Page 83 of Kingdom of the Two Moons

Blair slides off the back of her phantom wyvern and the summoned, glimmering beast with rainbow scales vanishes into thin air. She strides toward some rocks, looking for the entrance of the seer’s cave. Only her witch senses can detect the strange power lurking within those natural walls, telling her that something is hiding here in the first place.

A natural, tiny little cave in the woods, situated on the outskirts of the Black Forest and the Kingdom of the Witches, marked by the Nordriff—the range of high-peaked mountains that cuts through the continent like a ravine. High, snowy cliffs alternate with abysses—almost unconquerable if you can’t fly over them.

A reason Palisandre hasn’t yet dared to attack the witches.

The cave itself lies at the bottom of one of the many nameless, snow-swept mountains. Eventually, Blair finds the entrance, a tiny hole between a crack in the stones, almost invisible to the eye.

She has to duck because the ceiling of the den is so low. But a long tunnel stretches out in front of her, connecting the entrance with one large, cavernous hall at its end.

Inside it smells damp, and faintly of venison and dried herbs that grow in the border forest that merges with the Black Forest. The only difference between the two forests is magic. While the trees in the border forest are green, shielded from the icy winds by themountains, and the streams crystal clear, the trees in the Black Forest are huge firs and such a dark green they look almost black, growing densely, their branches reaching so low they block out all light. The ground is barren, and the streams are muddy and brown and treacherous, with a lot of strange, hungry creatures lurking in there.

The Black Forest has become a zone of anarchy, where wild, packless wolf shifters, and worse creatures roam.

Blair shudders at what the blacksmith told her. About the Nefarians hiding out there. Nefarians, like the angels, are so feared because they can fly and attack from the air. A little like the witches on their phantom wyverns, but with more stealth. A strange breed.

Blair shakes the thought off as she reaches the hall, a floor of pressed soil covered with carpets made of spun wool. A fire crackles in a corner, and she identifies remnants of burnt goat stew. Wild goats, apart from deer, snow hares and other fae, are the only animals that still roam these territories since the great cold came.

Blair sneers at the smell, longing for human food. Then she spots the seer lying on a makeshift bed on the ground next to the fire. A slim bundle of torn linen.

“Get up,” Blair says, nudging the bundle with a booted foot.

It stirs, and Blair raises her brows as an excessively slim young woman with hair the color of corn and huge, pointed ears sits up, flinching away from Blair and her silver claws. Wide, pearl-like eyes look up at Blair, the seer’s tiny, slim body cowering.

“Please don’t harm me, witch.”

Seers. Outcasts. No one quite knows what they are. A mood of nature and magic. Shunned mainly because people don’t like hearing about futures they don’t want to have.

Blair crouches next to her bed—or rather the moth-eaten cloak stuffed with straw or dried weeds of some sort. “I want you to tell me where Caryan keeps the girl from Kalleandara’s prophecy. The girl who ends the blight. Where can I find her? Tell me and you don’t need to fear me.”

The girl angles her head up to her, her pale eyes widening. Hells, she looks skinny with hunger and half-frozen. Blair looksaround but can’t find any clothes; the girl probably goes out into the cold in these rags. How she will survive the next winter, Blair has no idea.

“That girl is the one who saved your life…” she whispers, and Blair flashes her teeth at her.

“Come, seer, don’t test me.”

The girl flinches, trying to push herself into the wall and further away from Blair’s sharp teeth and nails. She wonders what the blacksmith wanted here. Why he sought this scrawny thing out.

“The Dark Lord will look for the first elven artifact. He will go to the holy mountain Silas. But she… she will die there.”

Now it’s Blair who stares at her.Will I be the one to kill her?

“Why? Why will she die?”

But the seer only shakes her head, a little desperate. “I can’t see. It’s veiled.”

“Try.”

“I can’t.”

“You better try harder, or I might change my mind about hurting you.”

The girl just shakes her head again. “I can’t. The veil around the holy mountain won’t let me.”

“Who kills her then?”

“I can’t see that either.”

Blair runs her tongue over her teeth, annoyed, and gets up, pacing back and forth before she stops. She swivels to the girl who just sits there and watches her, legs pulled close to her body. “She can’t die. She’s the one who’s going to kill Caryan.”

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