Page 28 of Kingdom of the Two Moons

9

Melody

A helicopter waits for us. Always the helicopter for the rare occasions Lyrian leaves the property at all. He hates driving. It is a one-and-a-half-hour flight over nothing but vast, endless forest to another big mansion that lies alone in a valley, frighteningly similar to Lyrian’s own. Most of the events he attends are in similar secluded spaces. I figure it is everyone’s wish at those parties to be as private and exclusive as possible. Why, I have no idea, but the events surearestrange.

I’ve never found out what it is exactly that Lyrian does for a living and what has made him so insanely rich, made him hide away from the world, but my work as a type of bounty hunter must have something to do with it. Nothing came up when I once sneaked into Hunter’s office and ran his name through an internet search. Same goes for the property of his—it showed up nowhere. I wonder whether Lyrian has another identity, or whether people like him simply don’t exist in the normal world.

I wonder whether I exist at all, like on paper. Whether I have a birth certificate.

Probably not.

I look back into the room, a replica of a Victorian ballroom. It’s filled with blackness radiating from auras so thick it is suffocating to just move through them. The sort of blackness I hunt.So many evil, loathsome people. Not all of them, though. Some bring along their wives, but their light auras are so tiny, swallowed by the omnipresent black that feels like wading through a bog. Not for the first time I ask myself how they can stand it—living among such horrible people? Sharing a life with them. A bed.

I shudder and down a glass of champagne, leaning against one of the marble columns. When I was a child, I hid under the banquet tables, eating the fallen leftovers. Those parties were always an opportunity to taste something other than bread. Or I would sneak off into one of the rooms of those mansions, hiding under beds, praying Lyrian wouldn’t notice my absence and that someone else would take me in. I imagined nice, loving parents who’d hug me and let me sleep in their bed, until Kayne and Hunter dragged me away, hissing and scratching and kicking.

Now I just get drunk, or at least pretend to, because the bloodhounds are watching.

No one ever speaks to me, though. No one ever pays me much attention apart from occasional, leering looks down my body and at my face. I imagine the sole reason I’m here at all is that Lyrian doesn’t want to leave me alone at the mansion but doesn’t want to spare Kayne and Hunter either. He’s fucking paranoid.

I take another flute of champagne from a tray carried by a waiter with white gloves. I sip it listlessly, the champagne more medicine than anything else, to dull the void in me while I watch Lyrian gliding effortlessly through the crowd, smiling and laughing and offering handshakes. So different from how he usually is. So different from the ice-cold monster that hides underneath his slick façade.

I startle when I feel a gaze on me, like something licking down my spine.

When I turn, I find a man looking directly at me from across the room. Involuntarily, I stiffen. My instincts register something my eyes need more time to comprehend.

He is tall, slender, not in a suit like everyone else here, but in black trousers and boots and a shirt that yawns wide open, made ofa fabric in a shade of midnight blue that seems to melt into his ivory skin. His hair is dark, with an almost bluish tinge, his face shockingly symmetrical and utterly handsome—edgy, with high, gaunt cheeks and a sensual mouth.

But it’s not the mocking symmetry that’s tugging at the painter in me, nor all the jewelry on him, glistening cabochons set in gold that catch the light in a stunning range of colors from deep indigo to azure—but his ears. His ears are delicately arched and on top of them sit golden caps in the form of wings.

Elven ears.

My heartbeat quickens as if I’ve just spotted a predator.

An elf. Like in one of my books. Unreal. There are no elves in the real world.

I must be going crazy.

I quickly look away, but I can still feel him watching me, still looking exactly the same when I glance back at him a moment later. I scan the crowd, but no one else seems to notice him or to give him so much as a second glance.

What the fuck?

I’ve probably had too much to drink. I feel the sudden need to hide, the need for fresh air. I briskly walk out of the room, too startled to look back.

Only outside, on the terrace, when my eyes search through the huge windows for Lyrian somewhere inside in the crowd, does my heartbeat return to normal.

I’ve had too much to drink, eaten, and slept too little. My eyes were playing a trick on me.

But when I finally make out Lyrian in the crowd, I notice something entirely else. Something I’ve never witnessed before: Lyrian’s strange, cold eyes are on the man, too, and for the first time in all these years, there’s… fear in them.

Before I can dwell too long on whatever reason the man’s presence seems to affect Lyrian, I turn and start to run toward the edge of the terrace.

At the balustrade, I stop and drop my glass. It shatters on themarble tiles. I carefully choose a large, sharp shard—a cheap stand-in for a knife, in case Kayne and Hunter come after me, but better than nothing.

Oh, I would fight back this time.

Not wasting another second, I slip out of these ridiculous high heels and jump off the veranda, my bare feet touching soft, mossy grass, cold and soggy from the never-ending rain. Then I sprint off as fast as I can. I’m a good runner. Very tall, slim, and athletic from all the long runs I’ve taken since I turned six, desperately pushing, trying to understand the edges and boundaries of Lyrian’s property.

Keeping to the shadows of large hedges, I bolt over the meadows, closer to the seam of a forest that borders it. The ground under my feet shifts suddenly when I dive into the protection of its canopies. It changes, turns hard and solid and treacherous.

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