48
When the Ground Opened
Melody
“You know they’re doing a ball for everyone who passed the year? They call it the Blue Moon Ball . ”
“Fancy name.”
“Yeah. Because, at the end of the year, on the tenth moon-phase, the moon over Avandal is going to turn fully blue for a whole night,” Ryder says while he chops some myrtle petals for what feels like the hundredth time.
“There’re celebrations all over town, but a ball for the students and some posh royals who’ve been invited. ”
He and I seem to share the same nonexistent talent for potions, because even Cassius has managed to brew Wolf’s Howling by now.
After class, we walked up to the space Blair and Meanara created for us students—a large table in a roofed, shady alcove open to the garden, surrounded by the vegetables and herbs Meanara grows.
It’s beautiful, that side of the temple.
Light filters through the high trees, dappling the plush, green grass, while cicadas sing above.
“Really? A real ball?” I ask, excitement flaring in my chest—right up until the thought of Riven, and whoever he’ll attend with, makes my heart drop. Straight into free fall.
“Yeah. A real ball,” he says.
I glance at him and notice his aura shifting. Something’s coming. He draws a deep breath.
“Do you think your scribe friend would go with me?”
I stop plucking the rosemary. “Faye? Well, I don’t know,” I answer truthfully. “But I think you could ask her.”
“You don’t think she’ll balk? I mean, I don’t want to spook her or anything. Since she’s coming to training now.” He suddenly seems nervous, shifting his weight from one leg to the other.
“No, I think it’ll be fine. Maybe she’d even like to come.
” I toss the rosemary into my boiling cauldron—and dare to look in when no explosion follows.
“Shit,” I mutter when the liquid turns a treacherous black instead of the gaudy red it’s supposed to be.
“Can’t you ask any of your packmates to do this?
You’re their alpha. You can order them to brew a potion for you, right?
Or maybe two?” I add hopefully, grabbing my cauldron and pouring its contents into the marble sink.
“Not that simple. Even if they’re years ahead of me. We have a wolf codex that forbids us from cheating.”
“What?”
He scratches his ear in a very wolfish way. “Yeah, I know, it’s silly. But our families have sent their kids to this university for centuries, and the campus demanded they make each of us swear an oath not to cheat.”
I snort a laugh. “That’s about the stupidest thing I’ve heard in a long time.” I walk into the garden, plucking some wild berries from the orchard near the forest.
I spin around when Ryder’s cauldron explodes, covering his hair in a paste that has the radiant amethyst of Riven’s eyes.
“Shit, no!” he groans. “That’s not gonna wash out without a proper spell. And we won’t be able to do those until at least end of next year, damn it.”
I step closer, biting back a smile at the sight of his now lilac hair.
“How bad is it?”
“Not too bad,” I lie.
He sighs with relief. Right. My friends don’t know I can lie. Hopefully, by the time he looks in a mirror, I’ll be long gone—or ready with an apology.
“But wait. What did you do to get that color?”
“Obviously, I grabbed the wrong damn scroll. That’s the one for fae hair dye, damn it!” he whines, running his fingers through his long hair.
I grab the scroll, quickly skimming the ingredients, then scan the area. I walk over to the silvery metallic boxes, where Meanara keeps supplies, and suppress a whoop when I spot rows of pigment jars.
“I’m gonna head back to the campus—try to get a spell,” Ryder mutters.
I nod, too focused on opening the cans. Fae hair dye. I didn’t even know that was a thing. My eyes catch on pigments the color of Riven’s eyes—a brimming, glistening lilac.
I carry my cauldron back to the blue fire burning in tiny pits embedded in the floor, then start mixing. Yeah, granted, I might not be able to brew Wolf’s Howling, but if Ryder managed this, I can, too, right?
Turns out I only suck at making potions, but not hair dye. And it’s actually fun. I spend the rest of the morning crafting colors, decanting them into glass flacons before heading back, a bag over my shoulder stuffed with jars of shimmering dye, smiling to myself.
I reach the university meadow right at lunch break, strolling among students pouring out of the campus doors, when a sudden rumble shakes the earth.
I stop, and the smile on my face dies as every instinct in me screams.
Because, hells, this isn’t an earthquake. Nor another rip between worlds. No—this tremor, deep and rolling beneath my feet—I know it. It comes from something moving underground. Fast.
I once escaped it. Barely. And only because Caryan saved me.
“Run!” I scream, a moment before the ground splits open and an unspeakably huge worm erupts. Its body is as wide as Aris’s wingspan in his largest form. A demon.
