42
The Thing That Hunts Below
Melody
We meet Blair, who’s laden with bags and bags of whatever the hells she bought, and finally leave Avandal after a thorough sweep through the food markets, where I buy Aris an entire assortment of violet carrots and apples with pink flesh from the money the campus gave me—although most people come and offer him food on their own because he’s so beautiful.
We even stop several times because he lets children pet him before we walk on.
I buy some chocolate-covered fruits on sticks for Faye and me at a stand on the bridge.
Then Aris, Blair, and I head back up the well-trampled path through hip-high grass.
It’s lined with pines and cypresses and bushes, fat, ripe berries glistening on their thorny vines, the midday sun baking down on us.
My fingers come away with blood when I pick a blackberry, but they taste like honey and dew and something forbidden, and I think it was worth it.
Aris has been carrying all the sacks of pigments I bought, and I unload them from his back as we part ways with Blair. I quickly take everything to my room. Then Aris and I make our way to the library.
The archives feel even more claustrophobic after the gentle, lively hum of the city and the warmth of the sun still on my skin. I shudder when Aris and I pass the curtain of wards, heading down the bleak, stony corridor to the heavy metal door at its end.
I find Faye between the rows, shelving books from a cart. She holds her lower back with one hand after she climbs the rolling ladder to lift an especially heavy tome over her head into the highest row.
“Wow, I guess I should have brought you some healing water in a keg instead of this,” I joke, holding out the chocolate-covered berries.
Her face lights up. I wonder whether it’s because of me, Aris, or the delicacy I brought her, but then decide it doesn’t matter, because the wide smile she gives me is so worth it.
“Oh my gods, how did you know I love these?” she asks, taking hers and immediately plucking a fruit off the stick.
“I didn’t, but now I do,” I say with a grin in return.
“Abyss, you really made my day. I have to shelve all those, and it sucks.”
I frown. “Can’t you use magic to shelve them?”
“I could if I had air or earth magic, but since I have none—no,” she says quietly.
“Well, I could help you,” I offer.
“Gods, no. I can’t take up your time with simple tasks like that.”
“What?”
“No, you’re…you can’t stack books,” she says quickly, her cheeks flaming.
“Why can’t I? Because I’m half-human?”
She throws her hands over her mouth, shaking her head. “No. Because you’re the girl who can translate the books, and it would be a waste of your talents.”
I tsk and grab the cart of books, starting to push it down the corridor between the shelves before she can protest further.
I bite back the comment that Caryan certainly didn’t think that —considering he made me clean his damn fortress day in and day out, scrubbing the fucking floors until my knees were raw and bleeding, while he could’ve wiped the place spotless with his magic in a second. Bastard.
Hells. Why am I even thinking about him again?
Because seeing him after all that time does something to me. It gets under my skin. My body aches. My soul aches. I even want him to train me again if it means seeing him—no matter what he does to me, no matter how cruel he’s gonna be. I want to be near him. I want his attention. I want—
Oh shit. No. Stop. Gods.
That’s so fucked up.
“Besides, Aris can fly them up there,” I chirp lightly, like my mind isn’t a complete disaster, forcing myself back into reality.
Aris rumbles something about not having hands, but I know he doesn’t really mean it.
“Please don’t—” Faye starts again, but I straight-out snarl at her, and the effect is immediate—she pales and staggers a few steps back from me.
“Sorry. Too much?” I ask, kind of alarmed. “I didn’t mean it that bad. I…I’m not used to snarling. People don’t snarl in the human world,” I quickly explain. “I guess I still have to find the fine-tuning.” I give her a sheepish smile.
“No, it’s okay. Point taken.” She meets my gaze with a gentle look in return. “And if you really insist on helping me, I won’t object.” She bends over the cart and hands me a stack of books. “Those go on level one, right here in the third corridor. I’ll bring these to level two.”
“What—no! Let me and Aris do it!” I grab the stack of tomes she’s taken out, wriggling against her chest, and pull them from her arms. My mind goes wild with what Blair told me about the archives—and how scribes sometimes go missing.
I’m not a scribe, and I have a shape-shifting demon with me, so I’m fairly confident no one’s going to try to eat me.
Well, not really—but I’d still rather go down there myself than let her do it.
