Page 197 of Kingdom of the Two Moons

“Is it really worth it, the relics? She can get you the other ones too, but not if she dies—you know it, and I know it too. She’s more useful to you alive than dead!”

Blair’s voice has risen an octave before he cuts her off, his voice grave, his black eyes burning into her. “I need to wait for the storm to subside. As long as it is like this, I can’t fly with her. I wouldn’t be fast enough. It would be too cold.”

Blair starts at what she sees then, what her witch instincts pick up in his tone.

Pain.There’s pain in Caryan’s voice, in his face, in his powereven, so clear and bright it’s unmistakable. Not once in all those years, not even when he was in hellish physical pain, had Blair seen him as much as flinch. But right now—he’s suffering.

What the hell? Why?

She’d ponder this later… if there’s a later for her. For now, she says, “Give her your blood.”

“I can’t,” he growls back between clenched teeth.

“Do it or she’ll die,” Blair hisses back unperturbed. He says nothing, and she lets out a snort. “Too fine to give an ordinary girl your blood? Or is it because she’s Ciellara’s daughter? Are you afraid people will learn about it and mock you for it?”

Abyss, how long she’d itched to finally shout at him.

His snarl runs over her skin, throbbing in her still-wounded neck. “Don’t be so ridiculous, Blair.”

“Then don’t fuck around and do it!”

“As I said, I can’t,” he repeats in a way that raises the hair on Blair’s arms.

“Why?”Why indeed?She can’t pinpoint the pain she’s feeling in him, can’t find the source.

But he doesn’t give her an answer. Blair wants to give him a biting rant full of expletives but the girl would die.Is going to die.Blair notices her fading heartbeat.

“She doesn’t have long, Caryan,” she says one more time, somberly, knowing he knows it too.

He seems to hesitate, but then he gently bends Melody’s head back, the way one would give water to an unconscious person. He brings his teeth to his wrist, slicing along his vein, so a spring flood of blood comes gushing out. He holds it against her closed lips, the blood dripping over her chin and neck.

Melody gasps, her lips parting ever so slightly, and the blood flows into her mouth.

Her brown eyes flare open as the magic—Caryan’s magic—violently pulls her back to life.

“More,” he says when Melody tries to wriggle free, realizing what is happening.

Her eyes widen with horror, but Caryan only forces his wrist harder against her lips, forces more blood into her mouth, willing her to swallow.

She does, clearly despite herself. Blair feels Caryan’s magic flaring up in the girl, then Melody’s body goes limp again. But she is no longer unconscious. Her lavender eyelids flutter, and Blair watches with a mixture of fascination and terror as the girl starts to shake her head again, mumbling and whining, as if caught in the middle of a terrifying nightmare.

Caryan watches her too, looking even more pained than before, but not surprised. Blair wonders what the girl’s seeing. From her pleading and whimpering, it can’t be anything good.

“Wake her up,” Blair demands, but Caryan just says, “I can’t.”

It stays like that for hours. Occasionally, Melody whispers some words or a scream cuts through the tent, sending the red-haired warrior startling up from sleep before Melody falls back into that restless semi-slumber.

Blair loses track of time herself, the blue magic eating away at her too, making her tired and woozy. Her healing throat burns, as every layer of skin slowly starts to knit itself back together, her agony catalyzed by her aching, tormenting thirst that lets her, too, drift in and out of sleep.

When she comes to the next time, amber eyes like her own—but with slitted pupils—watch her, embedded in a face she’s seen before. A beautiful face, almost feminine. Then she feels a bottle at her lips, and water flows into her mouth. She’s so grateful she wants to cry. She closes her eyes and gulps it down until the bottle is empty.

“More?” the gentle voice asks, and she just nods.

The red-haired witcher brings another bottle and holds it to her lips, and she downs this one too.

Just then, the tent door flaps open and Kyrith strides in, over to Caryan, who’s sitting in the exact same position he’s been sitting over the last hours, the girl still in his arms, wrapped in his wings, fighting invisible demons. Kyrith watches her for a second, thenCaryan, in a way that tells Blair he has never seen Caryan like this either. That he’sworried.

Then he clears his throat, the exhaustion obvious. “I haven’t found anything. But the storm has abated. We might be able to make it up to the peak, Caryan.”

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