28
Shattered, Still Standing
Melody
I jerk up, my breath rapid, my heart racing. Lyrian. The bloodhounds. A dark room.
I blink to my senses only to find pinkish eyes resting on me.
No bloodhounds. No Lyrian. No bunker. No chains around my hands.
I’m not back. I’m not still there.
“You’re safe…for now,” Meanara, the healer, says. Her eyes are soft, but her aura burns with rage as she puts a cool washcloth on my forehead. “How are you feeling?” she asks, her voice betraying nothing of her inner turmoil.
“Alive,” I say, propping myself up on my elbows. “And slightly dizzy.”
“That is from the herbs I gave you to dull the pain.”
I sit up slowly, only then realizing I’ve been lying in shallow water—on a bed of smooth stone, my body cradled by the healing river.
The glittering turquoise spring whispers around me, cool and luminous, easing the pain from my limbs as I marvel at it—and at the dreamlike architecture surrounding me.
I’m in a vast, cavernous hall beneath the earth, shaped from stone and water and fae hands: marble columns hewn directly from the rock, natural cave walls carved and polished until they gleam in shifting hues of blue. It feels magical—and somehow divine.
“I had to. Your…companion—the demon—he—” Meanara begins carefully, and I jerk upright, suddenly wide awake.
“Where is he?” I demand. “What happened?”
I instinctively reach out to my bond, only to find it… dead. I yank at it. “Aris!” I scream down the bond, but nothing. My eyes fly back to hers. “What happened? What did he do?”
“We muted the bond temporarily. He threatened to burn down the university. I sedated him and you before he could.”
I think my heart must have stopped. I take Meanara’s hand, still holding the washcloth, and squeeze it. “Where is he?”
“He is fine,” she assures me. “Well. And resting.”
“Unharmed?”
“Yes. Unharmed. He’s next door if you want to see him.”
I let out a sigh of relief. “I must find him.” I let go of her and try to get up. Everything hurts—but I’m used to pain and push through it. Lyrian beat me up too many times; bruises have long become old friends.
“Melody, please, I just healed your broken ribs and—”
I’m already out the door.
It’s only when I push open an inconspicuous door to my right and Riven’s lilac eyes snap to me that I realize I’m wearing some kind of white linen dress—now soaked through, clinging to me, and mortifyingly translucent. Fuck it. I stalk in regardless, pretending not to care about my nudity.
He’s settled in a wooden chair in front of a desk, Aris in his baby form curled up on a bed next to him, sleeping.
“Melody.” He gets up when I walk in, reaching for me, but I retreat with a hiss. He stops, his hands falling to his sides, his aura gray and unreadable.
I bend down and run a hand over Aris’s soft scales. He doesn’t stir.
“How are you feeling?” Riven asks.
“I’m getting tired of being asked that,” I snap, whirling to him. “What’s wrong with him? What did you do to him?”
I swear something starts to rumble outside. The air turns dense and heavy, charged with something I can taste like copper on my tongue. Lightning. For one awful second, I’m seized by the fear that Aris and I broke protocol, and that Caryan is finally coming for him—coming to take him from me.
Riven’s eyes flash. “He’s fine, just sedated. The healer made him sleep.”
I make myself ask, “Where is Caryan?” My voice comes out strangled, though, and every instinct in me hunts for Caryan’s magic beyond the door.
Riven doesn’t answer. Thunder roils outside—celestial magic—and my breath catches. My fingers curl at my sides, and I realize I’m trembling.
“Melody, calm down. He’s not here. I came,” Riven says softly, stepping closer, his gaze flicking to my trembling hands before I can hide them behind my back.
“And the storm outside?”
“Just a storm,” Riven says, worry shining in his remarkable eyes.
I take a deep breath and then slowly let it out. Caryan is not here. Aris is alive . Safe. We are safe . “If he touches Aris—”
“He won’t,” Riven says quickly. “Not for now. But what happened today can’t happen again.
” His gaze hardens. “You need to send him away before you go to elemental combat class, and you need to shield your emotions from Aris better. If this happens again, Melody, there will be consequences—and not just for you. Next time, you need to block him out completely.”
“I need. I need. I need. Yeah. I need to do a lot of things. But what I want doesn’t count, right?
I don’t want to be here—and neither does Aris.
” My words spill out unchecked—sharp, bitter.
I’m still a little numb. Drugged. I don’t mean to sound like this, not with him, but the ache in my chest has nowhere else to go.
And the way he stands there, calm, steady, so fucking unruffled by anything—always on the right side of things—stirs a traitorous instinct in me to lash out.
To make him choose. Choose me, for once—though I already know how that choice would fall.
The dark current prowls through me like a hungry thing on the hunt, and it takes more effort than usual to keep it from burning its way out through my skin. I wonder how much longer I can keep the magic down, locked away.
Riven lifts his chin at my tone, his face the mask of the monarch he is. Sleek, untouchable, and diplomatic to the bone. “We all need to do things we do not like to do, Melody. Things that don’t align with what we want.”
