26 #2
I wish the ground would open up and swallow me whole, because they’re still staring. Staring as unmistakably unfae tears spill down my cheeks—as if my round ears and ordinary looks weren’t enough to set me apart already. I try to stop them. I really do. But I can’t.
A moment later, heavy wingbeats pound the air. Every head snaps away from me toward the sound—and then they scatter. All of them retreat toward the campus walls as Aris lands in the middle of the meadow, the earth shuddering when his talons bite into the soil.
Honestly, it’s pretty impressive.
And pretty cool.
His eyes are livid, smoke coming out of his nostrils. “Do you need a written invitation, little one? Come, get on my back, and let’s get out of here for a while.”
I don’t hesitate. I sprint toward him. I’d fling myself around his scaled neck if he weren’t so enormous in this form—and if escape weren’t the only thing on my mind.
I scramble up his back, fingers slipping on warm scales, before I manage to hook myself around one of his spikes and hurl myself into the dip between two of them, just as his wings thunder down.
The force of it rips the ground away beneath us, hauling us into the air.
I let the wind dry my tears, let the space calm my breathing.
Let it soothe me while we circle over the temple, the sacred spring, and toward the sharp peaks of mountains, impossibly green grasslands, and rolling, soft hills until the world grows smaller and smaller.
Aris flings his wings out and banks left and we glide over a rural area, where vineyards stretch up hills, and the rich, golden color of grain fields paints the world. Tiny villages are spread out here and there, their streets paved with white cobblestones and smoke curling out of chimneys.
I lean my cheek against Aris’s leathery back, let his heat and reassuring strength seep into me. Finally, slowly, I can breathe again, and my heart rate returns to normal.
“I left her. I was terribly rude. She was so nice to me,” I say when I can finally form words again.
“That girl you have been talking to? The youngling?”
“Don’t call her that.”
“You are a youngling too.”
“Yeah, compared to your age, those mountains are practically newborns.”
“That is a silly comment. Mountains do not live.”
I turn my head and spot the outline of Mount Silas in the distance as we head south—the mountain where I almost died a little more than a year ago, and only survived because Caryan gave me his blood and saved me.
I wrench my thoughts away from it, from what the memory still threatens to tear loose, and force them back instead to the stairs spiraling ever deeper beneath the archives, to the sounds that once traveled up from the underbelly of the world.
“It is a dark place.” Aris’s voice cuts through the memory. I forgot to pull up my wall.
“You know what’s down there?” I ask him.
“ I do. But it is part of the list I cannot talk about, as I told you.”
“Yeah. Things he forbade you.” I cannot help the scorn in my voice. Part of me feels angry that Aris is still shackled by Caryan’s strict rules. That the broken bond to Caryan hurts him, too, and always will.
“It was my decision to break it, little one. Do not be angry on my account.”
And not for the first time do I wish to know more. Wish to know why Aris chose Caryan’s side in the first place. Where was Aris during Gatilla’s dark reign? And what ultimately made him side with me, of all people?
“You need to ask him.”
“Yeah, sure. As if he would give me answers to any of those questions,” I snap.
“To some, maybe.”
“I don’t want to talk to him. Ever. Again.”
I’m glad my shields are up, because even as I say it, those words feel wrong. As much as I hate it, a part of me always wants to talk to Caryan—no matter what he did to me and will do to me, no doubt—and all because of that damn bond between us.
I scream when Aris suddenly tilts sideways and I slip off his back—straight into open air. There’s no time to grab hold, no time to think. Just falling. Plummeting.
Right into a steaming lake.
I surface, sputtering, just in time to hear Aris’s laughter rolling down the bond.
He circles overhead, his eyes glinting viciously as he screeches with unmistakable delight, as if this is the funniest thing he’s experienced in decades.
“Youlizardy bastard!” I shout up at him, swimming for the shore.
“You should have seen your face,” he chuckles. “Besides, I prefer angry Melody over brooding Melody any day, little one,” he adds gently.
I haul myself out where grassy fields meet the crystal water, clothes soaked and clinging, hair plastered to my face as I scowl daggers at him. He lands beside me with a heavy thump, still looking way too fucking pleased with himself while he elegantly folds his wings.
I open my mouth to yell again—and then, infuriatingly, a laugh bubbles up instead. Sharp at first. Then helpless.
“I hate you,” I tell him, breathless and dripping.
His golden eyes gleam. “Little liar.”
“And you know that how?” I brush his nostril with a playful tap, laughing softly—only to wrinkle my nose when he answers with a warm puff of steam scented with dragonfire. “Eeeeew, you grumpy old man,” I tease. “Ever heard of a mint?”
“I just know,” he retorts, unbothered by my teasing.
“Right. I could never hate you,” I whisper, pressing myself closer until I’m nearly draped over his massive snout, my arms settling around his jaw as naturally as breathing.
Then I straighten, starting to wring out my sleeves—when his head snaps up in a sudden, serpentine motion.
“Stay back , ” he orders sharply, one eye fixed on the line of trees while he places himself squarely between me and whatever waits there.
As I lift my head, I spot Blair standing there, watching us from afar. She looks muddy and dirty and wild, her long white hair streaming unbound.
“She’s still not herself,” Aris warns.
I stare back at her, the guardian bond in me flaring hot and immediate, demanding that I run to her, that I grab her and hold on no matter the cost. Every instinct screams at me to move—but I stay rooted where I am.
Aris is right. There’s unmistakable danger radiating from her.
She lingers for a heartbeat longer, then spins on her heel and vanishes, slipping back into the trees.
“I need her back,” I say quietly, stripping off my clothes to let them dry.
“She’ll come around to being here. She just needs time,” Aris says gently.
I give up trying to wring the water from my soaked clothes and instead undress, then lie back in the grass, propped comfortably against Aris’s left leg.
We watch the clouds drift overhead for a while, the world quiet and unhurried, until he finally stands, blinking up into the sun.
His scales shimmer, fluorescent and beautiful, in the clear midday light, and for a moment I find myself wondering how I might capture that metallic sheen in his scales if I ever tried to paint him like that.
“You need to get back to class, or there will be detention,” he says.
My stomach sinks like a stone in water, because we’re both thinking the same thing: my next class is elemental combat.
“You’re right.” I push to my feet and slip on my leggings and t-shirt. My boots are still soaking wet thanks to Aris, but I put them on regardless.
A balmy kind of magic washes over me, like the gentlest bluish fire, and suddenly I’m dry. I blink at him, narrowing my eyes. “Since when can you do that?”
“Since…” He pretends to think. “The spikes of my glorious tail finally hardened. Probably when I was about fifteen years old. That must have been in the early Stone—”
“All right, all right, dinosaur, I get it. I bet the wheel hadn’t even been invented yet.”
“The wheel?” he asks, confused, as I climb onto his back and he takes flight.
“You could’ve just blown me dry with your demon magic,” I snap over the wind, more annoyed at my upcoming class than at him.
“Would have,” he retorts, as if he hasn’t heard my tone, “but I figured some sun would do you good.”
We circle back toward Avandal, the town’s grand buildings gleaming like gems in the distance, their colorful, ornate roofs marked with family signets that catch and reflect the light.
Far below, I spot people pausing whatever they’re doing to stare up at us, mouths agape, fingers pointing.
None of them looks afraid, though—even when a beast like Aris flies overhead, and he really does look frightening. Interesting.
We make it back to campus and the training building just as class begins.