44
“You Didn’t Kill Them, I Did”
Melody
Caryan appears as he did last time, without warning, just as Shay and I are sitting beneath the large tree among other students who’ve brought blankets and books.
The campus conjures all sorts of delicious little treats for us: fresh grapes, slices of cheese paired with fruit jams, honey and nuts, warm, freshly baked bread, and tartlets topped with raspberries and blueberries, their centers rich with vanilla or caramel.
I’m working on an assessment for magical history, and Shay and I decided to look into Avandal’s past as a dragon-rider academy—a topic I suggested and Shay, passionate as she is about anything dragon-related, eagerly agreed to.
So far, though, we haven’t found anything useful.
Even the archives came up empty when I sent my talent out to search for books on the subject.
The familiar tingle of Caryan’s power, which follows him everywhere, warns me, and I whip my head around as he steps out of a cloud of shadows. My heart drops and my knees turn weak as my nerves get the better of me, damn it.
I can’t help but notice the way his eyes shine with utter disgust as he runs them over me, finding me among the students. As if I’m not worth his time. As if he dreads every second with me. His face yields nothing, but I know the way he holds his wings.
Shame eats me alive, but hells, would I show him. I get up and lift my chin higher and walk toward him. No knee fall. No bowing.
His eyes flare. They’re dark today—not entirely black, but with irises of such deep charcoal they match the color of his wings. Sunlight doesn’t bounce off them; it seems to avoid him instead, shying away as if afraid he might absorb it, swallow it whole.
I do not look back. I do not look at all the students and instructors that all stand, only to fall to a knee. At Aris somewhere among them.
I avoid Caryan’s eyes when I walk up to him, looking straight at a point behind him.
I’m reckless, but I’m not a total fool. Not bowing is one thing, but looking him in the eye like a challenge is something entirely else for fae.
In this mood, chances are slim he would let an open show of disrespect pass.
A ring of darkness jumps alive around us, flames shooting skyward like last time. We’re trapped within, in the calm, like the eye of a hurricane, all black, blocking everything else out, shielding us from view.
Then it swallows us, and I’m again immersed in absolute darkness.
I try to keep breathing as the shadows engulf me. My muscles tense up in sheer reflex as his magic brushes along me like dew. Just so much darkness. It consumes me.
“Fight me,” he says from somewhere, his voice like a lash.
My heart threatens to jump out of my chest. I can’t . That behemoth in my veins suddenly quiets in his presence. Again. And I know what’s coming next.
Pain. His magic starts to undulate along my skin, on the verge of biting and burning me. I gasp as I realize what it’s doing. Peeling away my clothes. I can feel the fabric of my long sleeves being eaten up, bit by bit. Then he grabs my wrist, yanking me close.
I cannot see. I only feel him, absurdly enough the only warmth in the endless night.
I don’t breathe as he runs his finger along the cut he gave me. It’s infected and it throbs and hurts.
“You did not see a healer,” he says, and I wonder how the hells he can see anything in here. How does he know?
“It wasn’t necessary,” I lie, hating how my voice trembles.
He laughs quietly. A dead sound. “Call that magic,” he orders.
“I can’t.”
A scream shatters out of me as a long talon cuts the wound open again. Deeper. Wider. But, as if he cut a part of me open, light streams out of me, enough to illuminate our faces. Our bodies.
I glance down at my blood running over my arms. Panting, half sobbing, I meet his eyes. His shine in the darkness, even then, as if he is part of it.
“More,” he says, and that dark power in my veins rumbles, finally, as if answering to his call.
He angles his head. “More.”
“No!” I growl back between clenched teeth, still pushing down that force within me.
Granted, that magic protected me from that woman, or not woman , in the archives.
But letting it defend me is different to actively calling it.
The last time I released it fully, it almost ripped me apart.
So it is just my light that dances between us like tiny sparks.
Stars in a universe of darkness. So much like that night when it first showed, when he and I were in the bath… .
It seems like a dream. So much has changed between us since then.
“I do not have time for this, Melody. Don’t you understand?” he growls right back. “I’m running out of time, so call that magic!”
“No!”
His eyes hold mine as the tips of his fingers again form into long sharp claws. He cuts even deeper. My whole body shakes from the pain as he exposes my bone, but I don’t make a single sound. I won’t give him that.
