Page 70 of Kingdom of the Two Moons

One of the first things her aunt did as queen was ban all forms of art and music. Those things she viewed as distractions, keeping the witches from focusing on brutality and training.

Taverns and bars closed, along with shops and cafés. Trade dried out. Fae started to move away—first in a trickle, then in a flood, because they could no longer make a living in this kingdom. That was when theharvestingbegan. Her aunt considered everyone who left a traitor.

After that, Gatilla built the reservoir. Then sent the witches throughout the kingdom to track down all fae with magic worth stealing in their veins and butcher them too. Then she sent thembeyondtheir borders.

For a brief period of time, as Palisandre approached to strike atruce and ask for help to kill the angels, it looked as if things would eventually stop. And they did. Until her aunt managed to enslave Caryan and turned him into her weapon.

The last remnants of a once-glorious kingdom finally perished when Gatilla initiated the devastating, final war—the Witch War—leaving only ashes and ruins behind.

Blair cuts a corner and rats scurry away from her gaze into the dark. She sucks at her teeth, again thinking about what Perenilla said—about her aunt backing the wrong horse.

About Blair being a dreamer.

About why she did nothing to prevent her aunt from being butchered.

Because she’d been just that—a coward. Naïve. Foolish. Waiting like a love-sick puppy until Caryan made the decision she never dared to make herself.

The truth was, even as Caryan’s blade cleaved her aunt’s bloodless skin, she hadn’t been sure which side to choose. She’d stood there and stared and stared and stared. And then she ran because, by all means, she had been afraid. Terrified.

She betrayed her coven. She betrayed Caryan when she didn’t help him. She betrayed them all.

She pauses, the wave of self-loathing so bad that, for a moment, she can barely breathe.

If only they knew, Blair, that ugly, hideous voice in her head chimes on and on like a chorus. So similar to the reservoir’s magic.

Yeah, if only they knew,she bites back.

What she did was bad, sure, but it isn’t even the worst of her betrayals.

No. She’s done so much worse. Things even her mothers are unaware of, thank the Abyss.

In the days after Gatilla’s death, the second-oldest witch, Drusilla, had taken command and ordered Blair and the thirty-three covens of witches to attack Avandal, the capital of the Kingdom of the Seven Rivers, and its healing spring. Drusilla, an old and vile witch with a humped back, had heard rumors that Caryan washiding out at the temple there to heal and decided to nip the problem in the bud.

The night before the attack, Blair had flown straight to the temple on her phantom wyvern, to a beautiful healer by the name of Meanara.

That winter-haired elf had been the only one awake, sitting on the stairs and watching the stars. So Blair told her about the attack. Told her to warn her queen. To hide the women and children. To ready their troops.

Blair hadn’t done it for Caryan. Well, maybe a tiny part of her had.

Maybe not.

The angel would probably kill her anyway. Whatever.Fuck it.

But she’s definitely done it for Avandal.

Blair had never been to the glorious cities of Palisandre, but she’d been to Avandal several times, disguised as a lesser fae, before they installed the wall of wards around it. If she ever had the choice to live somewhere else, it would have been Avandal.

She fell in love with it. With the city itself and the seven magical rivers that gave the kingdom its name, running like steaming, glittery silvery-blue veins through it. With the streets made of stone so white the entire city glistens and gleams, even at night. And its people, the kindest she’s ever met, drinking tea at various tea houses, while harpists and flutists play on every corner, and the constant fragrant perfume of wisterias and jasmine fills the air.

She couldn’t allow the city to suffer the same fate as Akribea.

The night of the attack, many witches died. Blair made sure to send the witches of the covens close to her to places she knew would be mild and barely protected. The other ones, the cruel, bloodthirsty witches like her aunt, she sent right into the epicenter as she had agreed with Meanara. The latter covens were called the wild ones, even among the witches. It had become a form of sport among them to impress her aunt by surpassing each other with cruelty. Killing women and children and eating them had always been off-limits among the witches, until Blair’s aunt came to power. Blair couldn’tallow that either. Honestly, it made her fucking sick to her stomach.

She just couldn’t, whatever that made her.

A lot of witches fell, especially the wild ones. Drusilla eventually had to stop the attack and retreat. There had been so many casualties on both sides.

But Drusilla considered the attack Blair’s failure and threw her into the dungeon to rot there forever. And maybe Blair would have, if Drusilla hadn’t died miraculously a week later.

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