And besides, I might find more books down there.
“I’ll take them down. You take care of the rest here, and we’ll meet again in an hour at your desk?”
She swallows.
“Deal,” I say before she can object, and turn on my heels.
Aris and I head toward the stairs that lead down to level two.
As always when I’m down here, my skin starts crawling with something I can’t quite name.
As if there’s an energy—a presence—that reaches out to mine and runs along my skin like a ghostly dark hand, pulling me on, urging me to probe deeper. Farther.
I stare down another long corridor of books, glancing toward the space in the back that’s so dark I can’t make out its end.
“Come, little one. Let’s not linger,” Aris warns, and there’s an unmistakable edge in his voice.
“ What is this? You feel it, too, don’t you?”
“I do. And it’s nothing good, so come,” Aris confirms grimly.
I stare for a few seconds longer, at the darkness that looks like some kind of mist, beckoning me to come, come. Come!
I stagger backward, snapping out of it as those icy fingers slip from me once more. I quickly shelve the books on level two, then Aris and I move back toward the lighter areas where the acolytes linger.
But that presence—that feeling of being watched—stays with me all the way back to Faye’s office, and not even the fire in the hearth can warm it out of me.
***
Faye yawns as she leans back in her chair, clearly as tired as I am, but her eyes are brimming with the knowledge we’ve brought back into this world.
More and more, I get a clearer picture of the history of the fae realm.
This world had once been connected to others through portals—even to the nine hells.
Portals, not rips in the veil between worlds, through which demons could slink.
The creatures who came from there were called hellborns, like the Nefarians and the other races we learned about in Evanalora’s classes.
Most hellborns bore horns; a few were high fae.
Faye stretches her back with a sigh. “It’s such a shame that all the books only ever date back roughly five hundred years. I’d love to know what happened to the older ones.”
I take a sip of my tea, wondering whether I should tell her about the book I found that’s clearly much older—but then decide against it. Who knows what she’d do if she learned I’d ventured through the archives alone.
Then she leans forward, brushing back a strand of her long hair before frowning. Something golden falls into her hand. “Oh no.”
“What is it?”
“My earring…it seems to be broken.” She holds it up—a ring and a tiny dragon pendant that’s just come off.
“Let’s take it to a goldsmith. I’m sure he could fix it within minutes,” I offer.
“Or maybe someone can put a fixing spell on it.” Someone more skilled than me, because after my Wolf’s Howling, I’ll probably never be any good at brewing potions—and if the same applies to my spell-weaving skills, gods help us all.
Faye’s face falls as she stares at the golden earring in her hand, its twin still in her ear—and suddenly she looks close to tears. But fae can’t cry.
She closes her fist around it. “No, never mind.”
But her aura is so filled with sorrow that I say, “Come on. Let’s go together. Maybe we’ll find a professor on campus who can help us.” Even Riven could fix it for her.
Faye just shakes her head, clutching the earring tighter before slipping it into the pocket of her robe and abruptly getting to her feet. Then she frantically starts to gather all the scrolls. Her hands are actually trembling.
“Hey, what’s wrong?” I ask softly, resting a hand on her tiny shoulder.
“Nothing’s wrong,” she hisses, shrugging me off and turning away.
“We can fix this, Faye—”
“We can’t fix this!” she suddenly snaps, whirling around and baring her teeth—and I realize that if she could cry right now, she would. I stare at her, at all the pain pushing to the surface through her aura. Suddenly, all of her makes sense. “What happened to you?” I ask instinctively.
She stares at me like a cornered animal, her eyes full of fear and fury—the kind born of survival. The kind I know so well.
“I’m sorry—” I start quickly.
But she raises a hand, her eyes darkened by shadows. “Don’t! I don’t want your pity,” she spits, moving to storm past me—but I block her way.
Hells, she looks ready to rip into me, but I stand my ground. Maybe it’s not the right time. Maybe it’s my damn, stupid, straightforward way of handling things—always jumping in headfirst. Maybe I’m more fae than I believed—I simply won’t let her walk out on me.
“I don’t pity you. But you’re hiding down here, aren’t you?” I’ve seen plenty of scribes taking meals in the main hall, but never her. At least I’m fairly sure—her hair is kind of unique, and so is her aura.