Page 185 of Kingdom of the Two Moons

I’m still trying to get to thisfeelingI can sense, hidden within all this darkness that threatens to pull me down, consume me, suffocate me. Crush me. It gets worse the more I fight it. Yet I keep probing further into the darkness, trying to reach for the silver light that shimmers on the horizon like the evening star. But every time I’m close, it seems to slip away again, just out of reach. As if it’s not ready to be seen, acknowledged, recognized yet.

I shake my head, then realize that, to get to its core—to the darkness’s black heart—I must immerse myself in it first. To understand it, grasp it, face it.

Without another thought, I plunge in, headfirst, and down. The darkness changes then. It turns into an abyss, vast and endless. It gently pulls me along when I let it, when I no longer fight it.

The blackness starts whispering to me then, whispering its secrets.

Desperation. Heaviness. Years and years and years passing by. I can make out blurred scenes, faces, people, voices.

“Stop it!” Caryan’s voice is like a slash laced with ice, somewhere, cutting through all of it.

I startle, meeting his gaze, wide-eyed, as he growls in a way that makes every instinct in me scream.

“Whatever it is you are doing, let it go. This is not your mind.”

Not your mind.

As if on cue, walls of adamantine onyx slam down in front of me, a black phantom wind pushing me out of that black sea. I’m hurled ashore, the brute force of it so strong, so powerful, I briefly sway like before, or would if I were standing.

The blackness still hums through me, though—fatigue. Exhaustion. Bone-grinding, never-ending weariness that permeates everything, only fought off and kept at bay by cast-iron will. But glimmering within it, there’s still that silver star I glimpsed, the only guiding lantern in this ocean of blackness.

A rush of water tells me that Caryan has left the pool. When I glance at him, he’s already wearing his clothes again, his hair perfectly dry. I’m still on the ground, still waiting for those dark feelings to ebb out of me. Still shaking, I realize.

When he steps in front of me, I ask, “What… what was that?”

“Nothing pretty.”

I look up at him, my eyes trained on his as I get up. All warmth has leaked out of his expression.

“I saw that. But what was it?” My voice is sharp.

He licks his teeth, his upper lip curling slightly back. “Let it go.”

“No. You saidnot your mind. It wasyourmind,” I blaze on, the truth hitting me while the words tumble out. I had beeninhis mind. Is that part of my talent too? To be able to flit into his mind? It scares me.

“You keep overstepping boundaries. You’ve continued to push your luck since the moment you came here.” He bares his teeth now, those frightening fangs.

I don’t retreat an inch. “Well, you probably should have put a lid on it from the very start. It’s a bit too late now. And if you didn’t like me in there, why didn’t you kick me out straight away? I didn’t ask for it. I didn’t ask to be…suckedinto your mind, to see all that terrifying, never-ending blackness.” My words come out breathless. Suffocated. Directly into his face, that is now mere inches away.

A black flame springs to life in his eyes then. His voice is lethally calm when he says, “Do you think I liked it? Being torn from sleep by witnessing your panic and diffuse fear night after night? Wading through this… necropolis of your feelings day after day, year after year? When I wasn’t able to distinguish your recalled pain from a real threat, or whether it was just your nightmares again.”

I have no words for what he just told me. He has been in my mind. Foryears.

Not just when he drank my blood. He… foryears…

“Why…why didn’t you lock me out if you hated it so much?” I try to sound angry but fail. If anything, I sound broken and miserable. Hurt. Embarrassed. Lost.

“Because I—” He starts, but catches himself, the words reverberating in me anyway, as if his mind continues to speak to me.

Because I didn’t want to.

Instead, teeth flashing with every word, he says, “Because that is not howthisworks.”

“What do you mean bythis?”

“This conversation is over,” he growls back.

He turns when I grab his wrist. He stares at my hand on him, then back at me.

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