12 #2
I rigorously avoid the mirror and quickly switch off the light, padding back into the living room of the motel.
I can hear trucks passing by in the distance, a highway close, running through a stretch of forest, neon lights swallowing up the stars.
Such weird sounds; I wonder whether I will ever get used to them.
Although I grew up in the human world as Lyrian’s prisoner, his estate had been so remote I’d grown up shielded from all of this.
And, well, the desert in the fae world where Caryan’s fortress was…it had been hauntingly quiet, but in a beautiful way. I had never seen stars that close, as if you could pluck them from the sky.
“You could try talk to him. He will see reason,” Aris pushes, climbing onto the bed next to me, adjusting his golden wings.
I suck in a deep breath, chewing my lower lip. Aris knows him better than most. Yet…
“You do want to talk to him sometimes, don’t you?”
My head snaps to Aris and, involuntarily, fucking treacherous heat flushes my cheeks. For a moment, I’m too surprised to deny it.
“I do know, because, sometimes, before you fall asleep, I feel what you feel. And hear snippets of your thoughts,” Aris admits gently, reading my thoughts from my face.
I pull my legs up close to my body, hugging them again, my hair falling into my face, shielding me from his eyes.
Damn it, I should have known. Because it works the same way for me with him.
Sometimes I hear snippets of his dreams. It happens once our shields slip, in the few moments before we slide off into a dream.
“It never happens with Caryan’s, though,” I say quietly, frowning. Many nights, I’d been afraid my walls would fall once I closed my eyes and he would walk right in and command me to give away our location.
“No. Because you made the decision not to trust him. But you do trust me. Your mind works that way. Your subconscious mind does,” Aris explains patiently.
Again, I wonder how many people he bonded with before me. Caryan, yes. But how many before even Caryan? Aris has been alive since the beginning of the worlds—whatever that means. But then, Caryan is an immortal, so maybe they were always together.
Hells, always is a word I can’t even begin to comprehend, and probably never will.
I don’t want to probe again, knowing I won’t get an answer out of him, thanks to Caryan and his cohesion crap.
I also don’t want to poke that unhealed wound—what it meant for Aris to leave Caryan’s side for me.
I know it hurt him, that it still does, because I feel a muffled echo of this pain in me.
“I just…I just listen to his voice sometimes,” I finally admit, mind to mind again.
When Caryan speaks my name from the other side of the bond, knowing when I’m close.
“I never stay long enough to let him finish a sentence, though.” Or a command, for that matter.
I glance out the window, trying to make out the moon somewhere up there, cheerless and waning. “I know it’s pathetic.”
“It is nothing of the kind. It is natural,” he counters.
“It’s just—it hurts, Aris. Blocking him off hurts.
It’s like a physical pain, as if someone cut off a part of me.
” The words leave my mouth before I can change my mind.
I’ve never uttered that, not in the whole year we’ve spent here like this.
But now I’m too weak. Too weak to even keep secrets.
And if I die, I at least want to know why.
Aris pushes his body against mine, and I lean into him, soaking up his warmth. I think that, without him, I’d be dead already. I know I keep going because of him.
“This is the nature of bonds, little one. This is why you have to be so careful who you bond with. Because, once accepted, it does, indeed, become a part of you. It can be a beautiful thing, and a cruel one.”
I swallow, remembering what Riven once told me about their bonds. That even with a mating bond—the strongest bond for fae, the one the stars choose for you—it sometimes can become ugly, bad, especially when one party tries to reject the bond.
“It’s like love,” I say bitterly and I can’t help but think of Riven at that.
I know Aris knows this, because he hums into my mind, “Yes, little one. It’s like love in so many ways.”
I frown. “Why is it there, Aris? That bond to Caryan?” My voice is angry.
He just looks at me then, his eyes almost as golden as Caryan’s in some intimate moments.
I shudder when I think of them. Of how his hands trailed my body.
How my whole being reacted to him, his scent, his power—no matter how much I fought it and despised him for his cruelty and dominance.
How our magics danced with each other through the dark and how happy I had been in that tiny moment.
Something so beautiful had slumbered under my skin, and Caryan—
He destroyed it, put it back together, and forged it with his own, turning my silvery light into a bristling monster without ever asking. Hurting me in the process, in a way that was so painful I felt he was trying to rip out my soul in exchange.
Anger steels my spine, hardens my voice. He took something from me. Again.
“I never asked for that. I never wanted it. And I don’t want it now.” My words come out harsh, and I’m surprised by their truth. I’ve never uttered it as clearly before—but I don’t want that bond to Caryan. End of story.
“Melody—”
“No!” I cut him off. “I don’t want him.”
Probably half the fae world was dying to bond to him in whatever twisted way they could. If not more.
“I don’t want the power my talent could bring me.
” Power Caryan once promised me. “I don’t care for any of it.
And hells, I certainly don’t want a bossy, moody, ruthless asshole threatening me every time I don’t do exactly as he says for the rest of my life, and somehow, I know that’s exactly the way it would go with him if I accepted.
No. I have my own mind! I am my own person!
And Caryan would never let me have that, Aris, no matter what he says in the rare moments when he’s trying to be something close to nice. ”
“You don’t know that, Melody.”
“Yes, I do. Did you miss the bossy, moody, ruthless asshole part I just mentioned?”
Aris winces. “He is not always like that.”
