23
Speak Not of Mercy
Melody
Shay blinks at me when I open my eyes. “Good, you’re back.
They mended your bones and sedated you slightly.
Now come, lunch break’s almost over, and we’ve got to hurry to get to our next lesson.
Beeatrisa promised everyone who misses classes detention in magical combat, and I figured you wouldn’t fancy that. ”
I shoot up straight, pleased to find that nothing hurts anymore. Then I look around. I’m on some infirmary bed in a simple room. “Thank you,” I breathe, frowning. “Wait—we all get detention with Kyrith ?”
“Yeah. Apparently, they’re really upping the pace of learning how to wield our magic.”
My stomach rumbles, and I’m reminded that she said I missed lunch.
She hears it and giggles. “Don’t worry. Cassius’s gonna save us some pastries.”
“Wait—did you miss out on lunch because of me?”
“Doesn’t matter. I figured it would be nice not to wake up alone after what just happened. It was pretty cruel. Why did he do that?”
I swallow, taking a deep breath while I swing my legs over the bed to stand. “Because he hates me. And—yeah, I think that sums it up pretty well. We have a sort of history. It’s complicated to explain.”
I wonder how much I can tell her. They already know that I have some connection to the high lords and Caryan, but they don’t know the rest. Like that I am, apparently, the girl in their super-important prophecy, which one of the most powerful oracles of this world has given them.
No, I can’t tell her that. Or at least Riven warned me not to.
His name makes my stomach twist up in a knot.
“What’s next on our schedule?” I ask, although I already suspect.
“Elemental magic with High Lord Caedmon. Oh my gods, it’s so…unreal to be mentored by the high lords now.”
I swear she’s blushing again, and definitely swooning, as if the high lords are damn starlets.
“You all know who they are?” I ask, making for the door after I check my face and hair in a tiny mirror. Not that my hair changes anything about the fact that I still look like a corpse.
“Of course we do. Everyone knows them,” Shay says excitedly. “But—you know Professor Caedmon, do you? I mean, personally?”
Here we go.
“I do,” I deadpan, walking ahead so she can’t see the blush on my own cheeks. I really don’t want to talk about it.
“Oh, wow.” It’s clear she wants to know more but has gathered enough from my tone to realize I don’t want to say more.
I’ve been walking so fast I only realize where we are when we’re standing in some kind of large orb with a beautiful glass dome ahead; hewn, slim pillars reaching several floors up and toward the sky in breathtaking architecture.
I stop to admire the filigree structure, the paintings in niches showing various fae forms—starting with wolves, then fauns and sirens. And then, again, dragons.
“That’s where breakfast and dinner are held. This way.” Shay gently guides me up a vast set of polished marble stairs until we reach the second floor. A corridor spreads out before us. When it dies out, I realize we’re already late.
My heart straight-out plummets into my knees when I enter and find Riven already standing there at the end of an incredibly large hall that might as well have been a throne room it is that large and ornate.
He pauses whatever he’d just been saying and his amethyst eyes find mine, roving over me, as if scanning for injuries, his face set and serene.
Only after a moment does he turn back to the students.
“I was saying that magical wielding will now focus on refining your control for battle scenarios. The goal would be to enable you to wield your magic without the use of your hands, so that, even if someone were to sever them, you would not be defenseless. This, of course, only applies to fire, water, and air wielders. All other classes—earth summoners, healers and such—will be tutored by Professor Ronin ?aren at the rear of the hall. If you are among them, go now. The rest remain with me.”
I swallow and stare at the casual way he suggests something like cutting off hands. A few fellow students gasp as well.
“I also expect each of you to develop a constant magical shield—a sheath of power around your skin, if you will. A skill that requires immense concentration and time, but unfortunately, we don’t have the luxury of either.
You will practice until your magic is depleted.
Every advantage in battle is necessary. Let us begin.
Split into your respective magical groups, favoring your dominant trait. ”
He waits until all students do as he said. Shay gently squeezes my hand and walks off, and I’m left standing alone, as no one else seems to wield lightning, or silver magic.
Riven glances at me once, giving me a subtle nod, then turns back to the crowd. “Now, I bid you call to your magic. Gently. Learn to coax it so that it flows over your hands and along your arms.”
I stare as I watch students stretch out their arms, flames jumping to life in the palms of the fire wielders, balloons of water or tiny swirls of air in the hands of water and wind wielders.
“Well done. Now spend the remainder of the time learning to coat your skin with your magic, maintaining it in a constant flow.”
