Page 91 of Kingdom of the Two Moons

She stares at me as if I’ve slapped her awake, blinking at me. Then she curls her upper lip, flashing her large canines. “He’ll probably peel off your skin in strips.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. But the way I see it, I’m free to go.”

I start to move, watching the blonde elf who looks like she wants to jump at me and rip out my throat. But she still stands rooted to the ground when I reach the door. Streaks of envy curl around her like thorned vines.

The door swings open as if it knows I’m there.

“I’ll show him what you did when he comes in here to fuck me,” the woman says to my back.

I pause, turning my head slowly, sniffing the air delicately. The same way my movements have gotten faster, my sense of smell too has become more accurate. I shrug. “You meanifhe comes here. Which he never does. Because I can’t smell him anywhere.”

With that, I’m out the door.

I start to shiver as soon as the door has closed behind me.

What have I done?

What will Caryan do?

You won’t be his whore forever. Is that what I’d become? Why he’s keeping me. Why he made me kneel over him for everyone to see at that party.

My skin burns all over at the memory, but I swallow every sensation down. Smother every other thought that flares in my head, unbidden. Unwanted.

Iwon’t go down that path.Not now. I don’t plan to stay here long enough to find out.

I slowly walk back to my room.

There, I grab the book Caryan gave me, but it’s fallen silent andmotionless, no sign of it flapping its pages. I carefully open the first page, its paper waxen and foreign under my fingers. So old.

Runes. Runes of the elder language,that’s what I said, right?

You might want to read it one day.Caryan’s words. I’d been so nervous I didn’t realize their meaning.

How’d I be able to read them? I, of all people here. A girl from the human world.A book about silver elves, he said.

I turn the pages, looking at those strange symbols. Strange, but so beautiful. But the feeling I had last night, that I could read them if I only tried long enough, doesn’t stir. Maybe because I’m too restless.

Just as I’m about to close it, the text suddenly starts to make sense. I recognize words, then whole sentences, as if I’ve always known the language.

I flip through the pages. It’s the history of the silver elves. Silver elves or moon elves inhabited these lands a long, long time ago. Most of them had been killed by a raid of specters from the hells. There are a lot of descriptions about various well-known silver elves, and at which courts they lived and worked, about their work itself.

I pause on the last page. It seems to flicker and suddenly words that haven’t been here moments ago appear. My heart makes a leap, only to beat faster.

This is a message. Asecretmessage. Written in the same runes. It takes me longer to make out the drawings because they’re clearly handwritten, and the ink has already faded.

It says,Unravel the truths, star-struck and moon-kissed one.

And thenbelow three places.Library of Niavara.Archives ofEvander. Ruins of Khalix.

I stare at the drawings. What does this mean? That somethingisthere? The truth? But the truth of what?

“What do you want to tell me?” I ask the book, remembering how it flapped its wings and wanted to get to me. I get a ruffle of pages in answer.

“You meant for me to find this,”I say. “It wasn’t about the book’s content, but about that message.”Again, the pages flap inagreement and I let out a long breath, gently stroking the book’s spine.

Then I look to my right, at the lights that shimmer below at the bottom of the desert.Niavara, the town I can see from my room. Nidaw’s words flare in my mind, and I touch the page. My mother had been an elf, a daughter of Evander.

My heart still beats fast in my chest.You’re unique to this world.I look back down to that book in front of me, nestled in the sheets.

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