17
Dangerous Men Stay Dangerous
Melody
“What the fucking hells?” Blair comes skittering around the corner, Riven behind her, Aris on their tail. They all stare at me crouching on the ground, breathing like mad and probably looking it too.
“Panic attack. I got sick and needed some fresh air.” I get up.
“And the blood?” Riven asks as he offers me his hand, but I shake my head quickly. I don’t want his help after he was an ass to Blair. And I certainly don’t want him noticing the blue grains of sand that still cling to my damp fingers.
“Nosebleed. Nothing serious,” I lie and turn to walk back to the car, not sure I should be talking about what happened—the stone still clutched tightly in my fist and my head still swimming from everything.
They follow me quietly. Riven gets behind the wheel, and I’m glad for it, because I’m sure as hells in no state to drive a car—not after Noxus scrambled my brain.
Blair is obviously still drunk as fuck the way she’s cursing silently in the passenger seat, so Aris and I wedge ourselves into the back.
“What happened?” Aris asks, concern shimmering through the bond. Of course he felt my lie all along.
I tell him what happened and end with, “Caryan…has a twin.”
Aris stays unusually silent, and I can’t quite detangle what I’m feeling over the bond. Pain. Hope. Melancholy. Longing. Love. Worry.
I look at him. “Are you telling me what’s going on or what?”
He flinches. “I can’t talk about it. I’m sorry.”
Rage flushes up my neck. “Seriously? Caryan coerced you not to talk about his brother?”
“Yes,” he confirms, his tail swishing once in agitation. I can see that this is bothering him as much as it is me, so I drop it. But only for him.
“No, it’s okay, I know it’s not your fault,” I say, rubbing my naked arms, as if I can rid myself of the remaining tension. “But what did he mean by ‘I need to return to make sure my world becomes part of this one again. To break the veil that’s locked it away’?”
Aris gives me the puppy eyes, and I grit my teeth.
“Alright. Same can’t-talk-about-it category.
Got it.” I sigh. “But why does every fae have to be so cryptic all the time? Is that some kind of hobby? Or a kink?” I think down the bond, but Aris, for once, doesn’t comment.
When I glance at him, he looks far away in his mind, and I know it has something to do with Caryan’s twin Noxus.
I meet Riven’s eyes in the rearview mirror for a second, and my heart does funny things before I look away. I imagined a thousand times how it would be once I saw him again, but none of them included what happened tonight. That we almost went for each other’s throats.
I glance at Blair, wondering if I should tell either of them about Caryan’s twin.
I absentmindedly run my fingers over the smooth stone and it warms in response.
Blair maybe. Riven, no. And Caryan? Hells no, because that would require me to talk to him again—which I have zero intention of doing in the near future.
Well, screw Noxus and what he said. It’s not like he can leave the world he’s bound to, right? So I don’t have to do anything now. First, I need to get this over with.
I let go of the stone and put it in the pocket of my jeans when Riven pulls up in front of our motel and we get out.
“I will try to convince him to give you a few hours,” Riven says, stopping in the doorway next to the portal that is still hissing and swirling in the room.
I wonder what a human would do if they came into the room and saw that portal.
Probably have a heart attack. Blair straight out ignores him and stalks off to the other room, slamming the thin door shut behind her so hard it almost breaks.
I just nod, too tired to do much else. Riven looks as if he wants to say more but then thinks better of it.
I watch him step into the portal. It vanishes, swallowing him up—and my heart sinks.
I slump down onto the couch, Aris curling up next to me, when Blair finally comes out.
“Is the asshole gone?”
“The shore is clear.” I sigh without looking at her.
“You look like shit,” she states, pausing at the other end of the shabby kitchen counter, filling the machine with coffee before she switches it on. I’m so exhausted my eyes drift shut.
The next time I open them it’s to Blair impatiently tugging on my shirt. There’s a bowl in front of me on the filthy couch table, a creamy yellow liquid swimming in it, dotted with tiny…what the heck is that?
“Here. I cooked you something,” she declares proudly and shoves a spoon in my hand.
I sit up, rubbing my eyes. Aris lies curled up beside me, snoring quietly. Blair must have thrown a blanket over me, because I’m covered with it, and Aris too—only his head and tail poking out.
“What is it?” I ask, eyeing the…soup?
“Vanilla pudding, with frozen peas in it. Well, I cooked them, of course. Eat. It’s my favorite,” she states proudly.
“You’re not going to tell her that opening up a can and dumping it in a cup of runny vanilla pudding is not exactly considered cooking?” Aris cracks open an eye and watches me with what almost looks like a smirk.
“She’s trying to be…I don’t know…nice? So—I guess I won’t,” I shoot back, taking the spoon.
Blair watches me hopefully, then says, “As much as it pains me to say it, the asshole has been right in one regard. I should have noticed.”