Cassius’s flame combusts into a fireball that soars directly toward us, and shrieks fill the air. Shadowfire envelops it before it can reach us, suffocating the flames before they die.
“Loss of control is part of mastery. That is why I am here. Again,” Riven says it to him, and I hold my breath as he finally walks over to me.
“You must try too.”
I look down at my boots to avoid his scrutinizing gaze. “I can’t.”
“Please, Melody. Do it. Just once.”
“I can’t ,” I repeat, before looking up and straight into his eyes. I shouldn’t, because in the dimness, they flicker like crushed violets. Their sight briefly robs my breath.
“Why?”
“Because—” I start. Just as I’m about to tell him, he snarls quietly, “It was a gift, Melody. Seize it. Claim it as your own.”
I take a step back as if he’d slapped me. “So you’re now one of them too? Really? You think what Caryan did was right?”
I spot students turning their heads our way, and more magic slips from their control, combusting in splashes of water and fire. Riven’s magic douses them all before they can cause any harm—and he doesn’t even have to turn around to do it. Hells.
“No, of course not. But I understand why he did it. Were I in his position, I might have done the same.”
Of all the things he could have said, this is the worst. “Caryan practically forced his magic upon me in such a painful way that it felt like dying—a thousand times, again and again and again.”
Tears make my voice thick. I don’t bother to keep my voice down. Riven flicks his hand once, creating a half-translucent black bubble around us, and suddenly, I can’t hear a single thing except for his voice. A silencing dome, his magic stretched thin.
Only then he says, “I know. But he did it to save you.”
“Bullshit! He did it because he needs me to find those stupid artifacts. Just like everybody else.”
Riven’s face hardens even more, and a muscle feathers in his jaw. “I do not believe that is true.”
“Oh yeah? Then what do you believe? Enlighten me.”
He looks as though he wants to say something, but grits his teeth and looks away instead, clearly deciding to say something else instead. All I get is: “You should speak with him.”
“What?”
When he looks back at me, his eyes shimmer with something I can’t name. I wish I could see his aura. That he would let me. But he doesn’t.
“I won’t. I’m here, fulfilling his demands so I don’t have to talk to that monster again—”
“You can’t run from him forever, Melody,” he snaps before I’ve even finished my sentence.
I cross my arms in front of my chest. “Oh yeah, thanks for the reminder that, technically, I’m still his damn fucking slave.”
“That is not what I meant.”
“No. You seem to say a lot of things recently that you don’t mean,” I bite back.
He growls—a menacing sound that works its way up his elegant throat and turns him into a predator. “This power eats away at you, and still you cage it. Is this your defiance, then? Some sort of silly rebellion?”
My tears are giving way to hot, white fury. How could I ever think that this man understood me? Saw any part of me? I was so wrong. “Fuck you,” I spit at him, then turn away.
He grabs my shoulder, spinning me back around, and I laugh. Laugh like a lunatic. Laugh because, even when Lyrian beat me up, I laughed in his face—though I was terrified and humiliated and broken. Because it was better than crying. Better than falling apart.
Riven stares at me as if I’ve gone mad.
I raise my brows. “What? Are you going to punish me because no one speaks to a high lord like that? Then just get it over with, and you can move on with your class.”
“I made a vow—never to harm you, not by hand nor magic. That vow remains,” he says darkly, but his eyes flash dangerously.
I shrug his hand off. “Ah, yeah. Regretting it now?”
He bares his fangs.
I just put my tongue in my cheek, watching him. “You know that they can still see us, don’t you?”
“Watch yourself, Melody.”
“Or what? You can’t lay a hand on me. So—I guess I can do whatever I want.”
“You have changed,” is all he says, and I hate the resentment in his voice.
“Yeah, I bet I have. Now I think I don’t need to be here since I’m not going to summon that magic.”
“You know I must report your progress to Caryan,” he says softly. Not a threat, but what else would it be?
I shrug while, inwardly, I’m unraveling. “Then tell him the truth.”
“He will regard this as breach of contract.”
I just shrug again. “Inevitable that I see him again, isn’t it? You said it yourself. Tell him what you want.”
I turn away, but the bubble around me stays, turning solid like a damn wall when I put my hand against it. I turn back to him with a fake-as-shit smirk. “Gonna trap me in here forever, Professor ?”
He looks like he truly wants to punish me, his lilac eyes burning with a quiet fire. But then the bubble dissolves, and I stride straight toward the heavy, winged iron doors. I briefly expect them to be locked, but they aren’t, and as soon as they fall shut behind me, I start to run.