40
The Quiet After the Storm
Melody
Whatever Blair told Kyrith yesterday, there’s no more torture waiting for me.
Instead, he almost ignores me after he makes us do absurd stretches and then a series of warm-up reps.
He makes other students fight against each other, one time with magic, one time without, and I watch how Shay conjures vines of thorns with which she manages to ensnare Ryder in his wolf form before he can come for her.
Then the ground shakes once.
Training halts. Everyone pauses what they’re doing and stares at the orbit of black smoke and swirling magic that suddenly appears in the middle of the meadow, hovering suspended in the air.
Even Kyrith pauses. His remarkable green eyes widen and his jaw clenches. The magic becomes lighter in the middle of the vortex, more like a swirl.
A portal, I realize.
My heart leaps as, suddenly, Caryan is formed from the shadows themselves, dark magic swirling around him, caressing him as he steps right out of the air, magnificent, enormous wings out.
I hear sharp breaths and hushed whispers as everyone gawks. Some retreat a little, bow, or fall to their knees. I just stare as Caryan’s black eyes find mine in the meadow, in the crowd, as if he knew exactly where I was.
A few strong wingbeats bring him down, and he lands gracefully in the grass.
From the corner of my eye, I realize that everyone has retreated from me. All have fallen to a knee, their heads bowed in reverence, but at a healthy distance. Even Kyrith, his sword discarded by his side, his hair hanging in his face as his head dips low.
I’m suddenly painfully aware that I’m the only one standing.
My eyes stay on Caryan’s, as if transfixed. My heart is in my mouth, fluttering unevenly, as his black eyes seem to darken further when he takes in my bony body.
I straighten my shoulders and lift my chin in answer, defiantly. If he wants me to kneel, he’ll have to make me.
He takes a step toward me, his achingly beautiful face as cruel as I remember it. As if he can read the challenge on my face and is more than eager to meet it, his unholy magic flaring and dancing like black smoke along his broad shoulders.
A roar fills the silence. A roar as mighty as the magic that still whispers and sizzles all around us like the harbinger of a thunderstorm.
Suddenly, Aris is here. But not in his usual size. Even I gawk as I look up and find a shadow falling over all the valley, so large it entirely blocks out the sun. He has never been this huge. His wings are gargantuan, one wing the entire length of the library’s main room.
It takes everything not to fall as the ground shakes when his massive claws grind into the soil next to me, ripping it open, sending stones and soil flying. Hells, I don’t even reach his ankle.
Caryan halts, his face unmoved. But he’s terrifyingly unimpressed. He doesn’t even blink as Aris brings his head forward, over me, and bares teeth the length of Caryan’s body, snapping them shut mere inches away from his face. Aris’s breath ruffles Caryan’s hair as he exhales smoke.
“Aris,” Caryan just drawls, his voice deep and melodious, but dangerous all the more.
Aris keeps his teeth bared. I shout at him mentally, only to realize that he has his shields down. He has blocked me out…for the first time. Totally.
I try not to be hurt. I’m too scared for that.
“I should end you right here as a fitting punishment for treason,” Caryan says.
Ice-cold horror sluices through me as a familiar long silver sword with blue-shimmering runes appears in Caryan’s hand. Aris just roars again in answer, a sound even more violent coming through his teeth. This is going to end deadly.
I hurl up the walls between Caryan and me, and for a split second, I’m swamped. It’s like a floodgate, and everything pours into me and back to him.
I’m not prepared, but neither is Caryan, it seems, because his head snaps back to me, his eyes wide with too many of my emotions.
“You cannot kill him!” I say into his mind, panic clear in my voice.
He just angles his head in a predatory way. “All the things you’re telling me I allegedly cannot do. It might be time to demonstrate to you how wrong you are.”
His voice is deep and vicious in my mind. I can feel talons running along the underside of my skin, making me gasp. Writhe.
He laughs quietly, and I wonder whether now I’ve let him in, he could just dig those talons into my mind and end me. I should pull those floodgates up again, but I can’t. Right now, I’m too focused on Aris to hunt for Caryan’s dark talons somewhere inside of me.
“We had an agreement,” I remind him. “You broke it by coming here.”
Fangs snap into me mentally as Caryan’s eyes fill with black fire. “Yes. We had an agreement. And you violate it every day by refusing to train your magic. You broke the terms. I waited. I gave you time—but you failed. And now it’s off the table.”
