Page 124 of Kingdom of the Two Moons

“I can hear your heartbeat,” he says as if this is a way of greeting. “I can feel the heat of you, the rush of your blood through your veins like a brook in a forest.”

He takes another step towards me. I don’t move. As I said, I’m tired of running.

“Truth. That’s what you want. Yet, when you asked whether that was an apology,” he starts again, looking down at me through feathery lashes. “Would you like me to lie to you?”

“I don’t know—can you?” My answer is a breath, not more.

Again, that smile on his lips. It’s a fascinating sight. Terrifying.

“My astute little girl. If I could tell you many lies, would you wish me to, rather than the truth?”

Briefly I wonder whether he can. Whether this is what he’s really trying to tell me. Because he promised to be honest.

Before I can answer, he says, “Do you wish me to tell you that I regret taking your blood so violently?”

My mouth goes dry. I forget where I am. Who I am. I don’t know what the hell makes me shake my head.

“Good. Because I do not. Shall I tell you, rather, that I would like to drag my teeth across your chest to taste your beating heart?”

I’m unable to step back when he touches me. Unable to move at all. And I know I should. I should run. Should fight when he leans in and I feel his lips at my ear.

But all I do is close my eyes.

“Or that a part of me wishes to rip the flesh off your bones, bruise you all over, and leave you ravaged.”

My heartbeat stumbles, and I know he feels it by the way his breath changes over my skin. I know he means it because I can sense his anger, buried somewhere deep inside him, clawing against his ribcage. But underneath, something even deeper and darker simmers.

“Or should I tell you how many nights we were under the same moon, and I was sick to know it, but could not find you?”

His words blur, so do the boundariesof our bodies. I can no longer tell what is real and what is not real. What is true and what is a lie. Again, I feel swamped, drunk.

I’m not sure that he whispers, “Shall I tell you that I kissed your hair when you slept?”

Not sure that I imagine his teeth grazing my pulse. The vague realization hits me then, far away and blurry, that he could open me and let me bleed out in his arms.

Yet he chooses to press a light kiss on my throat along with the words “Shall I tell you that I’ll be careful with you? That I shall try to keep my horrors from you?”

A heavy darkness claims me, and I collapse into him. “Or shall I promise you that there is nowhere in existence you could run that I would not find you. That there is nothing I would not do to save you. That I would rip apart every world, every dream and every nightmare for you. I would even rip apart the hells.”

I know it’s magic, his magic, I recognize it even in sleep. Even in my dreams.

Because I always knew it.

39

Blair, two years before Gatilla’s death

They destroyed outposts night after night, striking randomly and out of nowhere. Palisandre couldn’t predict a move, couldn’t send reinforcements in time.

The truth was, Blair and Caryan chose the outposts after the accumulation of magic she sensed. The more powerful the high fae, the stronger the magic. They took them down one by one and bled them out, feeding their essences into the reservoir. They set up camp at the most remote mountain peaks or tucked away in caves and neck-breaking ravines, impossible to reach without wings or phantom wyverns.

It took a month until the whispers of a Palisandrean army being sent towards the Blacklands reached Gatilla’s ears. Another week until war was openly declared and Blair found herself staring down into the valley, at the biggest army she’d ever seen.

The whole lush plain was crowded by rows and rows of soldiers in shining armor, setting up their tents and honing their weapons. Looking down on them, she couldn’t help it: her heart sank. Her knees turned weak at the sight of so many high elves, at the throbbing wall of power they emanated. This was only a fragment of Palisandre’s army, the most powerful kingdom in this world, and already the air flared and stirred with magic.

She’d known this would come. That this was what her aunt wanted—an outright confrontation for the whole world to see. What Blair and Caryan had been working towards during the last months. But seeing it was different.

A lot of witches would die.

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