Page 199 of Kingdom of the Two Moons

Blair scrunched up her face. It should have made things better, but somehow it didn’t. That Riven accepted this. Knew of his fate and still chose it.

“Why? Tell me why, Caryan.”

“Does it feel good to be shackled, Blair?” was all he asked back.

“What do you want? To march that army over the whole planet?”

“I thought this is what you feared most—to lose the ones you loved. There is no more death. This way, war can’t bring more death.”

She let this sink in.

“You made monsters, right? They drink blood. They need to be controlled.” She saw it in their faces. That wildness. That feral stare and hunger. And fangs. Kyrith grew fangs before she left.

“Like me. Like you. I will control them until they learn.”

“They are—abominations.” She started to scream, her voice reverberating from the high peaks, being thrown back at her like a mocking echo.

Caryan just waited, his perfect face so blank. So empty. His eyes were as black as the gaps between stars.

“Say it, Blair. Say what you think I am. Come. For once. Bebrave enough to voice it.” He stepped closer, his black wings huge and vast behind him, blocking out the moonlight, a shadow falling over her. “Say it,” he said again. Calm. He was so fucking, eerily calm.

“This… where will this lead?”

“The world thirsts for dominance. Always has. Always will.”

“And my cruel aunt on the throne?”

“That throne could just as easily be yours.”

She shook her head. “This is against everything we know. Everything I believe in. Against tradition.”

“Tradition is the illusion of permanence, Blair.”

She took a step back. He followed. They danced like that through the dark.

“This… this destroys every rule of the natural. Disrupts the order of things. The balance of nature and magic.”

“Believe me when I say those rules were destroyed long, long ago.”

She did believe him, although she couldn’t understand what exactly he was saying. Wasn’t sure she wanted to.

But there, in the moonlight, he looked more ancient and timeless than ever.

She whispered, “This is… bad. Wrong.”

They stopped at the edge of the cliff, the abyss yawning around them.

“Maybe I’m not the villain you think I am, Blair.”

Blair gazed down into the darkness. Such an irony that her aunt was afraid of heights. And slept with an angel. Such an irony that her aunt built a tower like Windscar, made for creatures born into the storm, yet she couldn’t even bear entering the platform, couldn’t bear looking out a window. Never rode a wyvern.

Blair kept her gaze to her right, staring down into the bottomless pit. She wondered how it would feel to tumble into it. Down, down, down.

Caryan’s words reached her at last, and she leveled her gaze at him. He wasn’t just beautiful. He was horrifying and otherworldly and more than vaguely threatening.

He was a dark king. Eternal and almighty. She felt his power roiling in her soul, endlessly.

“Maybe you’re much worse,” she breathed.

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