7
A Bridge of Starlight
Melody
There’s only pain. And darkness.
Soothing, calm darkness that seems to call for me. The shadows beckon me to step closer and follow them into oblivion.
I’m tired. I just need some rest. Yes. I just need to go deeper into the darkness.
“Wake up!” A voice, so fucking familiar, rasps through my mind, along with a surge of power that burns through my veins like lightning, just as I want to drift away. Burning me from the inside out the same way he did not so long ago, when he forced his damn magic into me.
Caryan.
I jolt, screaming and writhing. “No. Go away! Leave me alone!”
“Wake the hells up!” he growls, and suddenly, I’m standing on a kind of dark bridge. Something that’s half-solid, half dust and smoke, made of starlight and night.
And on the other side—shit—stands Caryan himself.
No, no, no! How the hells could this happen?
My mind spins and reels as I try to remember what happened. I was in this forest. Where the heck am I now?
And—Aris…. My breath catches, and my heart aches so badly I fear it might just crack in two at the thought of him and the trunk of where our bond had been somewhere deep inside me, burning like a cut-off limb.
Gone. He’s gone.
“You need to get back. Wake up. And tell me where you are!” Caryan demands, forcing my attention back on him. He looks as furious as he did when I flayed his skin off with my silver magic. When my magic ran into him, eating away at his skin and bones, until I could see his beating heart.
The memory makes me sick. I’d never meant to kill him, or to harm him. Not so badly, at least. But I’d been so terrified. And with this magic he gave me, forced to fuse with mine, that now coils around mine, coating it like a layer of titan and darkness—
Part of his bristling, black, unholy power now runs through me and rumbles somewhere deep inside me like a monster that wants to get out of my skin.
Holy shit.
The panic that spears through me is enough to make me think clearer and wipe away the fog in my damn head.
Caryan is here, wherever the heck here is.
That means he fucking found me, kind of.
And the only reason he hasn’t yet really found me—because I’m fairly sure this isn’t reality per se, even in my current state—is that I have no inkling where I am, and he can’t wring our location out of me.
“Where are we?” I demand, ignoring his question.
He narrows his eyes at my tone, but fuck him.
“Tell me where you are,” he shoots back. Right. Here he is.
I glance around, pretending I haven’t heard him. It looks like a kind of…galaxy. As if we are somewhere in the dark with stars glistening all around us, the sky a deep mixture of blue and violet.
Another rush of panic surges when I think that this might be some kind of fucked-up fae prison he dragged me into. But then he wouldn’t have asked me where I am, right? Hells, I have to get sober.
I fix my eyes back on him. “Where are we? Where is this place?”
“You’re hurt. You were passed out. I couldn’t reach you. I will come and fetch you. You need healing. So tell me where you are.”
“Healing?” I snort. “Damn right. I need healing from your bullshit.”
I don’t know what suddenly gives me the damn courage to face him, but to hells with it. Maybe it’s all he did to me. Maybe it’s that I lost Aris and my heart is in pieces anyway. Maybe I’m just on the brink of death, my mind too fuzzy to make a good decision.
His eyes, all black already, flicker, gaining a shade so dark it looks as if they are two gates to hell. His upper lip curls back to reveal the full length of his fangs. A growl is working its way up his throat—one that makes me inwardly recoil and want to run and hide.
“Watch it,” he warns.
“Yeah, or what?” I get up to my feet. “You’ll come for me?”
He’s at my throat so fast I only see his movement in a blur. His hand is around my neck, and I’m pushed against an imaginary wall that hadn’t been there mere moments ago. My head bangs against it, and Caryan’s lips are so close his are almost touching mine.
“Where are you?”
“I don’t know,” I say.
His hand stays around my throat, but he’s still letting me breathe. “What happened?”
“Where am I? Is this a fucked-up prison you designed?” I just have to ask.
“Answer the question, Melody.”
“I want to know where I am first . So—if you want me to tell you anything, you’re going to have to answer me first ,” I snap back at him.
His fingers twitch. I wait for him to strangle me, but he doesn’t. Whatever happened to me—to us —at least makes him act differently. Slightly.
“This is our bond.” He spits the word out, as if he hates the mere sound of it. The taste. And he probably does. Well, he made it quite clear he did in the past. “And this is a connection between our minds. You and I designed it. Now you. What happened?”
Fuck.