“Aris saved me once, so spare him. Please,” I breathe as those talons repeat their movement, slicing torturously slowly along my insides.
It takes everything not to cringe at the feeling, on the verge of pain, almost unbearable.
What the hells is this? Something that makes me want to crawl out of my own skin and vomit at the same time.
“This is not a good enough cause,” Caryan drawls, and the brief flash of fury I spotted is replaced by a void of emotion. “None of this would have happened if you hadn’t run from me.”
Anger boils up in me. Dangerous and stupid anger. “You made me run from you!”
“I was patient with you. I warned you not to run. I asked you what I must do to make you stay. You brought this upon yourself. He is going to die for this. Maybe then you will finally learn from your mistakes. It’s about time you encounter a sense of consequence.”
Every word feels like the lash of a whip, pelting me. Panic swamps me, swallows me entirely. I feel as if the ground has been swept from under my feet as cold determination flashes in Caryan’s eyes. He lets me feel it too.
In this moment, I know he is going to slice Aris to pieces, right in front of my eyes. Butcher him until nothing is left.
I walk closer until I stand right next to Aris’s monstrous head. His one eye blinks at me, and I feel him pushing against our bond, which I had shielded when I began speaking with Caryan.
I open the doors a tiny crack, enough to say, “This is between me and him. Don’t you dare make this worse for you! Stop growling.”
“I will not leave you here alone!”
“You will leave me forever, Aris, if you’re not quiet! Promise me to stay out of it!”
“I swore to protect you—”
“You can’t always protect me, Aris. That’s life.”
“I will not—”
“Promise me! Aris! I don’t want to live without you! I can’t.”
He grumbles but clearly hears the sheer, undiluted terror in my voice. The truth in it. He knows Caryan better than most.
Finally, he snorts, “Alright.”
I seal the tiny crack and lock him out once more, like I did during training with Kyrith.
Then I look back at Caryan. A breeze ruffles his wings, his black hair.
His beauty, such a stark contrast to his cruel, deadly nature.
His magic still comes off him, and I can feel it coming for me.
Undulating all around my skin, brushing under my clothes and up my body.
Another demonstration for me of just how utterly helpless I am. That he can do anything to me.
He’s showing the world too. That he still owns me. By law. Because, strictly taken, I am nothing but a runaway slave.
I keep my chin up, not showing how much it affects me. The trespass. The humiliation in front of all of my friends and classmates.
I get enough of a grip on myself to hurl up those walls again, at least enough to block the flow of my emotions again. My thoughts too.
Caryan’s vicious snarl in my mind tells me he feels it, but he can’t do anything against it.
His eyes harden and turn as black as onyx, matching his tone as he growls into my mind, “Oh, I can, Melody. Shall we go somewhere private and see how long you hold up those shields when I’m not miles away but right before you?”
I clench my teeth as his magic crawls over my skin again, a reminder of how he shoved it into me. How he almost broke me. He just laughs as he sees me shudder.
“Then let’s go. But let Aris live. I’ll do anything you ask from me.”
“Oh, you will do it anyway.”
I flinch at the open threat, at the promise in his eyes, but manage to keep my face blank. Never show any weakness. Lyrian beat this into me, and maybe, for the first time, I’m grateful for this lesson. I ask, “Tell me what I must do.”
“It’s too late for that.”
I can feel his fury. I know everyone is watching.
And with a last glance at Aris, I fall to my knees.
Caryan’s eyes darken. “So predictable. This is all it takes to make you go down on your knees.”
I feel his disdain glittering down that bond. Slick and raw and ugly.
His sensuous lips are curled in what looks like a sneer of disgust. “Threatening to butcher the little, traitorous friend of yours.”
“Isn’t this what you want? To have me on my knees?” My mental voice is not more than a whisper while I look up at him through my lashes.
“Not even close,” he snarls back, but his eyes drift to my lips briefly before they lock onto mine again. He lifts the sword in his hand.
“Please don’t. Please—” I hurl up the floodgates between us, let him feel everything I’m feeling again.
Fear. Desperation. Panic. Fatigue. Misery.
Humiliation. “If you kill him, you’ll break my heart.
And you need me to function. I’m of no use for you broken.
” I let him feel it, because it’s true. And maybe he can’t feel anything himself.
Maybe it’s true what he once said, but he sure can feel my feelings now.