Page 22 of Kingdom of the Two Moons

Whipping. Probably. Maybe they’d been banned from flying for a week.

Normally, Blair couldn’t wait to leave the claustrophobic halls of the amethyst tower Windscar, from where her aunt, Queen Gatilla, ruled the kingdom of the witches.

More than two days indoors had already made her restless. On edge. Made her itching to get back out there. Riding the wind, reddening the steel of her sword, and getting a belly full of hot blood—those were the things a witch lived for.

Ambushing Palisandrean villages close to the border was the real deal. Ransacking those rundown settlements—left mostly unprotected because Palisandre would not spare its precious soldiers to guard some lesser fae farmers and a few scattered cattle wranglers—was the highlight of the year.

Those raids were the only fun the witches had—picking some of those men and using them for their needs before sinking their teeth into their throats. Fucking and looting before leaving nothing but death and destruction behind.

It was what Blair had lived for.

Yeah, normally she couldn’t wait to leave again.

But things changed.

Now she found herself secretly hoping for a ban. Anything that would let her stay here a little longer. She told herself that the reason for her change of heart had nothing to do with the black-winged angel Caryan. Knowing it was a lie. Her heart made a treacherous jump only thinking his name.

She lifted her head and took a few deep, steadying breaths to calm herself for the encounter with her aunt as she crossed the frost-swept platform, untying her snow-encrusted braid and running her nails through her hair in an attempt to detangle it.

It was an honor to serve her aunt, she reminded herself, not for the first time. An honor to be commander of all the riders, of all aerial units. An honor to lead the red coven—the deadliest one. Blair was their head, their wing leader. She would one day become queen.

But as she crossed the platform towards the heavy stone doors with the spiral staircase leading deep down into the cold belly of the Fortress, all she felt was exhaustion and cold in every fiber of her being.

And a thrumming need, more of an ache, that started to build underneath her skin. An ache that was constantly there, setting her on edge if she was away for too long and intensifying to the verge of consuming pain the instant she got back and felt Caryan’s presence. She knew that amount of desire was unhealthy, so strong it was soul-eating.

But she couldn’t help it. Just as she couldn’t help the fact that these missions had started to feel like some kind of punishment for something she hadn’t yet committed.

That all of her just wanted to stay a little while longer this time.

The insides of her palms started to turn sweaty at the prospect of seeing the angel again. Abyss, she was nervous like a fucking youngling. But she longed for him. Had longed for him every single day she’d been away. Burned for him with every part of her body. She hadn’t changed her clothes in order to keep his smell on her for as long as possible. She hid it under a wall of magic, though, so none of the other witches would pick it up on her.

If her aunt ever found out, she’d be the blood and meat that fed her wyvern. After she’d been tortured for a week straight.

Hells, she’d be doomed. Not even her mothers could know that she and Caryan were sleeping with each other. Not when he was her aunt’s slave. Her aunt’s lover. Her dark creation.

Her weapon.

Treacherous heat pooled in her core as she picked up the faintest whiff of his elusive scent in the corridor. Along with jittery excitement thrumming along her bones, making her dizzy. They’d been fucking for five years now and still, she felt nervous every time.

Never ever had it been like that with a man. Had she been like that. And deep down, she knew she shared some form of connection with him beyond the physical.

It was so wrong, though. So dangerous. But how could something so wrong feel so right?

She had known she loved him since the moment she set eyes on him.

She had seen angels before they had been hunted down. Shehad heard stories about them. About their beauty, outstanding even among the fae. About their power. Their wrath.

But Caryan was no normal angel, if there even was such a thing.

No. She knew in her bones that he was different even from them. And it wasn’t just his mesmerizing, ever-changing eyes. No, everything on him was a pure force of nature. Made of undiluted, otherworldly, dark power that sang to her very soul.

The moment she saw him she’d felt the tendrils of fate twirling around her, closing tight.

She’d reached the huge, double-winged door to her aunt’s council chamber.

“Do you want me to come with you?” Her mother’s voice sounded behind her, startling her. Not Aurora, but Sofya. Always blonde, beautiful Sofya, who was reckless and brave.

Blair turned and met the deep-blue eyes of the white-haired witch, her hair the color of moonlight on a lake. “Go have some mead in the hall. I’ll do this alone.”

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