My heart leaps into my throat. The worm’s head is nothing but a circular maw of flesh-shredding teeth, massive pincers jutting from its foul mouth. It rears once, bending forward—then surges.
Screams fill the air as students scatter.
“Little one!” Aris’s ear-shattering roar fills my mind and the air alike.
I look up to see him spearing down toward me, massive wings slicing the sky. But even he looks small compared to the creature.
A few students stumble, and I scream for them as the worm’s maw plunges toward them—twenty people, maybe more. I sprint forward, remembering the last time: how my silver magic blinded a monster with no eyes.
I call it—beg it—to rise, and the well opens inside me. Silver light pours out, lightning crackling through it as it wraps the beast like mist.
It works. The worm rears back, shrieking, pincers snapping.
“Get your ass inside!” Aris growls in my mind.
“No! I can’t just let them die.”
“Not much you can do about that, little one.”
“Yes, there is.” I reach for the bond to Caryan and tear down the wall between us. He’s there instantly.
“Melody.”
“A worm. Here,” I manage to say before the creature tears free from my magic and dives again, bowing its body toward the crowd. Morgana’s among them. Her eyes cross mine and my heart stops at the sheer terror in them. Another few seconds, and they’ll be dead.
Aris swoops down, blue demonic fire spilling from his mouth, buying them precious seconds.
Where are you, Caryan?
The worm snaps its pincers as Aris’s claws dig into its leathery hide. He roars, tearing—but the monster is too huge, Aris’s strength not enough.
The students flee toward the campus, and that movement seals their fate. The worm surges after them, instincts triggered—
A wall of shadowfire flares up in front of it. The worm unleashes an ear-splitting screech that nearly blows out my eardrums before diving into the earth and vanishing underground.
The blood in my veins freezes as Riven’s eyes lock with mine. The ground trembles again. No one knows where it will strike next.
In a heartbeat, Riven is at my side. He scoops me up and launches us into the air.
“Put me down! We have to do something!” I shout. “We have to help them!”
“We can’t. I’ve never seen a monster that large,” he says, his voice tight with remorse.
My heart hammers as we hover, watching the earth split open again near the stables. The worm’s mouth bursts from the ground—and devours a cluster of fae. Red mist fills the air where they stood.
“No,” I whisper against Riven’s neck.
But the monster isn’t finished.
If anything, the brief taste has only sharpened its hunger, driven it into something ravenous and wild. It dives again—this time angling toward the cluster of students near the old tree, its white blossoms glowing like fallen stars against the terror below.
“Cassius!” I scream when I spot him among them, his face drawn tight with fear.
Riven tightens his grip, holding me as though he fears I might somehow slip free, wrench myself from his arms, and plummet straight to death. I twist against him, fury burning hot beneath the fear, but he holds fast, wings flaring slightly as though bracing against me rather than the air around us.
“I won’t let you,” he says, low and fierce.
The words curl through me, unwelcome and intimate all at once. Protective. Possessive. I hate that some treacherous part of me responds to it while another one wants to claw at him to let me down. Cassius is out there—and I am being kept . My friends are out there—again—while I’m dragged away.
I go rigid in his arms as the worm surges forward, unable to look away from the inevitable.
Students desperately throw up their hands, unleashing their magic—fire is screaming through the air, ice splintering, vines snapping taut—but the creature plows through everything, unstoppable. Cassius’s shield of ice cracks like spun sugar under a hammer.
He turns and runs. My breath dies in my lungs.
Three seconds.
Two.
The air tears open.
A vortex blooms directly before the worm’s mouth, and Caryan steps through as if he has always been there, waiting just beyond the world.
Black wings unfurl—vast, consuming. His silver longsword catches the light, but it’s his eyes that steal my breath. They are gray as polished glass, shimmering with pure death.
The worm barrels forward.
But Caryan moves like lightning. Effortless. Terrible and absolute.
Silver flashes. Thunder cracks as his magic lashes out all around him.
The worm’s head tears free in a single, merciless stroke, crashing into the meadow as its body collapses a heartbeat later.
A laden silence follows.
Then a few sobs.
And finally—after a long, stunned moment—
Cheers.
Caryan ignores them all.
He descends in a smooth, unhurried arc, black wings folding with elegant precision as he lands in the grass before the monster’s carcass, as though the chaos around him has nothing to do with him.
He raises his hand. Strong fingers spread wide—not in haste, not in mercy, but in command.