45 #2
The words tumble out before I can stop them. “And he’s never going to like me back, and I feel kind of stupid about it, and I know I should go to his classes, but I can’t deal with looking at him all the time because I don’t even know what’s going on with me—”
“Melody,” Faye says gently.
I stop. Abruptly. Mortified.
“I’d really love the book.”
Oh.
She takes it from my hands like it’s something precious. “And for the record,” she adds, “I think your rules are much better than the original ones.”
My throat tightens.
“…Okay,” I say weakly. “Good. Because I was about two seconds away from fleeing the room.”
“I’ll take good care of it,” she says, tapping the book lightly. “Promise.”
I nod, because my throat has decided it’s done cooperating.
“So—Riven Caedmon, the high lord?” she asks finally.
I blush even harder but nod, shifting my weight from one leg to the other.
“I’ve heard he’s beautiful,” she says, her voice perfectly even, her expression carefully composed—as if she hasn’t just listened to the most cringeworthy speech in fae history.
I stare at the spot where she’s standing, my chest feeling oddly tight, wishing the ground would open up and swallow me whole. But she still isn’t laughing. Or looking at me like I’m fragile, or ridiculous, or like I said too much.
And it dawns on me—slow and tentative—that maybe she doesn’t actually find me that awkward. Rambling, oversharing, glitter-loving mess that I am.
Maybe…I really do have a friend.
“I’ve seen him with Professor Evanalora,” I say, slumping into the chair opposite the desk and pulling my legs up toward my chest—even with my boots on. The library doesn’t seem to mind. No book comes flying at me.
“You’re the girl from the prophecy,” she says finally. “The silver elf.”
My eyes flit up to hers. “I thought that was a secret. Or at least they want me to keep it one,” I say tiredly.
“They?”
“Riven and Caryan.” I wave a hand as if I can disperse their presence.
“Caryan, as in, the Dark Lord?” she asks, a touch incredulously.
“Yeah. Like the dark, moody, grumpy Dark Lord.”
Her eyes widen with what I realize is actual shock. “Are you and he—”
“No, I’m not his lover!” I snap before I can help it. But having been looked at as Caryan’s slave—a.k.a. plaything in the bedroom—for way too long, the topic is seriously not a good one.
“I wasn’t going to say that,” she says quickly. “I just find it strange that he keeps you around, given what the prophecy says.”
“What does the damn prophecy say?” I don’t even try to hide my exasperation. All I ever hear are cryptic hints at the prophecy about Caryan and me.
Faye looks around as if someone might overhear us, and I’m not sure whether it’s because I used damn and prophecy in one sentence or because she truly is worried someone could be listening in. Either way, I don’t really care anymore.
“You don’t know?” she asks curiously.
“No. I don’t even know exactly what the prophecy says—I mean, like, the actual prophecy. No one will ever tell me anything really. And it sucks.”
“Oh…” Her eyebrows are higher than I’ve ever seen them.
I laugh. “Sorry, that must all sound very weird.”
“Yes, it does. But I guess I’m weird, too, so…” She gets up, and I frown as she rummages through the shelf behind her.
She returns with a heavy book. “Here. Let’s read the prophecy.”
“You have it in that book?”
She nods, opening the pages. “Yes, we catalog every official prophecy given by one of the oracles. It’s our law.”
Now my brows shoot up. “Official prophecy? Are there unofficial ones?”
“Yes—the ones given by the seers. But when one of the three oracles speaks, the prophecy is usually momentous. A few people still seek them out in hopes of glimpsing the future, but since such encounters rarely end with the seeker alive, most consider it unwise. When the oracles choose to deliver an official prophecy, they command a priestess and an acolyte to record it for them. But they do so only very rarely.”
I lean back in the chair, blowing a strand of hair out of my face. “Wow, there are so many things I don’t yet know about this world. And I wonder whether I ever will.”
Faye’s beautiful eyes soften. “Honestly, I like it. It makes you…unique. And refreshing. And who cares about bureaucracy anyway?”
I laugh. “Well, you. Because it’s kind of your job.”