I wonder whether his words are as ambiguous as I want them to be, or if it’s all just in my head. What do I want to hear, really? That he missed me? That it meant something—that he kissed me? That everything meant anything at all?
That he believes that Caryan’s a bastard?
Of course he doesn’t.
I look away, feeling suddenly very tired and exposed. That translucent dress certainly doesn’t help me feel more in control. “What happens now? Caryan’s gonna punish me, or Aris?”
“No. He’ll let it slide for now. But the next time you train, you need to send Aris away. Farther. And block him out fully, even if you get hurt during training. For Aris’s sake. You can do that, block a bond fully. I heard that you blocked the one to Caryan, after all.”
My head snaps to him. “You heard—”
“Caryan said he couldn’t reach you. That you blocked the bond to him.
I don’t know how you achieved that, and neither does he, but it means that you can.
Aris can be dangerous, Melody, especially if he believes you’re hurt.
”Riven clears his throat, then says quietly, “If Caryan learns about something like today happening again, he is going to put an end to it. Do you understand?”
My ribs cave in on my heart and for a second it feels as if I can’t breathe. Caryan would put an end to him . He would kill Aris if he came to interfere with Kyrith “training” me again. That’s what Riven is trying to tell me.
“I get it. I’ll cut him off,” I say, glancing at Aris, still curled up and sleeping so soundly. I failed him. I should have done better today. I should have known better. I’ll make sure this never happens again.
I know he would hate it—to be apart from me. And so would I. But if it keeps him safe, I’ll bear it. I owe him that much. And so much more. Gods, how could I allow this to happen in the first place?
Riven takes a step toward me, and his elusive scent invades my senses—lilacs and moss and something citrusy. His eyes rove over my face, lingering on the bruises I know are still there, because hells, my cheekbone throbs where Kyrith shattered half of it.
“You would be wise to let that magic up. Then it would stop, you know. You won’t be seeing Kyrith again. I can arrange that much.” His voice is quiet as his gaze lingers on me.
I don’t know what to say—what to do with his sudden closeness, the way it wrenches all the wrong reactions from my body.
So I just let out a quiet laugh before I bare my teeth at him, glowering up at him. “You know, if you came all the way here for that pretty little speech about me needing to let out my magic, you shouldn’t have wasted the effort.”
His eyes flare, but I turn away anyway, deliberately showing him my back as I walk over to Aris—something you’re not supposed to do. Never turn your back on a higher-ranked fae. Certainly not to someone like him. Someone with his station. With his kind of power.
My spine prickles with the knowledge of what I’m doing, but I keep going anyway, braced for his reprimand. Hells, I’m daring him to try. Something in me itches for friction, and the thought startles me. Maybe I really am more fae than I thought. But he lets the disrespect pass.
“Why are you fighting it, Melody? It’s your nature. Your magic. It’s a part of you now, whether you want it or not.”
“Oh really?” I lift my eyebrows, batting my lashes at him.
Riven’s jaw is set, his teeth clenched as if he struggles to keep from baring them at me.
“There must be a reason that you don’t let it up.
It almost killed you in the human world.
It will eat away at you if you don’t accept it as part of you.
If you let it out, it will feel better. You will feel better instantly.
Let me help you wield it, shape it. Hone it. Own it.”
I turn to him fully, no longer caring whether he can see me all naked. Let him. Let him see all my disgust shining in my eyes, reflecting on my face. “I never asked for it. It was fine as it was—just my silver magic.”
His jaw hardens. “It’s a power others would kill for.”
“Maybe I don’t want that fucking magic. Maybe I’m just not like the rest of you fae—hungry for power and destruction and death!”
I know his temper slips when his lips curl back, revealing his fangs. “It’s a weapon, Melody. In a world where you had none.”
I take a step back from him until the edge of the bed pushes into my knees. “I should have known you’re just like him. All I wonder is why you didn’t volunteer to teach me instead of Kyrith.”
“I did.” His answer comes too quietly.
I throw my head back and laugh—really laugh—at that. “I bet you did. Shame you drew the shorter stick. Would’ve been fun to beat me around a bit, huh.”
“Don’t say such things, Melody! Ever. You hear me?” Riven’s voice turns into a growl, more animal than fae. His hand shoots out toward me—to pull me close or to push me away, I’ll never know—because I slap it aside with my fae reflexes, teeth bared, eyes livid.
“I’ve been touched enough for a long time!” I hiss. “I’m no longer that girl you knew. If you want to keep your arm, don’t touch me. Ever. You hear me?”
I throw his own words back at him, ignoring the darkness flickering in his eyes, and turn to scoop the still-sleeping Aris up in my arms. My newly healed ribs protest, the bruises still there, but I hold on to him—to his warmth, the only stability I have.
The only friend I’ve ever had. The only family.
Then I turn back to Riven, straightening my shoulders and lifting my chin. His face has already slipped back into that mask of Caryan’s right hand—cold, impenetrable and utterly, mockingly beautiful. And the ease with which he does it breaks something small and irreversible in me.
“Tell Kyrith, if this is his way of making me let that magic up, he’ll have to try much, much harder next time. And tell him I look forward to it.”
Then I’m out the door.