Page 169 of Kingdom of the Two Moons

I swallow hard. My mother. The woman I had dreamed up so many nights alone in the darkness. I know Caryan’s words should hurt, but they don’t. All this information should rattle something in me, but for some reason, it doesn’t.

Where I maybe should be heartbroken, there is just numbness. A void. An absence.

I take a deep breath and then I move on, as I always do. I have to.

I say with a bravado I do not feel, “You know, after all that gloomy talk I think I need another drink.”

I slink past him, walking around the kitchen island to avoid his path, heading straight for the fridge. I open it, looking for that bottle—whiskey. I find it and pour more into one of the tumblers.

Caryan remains standing on the other side, his expression unreadable. Cold.

I watch him over the rim of my glass, wiping my mouth after I’ve downed another glass.

“Is it wise to get that drunk?”

“I don’t know. Is it wise to keep whiskey in a fridge?” I ask back.

He runs his tongue over his teeth. “We fae do have different palates. I like it that way. The opposite goes for little girls.”

I raise my brows at him. “You don’t like them cold?”

His upper lip curls back, annoyed. “I don’t like them drunk, for obvious reasons.”

“As you just said—I’m a little girl and reckless and audacious and… right, enigmatic. And you have no feelings anyway. So I guess this is what reckless, oversensitive little girls my age do when they want to have some fun. Or as you’d put it in that elaborate way of yours,I might have a tendency toward volatility at the worst possible of moments.”

I’m drunk.There’s no other way I’d have just snapped at him like that. Mocked him like that. But a part of me is threatened to drown in desperation if I didn’t.

I’m going to need to find three relics for him. Relics that don’t call to me on top of that. But even if I manage to find them, even if he gives me my freedom, I’ll be safe nowhere. I’m not foolish enough to think that I’m safe with him either, now or ever.

He licks his lips, and I hate that I follow the movement of his tongue. He retorts dryly, “Thishardly looks like fun.”

Something unholy flickers in his eyes, but he doesn’t intervene when I refill my glass another time and drink some more.

I secretly fight against the burning in my throat, like hot water, but force it down anyway. Then I give him an innocent look. “No? It could be, you know.”

I fill the second glass and shove it, the way he did before, glad it slides elegantly over to him as if I planned it that way all along.

“That is, if you decide to let go for once.” I shrug, trying to say it as nonchalantly as I can. Hells, I’m drunk.

“You don’t want me to let go, believe me.” His voice has dropped, but I opt to ignore the warning in it.

“Maybe I do.” I lean against the counter, looking him in the eye while sipping some more, although it already feels too much.

He doesn’t reach for his glass, just watches me in that stoic, serene manner of his. But his eyes flicker again, some deep purple entering the gray. It reminds me of Riven.

“So what now?”

“What do you meanwhat now?” he echoes sharply.

“Will you just stand there and watch me getting hammered?” I take another sip of the sharp liquid and then I walk around the island, stopping right before him.

I try not to think of how tall and intimidating he is as I hold my glass out to him, a daring smile on my lips.

What the hell is wrong with me? Am I flirting with death? Winged death, that is. A very, very bad idea. Yet part of me wants to go further. Feels it like a pull under my skin. I want to see how far I can go and what will happen if I cross that line. I want to know why he treats me differently than all the others. There must be a reason for it, I know it in my soul.

I want to find out. Tonight. Maybe I’d come too close to death too often over the last few days.

He stands unmoved, like a man made of stone.

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