44 #3
I look back at him in silence. And he lets me.
It’s been more than a year since I saw him, and part of me needs to take him in. I notice the sharp angles of his face. He hasn’t changed, and at the same time, I can tell that something is different. As if the last year took a toll on him too.
Or maybe I just want to believe that. Want to believe that whatever I felt—that twisted, dark thing between us—wasn’t one-sided. That whatever he did to damage our bond affected him too.
I don’t know why I want that, though. Revenge, I tell myself—but I know that’s not it. It’s a far more pathetic reason.
“It would have…made a difference,” he says after a very long while. He turns his head away, offering me his stunning profile.
I brace myself for what comes next.
Out of reflex, or sheer self-preservation, I pull my shields back up far enough to stop the ebb and flow between us, as natural as the movement of an ocean. As natural as breathing. To block it feels strange. Painful, even. As if a part of me goes missing. I wonder whether it feels the same to him.
His eyes shift into a stormy gray in answer, and his gaze snaps back to me, as if I had just tugged at his sleeve. “Do. Not. Do. That. Again.” His voice is low. A growl. A warning. A threat.
I’m just so tired. I keep looking at him, my fingers digging into the blanket.
I wonder what will happen now that I obviously broke our contract.
Now nothing is holding him back. Nothing kept him from coming here.
I can barely stand the intensity in his gaze, as if he can read every dark thought I’m having, even if my shields are halfway up.
“I know I hurt you,” he says after another pause. “Sometimes I forget how young you are. You look so grown up. I forget that it is all a facade.” He looks back at me, and I flinch. His gaze is like a touch. A branding. “But I need you to be able to defend yourself.”
I watch him, spellbound and strung too tight.
“I thought it was defiance. Rebellion—” He catches himself, no doubt trying to detangle what he’s been feeling through our bond. A frown appears between his eyes. “But you…you were afraid.” He angles his head, eyeing me from head to toe. “Afraid you would kill them all.”
The moment his says this, something between us shifts and fractures. Because, in that very moment, I see understanding entering his eyes. I hadn’t realiz
ed how much I needed it until I finally felt it.
I dig my fingers even deeper into the soft duvet, let my hair shield my face.
“I hurt them. I killed them, those wolf shifters in the Black Forest. I never meant to kill them—but the magic just did it. And I couldn’t make it stop.
And now I’m terrified that I’ll kill my friends.
That I just ruin everything and everyone I care about.
I have nightmares about it. Sometimes I can’t sleep. ”
Tears fill my eyes anew, and suddenly he’s kneeling before me, gently brushing back my hair, his fingers leaving a scorching trail over my skin, as if branding me with more of his magic.
“I do know how that feels, Melody. I do know how, sometimes, it would be easier to scorch it all to ashes and dust. That a dark part of you wants that, because I want that too sometimes.” His voice is so low, so soft.
Ice rakes down my body as I meet his eyes. This close they look like shimmering tar. Endlessly dark, the blue and red extinguished. I don’t dare say anything.
His fingers tighten in my hair, drawing lazy circles.
“But I don’t. I accept that things need to run their course.
That some creatures have a will on their own.
” He grazes my jaw defiantly gently. “I accept that things must be that way. I understand that this unpredictability and wildness are the concept of this world.”
He straightens and stands, as if he just realized what he revealed.
He looks down at me, his face half veiled by the shadows. “You didn’t kill them, Melody. I did.”
The words fall like stones in a cave. I sit up. “What?”
“The wolves. In the Black Forest. I hunted them down. I found the dome of magic and shattered it. Within, I found the wolf shifters and Connus. They were alive. They had burn marks, but they’d already healed.
They’re dead now. Not because of you—but because of me.
I killed them for what they did to you. Not your magic. ”
The world flickers, and then, he’s just gone.
I stare at the place where he was standing, my heart pounding, from everything that just happened. What he did. What he just said. What he revealed.
But, of all the things, what he said last meant the most. He killed them all. Not me.
It should make me sad that he found and executed them, I know. And it does.
But another part of me is relieved. I didn’t kill them. My magic, monstrous as it is, didn’t just go against my will and kill them.
I know that what Caryan just told me was a gift, meant only for me.
I close my eyes, and, for the first time since that awful day, I fall into a dreamless slumber.