“Yeah, well, he might have his moments when he’s not a total dick, but that’s only when he wants something from me and thinks he gets it easier when he’s playing nice instead of hurting me straight off.”
I clench my fingers to fists, my nails biting the skin of my palms, staring at Aris, daring him to object.
Secretly begging him to, because if anyone knows Caryan better than me, it’s Aris, and hells, right now, I’m secretly praying for him to contradict me.
Tell me that Caryan was only rude and brutal and merciless with me because he’d had a bad day, week, month, year…
damn, century . A tiny, pathetic little part of me wishes that.
That Caryan would suddenly turn into a cuddly person, at least toward me.
But I know it’s the weird bond speaking.
All I find in Aris’s eyes and aura is a big, vast sadness, as if he personally had been tasked with making Caryan a better person—and failed. And hells, if I ever had any doubt about my choices at all, they are wiped away in this very moment.
“Maybe you should talk to him regardless, Melody. A bond is also a chance. And a broken bond hurts both parties,” Aris suggests carefully.
I snort. “Oh, I doubt that Caryan is suffering in any way.”
Aris just keeps looking at me, his head tilted, his tiny ears twitching nervously. I can see the beginning of his four horns, two on his forehead and two beneath his ears.
“This is not true, Melody.”
“They say angels can’t feel,” I spit. “Which is another nice affliction. Like, hey—your twin-soul can’t love you, but don’t worry, at least you look good together.”
Aris’s eyes widen like I just slapped him. “And you believe that to be true?”
I shrug, jaw tight. “I don’t know. Isn’t it?”
I can see him thinking, trying to find a way to tell me about him and Caryan without violating the vow Caryan made him swear. I hate that Caryan’s control reaches even here, through Aris, through the silence.
“When you’re that old, Melody, feelings can become like a long-forgotten memory. You lose so many people along the way. You commit atrocities. You dull. Like an old sword. You reach a point where you’ve experienced everything. Can you imagine that?”
“But you’re older than him, right?” I counter. “And you still feel. You have a heart. You love. Or bond. Or whatever it is that you do.”
“Because I allowed it. But I am no angel. This is true. Every creature, Melody, is different. I am a demon, little one. I kill without remorse—but never those I bond with. Those, I love fiercely. I protect them with my life. Those, I choose.”
“And him?” I whisper. “He never wanted that bond to me.” My voice is barely audible, shame tightening my chest. I remember the first time I was in Caryan’s head—when I just followed that strange calling and found that velvety thing deep inside me.
And how he hated it. The disgust in his expression when he realized I’d seen his thoughts.
Felt them. The coldness in his eyes. As if I were some bug he wanted to squash but couldn’t.
“He might not,” Aris says quietly. “But it is still a chance. You should talk to him.” Aris nudges me gently with his snout. His eyes hold a plea. And I know I must look bad. Worse than ever. Like I’m unraveling.
“I can’t have him say anything, Aris,” I remind him. “In case you forgot, the second he speaks, we’re fucked.”
“I know. But you could bargain with him. Strike a deal. He can communicate without speaking. He’s clever. And so are you. You’ll find a way.”
“Yeah, and then what? Bargain again the next time? And the next?”
“Something like that.”
“He would hate me, Aris.” Even more than he already does.
“He might agree to it regardless,” Aris says, and his answer does not exactly cheer me up. “He is your only chance. And I know you—you’ll find a way to make it work.”
He doesn’t say our only chance. But I hear it anyway. Because if I die, the bond dies with me. And with it, any chance to protect Aris and Blair from Caryan’s wrath. Once I’m dead, that chance is gone. And Caryan is immortal. That kind of gone lasts forever.
“I want you to live, little one,” Aris says softly. “I’m not worried about me. I’ve lived so many lives, it doesn’t matter anymore where—or if. But you…you still have so much life in you. And Blair—she needs to return too.”
“Blair sure as hells doesn’t want to leave the human world,” I mutter, dodging the truth.
“That does not mean she is well here, does it?”
“It’s not like I can make her go,” I say, more bitterly than I intend. “She doesn’t want to go back. Especially not to him .”
“You need to return, Melody. Please,” Aris says, quieter than ever. “Talk to him.”
He doesn’t press again, though. Just curls up beside me, his golden wings draping softly around us like a blanket. I curl up, too, arms wrapped around my knees, chin resting on them. I close my eyes. “I’m tired, Aris. Another time, okay?”
“You promise?” His voice cracks.
“I promise,” I whisper, and press a kiss to the soft spot between his tiny horns.
Then I pretend to sleep. But I don’t. I rarely do these days. And when I’m sure Aris is asleep—his breathing slow, his heartbeat steady beneath his scales—I reach out. Gently, cautiously, I run a mental hand along the walls I’ve built. The ones I shaped and honed like weapons to keep Caryan out.
Beyond them…a bridge. Forged of smoke and starlight.
And behind it…his mind. His presence. Always there, just shimmering within my reach.
Could I? Could I really ?
My heart aches. It does every time I near that mental bridge. The pain worsens—and somehow eases once I get closer. It’s a strange ache, the kind you feel when you miss something you wish you didn’t.
Caryan.
Our dark bond.
I don’t know why I crave his voice. I just know that I do. I need it, like air. Just as Aris said.
I press a hand against the inner wall. And as if he feels me standing there on the other side—
I hear his voice, as if he’d been waiting for me all along.