Page 171 of Kingdom of the Two Moons

I let out a cold laugh. “I see. Yet you didn’t seem too repulsed by a little girl like me sitting on your lap at the party.”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Is it because I’m talking back?”

“Hold your insolent tongue!”

“The tongue you—”

His fingers are around my neck again, harder this time. I find myself pushed against that counter before my mind can catch upwith his speed, his momentum. He’s standing between my legs, his teeth mere inches away from my lips, so close we would be sharing breath if he let me breathe.

I meet his stare, those eyes burning right into my innermost being.

Hold your tongue.Yourinsolenttongue. I’d laugh at his choice of words if it didn’t hurt so much. But the hell would I show him.

Just then his fingers ease slightly. I draw in a breath and hiss, “Ah, I forgot that you only likereal women.”

He shoves me even harder against the counter. So hard my head smacks against the cupboard, his body pinning me, grinding me against the stone, his shadows crawling up my skin. He’s all animal now, his eyes not gray but a bottomless black as his free hand slams into the cupboard next to me so hard the material splinters. So close I can feel the whisper of air on my face, his hand only missing me by an inch.

I swallow hard as I stare at his hand next to my head, swathed in midnight smoke.

All I wanted was to push him, even if it meant that I made him angry, and now I’m terrified.

I feel myself struggling for air, his fingers digging too deep into my neck. A little tighter and he could just snap it. Tears I can no longer hold back fill my eyes while I look up at the all-consuming blackness in his.

Just then, like in the desert, something silvery flares up all around me, swirling around his shadows. I stare as it glistens and gleams, Caryan’s magic reacting to it—his shadows twining and untwining all around us, laced by that silver, sparkling light. I’ve never seen anything more beautiful, as if the night and the stars had changed their shapes just to dance with each other.

Caryan holds me a moment longer before he lets me go. His eyes, like mine, focus on the strange light curling around his darkness.

When I look down at myself, I find my skin alight with it. Themagic streams out of me, trailing off me like smoke infused with stardust and liquid moonlight.

For a second, I think I’m imagining things. That I just drank too much.

This can’t be real.

But then Caryan’s eyes glide to mine, and I find them as silver as the magic, as if some of it has just melded with his very being. The fury in them is gone, and too much lies in them now. I see my own surprise mirrored there, caution, pride and… admiration.

He goes to step away from me, but I dig my fingers into his shirt, burying my head in his chest like I did two nights ago. My head is spinning too fast to allow any clear thought, the floor wonky under my feet, unreliable. The whole room swims as I turn my head to the side. The light,mylight, is still everywhere, flickering over the high ceiling and the walls, still curling in the air like smoke, now brushing up against Caryan’s magic, teasingly, almost playfully… and his answering, carefully, curiously.

I’m still staring atourmagic as he gently lifts me up. He carries me, and I let him. My light fades until only remnants of it flicker through the air like fireflies, before they wink out, my skin white and pale again, only his shadows still brushing around me like the gentlest of touches.

I barely register another door opening into darkness before Caryan lowers me onto cool, incredibly soft pillows. Then he’s over me, laying me down, bracing himself on one arm above me.

“Please don’t leave now,” I whisper. He hesitates. Our eyes lock.

Then I feel him pulling back and my heart sinks.

But he just walks around the bed and lies down on the other side.

I turn to him in the dark, looking at the soft blue stars that now dance in his eyes, all the blackness dissolved, as if it was never there in the first place. I feel his hand gently stroking my hair and close my eyes. His scent, which clings to his sheets, engulfs me like a soothing lullaby.

I’m not sure I hear right when he murmurs, “You look like a child when you’re afraid,” more to himself than to me.

But I’m already asleep.

51

Riven

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