Page 162 of Kingdom of the Two Moons

The smell of oranges and lemons and persimmons suddenly hangs thick in the air, emanating from the huge, ripe fruits on the trees above my head. Caryan leads me through hip-high flowers in all shades of the rainbow, crystal dust shimmering on their petals. I can still see everything perfectly clearly, although there’s no source of light anywhere close.

“Night vision,” he explains, as if he’s read the thoughts from my face. “All fae have it,” he adds.

He gently guides me into a meadow under huge trees that shouldn’t be able to grow in these conditions. Their roots are huge, sprawled around them in waves like some sort of strange legs.

“Milkwood.” Caryan again answers my silent question. “They remind me of home, so I had them planted here. They can move, not far, but a little if they want.”

“Home?” I ask.

His eyes darken a touch and his voice becomes deep and raw.A ripple goes over his aura. I’m not sure, but it might be nostalgia. “What I remember of home, that is.”

“You don’t remember much?”

I watch the soft blue in his irises leaking into the gold-red whirl as he keeps looking at the trees.

I can’t read his tone when he says, “I am old. When you reach my age, you lose a lot of things in the process, but sometimes fragments remain. One of them is the memory of those trees.”

Again he laces his fingers with mine and leads me on through those endless, unreal gardens, through a patch of forest so dense that shadows disappear before we reach a clearing. And I have the feeling I’ve stepped into a living painting.

There are so many different hues and shades, so many flowers and bushes and trees; fat grapes of wisteria winding along low branches, wild blackberries and raspberries glistening in-between like jewels adorned with thorns.

Caryan lets go of my hand and sprawls so casually in the silvery silk-soft grass that for a moment, I just stare. Stare at the picture in front of me, at the beauty of him, a creature so undeniable fairy. His skin milk-white, his hair black like ink, moonlight threading through it, touching his devastatingly beautiful face with those sharp, pointed ears, as he lies there, strangely relaxed as if no one was watching him, surrounded by impossible nature.

And I know that one day I’m going to paint this scene. One day,ifI ever feel confident enough to capture his otherworldly grace, the alabaster hue of his skin and the way his veins shimmer through. I stay a moment longer, trying to memorize every detail, every facet, before I match him, lying down on my back, close but not too close.

“This is what I wanted to show you,” he says over the wild song of frogs and cicadas, one arm tucked behind his head; with the other, he’s pointing to the stars. “Starfall. Tonight is the peak of the equinox. It’s the time when the stars rain from the sky.”

Indeed, as if having waited for his words, stars do begin to fall, leaving long, glittering trails like silver fireworks, each one longer and brighter than the last.

“In the human world, we believe you can make a wish for every shooting star you see,” I say quietly. Not that I’ve ever seen one so big and so close. Not when it had always been raining at Lyrian’s.

“Then I think you can make a lot of wishes tonight,” he answers darkly.

“I think I do need a lot,” I admit.

His gaze wanders over me before he looks back up. We lie there for a long time. I turn on my side, carefully stretching my fingers toward his right hand. He’s so close I could touch him. And a part of me wants to. A dark part of me wants to feel his power again, his energy, his magic.Undermy skin.

Despite all that happened last night. Despite what he is, in his very essence.

Maybe because of it.

Heat flushes my face, along with a shiver.

I hear him turning his head to me, hear the grass rustling at his movement.

“Nidaw said angels are made of stardust,” I whisper.

To my surprise, he laughs quietly, a sound like black velvet and soft as water. Startling. Alluring. I look at him, spellbound.

He raises his brows in question when he notices my gaze.

“You can laugh.”

“I have not, in a long time,” he admits after a while, his gaze lingering on my face. “But we’re not—made of stardust.”

I’m still looking at his skin, which seems to glisten in the dark, and at my fingers so close to his, when something slithers over his arm again—the same black and gold I saw the other night in his kitchen. I don’t pull my hand back, but watch, mesmerized, as those foreign symbols and tattoos sneak up over his wrists and fingers, gliding around the area where my hand is closest to his as if they are curious.

And somehow I have the feeling that it isalive. Alivingtattoo. Something with a pulse, almost like the bargain on my wrist.

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