Page 152 of Kingdom of the Two Moons

I’m caught and pushed hard against a crumbling wall. I flinch, my eyes wide, my breath short and fast from running. I swivel and stare into Riven’s eyes. They seem to burn in the darkness like dying stars, simmering with rage.

“You’re trying to run,” he snarls.

“No, I wanted to find the library,” I lie quickly.

“Liar!”

I freeze when I feel talons instead of his nails pressing into my skin, too similar to those of the men in my room that night.What the hell?

For a moment I’m too scared to deny that I wanted to run; the words die on my tongue.He knows.And he caught me just like the first time in the woods. Or the second time in the Fortress. But he’s never looked so furious before. So intimidating. So unhinged.

“You just happened to conveniently leave out the part where my mother ran fromCaryan,” I throw back at him, right into his face.

“Who told you?”

“Does it matter?”

He bares his teeth. “I never told you because it’d have just made you try to run again. But it seems no matter what I do, you run anyways.” His hand closes around my throat then, talons grazing my skin, on the verge of drawing blood. “I warned you.”

“Please…” I whisper, suddenly terrified. I wonder how far his vow to never hurt me goes. How much hecando.

“Please what?” he asks in a cruel voice that reminds me how he made Lyrian cower and grovel with merely words and a point of his fingers. So different from his usual self. Hell, when he’s like this, it doesn’t take much to imagine why he’s Caryan’s right hand. Because he’s just as lethal. Just as deadly.

“Please don’t…”

He pushes me against the wall again, pinning my body with his, my wrists held captive above my head. But this is so different from before. He is so different.

“Don’t what?” he mocks, leaning into me.

I can’t find words. I know he’s still wild.

He grabs my chin, the talons gone. Then he kisses me.

It isn’t pretty kissing. It’s carnal, possessive, and brutal. He kisses me with his body, his teeth, his one hand still gripping me in a chokehold, opening my jaw. He snarls as I bite his lower lip so hard I taste his blood in my mouth.

But he pulls back, glowering down at me.

Good.Because I don’t want him to be like this with me. Not him. The rudeness, the brutality of it… It breaks my tiny human heart, and I want him to see this.

“Traitor.”

A male voice behind us makes Riven whip around, his blood still dripping over his chin. I scan the darkness around us but find no one.

Then a flicker in my peripheral vision. A shadow, moving.

My head snaps up and I find a figure with membrane wings rending the night like a creature out of a nightmare.Nefarians.Three more of them squatting on columns, still partly hidden by thedark. I realize that they used their wings to shield themselves, to blend with the darkness so thoroughly neither of us noticed them.

“I’d hoped you wouldn’t be here, Riven. And I’m sorry thatthiscomplicates things even further,” the man closest to us drawls. He lands smoothly on the column above us with one mighty flap of his wings. “I’m sorry that she has to die. But you know she must.”

“Touch a hair on her head and yours will roll,” Riven growls back, in a voice I’ve never heard him use before. He pushes himself in front of me, keeping me behind him against the pillar.

“Have you forgotten our ties? They run deep, whether you want it or not,” another Nefarian hisses from above, his voice echoing from the ruins.

“I do not care about our ties. You heard me. It was a last warning,” Riven snarls back.

The men exchange a glance before they step further out of the shadows.

“They’re going to attack, right now,” I whisper, not sure it will change anything if Riven knows, but I see it clearly in their auras.

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