40 #2
“Your ridiculous little heart,” he snarls, but I feel him falter. I can see a conflict in him as he weighs what I just said. Eventually, he says, “We will see how training goes. Fail me again and he will die. Do you understand?”
“I won’t.”
His head flicks to Aris. He snarls, “Get out of my sight,” and Aris, with a last, fiery look at me, snaps out his wings and takes off with a furious screech.
Caryan turns to me and I try not to tremble under the weight of his full attention. “And you—you’re going to prove that right now,” he says out loud now.
He grabs my arm. At the same time, a whirlwind of darkest magic erupts all around us. Screams fill the air. I briefly glimpse faces with eyes wide and mouths open.
“Caryan, please—” My head whips around and I spot Riven. He must have heard and come. His lilac eyes meet mine through the torrent of magic that whispers and hisses all around us.
Caryan only looks over his shoulder at him. “Oh, I’ll make sure you hear her scream, Riven,” he counters as he yanks me closer and I’m stumbling up to him as if I weigh nothing. Then the magic swallows us whole, and total darkness surrounds me.
It feels like the bunker. My throat immediately closes up, too tight to gulp down air. No! No!
“I know you hate the dark. Do something about it.” Caryan’s voice. Somewhere.
He lets go of my arm, but I can feel how close he still is in the dark. My panicked mind seizes on his words. His proximity.
His magic comes for me again, like the night I fled.
I feel that deadly thing he gave me rising in answer to the darkness, as if called and lured by it. As if it’s part of it now and wants to be complete again.
“Good. Let it up,” Caryan whispers down my neck, his breath licking up my spine.
I startle, then shake my head. Ridiculous, because he can’t see it. But I won’t let the magic up.
I clamp down on it, force it back into the elaborate prison I built. I can’t. I would doom them all. Kill them all, as I killed those wolf shifters in the Black Forest. I shove that power back down with all the strength and will I have.
“Not so fast,” Caryan says, as if he knows exactly what I’m doing. He catches my naked wrist.
My magic erupts, called by his touch. Amplified by him for reasons beyond my grasp. But it happened the last time, and it happens now.
Rays of silvery light rip and burst out of me in radiant glitter, curling in the blackness like tendrils of smoke.
My skin is suddenly alive with my power, moonlight running underneath it.
I can see Caryan’s face as my light dances over the perfect planes.
His black eyes shine silvery, like two crescent moons.
I am a star in a universe, keeping the ravenous darkness at bay.
Why does he amplify it?
“Like calls to like,” he says, as if reading the question from my face.
I want to wrench my wrist free and break the contact, but he holds firm, pulling my arm back, stretching it.
“Oh no. We’re not done yet,” he says. “Not even close.”
I hiss in pain as his magic starts to cut along my arm, like a black, insubstantial monster’s talon. Similar to the one that just ran along the inside of my mind. Blood drips, running hot and red over my skin. My eyes are wide as I stare at Caryan, then at my blood.
The distraction, the pain—both are too much.
Something in me finally breaks free.
That deadly power surges up in a full-blown eruption.
Silvery lightning rains down from the darkness, striking again and again and again.
This power of mine is roaring, snarling, biting.
A beast, a creature of destruction and chaos and ruin.
A monster I just freed from its cage. A monster that’s been suppressed for too long.
It rips into his magic, but his just curls around it, absorbing every one of its deadly strikes without attacking back. I shake from the strain as it pours out of me. Horrified.
I’ll kill them all. It will wreck the campus, the temple. Kill all my friends. How can he allow such a thing to happen?
But strangely enough, even as I’m torn apart, another part of me feels lighter. Relieved. Healthier. Stronger.
Caryan eventually lets go of me, and I sink to my knees, on the brink of a breakdown. I’m suddenly terribly tired. Too tired to keep standing, as if my body has shed every last bit of energy. I know it’s because I’m still too weak. It’s pathetic.
