to hang back a little when they followed me.

Of course, Lyrian didn’t believe me for a second. He knowswhy I want space. He knows I let people go. He knows I lie to him, again and again.

I clench my teeth hard to suppress my tears.

Yes, dying would definitely be better than facing what he will no doubt do to me.

I crank up the music, my lips moving quietly along with Margot Timmins’ otherworldly voice, begging darkness to be her pillow, to take her hand and make her sleep. Then I open the windows, letting my dark, long hair stream unbound and rain pelt my face.

I go even faster, the car cutting through the landscape like the brushstroke of an angry painter.

Moments like this almost feel like flying. The only moments where I feel free, unbound, untethered.

I breathe in the cold air, heavy with sap and gravel and wet concrete. But it is the lighting that wakes something in me. Lashing the sky with the promise of deluge and decay.

I like storms, always have. They remind me that even the sky needs to scream sometimes. And not just me.

It’s something other than this suffocating, inescapable solitude, expanding everywhere around me.

And I tried to escape it so many times I’ve lost count. But Lyrian and his brutal henchmen, Hunter and Kayne, always manage to track me down in the end, no matter how fast and far I’ve gone. Twice, I even made it so far as to dump the car in a stretch of forest, escaping on foot and checking into a hotel miles away two days later. They found me in the middle of the night and dragged me back to Lyrian in chains.

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