My eyes dart around at the blue and black sprinkled with starlight.
Then I clench my teeth as I think of the tattoo on my left hand and wrist. That damn bargain.
Now Caryan just has to say the words—tell me to do something, anything —and the magic of it would force me to obey.
Like reveal where Blair and I are. Maybe it’s a good thing that I have no damn inkling where they brought me or where the real me currently is.
“We fell. Aris is—”
“Aris?”
Shit. “Your…demon. He’s dead.”
For the briefest of seconds, I think I find a human emotion flickering in Caryan’s eyes. For the first time since I met him. Grief. But it disappears as fast as it came, his aura unreadable and shielded, as always.
He lets go of me, though, and takes a step back, backing out of my personal space. “Where are you?” he asks again.
“I don’t know. Last thing I remember, I was in the Black Forest,” I say before I can take it back. Hells, why did I tell him that?
Maybe because a weak little part still hopes he will come looking for me should they decide to take me captive, torture me, or—hells—kill me. Maybe because that part wants to go back, no matter the cost. Would crawl back to him, even when my knees were raw and I only had a few breaths left.
Yeah. Definitely.
And I just let that pathetic little part gain the upper hand for a second.
His eyes darken even further, as if he knew exactly why I told him. What is this fucked-up thing between us? “I want you to—” he starts.
Before I know what I’m doing, I slam down an imaginary stone wall between us.
Shocked by what I’ve just done, I take a step back, eyes wide at my own cunning, the wall behind me dissolving at another thought.
Shit, what is this place? He said our minds created it, and I acted on instinct.
And it obviously obeyed. I try to catch my breath.
I knew what his next words were going to be.
Find me. Return to me. And once he said it, I’d have no fucking choice but to obey.
And I can’t do that to myself. Can’t do that to Blair either, if she’s still alive. I really hope she is.
I bite down a scream as the wall implodes before my eyes and Caryan appears before me again.
If I’d thought he was angry before, I don’t want to know what he is now.
I swear smoke starts curling out of his mouth when he parts his lips to finish his cut-off sentence.
No! I won’t let him do that. I’m tired of his control.
Tired of his rage. I won’t return as his prisoner, his slave.
I won’t bow to his will and whims and find those relics and do whatever sick shit he wants to.
No. I’m done. So fucking done.
He comes for me again, but this time, I’m faster.
A wall of fire flares up around me, and he steps back, his eyes wide, sizing me up as if he’s never seen me before.
But I’m a painter. And if I’m better in one discipline, it’s imagining things.
My fantasy. My mind, running wild and creative in ways I guess he can only imagine.
Here, I finally have the upper hand, I realize, with a kind of cold prickle that is both terrifying and intoxicating.
Sure enough, a split second later, water comes from everywhere, trying to dampen it. Splashing me and hurling me back. I even spit water when I get up.
Fuck him.
This is my mind! Caryan might be the strongest fae in this world, but here, I am better, and I’m going to prove it! My flames turn into Riven’s magic. Black. Immune to water. Caryan’s eyes flare dangerously as he recognizes whose magic this is. “I dare you!” he snarls. “You are mine!”
“No. I’m mine before I’m anyone else’s,” I growl back.
His magic curls up, rising to the challenge.
This black, hellish dark smoke that can take everything apart.
That seems to feed on light and life itself if he lets it.
It comes for my flames, ready to inhale them and snuff them out, absorb them the way Caryan absorbed Blair’s magic when he drank it out of her.
Damn, I need a plan. I need to get out of here. I need to block this bond.
Caryan’s magic.
I feel deep into myself, hearing it rumbling and roaring in answer when my senses strain for it.
You want out? Then come. My voice is only a whisper, but that magic damn well hears me and reacts as if I’d screamed.
It surges out of me in a ferocious tornado, clashing with Caryan’s like a beast from the hells, shimmering silvery-black.
For a moment, his and my magics collide with talons and fangs before they halt midair, mine lined with silvery tendrils of starlight and his purest darkness. Then—
They merge. Then halt. Wavering in the air as one.
I smile as I realize what’s happening. I secretly hoped it would work this way.
Well—no, actually, my whole plan to stop him hinged on that wild theory.
And now I’m proven right: his magic can’t attack itself.
I bite my lip so as not to say, Yeah, that monstrosity you pushed and forced into me?
Part of which now bristles in my veins—it makes me immune to yours here.