Her smile falters a bit as she looks down at the mess of scrolls and the book that apparently holds the prophecies. “Right. My job,” she says quietly, with a kind of resignation I can’t interpret. Then she starts rifling through the pages, until she finally shoves the book over to me.
I read it and frown. “Okay…so I get the silver-blood thing, but what about those ‘lips that quench their thirst’? I mean, Caryan drank from me. And what is the blight?” Damn, why do these things always have to be so cryptic?
My stomach rumbles and a piece of delicious chocolate cake appears. I don’t hesitate a second and take a hearty bite of the delicious thing. Then I sigh.
Faye watches me closely, tilting her head.
Her hood has slipped off again, and her long hair sways to the side.
“There are a lot of interpretations. As soon as a prophecy is out, all priests tend to give their opinions on it. But the most common one is that Caryan is the blight,” she says, her eyes watching me intently.
“What? So I’m, like, going to be his end?” I almost choke on my second bite and cough. “Like— kill him?” Like—what the actual fuck?
“That’s how I’d read it. And it seems to be the general interpretation,”Faye says carefully. “But of course, it can mean something else entirely,” she adds quickly when she sees my face.
“Honestly, it must be a joke, because I’d never kill him.”My mind spins. Is everyone really thinking that I’m the one to kill Caryan? I mean, that sounds too absurd to be true.
“Do you like him?” Faye asks, so forthrightly that it throws me off guard. Finally someone who’s not treading around the subject as if it were poisonous or explosive.
I lean back, deliberately chewing my cake a moment longer than necessary before I swallow. “Wow. That’s a hard question.”
“Are you close to him? You’re referring to him in such a familiar way,” she points out carefully.
I drop my gaze to my hands, catching my lower lip between my teeth.
If I can be honest with anyone, it’s her.
That’s why I came here. Why I told her about Riven.
I need a friend. Someone who is as sheltered and cut off as I am, even if it’s in a different way.
But she’s different, too, just like I am.
And I get the feeling that she really understands me in a way Shay, Ryder, or Cassius never could.
I like them, very much even, but every relationship is different, and my feeling tells me that they just wouldn’t understand.
They would wonder why someone with the chance to be Caryan’s precious silver elf, with a place at his damn court, wouldn’t run and grasp the opportunity. They’re too fae to understand.
Strangely enough, Faye isn’t.
“It’s strange between us. We have a bond.” I frown, then meet her eyes, finding nothing but openness and gentleness there, reflected in her aura.
So I tell her. I tell her that I was a slave at Caryan’s court. What he did to me. About our weird mental space and how I blocked it.
“Hm, that bond obviously seems to be part of the prophecy,” she muses once I’m done.
“Obviously.”
“Did you ever ask him about it?”
My eyes widen. “What? No. Gods, no. That man can’t give me a straight answer. Ever.”
“But would he?” she pushes.
“I don’t…I don’t want to talk to him. Like, at all.” Melody, you’re a damn liar.
“But he trains you. He—”
“But every time we’re close, my body reacts to him in a way I don’t want it to,” I blurt, then bite my tongue. I shouldn’t be talking about that, but hells, it feels good.
“Because you’re in love with Riven,” Faye says gently.
I want to deny it. But what point would there be in doing so? “Yes, I guess I am,” I say finally, hiding my face in my hands.
“And he…does he like you too?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes he looks at me like he does. And when he kisses me it’s like…there’s more between us. But then, the next second, he’s cold and distant again.”
She purses her lips. Another slice of cake has appeared between us. Orange. Her favorite—and she takes a hearty bite.
“Does Caryan know?” she asks finally.
“Not his problem,” I snap back.
“Well, maybe it is,” she suggests quietly.
I think about what Blair once said to me. That Caryan doesn’t share.
I just shrug.
“Have you and he…?”
I flinch, then hide my face again and shake my head. Heat creeps up my face.
“Have you ever been with anyone before?” she asks, and I shake my head again. “Me neither,” she says.
I lower my hands to look at her. And suddenly, seeing her like this, I just can’t let her live here. Wasting a life away from sunshine and joy and friends. And love.
