Page 138 of Kingdom of the Two Moons

No, I will go on. I will find a way out.

I will climb this fucking hedge. I try. It’s too high, my fingers finding nothing to hold on to, as if the whole thing is slippery with some magic.

I give up at the third attempt, and more footsteps startle me. I run on, run for all it’s worth. More corners, hedges, dead ends.

Eventually, I stop in a quiet corner, breathing too hard, mybody trembling with fear. I’m trapped. I can’t shake off the feeling that the labyrinthwantsme to be found.

I cower into the darkest corner, begging silently for the labyrinth to hide me. To make an exception.

What if I scream? Will it matter to anyone? Will it attract attention? Draw my chaser? Where is Riven? He won’t be able to find me if the labyrinth is preventing it or, with his speed, he would have already. Or maybe he already gave up on me, having seen that I’m not worth it?

I bury my head in my hands and start to cry in earnest while the damn hedges seem to draw closer and closer like the walls in that bunker.I will not be afraid. I will not be afraid.But the words sound hollow. The darkness is too much.

I don’t look up when leaves rustle in a breeze. When a figure pauses in front of me, casting a long shadow. Someone to claim my blood, my body, with whatever sick desire.

But when I look up eventually, I find black eyes rimmed with gold, unreflective for once, and wings behind him.

Wings…

My whole stomach cramps. I slide backward as if I can somehow melt into the hedge.

“I won’t hurt you, Melody,” Caryan says, his power flooding me, dark and entrancing.

It’s so much like the other night, so much like when he whispered all those dark things at my neck. Every word he said clanks through me with new ferocity, my flesh alive with burning fear.

He meant it. And here I am, a slave, an amusement, a fucking plaything. A wretched toy.

“I hate your games!” I blurt out, glowering at him, my body feverish and alert. “They’re sick and weird and…” My voice is all wrong—too loud and breathless. “Everything here is weird, and so backward. Keeping slaves, whipping people for mistakes!”

The words tumble out. It’s all I have left, to let him know what I think about whatever the hell he’s going to do to me.

But to my surprise, he says, more gently than I ever imagined, “I know it appears that way to you.”

He holds out a hand to me, and only then do I notice the green bracelet, his color not matching mine. He isn’t my hunter then. “That’s why I came to get you,” he adds.

I stare at his hand. He’s different. So different from the fury and anger when he found me in the desert. Different to last night too. Last night he was himself, I realize with a start. Untamed. Wild. And a little bit unhinged. Now he’s—well, I don’t fucking know what he is right now.

When I look up into his face again, his features have softened, the blackness of his eyes morphed into that resonating blue.

He has come to get me. Twice now.

I slowly edge closer, though I don’t take his hand. He straightens and I stand up too.

“We have to fly back,” he declares somberly.

I glance at his huge wings, then at him, unsure how it would work. “Can’t we just… walk? It’s your world, your labyrinth…”

“It’s enchanted for the night. I would have to break the whole spell.”

I try to ignore the surge of his power flickering up my skin once more. Try to ignore how his eyes draw over my half-translucent dress. About how that makes me feel.

As if my skin is too small. Aching. Raw.

Too bare.

The blue in Caryan’s eyes turns into midnight hues. “This isn’t for you. Riven shouldn’t have brought you here.” He seems to say it more to himself.

And there I feel it, a hint of his fury again.

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