Page 217 of Kingdom of the Two Moons

“I will not allow you to die on me!” His voice is suddenly a primal growl that comes from somewhere deep in his throat.

And I know he has long made the decision. There is nothing I can do as the shackles pull tighter, his magic swamping me, invading every part of me. Bristling and biting, searing me from the inside. A burning like nothing I’ve ever felt before.

I shake my head as tears well in my eyes. “I fucking trusted you!”I scream as he steps up to me once again, the magic a thousand times worse when our bodies touch, amplified as if I’m a wildfire and he is gasoline. “I don’t want your evil magic!”

“Do not fight me, Melody. I have to,” he snarls into me.

But hells, Iamfighting him, his damn, dark magic. Kicking and biting and clawing at him, my teeth finding flesh and ripping until I taste blood. My magic desperately scratching and straining against his magic, but he’s too much. His magic is too much. Way too powerful. I sensed it the first time in the desert.Heis endless.

My vision blurs as his power shoots and runs through me so wildly that I become pain. Just pain, as everything disintegrates.

My body turns numb.

Silent tears stream down my face. I can no longer hold them back, no matter how hard I’m trying.

My body, my very soul, are aching fromthis. From what he’s doing to me, the crack deepens every second it goes on. A pain beyond something physical but so deep I don’t know where it starts and where it ends. Shadows and crackling lightning flaring under my skin, becoming so painful, so elemental as it tears my innermost being apart.

I will survive. I survived Lyrian, I will survive this too.

It’s those thoughts I cling to that tether me, that don’t make me lose my mind. My sanity.

It’s all-consuming, the pain, breaking more than just my heart. Shredding everything in their path.

My senses barely remember how I ended up on his bed—the bed I slept in, feeling so safe, his scent lingering like a callous mocking. But when the pain finally subsides, he’s above me. His body is so heavy and huge over mine. Only hard muscles, pressing me deep into the sheets, his hand holding my wrists over my head.

Somewhere I register that I’m shivering under him like mad, worse than I did on that mountain when I was fighting the cold. Now I’m sweat-slicked and feverish.

Eventually, he lets go of me and sets my body free.

I curl up on my side, my fingers digging so hard into the sheets they turn bone white.

I know he’s watching me, standing in the dark at the foot of the bed. Looking down on me. But I don’t dare glance at him.

My heart is still beating, despite the fact that it feels like it’s been shattered so thoroughly, and I almost wonder if magic alone makes it beat on.

My whole body aches from what he has done. Every part of me feels sore, every inch ravished, violated, broken.

And empty.

I watch his white, powerful body when he turns his back to me and walks out of the room. I must have torn his shirt, because it lies next to me on the bed, discarded, shredded.

The silence that follows closes in on me. The emptiness as soon as he left me.

I get up, the ground under my feet unreliable. I look down at myself, still in my pants and my bra, yet I couldn’t feel more naked. More bare. More alien. As if this isn’t me I’m looking at, but someone else. It’s only then that my eyes rest on my wrist—there’s still the tattoo of my bargain, but it looks different. Ornaments and runes spread around it now, rimmed with black and gold tendrils, shifting.

Runes. Those are runes fromhisbody. I touch them, and as ifon cue, a wave of darkness shudders through me, rattling me so deeply I pull my hand back from my skin, eyes wide. But the new, dark force keeps undulating along my bones, filling the emptiness in me.

What the hell?

Slowly, so slowly, I follow him to the living room.

Caryan stands in front of the open window. His back is still to me. He’s watching the stars.

My gaze goes to my shirt on the floor. Like an article that belongs to another person. How long did his magic run through me like a wildfire? Burn me from the inside out? It felt like months, years, but it might only have been moments.

I snatch up my shirt and wriggle it over my head. Then, before he can turn to me, I run. Toward the door, toward the carved head I’ve spoken to so many times.

The blueish flames in its eye sockets jump to life.

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