Page 203 of Kingdom of the Two Moons

She nods slowly, to herself. Then she says quietly, an unusual frown on her face, “I don’t know why I didn’t fight for her. Or for Caryan, for that matter.”

“You do, deep down,” he says, but she shakes her head vehemently. Yet pain flits across her features.

When she looks back up at him it is gone though, her gaze focused once again. “I didn’t kill Melody because she spared my life in the human world. She warned me that Lyrian was coming for me. She helped me escape by leading his lackeys away. I figured I owed her.” She pauses and shakes her head again, that frown deepening. “And now she’s saved my life once more.”

She opens her mouth again, as if to say something else, but catches herself, and says instead, “If you want to do me a favor, tell Caryan to make it quick and painless. I know he listens to you, lordling. I’ve suffered enough.”

With that she turns her back on him and steps into the darkness, returning to the spot on the floor.

64

Melody

Magic hums through me, scalding hot, pushing the cold back. It burns. The cold, not the hot. Two different forms of magic, clashing in my body like two mighty, fanged, and taloned beasts, one blue and one golden, both as ancient and raw as the other. The gold startles my heart back to life, shielding it from the cold that wants to make it stop.

I blink to life, looking up into the familiar, breathtaking, golden eyes. The same magic reflected there that’s in my heart now, swamping every part of me like a dam that has broken, filling everything, where before there was only a shy trickle.

Then the cold sweeps back in, claiming me again.

The pain. The agony, slamming into me.

But that isn’t the worst of it.

The worst are the nightmares, feeling so vivid, so real. As if I’m witnessing everything myself.

I’m on a battlefield, looking down on an army full of glorious elven warriors in shining white and gold armor, mighty black wings on my back pushing me on, keeping me above them. Razor-sharp instincts make me dodge the arrows that sing past my ears, my reflexes so fast that I can see them flying by like doves in the sky.

Then there is magic. Dark, agonizing, black shackles invisible to observers, cutting deep into my flesh, leaving imaginary wounds that feel so real I clench my teethagainst the pain.

The scene jumps, and I’m on the same battlefield again.

Where that gorgeous army was before, there’s only fire and corpses, the smell of blood so overwhelming, so omnipresent, tingeing everything, that I feel myself cry out in pain. A sound my unconscious mind registers, echoing somewhere outside the walls of this dream. But I stay there—I, the ancient creature with black wings don’t cry out, but instead plummet from the sky, the long, blue-glinting sword in hand, cutting through more bodies, as if the blade is an extension of my body.

I will myself to stop. I fight it, but I can’t. The magic that once enslaved me is a force in my blood, sending excruciating pain down those shackles as if they were liquid iron, trying to melt into my flesh and soul.

I whine, plead for the magic to stop, but this is not me, not the creature with wings who slays warrior after warrior until the chopping sound turns to a hum and a mist of blood drenches everything so profoundly and devastatingly I know I’ll never get rid of it.

The scene jumps once again and blood’s running down my throat, thick and delicious, sparked with power that melts with the golden force in my veins, while the eyes in front of me lose their shine. Yet I drink on until the heart of the man whose wrist I’m holding in my hands—no, notmyhands, but elegant and strong and violent ones—stops, his body a dead weight falling to my feet once I let go.

No. No! I’m no killer. I didn’t do this!

I…

A bedroom. A woman with long, deep-red hair sprawled around her over silken cushions like a puddle of blood. Her head bedded on her arms, her naked body sweat-slicked like my own, the smell of sex heavy in the air. I watch the woman beneath me, wanting to get up, wanting to crush her throat with my bare hands, but I don’t, knowing those shackles of enslaving magic will prevent it, will cut so deep. Knowing I will pay if I so much as try, knowing it is better to play along. Give her whatshe wants. He—I—sit up when it’s over. But the woman slides closer, leaning over my muscled back that’s familiar and is not mine, her deep-red fingernails scratching over my chest, her lips whispering, “That was a hell of a ride, Caryan, but I am not done yet.” And he—no,I—turn, obedient, pushing that beautiful woman back down onto the bed while I keep looking into those cold eyes I hate so deeply, so fiercely that the hatred eats away at me. I whisper in a deep, lilting voice that costs me, “Oh, I will make you beg this time.”

Darkness.

Pain. Hellish pain jolts through me. It goes on and on and on while magic claws and bites into my skin, black magic lacing with the gold of my own. I want to die. I just want to die, not knowing how to hold on any longer but not knowing how to escape either.

There’s nothing I can do other than bear it while the pain lasts forever, leaving me gritting my teeth, straining against the iron shackles that bind me to the table I’m lying on. The red-haired woman from the bedroom is bent over me, guiding a knife carved from bones and inked with blackness over and over into my flesh.

Snap.

Music. Naked bodies everywhere. Gold. Smoke of foreign herbs, intoxicating my senses. A woman over me, straddling me—him, the angel. Her body glides up and down, her sensual mouth parted, a moan escaping. I—he, the angel—leans his head back, glancing over, and there’s Riven.

“Riven. Riven!” I scream, or at least I think I do. But he doesn’t look at me, doesn’t react at all, his beautiful face a mask of anguish, his violet eyes so terrifyingly empty as he kneels over the same red-haired woman I just…Riven! Riven!

More blood.

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