Page 183 of Kingdom of the Two Moons

This makes me pause. “She… my mother didn’t want you to find them, the relics, did she?”

His eyes are blacker than ever when he finally says, “She most certainly didn’t.”

The words hang between us. He closes his eyes and retracts his hand out of the water, clenching his teeth as if he’s suddenly in pain without the soothing magic of the spring.

I want to probe further, but an image hits me so hard I’d have stumbled if I wasn’t drifting in the water. I see a woman with a heavy black sword in her hand, silvery flames dancing along its blade as she plunges it into Caryan’s body, before drawing it up, tearing through his belly, splitting his ribcage right up to his heart…

What the hell? Where did that come from?

“My mother… she did that to you. Your scar,” I whisper, suddenly sick and breathless.

Caryan opens his eyes again, and I’m surprised that they’re now holding the pale blue color of the spring. Surprised at the cool way he says, “Yes. She did.”

“She… shetried to cut you in half.”The scar I saw, the maimed runes. My voice breaks. I’m still trying to get that image out of my mind. Still trying to somehow wrap my head around the unspeakable violence.

But I can’t.

“Maybe she should have, to see whether it would have killed me,” he answers. The serenity in his words alarms me.He means it.Means it with his whole being.I feel it somewhere deep inside me, along with a jolt of seeping, agonizing pain that isn’t in me and at the same time is.

“You—you are hurt,” I say, my eyes instinctively searching for a wound that’s causing his pain, but I find none.

He frowns at me before he puts his hand back into the water, the pain I just felt subsiding instantly.

“The runes. The destroyed runes on your body,” I gather, the knowledge suddenly there, just like that gory scene before.He’s in constant pain because of my own mother.

“Yes. They never heal. Even the healer couldn’t restore them because they are old. Older than I am.”

He looks tired as he says the words, and I sense the burden of his endless existence like a dead weight on my shoulders. Along with the searing pain he carries constantly, I realize, an echo of it still reverberating in my own body.

“This water soothes it,” I whisper.

He frowns again, irritated, before he relents. “Yes.”

“It’s the same water that…” I can’t bring myself to say it after last night, so he does it for me.

“The same water that runs through my court, yes. It’s water from the seven rivers, laden with healing magic.”

Suddenly, I’m aware that the only reason he doesn’t come in is that I’m there. “You can… you can come in,” I say quietly. “I’ll get out.”

“It’s alright,” he says.

I get up anyway, ignoring every instinct to cover myself when I step out of the water naked. He doesn’t look at me, though, keeping his gaze politely away to give me privacy until I’ve wriggled wet into my clothes. I want to walk back to the others to give him some space in return, but suddenly the idea of being alone with Kyrith and Ronin doesn’t feel too appealing, so I settle down on the stone next to the fruit.

“You want one?” I ask, offering a piece to him.

“Eat. You need it.”

“You do eat, don’t you? Generally, I mean. You have a kitchen.” The words tumble out before I can take them back.Apart from drinking blood, I want to add but don’t.

“We do, but we can go for a long time without food,” he says, but gods damn me if he isn’t looking at me with a sudden hunger that startles my heart into an uneven beat. It reminds me of the voracity of a predator.

But it’s gone in a heartbeat, and his face shifts back into its usual, bored austerity.

My heart still races, though, as I look down at my hands.

I shove the piece of fruit into my mouth, looking away as he strips down, only looking back when I hear him sliding into the pool. And hells, I know it’s wrong, but I can’t resist. Can’t resist seeing him, seeing more of that body the water hid from me that night, as if it’s a secret I crave to learn about, despite every better judgment.

I want to see more of that tattoo that’s much larger than the tiny tails I saw running over his fingers and wrists when he touched the water. There’s no denying that it’s marvelous. There are so many symbols shifting and intermingling, gold and black, it’s hard to make out a single one, especially from a distance.

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