I look at her, eyebrows raised. She seems to be sober again, or at least close.
“It was nice, that you defended me. He can be an arrogant prick,” she goes on, waving a hand to encourage me to finally try the “soup.” She looks so hopeful that I make myself swallow three spoonfuls, avoiding the peas, before I put the bowl back down.
“That’s delicious, but I’m just not hungry,” I say quietly, forcing a too-wide smile.
“You don’t like it?”
“I did. It was good.”
“Liar!” she snaps. “You didn’t touch a single pea.”
“I just don’t like peas.”
“Peas with vanilla pudding to be precise,” Aris chimes in, endlessly amused.
Blair cocks her head. “Don’t lie to me. Tell me what I could have done differently to cook a soup?”
“Well, I guess it’s just…we humans would never eat vanilla with peas.”
“But it’s delicious,” she insists.
“Yeah…it is. But, please, take it.”
She’s already grabbed the soup and started drinking straight from the bowl before I even finish the sentence.
“So what exactly did you arrange with Caryan?” she asks once she sets it down, licking the yellow rim from her upper lip.
“That I attend the university,” I say, sitting up further while I run one hand over Aris’s soft scales.
Blair brushes her long hair back from her face, the mascara under her eyes still smeared. “Then go. Sounds like a good deal.”
“Sounds like fucking prison,” I mutter, wrapping my hands around my legs. “But what choice do I have?”
“Avandal is beautiful, you know. And that Caryan grants you that—isn’t this better than being a slave?”
“Are you actually having a normal conversation?” Aris cuts in, his eyes closed again.
“Seems so.” But, agreed. After months of almost radio silence between us, it feels weird. He snorts his disapproval.
“Aris! At least she’s trying. It’s a start,” I counter. “And don’t be team Riven. I had enough of this tonight.”
“Team Riven?”
“Yeah. He hates Blair.”
“Forgive me when I do not show as much patience as you when it comes to an over one-hundred-year-old witch behaving like a human child and finally deciding on some halfhearted, last-minute bonding efforts either.”
“She’s hurting.”
“We are all hurting in one way or the other, little one,” he shoots back. “That is no excuse.”
I pretend to think so she doesn’t know Aris and I are mind-talking. Or shit-talking, for that matter. I look at Blair. “Sure, Avandal is beautiful, I suppose.”
“Huh. He must be really desperate that you not die on him to give you so much rope,” she snaps.
I know it’s not personal—that a part of her would probably still love to see me dead. In her mind, me being gone would solve all her problems, or at least soothe the bone-eating jealousy I spot in her aura. Problem: our guardian bond.
Yet again, I wonder how anyone who looks like her could ever be jealous of me. She’s one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen, even among the fae. “I’m a tool to him, Blair,” I say quietly, hating how a tiny, bonded part in me still refuses to accept that.
“I know,” she chimes lightly, but it feels forced.
And I remember what that creepy demon in the dark woods said to her—that she’d love to be Caryan’s queen.
And all the other ugly things. I lean forward and look at her intently.
“Come with me. We get our own rooms. And the high priestess is a wretch, by the way.”
Blair laughs again, this time for real—a rare and beautiful sound. “Oh, Beeatrisa’s well-known for being the epitome of a bitch. But no, I can’t go back.”
“But you’d be safe,” I try again.
“Safe?” She snorts. “Do you know how a witch is looked at walking through Avandal? They’d spit at me at best, come for my throat at worst. And I can’t even blame them.
But you go. I’m sure you’ll find a way to get what you want in the end, Melody.
You’re clever and, I must say, kind of stubborn in a good way.
I trust you’ll fight for the life you want.
But no one has any use for me there. For a witch without magic. I can’t.”
I swallow hard but the lump in my throat won’t ease. “I do. I need you. I can’t go there all on my own. I just don’t know how. I know no one.”
“You’ve got your grumpy lizard lapdog here. You’ll be fine.”
Aris opens his eyes and bares his teeth.
“See, I knew you weren’t really sleeping, demon,” she states self-righteously, then gets up. “Sleep until your bat-winged princeling returns. You really look like a corpse already.” She strides toward the next room, then pauses in the doorway. “Just be careful with him.”
Despite myself I ask, “Why?”
She just shrugs. “I know you like him. More than you should. But—dangerous men stay dangerous men. I’ve learned that the hard way.”
I look down at my feet tucked in under Aris’s belly to keep them warm. “Oh, I know that too.”
“Do you? Because the other thing is that Caryan doesn’t share, you know.”
My head jerks up, and my cheeks run hot, despite every effort. “I’m not an object to be handed off or shared.”
“No, you’re not,” she drawls, lost in thought. But her gaze lingers on me. “But I bet Caryan sees that differently.”
With that she’s through the door.