“Don’t become an acolyte,” I say.
Her head whips up.
“Don’t. Come with me. Up. At least train with me and Blair before you make that decision,” I quickly amend when I notice the sheer terror on her face.
The mention of Blair makes her pause and her aura light up. So I probe on.
“She might turn you into a warrior, so that, even without magic, you’re no longer powerless.”
Faye chews on her cheek. “She’s become some kind of beacon. A lot of the scribes, and even some acolytes, watched how she fought Kyrith.”
“She trains us now. I mean, her lessons are pure torture, but she agreed to train us. I’m sure she’d train you too.”
“I have no magic. I’m a lesser fae. They…they spit on people like me. We’re born servants,” Faye says quietly, avoiding my eyes. “We’re low life.”
“What?” Anger rushes through my veins. “You’re not low life. Never say that,” I say, harsher than I mean to.
Her cheeks are flushed, and her eyes wide. “Yes, I am. I’m surprised you even talk to me.”
“What?”
“It’s the law of this world. And the university only accepts students with a lot of talents and magic in their veins.” She shakes her head. “I’d never be accepted.”
“Then the law of the world is fucked up. Yes, I would talk to you! And Blair would train you without a moment’s hesitation,” I say, knowing it’s true.
“Gods, Blair even loves humans,” I add, because hells did I learn that human is also actually the equivalent of an insult.
“Or become a healer if you don’t want to be a fighter. ”
She looks away at that. “I told you I can’t become a healer.”
“Yeah, because you think you’re not worth it,” I say.
But she cuts me off. “No. Because I don’t want to be a healer,” she says finally, her face suddenly shaded by anger and darkness.
“As a healer, you have to tune your magic to the energy of the person you want to heal. And even if I don’t have any magic and would only ever make potions, it’s the same.
You have to make the potion for the patient, meaning your whole being has to tune in with theirs, and also be imbued with peacefulness and the will to heal them.
” She lets out a shuddering breath and, again, fire burns in her eyes when she looks at me.
“I’m just too angry to be a healer, Melody. ”
Our eyes meet again, and I see the plea in her aura for me to understand. Just as I wished to be understood by someone else.
“Sometimes I want to burn those people who did this to us. I want to harm them. Quarter them. Drown them,” she says, her eyes darting around the room, her teeth clenched, her aura suddenly a dark thunderstorm.
I wait, and finally she says, hiding her eyes behind her hand, “When I was little, my father used to tell me bedtime stories. And he always made the heroine a beautiful dragon-rider. She was strong, brave, and fierce—and a warrior. And then he gave me those earrings, telling me that I might be like her one day.”
Finally, she lifts her hand from her eyes.
“When I grew up, I finally came to realize that his words were a children’s tale designed for a child with no magic in her veins and no future.
Because there are no dragons left in this world.
And even if there were, I’d never be a rider because of what I am.
” She swallows hard. “And that’s fine, you know.
But—I could never be a healer either. I still have so much anger in me.
And I know it’s probably a terrible thing to say, but I’d rather shatter some villain’s bones than mend those of a good person. It’s just not my nature.”
I nod when she finally looks back at me. In her aura, I see that she’s terrified of my reaction.
“I understand,” I offer and genuinely mean it.
“And no, it’s not a terrible thing to say at all.
I couldn’t be a healer either, and probably for the same reason.
” I smirk at her. “And you know what, fuck it. Let’s go out there and just have…
fun. At least I’d not be the only one collapsing after one minute when doing planks. You need to get out there, Faye.”
“I can’t,” she says quietly, avoiding my eyes, fidgeting with her robe.
I get up. “Well, I gotta go, because I have another friend who I need to spend time with. But think on it, about joining our training. See you tomorrow,” I say, and then gently put down the golden earring Blair got fixed for me—I think she probably had Meanara do it for her—the tiny dragon emblem shining as it catches the light.
Faye stares at it. “How did you—it was in the drawer of my nightstand,” she stammers.
“Well, what can I say? Aris is a sneaky little bastard and a shapeshifting demon, and, well, Blair’s a witch with good connections,” I say, then turn and leave.