Page 160 of Kingdom of the Two Moons

Caryan didn’t give me an answer. I glance one last time up to the beautiful sky, trying to memorize everything, the stars so close they look as if you could pluck them from the firmament like silver berries, then I return inside. Nobody notices me sneaking away and out of the ballroom, heading for the bathrooms before anyone can see the tears streaming down my cheeks.

I shouldn’t cry. But all I can think is why Caryan couldn’t just have let the worm eat me. Didn’t Riven warn me that fae don’tfeelthe way humans do?

I suppress more tears.

I’m tired. Just so tired, and my panic is more present than ever, swamping me. I want to spray cold water onto my face, but then remember the flowers on my cheeks. Those beautiful flowers the servants painted on me. Such a stark contrast to all the violence, my dark thoughts.

I wipe the tears away and gather myself. I need to go back, or Nidaw will notice my absence and chide me. I straighten my dress and step back out into the twilight of the corridor before I walk back to the kitchen.

My hands are still shaking when I start to line up glasses on a tray, and one slips through my fingers. Shards fill the sink, and I cut myself as I fish them out.

I’m an idiot, cutting myself again.

I curse quietly when Nidaw steps next to me, handing me a clean kitchen towel to wrap around the cut. When she asks me whether I’m alright, I can’t look at her. Can’t look at her pitying face without starting to cry again.

So I just nod, quietly promising to clean up the mess. Nidaw shoos me away and tells me to go to a healer to have the cut seen to.

I don’t, but I’m glad to have been let go. I venture through the darkness, my breathing easing a little in the quiet of the halls. In one of the patios I pause.

I climb onto the rim of the marble fountain, dangling my bare feet in the cool water while I press the kitchen towel hard on the cut, willing it to heal. I close my eyes for a moment, listening to the soothing splatter of water.

“There you are.”

No other voice has ever had that effect on me. And never will, I know. The deep, melodious tone like a cruel mocking in my ears, a perverse mirror of the ridiculous, cruel beauty of his face.

Caryan. He snuck up so quietly I didn’t hear a thing. But then, I’m only a half-elf-something, so why the hell would I?

I have never fit in anywhere, not in the human world, and sure as hell not here.

I bite the inside of my cheek, not able to look at him. Knowing I’m being unacceptably rude for a slave, ignoring my master or owner or whatever the word for this fucked-up relationship is. Knowing too well he won’t let such behavior pass and that it certainly won’t help my cause.

“You’re hurt,” he says, no softness in his voice now.

“Just a cut,” I murmur, trying to twist further away from him.

He steps up behind me. “Let me see it.” His voice is commanding but I don’t move.

“So bossy?” I ask instead, knowing I’m overstepping.

He snarls his response. “Show me. That’s an order.”

As if on cue, a ripple of power slithers along my bones, but Iignore that too. How can I explain that I feel unable to turn around, to look at him, to face him without starting to cry again?

I freeze when I feel his hands in my hair. His fingers brush against my neck before he pulls my head back just as he leans in, exposing my throat, his lips right next to my ear.

My pulse skyrockets.

His voice is a quiet growl that shouldn’t affect me the way it does. “Ignore me one more time, and I will show you exactly howbossyI can be.”

I slowly turn then, taking my feet out of the water one by one and sliding around so I’m facing him. I keep my head trained on the jasmine bushes behind him. He grabs my arm, unwrapping the kitchen towel, and I suck in a sharp breath as a pain I haven’t felt until now jolts through me. Maybe the cut is deeper than I thought. From the look of the blood-soaked kitchen towel, it probably is.

“You weren’t going to the healers, were you? As Nidaw told you to.” His tone is another growl, his fingers holding my delicate wrist like a vise. I know I’m going to have bruises tomorrow.

How the hell does he know everything?He must have overheard it. Probably smelled my blood and trailed my scent.

“It’s not so bad,” I retort between my teeth, sharply. I shouldn’t talk to him that way, shouldn’t push it further. But I’m just so angry. Partly from the pain, partly at myself, at them, at Lyrian and Riven and my mother and everyone else on this planet, or the other, or however this place works.

I just want to be left alone. I just want some peace.

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