The darkness around us vanishes. I brace myself for the chaos, the death, as the deadly void that held us dissipates like mist in the air, revealing nothing but the lawn, dawn already gracing the horizon in a gentle blush.
I blink as if my eyes are playing a cruel joke on me.
Nothing is destroyed. Everything is as peaceful as can be. As if Caryan absorbed all that evil power as it erupted out of me.
He looks down on me as if I am dirt in front of his boots. Something he might just kick aside with his foot. “We’re going to repeat this until you learn to call it on your own.”
I push myself up, grappling for some remaining shred of dignity. For some sharp words. But I come up empty. There is just exhaustion and the remnants of my terror.
“It was a gift, you know. That magic. You’ll realize this one day,” is all he says before he disappears in a cloud of darkness.
***
The lawn is empty. Empty, but…intact. The grass as plush and green as ever.
I stare, running my fingers through it, still distrusting my eyes, as if they could lie to me.
A part of me expected burnt bodies and crumbled buildings.
But everything is as it was, the lawn unscathed, not a leaf of the flowering trees ruffled, birds warbling away.
Whatever Caryan did, he prevented my devastating magic from wreaking havoc.
Night falls as I stay there, too tired and shaken to get up.
I look over at the university building. Lights are on inside, the complex warm and inviting. Distant laughter and the murmur of conversations drift over to me. Dinner.
They all went to dinner. That’s why no one is around.
I was in there with Caryan the whole afternoon without realizing it.
I allow myself to take a minute to let it all settle in.
They’re all still alive. Safe. Unharmed.
Finally I let out a shuddering breath, brushing sweaty strands of my hair out of my face.
Thank the Abyss no one is around. I don’t know what I would do if the students were still here, staring and gossiping.
I get to my wobbly feet and make my way over to the campus, my whole body aching from the aftermath of the magic. I barely make it back to my room I feel so dizzy.
All I want is a bath. And a bed.
To my surprise, a bath is already running and some food sits on a plate next to it. This time it’s not from the campus, but from Blair…a platter laden with bread and cheese, nuts and grapes, and some cold meat. There is a note, too, tucked under the plate.
Have gone out hunting with Aris. Enjoy your bath and eat! PS: I hope you’re okay. Blair
I stare at the note. Blair. Hunting. With Aris.
I wonder whether Blair realizes that she’s changed. I know she did it for Aris, taking him out for a hunt. Because being cut off from me, knowing I was somewhere with Caryan, must have been true hell for him.
I peel off my clothes and ignore the still-hurting cut on my arm, careful to keep it out of the hot water as I immerse myself in the bathtub.
Aris. I should talk to him. Let him know I survived.
“I’m fine,” I shoot down our bond after I opened the gates between us a tiny crack.
“It’s about time you’re back. I am coming home.”
“No. Stay. I’ll just go to bed,” I say back, although a part of me wishes for nothing more than to curl up against his warm little body and let his heat seep into me.
“I will come back anyway,” he says, because he knows, although the doors to my emotions are still sealed.
“No. I need some time alone,” I lie. “Enjoy the goats.”
“Bears,” he rumbles.
“Good night, Aris. I love you.” I shut the door and put my head under water.
For a moment there is only my heartbeat, but where that constant roaring of caged magic was, thrashing against me, there is now only…
silence. Peace. Calm. Gone is the permanent thrum under my skin, pushing to get out, because this afternoon, I released every last bit of it.
For the first time in a year, I feel a little bit lighter.
Indeed, when I get out of the water eventually and meet my face in the mirror, the dark rims under my eyes are gone, and I no longer look so frail. Even my appetite is back, and I wolf down the food in record time.
As if the campus senses it, a huge piece of dark chocolate cake appears on my desk.
“Thank you,” I whisper to the kind magic and dig in.
Then I sigh. Abyss save me, but this is delicious.