My legs give out. I nearly fall to my knees, but he catches me with a strong arm as I slump against his body.
My head against his chest. Cold sweat streams down my forehead, mingling with tears.
My fingers dig into his shirt while the world around me flashes in black and white.
Light and darkness. The pain reverberating through my body.
“Call that magic and I make it stop,” he whispers, his voice suddenly low and deep, almost like a lover’s. His hand—a hand again and no longer clawed—runs along the column of my throat.
I find the strength to lift my head, to wrench free of his hold. Only because he lets me, I know. His obsidian eyes turn dark, a chasm opening in them. The yawning abyss of eternity.
I manage to pull my lips into the semblance of a smile. “Go. To. Hell.”
Fast as lightning, his hand shoots out and grabs my chin, bruising me. His upper lip curls back, showing me the full length of his fangs. I think he might just shatter my jaw with his grip.
“You will obey. I will make sure of that, and if it means that I have to cut you open from your scalp down to your toes…” he seethes, flashing his teeth at me at every word.
Just then his magic forms shackles around me that cut into my skin. They push me down on my knees, locking me into place.
I know I should beg. I should cower. Plead. Beg for forgiveness. But all I can feel is fury. Fury about my own helplessness, the injustice. It is chasing all common sense out of me. Something in me snaps.
I lift my chin and stare him down, king or no, because right now I don’t care. “Then do it. Because it’s not like anyone cares what happens to me anyway.”
“I do not care? I’ve been watching you and your stubborn games, Melody, day in, day out. For way too long. Your childlike acts of rebellion! You do not go to all of your classes. You refuse to fulfill our contract. You won’t call to your magic. I would not be here if I did not care.”
“Yeah, you know what? This is a fucked-up way of showing it!”
“You almost died in that human world because you were so stubborn and blocked me off—I will not allow it! I will not allow that you die, no matter the cost.”
I have no time to think that he said something similar before he forced his magic into me. Because this time, his talons dig into the wound again, tearing my flesh open wider and scratching along my bare bone. His power follows, flooding in, searing my ravished flesh like living fire.
I might have collapsed if the shackles weren’t holding me up. They wrench me upward until I’m standing before him, my wrists bound and lifting me into the air. I thrash, but the pain is too much.
Shattering me.
And just like that, the cage of power inside me shatters too.
It thoroughly shatters. Splinters. Breaks. The beast in my veins rears up, charging for him, more than eager to clash with his magic. I can no longer hold it back, because it ripped its leash along with it, and all there is, is violence.
A gray twin to his blackness, similar in its hunger for bloodshed and destruction.
There is a deafening sound, like thunder, and streaks of lightning hail down.
Black wafts of smoke wrap around them, as if to contain them.
I know I’m alive with silvery light, my skin glowing, but it is something like electricity that flickers around us, charging the air and biting into the darkness that is new.
And his blackness, answering, similar black streaks of lightning crackling around it in a deadly dance, violent reminiscences to the one time our magic gently brushed against each other.
This is a fight. Dirty. Lethal. But beautiful all the same.
I just let go, let it up and up and up, while letting my mental shields slide down, until I no longer know who I am or what or where.
It no longer matters. I am a flow of magic, a thing in between his mind and mine, created of his darkness and my light.
And the dark void around us, alive with crackling streaks of black and silver.
It goes on until I no longer can. Until everything in me pours into a last strike that is absorbed by his magic once again.
The shackles loosen and I fall to my knees. Almost collapsing in front of his boots, bracing myself with my last strength and iron will as I glare up at him.
“Intrepid as ever,” he purrs.
He drops to his knees, grabs my arm, and yanks it up. I clamp my teeth down against the blinding pain. It’s so sharp it nearly makes me vomit. He cuts his own arm with his teeth, and his blood warms mine as he holds it above mine. My skin heals where it runs over it.
The pain instantly subsides, leaving my skin intact as ever.
The cut on his arm heals immediately thanks to his fae healing and the runes tattooed on his body.
When I glance up, he licks my blood from his wrist. The color seeps into his irises, turning them an eerie crimson, glowing in the night like an aurora over a land of shadows.
Then darkness ripples, and I’m on campus again.
And he—is gone.
***