8 #3
I scramble to my feet. Tears bite my eyes, and panic steals every rational thought as I stare the pack down. What are they going to do? Rip me to shreds? Chain me? Drag me back?
My magic flares again, and I fall to my knees as a shockwave of blackest shadows and lightning erupts out of me.
One second they’re coming for me, the next they’re thrown yards through the air, back toward the mansion, whimpering and whining as their furs are turned to charcoal.
Streaks of lightning continue to sizzle through the air, catching and burning everything it latches on as it flows out of me.
It spills out of me—a storm loosed from its cage.
Blair screams, hiding behind a hedge. Connus tries to run but gets struck in the back by a bolt and collapses.
My heart stops and I fall to my knees. No! I scream for it to stop.
But it doesn’t.
No! Please no! Another cry gets stuck in my throat. I killed them. I fucking killed them.
I never wanted that. I’m not a murderer. But the charred bodies strewn around me—fur burned away, limbs twisted, the air still stinking of smoke and death—tell a different story. The truth presses in, suffocating—I killed them. Every last one.
I did this. I burned them all.
Stop! Stop! I plead with that deadly magic, but it doesn’t. It keeps hailing down from the sky, as merciless as the dark angel who gave it to me. Another bolt strikes the house, sparking flames that quickly begin to devour the wooden building.
When it’s finally over, and that well inside me has emptied itself out until not an ember is left, I splay my hands in the dirt, watching the inferno in front of my eyes unfold, too horrified by what I’ve done to move.
Blair’s words—telling me that we need some kind of counterspell to leave here—ring sharp in my mind.
Blair.
I get to my feet and run to the bush I saw her disappearing behind, only to find her face down, sprawled in the scorched meadow. “No! Blair! Please, don’t be dead! Don’t be dead!”
I grab her shoulders, ready to shake her, but she flips me over, kneeling over me in a heartbeat, her amber eyes glowering while her legs press my arms into the soil, her weight pinning me down.
“You fucking doomed us!” she snarls. Her fist connects with my jaw so hard I see stars.
“We’ll die here, locked in this damn dome of magic.
Just know that, once I’m starved, I’m gonna make a spear from the wood, kill you with it, put an apple in your mouth, and roast your delicious little corpse over that fire. ”
“Poetic,” I manage to grit out, blinking to my senses. “And fucking crazy.”
Thump. Thump. Thump.
We both freeze as the ground starts to rumble, and something massive hits the dome so hard the whole world shakes. Again. And again.
Thump.
Another boom, louder, rolling up through my bones like thunder, follows.
A third—and we look up as the dome arching above the garden splinters. Silver cracks race outward like spiderwebs, each one glowing faintly in the mist. Through the gap, a massive shadow is moving. An enormous, deep-blue shadow. A dragon.
The tail hits again—a morning star of spikes and muscle—fracturing the wall until darkness bursts through the illusion of sunlight and warbling birds. Followed by a stream of bright, bluish fire flooding in, searing the not-yet-scorched grass to ash in a perfect, burning arc.
“What the hell?” Blair’s eyes dart from the crack to me for a second, and we both fall silent. Her eyes widen as the dome starts to splinter further and then—
Whack.
The vicious tail slams into the dome once more, tearing a hole big enough to see him clearly: scales midnight blue, his eyes like molten gold, and teeth the size of very long swords. My throat closes and my eyes burn. “Aris…”
“Come, little one,” his voice rumbles through my skull. “I can’t hold this form forever. RUN.”
I don’t need more. I shove Blair off me and bolt toward him. The dome is already knitting itself shut as I sprint toward it with all the power I can summon into my muscles. Toward Aris. Toward home. Aris! He’s alive! Tears start to stream down my face.
“No! Melody, wait!” I hear Blair screaming behind me.
But I don’t. I can’t. All I can see is him.
Aris slams his tail into the dome again, and the last crack gives way.
A hole splits open, large enough for me to climb through.
I run, faster than I’ve ever run, even when that hellish beast of an oversized worm with shredding teeth wanted to make me his second lunch in Caryan’s desert, toward the hole that’s already starting to close up again.
Separating me from Aris.
From the world.
From freedom.
With a jump, I throw myself through the fissure in the magic, hitting the muddy ground on the other side hard before I roll over to Aris’s huge, clawed feet. The demon lowers himself so I can climb onto him when something grabs my leg.
Blair.
“Melody, wait! Please, don’t leave me! Don’t fucking leave me here! I’m gonna die here,” she pleads, her body half caught in the fissure that’s already closing around her.
Aris snaps his teeth toward her, those monstrous teeth, easily the length of my body, stopping dead-short before Blair’s head. “Say the word and she’s dead meat, Melody.”
“No, I know she’s annoying as hells, but I can’t leave her behind,” I shoot back, grabbing my sword and drawing its pommel over Blair’s temple.
She goes instantly slack, falling to the ground.
Aris sighs into my mind but closes his talons around her body and lifts her up and out of the dome.
Then he turns, his massive wings beating the air and surrounding trees into submission as he takes flight.
Behind us, the last shimmering crack in the dome closes up and, just like that, it’s hidden from us again, totally invisible to the eye, as if it was never there at all.