“It’s the best cake I ever ate. Not that this means much, because I hardly ever got cake, but this is heaven,” I say while I lick the sticky chocolate off my fingers.
A warm breeze blows around me, and I realize that the campus… is flattered. And a little embarrassed.
I frown up at the ceiling with a laugh. “Really? Wait…did you make this yourself?” I ask carefully. I assumed the house conjured things up from the kitchen. From meals the staff prepared, but suddenly, I’m no longer so sure. The campus learned that I like chocolate and…
Another, ever-so-gentle, breeze around my ankles. A confession.
“You made this for me?” I gather.
Another gust of wind plays through my hair, tinged with the scent of roses. I swallow hard, my heart suddenly tight.
“That’s sweet,” I whisper. “Very sweet of you.”
The scent of roses grows stronger, and then, one more thick slice of cake appears.
“I can’t,” I say, but the gust urges me toward it, as if to say Eat, you will need it.
For training, as if it knows.
Sentient, Shay said—the campus is sentient. I never fully grasped what that meant. But it knows what happened. It isn’t merely enchanted. It isn’t just magic. It has a soul.
All the lessons with Kyrith. The hot baths for my healed bones, the ointments and balms for my still-sore body. I always thought some healer came by and put it there out of pity. It was the campus all the while.
“It was you. All the time,” I breathe.
The curtains dance in the wind, as if with joy. Then the plate with the cake slides closer to me.
“Okay…but only because it’s so good,” I concede and wolf down this piece even faster than the first.
When I’m done, the softest of breezes suddenly whisks over my skin like a hand trying to pull me along.
I frown and get up, following this tug until I stand in the corner of the room.
The breeze slides along my neck and I instinctively look up.
The lights go on, the fae flames flickering stronger than ever.
Suddenly, the whole room is drenched in bright light.
I stare at the faint images of colorful paintings that once must have covered the whole ceiling and now have faded almost to oblivion.
I hadn’t seen them before, but then, I haven’t yet looked at the ceiling so closely.
“Wow, those are beautiful,” I say, and the breeze wafts around me in a gentle kind of tornado, flowers from the wisteria in front of my window woven in, swirling around me and wrapping me in their sweet smell.
Out of nowhere, a set of brushes and paints appear on the floor, along with some jars holding pigments.
I raise my brows in surprise. “You want me…to restore them?”
The joyous tornado of air turns a little bit faster.
I swallow. “I’m honored. Yet…I’ve never painted on a wall . And I haven’t painted in a long while.” My heart squeezes tight at the kindness of the campus. Of all the people, it deems me skilled enough to paint its walls.
The brushes clink and slide closer to me, as if the campus wants to say I don’t care. I trust you , and at the same time, more and more flowers surround me.
Then the air suddenly stops and they flutter all around me like butterflies.
I laugh. “Alright. I’m gonna find some books about restoration techniques and then I’ll try my best, I promise you.”
The flower petals brush up against me, some clinging to my hair, and a warm breeze surrounds me one last time before it subsides.
“Okay, just one last thing,” I say, squinting up at the faded images. “I’m going to need more pigments than just those for the top layers later on. Do you have more stored somewhere?”
In answer, golden coins clink down next to me, along with an old map of Avandal’s town.
I raise my brows. “You want me to go to the town and buy them?”
A few more silvery coins clink down in answer.
“Okay,” I say, staring at the gold that’s probably way too much, but well, I have no clue how much pigments cost in the fae world. A few could be very rare and might be more expensive.
I put them all in a pouch the campus also provided and hide it in my underwear—a habit I adopted during my time at Lyrian’s, where I hid and hoarded everything I could get my hands on—from junk to gold—like a dragon, so I could escape one day.
Then, suddenly, sated and warm and tired as I am, my exhaustion hits me like a blow. I barely make it back to the bathroom to brush my teeth before I fall headfirst onto the bed.
Sleep has already claimed me before I can fully close my eyes.