Page 202 of Kingdom of the Two Moons

“You know—those fangs suit you, princeling,” she eventually says, not one part of the apple left. “They give you an edge.” She steps closer again, her clawed fingers twirling around the bars once more. “I like men with an edge.”

Her voice is a seductive purr that has no doubt lured many men into her bed… and to certain death.

“Is that why you slept with Caryan? Or was it to outdo your lovely Aunt Gatilla?”

She pouts her coral lips. “It’s nothing like fucking a high elf, and I’ve been with some. He’s dangerous, and he lets you feel it. With him, you never feel safe,” she whispers, an erotic timbre in her voice that crawls under Riven’s skin whether he likes it or not. Her amber eyes flare. She knows.

“That’s a good thing?” he asks indifferently.

“A thing some women like,” she says, tilting her head, her long hair grazing her hip as she does.

If he didn’t like the way she looked at him before, he certainly doesn’t like it now.

“That might be why Melody feels so… attracted to him.”

“Who isn’t?”

“Oh no, don’t pretend you’re not bothered by that.” Blair’s eyes flare and her eyes turn vicious. “Or I could tell you how he made her kneel and beg while he—”

Riven’s hand shoots out and grabs the witch’s neck between the bars, so hard she makes a choking sound. He steps close, so close he can see the tiny speckles of silver in the amber of her irises.

“Enough of the games now. Tell me why you didn’t kill her.” His voice is a growl—letting her see that side of him. He loosens his fingers just enough to let her catch her breath to answer, only to realize that he mistook her laughter as gagging.Insane creature.“Tell me or I’ll hurt you.”

“Maybe I’d like that,” she whispers back. The witch has the nerve to underline her words with a grin.

Riven’s nails turn into dark claws as he wills them to, digging into her neck until blood leaks.

The witch’s laugh stops, but her eyes turn hollow. “Interesting.Go ahead. Hurt me. I have nothing left to lose anyway.”

Riven lets go of her then, pulling his hand away, stained with her blood. She straightens too, bringing her fingers to her bleeding neck, looking at the crimson on her fingertips before her eyes turn back to him.

“What are you? You’re notjusta high elf.” She squints at him as if seeing him for the very first time.

“I asked you a question first.” Riven makes a show of licking her blood off his fingers.

She holds his stare, then says, to his surprise, “Perenilla knows I didn’t help Gatilla when you and Caryan killed her.” The words hang between them. “I lost my coven. I can’t return. She’s already made my life hell in the last few years. But now the fun’s really over.”

“You could fight her,” Riven says quietly.

She shakes her head. “No. Caryan took my magic.” She looks at her hands—once such cruel, powerful tools, which now are supposed to be just… hands. It’s hard to believe it.

“Do you want to know a secret, little vampling? One my sisters would decorate the ground with my innards for? I’d have traded my magic without a second thought just to be likethem...” she says, self-forgotten, still looking at her hands, as if seeing them for the first time. “Just to be like one of those ridiculous mortals.” She huffs a laugh. “And now, the dark irony is that I ended up having neither.I’m a toothless monster.” She frowns at herself before her eyes focus back on him. “The girl, Melody—she shouldn’t have stopped him when he wanted to kill me,” she adds, and for once, Riven reads the exhaustion on her face.

“Whydidn’tyou intervene, Blair? When we killed Gatilla?” he asks with true interest.

It’s a question that has long burned in his mind. Caryan killed every witch present, Riven and Kyrith hunted the fleeing ones down, but not Blair. There just wasn’t the time after Ciellara slit him open with that sword. In that moment, Blair, who had just been standing aside, watching with a face empty of everything, turned and jumped out of a window, her phantom wyvern flying by, carrying her away.

Riven doesn’t know what Caryan would have done if she had stayed. Whether he would have killed her too for idly standing by, or whether he would have offered her to join his court.

Maybe this is why Blair fled. Because she had not had the courage to let herself find out.

She says, “You first.”

“I’m a half-blood. My mother was a Nefarian.” Have it out. Let her know what he is.

She stares at him. “Do the others know? I mean, like, do the people of this kingdom know? Or Palisandre? Gatilla never knew.”

“This is another question, I suppose.”

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