Page 25 of Kingdom of the Two Moons

8

Blair

For a moment, Blair is still back there. For a sweet moment, she is still that girl, so eager and proud to do her aunt’s bidding. To be Caryan’s secret lover, his secretly chosen one. The one he favored over her aunt.

For some precious, dreamlike seconds, her body feels whole again. Filled with pride and purpose before she blinks to her senses, remembering where she is.No, leave me dreaming!Sleep is the only time she comes close to feeling alright these days.

The months after her aunt’s death, after she and Caryan parted, she barely left her bed. She took potions to keep her mind in sweet oblivion. Reality had felt like being underwater. Not dead, but unable to breathe, flooded by despair and agony. Only when Aurora and Sofya came to force her out of bed every morning did she go, and even those waking hours were a blur. Only fractions of them are left. Scrapes and bits, all a mere collection of shards, like herself.

In those waking hours, she played along. She played her role.You only have to make it through the day so you can crawl back into your bed,she told herself. Her credo. Her deal with herself.Only one more day.One step at a time.

She made it. She doesn’t know how, but she made it. Basic instincts kicked back in and slowly, so slowly, her bloodlust returned. She was a husk, but a hungry one. And an angry one. So one day, the fire found a home in her, the pain, the darkness.

She returned from the Abyss, snapping and biting and hissing at everyone and everything in her way.

It was only in the human world that she felt she could start anew. Be something other than this shell. Something more.

And now she’s back here, more doomed than ever.

She gets up when she hears steps coming down. Perenilla stands on the other side of the bars, her two bodyguards—mercenaries, more male wolf shifters, who’ve lost their pack—in tow. The same kind that had hunted her down in the human world. The witches killed so many of their alphas, the remaining wolves are now ganging up, selling their services toanyone—even to the witches—with all rules out the window, turning into ruthless, savage creatures with few morals and even less qualms.

“Blair, I must say you look…”

“Beautiful? I know. Can we move on now?” Blair drawls, bored, pretending to examine her nails.

“I was actually going to say a little pale,” Perenilla answers sourly.

“Oh, that. It’s probably just my skin that’s hanging from my bones in scraps. Nothing good makeup can’t fix, don’t worry,” Blair hisses, looking fully at the queen, the iron bars like a magic-blocking wall between them. “But to have my queen come down here in person—I should be flattered.”

Perenilla might have pardoned Sofya, but there’s been no news about Blair. Not that Blair expects the queen to let her live after her performance up there. Not that she knows why she spared Sofya either.

She’s pondered it during her nice stay down here. Either Perenilla needs Sofya as leverage or it would have just looked bad to kill her after what Blair dared to say. Perenilla is more of a politician than a witch, after all, having been raised at a court in Palisandre. But that was long before Blair’s aunt started another war. Before she became the tyrant she was. And a thing like that—a witch living anywhere outside the Blacklands—became an unthinkable thing.

Perenilla says, “You’re actually funny, Blair. Or rather, your incapacity for diplomacy is.”

Blair bats her lashes at her. “Is it this charming trait of mine that has kept you from having me executed so far, Perenilla?”

“That’smy queento you, Blair.”

“Does it matter?”

As an answer, one of the shifters draws back his lips to reveal cruel teeth, flashing them at Blair in warning. He is currently caught in some state between fae and wolf, with predatory teeth and claws on his fingers instead of nails. Not to mention the sheer amount of hair on his arms, or rather,fur—definitely moredogthan human.

Blair scrunches up her nose before she flashes her teeth right back at him. “Oh, really? Don’t fucking bark if you can’t fucking bite, fleabag.”

“Careful, witch. You smell too delicious. We might just take a bite out of you.”

“Yeah. Come in here and see how that goes.”

“Seems the witch is a bit needy,” the other one drawls with a leer, his gaze snagging on her breasts. “Too much time alone down here.”

Blair’s brows twitch up before she rakes her gaze over him, letting her disgust reflect on her face. “Keep dreaming. Ever taken a look in the mirror? Well, you should. They don’t lie, but you’re lucky they don’t laugh either.”

Both of them blink in obvious confusion, and Blair throws her head back and laughs. “You don’t get it. Too complicated? Too many syllables for you?”

Another growl rumbles up their throats and gone is the leer from seconds before. “Watch it, witch, or—” the seconds one warns.

“Enough!” Perenilla cuts both of them a sharp look and they fall silent.

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