7 #2
Caryan’s stern face and the hardness of his jaw show me that he hadn’t expected that.
I fucking beat him at his own damn game, and hells, it feels good.
I will my magic to flare brighter, darker.
To blot out everything and form an invisible wall all around Caryan.
I throw everything I have in there, feeling how my magic grows thicker and thicker while the well in me empties out.
“Melo—” Caryan’s voice grows faint, and I will my magic to swallow sound too.
I can hear him roar and thrash, but my magic and my will are one, becoming everything. And then, all there is…is blackness.
***
I jolt awake with a gasp.
What the heck just happened? My head feels like it’s been split in two.
My lungs are burning, my heart is jackhammering.
Sweat slicks my skin, my hair is clinging in damp strands to my forehead.
I run my fingers through it to shove it out of my face.
Shorter. Right. I cut it with the sword. It falls around my cheeks now.
I guess it’s been time for a new look anyway. But my hair is the least of my problems. I feel inside me to the bond with Caryan. It pulses faintly in my chest—no, it pushes. But it’s still blocked. My new magic curls over it like black ice, sealing it off.
I shudder against the overwhelming need to reach out to him despite what just happened. To hear his voice again. To feel him...close. To open the gate between us again, because it’s as natural as breathing, and blocking it just feels so wrong—like severing my own hand.
It’s as if one part of my body, of my mind, of my whole being , is now part of his.
As if he and I together make a whole, and I’m incomplete without him.
Fae bonds and rules are so fucked up. But I’ll deal with that later.
For now, I’m so parched I can barely think straight.
My tongue’s sticking to the roof of my mouth, my lips are caked and dry.
I find a glass of water next to the bed, downing it in one greedy gulp before I look around.
I’m in a bedroom, in a huge four-poster bed. Various furs decorate the dark-paneled walls. Hare. Bear. A white fur that was maybe once a snow goat.
There’s a window to my left.
Air. I need air! I throw back the sheets, ignoring the ugly sting in my gut every time I think Aris’s name, as I get to my feet. The bond inside me seems to bleed like a laceration.
I shove away from the bed, relieved to find that I can move again, crossing to the window and opening it.
A wild garden lies below. It’s…lovely, with lavender bushes and rosemary hedges, even if it looks neglected.
Behind, twilight is sinking its teeth into the horizon.
Cicadas sing somewhere in the large trees.
Where am I? I make it over to a standing mirror, pushing up the simple, white linen dress someone clad me in—my clothes nowhere to be seen. Bandages crisscross my ribs, but the pain is gone. Healed—or I’ve been unconscious far too long.
My breathing turns ragged, and something dark stirs in answer to my anxiety.
The magic Caryan gave me, now forged anew with my own silvery one, rising to my panic.
I clamp down on it and stumble toward the door, a part of me expecting it to be locked when I push the handle.
But it swings open to a dark, wood-paneled corridor, and relief swamps me when I find that I’m not locked in.
I spot my ankle boots next to the door—the only remnant from my so-called life in the human world—and slip them on quickly, then head out.
The black sword is gone, and I feel strangely vulnerable without a weapon.
I venture out regardless. The oak floorboards creak treacherously under my feet, but I suppose, for fae hearing, me trying to sneak is superfluous anyway, when they can probably hear me breathe through the walls.
Gods, it sucks being a half-human in the fae world.
I reach a wooden staircase, following the sound of muffled voices drifting up from below. Maybe five people, maybe ten.
I breathe deep and focus the way Caryan taught me in the Emerald Forest—peeling back scents in layers. Sweat. Unwashed bodies. Smoke. Steel. Unwashed bodies. Sweat. Smoke. Some herby smell of what could be a drug. Alcohol. Mold.
Alcohol is good, so if I’m lucky, they’re drunk. I’m unarmed. Not good.
Focus, Melody. What else?
I really try to identify the people downstairs by their smell, but I clearly lack experience, and all I can tell is that there are some elves among them, because their smell I know already—no fauns or sirens or the like, but something foreign, like wet dog.
Useless.
Well, I think I vaguely recall Blair muttering something about wolf shifters. Grand. Simply fucking wonderful.
I look at the stairs and take a deep breath.
I need to get down there at some point, and since they haven’t locked me up or chained me or anything, I guess I should get downstairs and see what this is all about.
I take a deep breath and descend into a large kitchen, each step seeming creakier than the last, and I inwardly curse the old wood.
When I finally reach the last stair, all eyes are trained on me like a weapon.
My gaze sweeps over them. Fae, clad in worn-out, leathery armor.
They’re all sitting around a long, rustic wooden table, kegs with foaming ale in front of them.
Platters with cheese and bread alternating with swords and daggers are strewn in between like some sort of macabre decoration.
My eyes land on my sword—the black Nefarian sword leaning against the table next to a woman with one side of her head shorn and a ragged face.
She notices my stare and licks her teeth, her washed-out green eyes fixed on me. “It’s something, isn’t it? I called it Smasher. ”
“Looks like mine,” I say back, and she snickers as if this is fun. I find that guy who beat me, seated at the head of the table, staring at me.
“Yeah? That a challenge? Come and get it if you want it back,” the woman snarls, running a calloused hand over the weapon’s blade, caressing it, as if daring me to snatch it from her. “Although I doubt a half-human can do much harm,” she mocks.
I decide to ignore her and walk past them toward a doorway. But before I can, she jumps up and grabs my wrist, filthy nails digging into my skin. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“Let me go,” I snarl right back.
“Then make me, half-blood.”
The last word is meant as an insult. Riven told me that fae spit on half-bloods. My heart clenches at the memory of him. Of his black hair, beautiful face, and stunning lilac eyes. Of the way he kissed me goodbye.
I shove the emotions down and lock them away deep inside of me. I could just hope that he’s alright after he helped me escape. But if Caryan finds out….
I force those dark thoughts down, too, because I have different problems now. One of them is still digging her claws into my wrist.
But before I can do anything about it, a clapping sound echoes in the kitchen.