Page 158 of Kingdom of the Two Moons

I look down. “I’m sorry I ran. It’s my fault.”

“Noneof this is your fault, Melody,” he corrects, the anger in his voice makes me startle.

“He killed Sarynx. His lover. He killed her so easily.”Caryan.I don’t know why I say it. I don’t know why it matters so much.

“Angels do not feel the way we do,” Riven answers carefully before he brushes a strand of hair out of my face. “Some say they cannot love.”

I glance at him, my heart suddenly tight. “And do you believe it—that Caryan can’t love?”

He looks away at that and rises. “I hope it’s not true.”

49

Melody

I wake up in Riven’s bed in the morning. He must have carried me there after I fell asleep again. When I turn, I find him sleeping right next to me, his torso still naked, his dark hair disheveled. His face is free of the strain I saw on him last night. Of the pain. The honesty. All the horrors of the past.

I shudder against what I’d seen last night—that act of unspeakable brutality and cruelty, etched into his back forever. That anyone could have done this to him—it makes me sick to my very bones. And angry.

I turn to the side to watch him for a while, then get up as quietly as possible. I shower in my room and change into fresh clothes before I join Nidaw in the kitchen.

To my surprise, everything is as always: loud, hectic, the servants chatting with each other. Everly throws me an apologetic glance over the kitchen isles while everyone is busy preparing piles of unreal-looking food.

There will be more celebrations tonight.

I don’t know what I expected, but not that everything would continue as if nothing had happened. Obviously, none of them has heard about the attack last night in Niavara. Or the executions. Or maybe they just don’t care. Maybe it’s part of their nature, after all. I think of the way their eyes shine when they see blood and shudder.

I’m nervous though. Agitated. On edge. Caryan saw everything in Sarynx’s and Shiera’s blood. That I wanted to escape. I don’t know what that means for me. Whether there will be consequences. I guess all I can do is wait.

***

I’m tense all day, part of me waiting for Ronin or Kyrith to come get me and throw me into the dungeon. But nothing happens.

Later, Nidaw comes to me to put me in the bath and get me ready for the night shift as usual. But this time, the mood in the bath is different as I enter. The sirens seem looser, grinning and smiling, chatting with each other while they wash and dry me. Then they start to press their golden hands down my body as some sort of decoration before they paint flowers on my cheeks and around my eyes, over my temples, and up to my eyebrows, matching similar artwork on their own skins.

When I cast a questioning glance toward Nidaw, she says, “Tonight, the new moon cycle started. We all are allowed to dress up while we serve, to celebrate too.”

“Magnolia, wisteria, violets, and snowdrops,” a siren with slightly greenish hair declares, giving me a wide smile of her small teeth before Nidaw waves her off.

They chuckle like children with a secret while they scatter out of the room. I envy them for their lightheartedness. I know that I’ve never been that way.

“Before you came, they said you look like an elf from the Enchanted Forest,” Nidaw explains when they’re gone, smiling to herself while she braids strands of my hair and entwines them with each other in a beautiful but complicated pattern, the rest of my hair falling loose. Then she starts to weave in some gold and silver filaments again.

“The Enchanted Forest?” I ask out of politeness. I don’t want to spoil her mood.

“Yes. They find the elves from there the most beautiful,” sheanswers, her hands gently combing strands away from my neck. Her smile is warm when she meets my eyes in the mirror, as if she senses my restlessness.

“The High Lord Riven is from there,” she adds before she releases me, but not without another long, knowing glance toward me. And I can’t help but think how little they know about Riven and his past; that they probably don’t know the truth.

Then I wonder how much they talk about me and him. Again, I think of his lips on mine last night, his hand in my hair, on my neck. The way he…

“Where are the angels from?” I ask to distract myself.

Nidaw stiffens slightly, but then rolls her tiny shoulders as if to shake off some tension. “We don’t know. They just fell from the sky one day.” She starts to apply some more gold dust on my cheeks with a furry brush.

Finally, she touches the tip of my nose with her finger. “We also say the angels are made of stardust. That’s why they’re so beautiful. And now, it’s time to leave, my little fairy girl,” she says, ushering me out.

***

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