Page 93 of Kingdom of the Two Moons

“Watch it, Aurora, or I’ll have you replaced.”

Aurora hadn’t so much as blinked. She held Blair’s stare longer than anyone other than Gatilla or Caryan would have dared to.

Blair had lashed out and cut open her lip, yet Aurora still hadn’t retreated. Hadn’t even flinched.

“Impudence breeds madness,” Blair recitet.

Aurora’s remarkable eyes darkened. “You are not your aunt, so do not repeat her wicked words to me. You can’t lead us into this war. Into a war that will cost so many more lives.”

Treason. It was the first time ever that Aurora had so much as hinted at Blair’s heritage. At her amber eyes and wine-red hair, the heirloom of Gatilla’s bloodline—the strongest bloodline of all witch clans. Blair never particularly cared to learn about her heritage, but she knew that witches came from an alliance between demons of the hells and fae, and that the purple blood in her veins was a testimony to draconic blood. In her, like in her aunt, it ran almost pure.

“What do you want me to do?”

“Refuse. Lead us somewhere else. Stand up against her, Blair. This war has cost us too much. Witches will follow your lead.”

“I should drag you right to our queen for even thinking such a thing,” Blair snarled.

She should have punished Aurora then. Broken her nose, at least. Yet she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She never could. She allowed such indiscipline, allowed that wildness to burgeon. If her aunt knew, she’d have all three of them cut open, dangling from hooks and bled to death while she wore her finest silk and sipped a glass of wine.

“Caryan knows what he’s doing. Now step back in line,” Blair said, but Aurora kept blocking her way.

“You can’t be so foolish as to trust the angel. He is hers, Blair. Her weapon. Hers. He is ruination. To all of us if she unleashes him.”

“He is as much hers as he is ours,” Blair snapped back, her mother’s words and their meaning, their implication, making her lash out again. “He’s our only chance for survival. Our only chance against Palisandre.”

After the Demon Wars had cost so many lives, they were too few. They needed Caryan’s power. Her mother knew that, yet the look Aurora gave Blair then—it still ached like a scar.

Blair tried to ignore it. She also knew if she turned around now, some witches—Sofya, at least—would be grinning in anticipation, not sharing any of Aurora’s qualms. That’s when witches smiled—on the hunt. Right before a kill.

Her blonde mother was a pure witch, pure wildness raging in her heart, always eager for bloodletting. Sofya never backed off from a challenge. No, she threw herself at it, sword drawn.

They reached the outpost and Blair’s mind finally cleared.

She gestured to the witches to disperse and take on the outpost as they discussed while she headed straight for the citadel’s tower.

She sent out her magic—a wall of bristling, biting, red, fire-like energy—the second before her wyvern’s massive claws tore the whole wooden roof away.

Screams had begun to fill the air when a white-haired elf suddenly appeared on the half-destroyed roof, and a wall of ice shot up to meet her magic.

His rough-spun clothes and wild hair suggested he’d been asleep moments ago. Yet he was already armed to the teeth, a long sword in both hands.

Blair silently commanded her wyvern to land right in front of the silver-haired high fae.

She drew her own sword from her scabbard on her back before she jumped down from her wyvern, landing smoothly in a crouch.

“Who of you is Kyrith, the white mountain lion of Palisandre?” she asked, blocking his blows with her sword while their magic writhed and clashed in the air around them like two massive beasts, trying to devour each other.

“In the flesh, witch,” the elf snarled back. His sword came down so violently, it cleaved her sword in two.

Blair just raised her eyebrows, then threw the useless hilt off the tower. Shame. She’d have to use her nails and teeth then. But that way it was much more fun anyway.

She flashed a silvery grin. “How fortunate. I’m going level this outpost and then I’m going to leave with your head.”

Kyrith turned out to be a particularly nasty bastard. He lashedout with his magic again before Blair could use hers as a shield. In a storm of ice and hail so thick Blair had bruises all over her body, he’d brought down the whole tower and summoned a gust of wind so strong it blew both of them down. They’d dropped from the sky in a free fall.

The asshole somehow managed to block his own deadly plummet before he could splatter on the ground. Blair would have been dead if it weren’t for the claws of her wyvern catching her a few seconds before her body would have inelegantly plastered the ground.

Kyrith regained his footing fast and blasted another icy storm against her wyvern the moment he found his balance. Her wyvern had screamed and lunged towards him. Blair dismissed the creature a split second before a sharp cone of ice could have pierced her heart.

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