49
The Desert of Stars
Melody
Just when I’m about to drag myself back to my room to change out of my sweat-drenched clothes into fresh ones—and maybe wash my hair—Caryan drops from the sky with predatory grace, landing directly in front of me.
Shay and Cassius, who’ve been walking with me, freeze—then retreat in hurried, too-deep bows to Caryan, careful not to meet his eyes.
They throw me quick, apologetic looks—fear plain on their faces—and I can’t even blame them, because Caryan is terrifying in his cruel beauty.
A heartbeat later, they’re practically fleeing inside.
Caryan doesn’t even acknowledge them, as if their presence is beneath his notice.
Before I can say anything, darkness flares outward, cloaking us from the world beyond.
This time, it doesn’t swallow me whole. Instead, Caryan extends a hand.
Gold-and-black runes writhe across his skin like living serpents, shifting and restless.
Runes my own mother inked into him. The few of them he transferred from his skin to mine and that now grace my wrist hum in answer.
I know better than to resist. My fingers brush his, and a jolt of power spears through me—sharp, intoxicating, and dangerously close to pleasure. I ignore the ache it leaves behind. The jolt of longing for something I really should not desire.
The world opens up and starts to turn and, before I know what’s happening, I’m standing in a strange land of twilight. A desert, the sand beneath my feet running white and black, a lilac moon in the sky, dipping everything in a violet glow.
“Where are we?” I ask.
“In another world.” Caryan’s voice is velvet-smooth, but there’s something grave beneath it.
He releases my hand, and I step back quickly.
I glance at him—and he looks as gut-wrenchingly beautiful as ever, his hair as black as his large, magnificent wings that I once ran my fingers through, his face set in that lush austerity of his, and his ever-changing eyes embedded in black, his irises now the color of the sky at dusk.
I try very hard to ignore how I must look, with my hair disheveled and in sweaty strands from training, my clothes hanging on me.
I clamp down on my shame and make myself meet his eyes.
“What you did today was reckless,” he says finally, voice deep and rough.
“What?”
“You could have died,” he snarls, coming for me with such ferocity I have to blink a few times to process it.
“Well, that’s because a fucking demon showed up.”
“Not your place to try to save the day. Next time, do me a favor and run inside.”
I stare at him, too shocked to even retort. “What?” is all I manage again.
“It’s a damn miracle Riven found you in time. Why did you even think to sacrifice your life for theirs? You have to live, don’t you understand?”
“That worm was going to kill them!”
“It’s not in the nature of fae to sacrifice themselves for others!” He’s in my face so fast, vicious fangs snapping shut—reminding me how he once tore savagely into my throat and drank—that my instincts scream. “And you’re above them. You’re a princess!”
My spine tingles from his fury, from his magic trying to wind its way around my bones and intrude under my flesh—but my magic holds firm.
“So now I’m a princess ? Really? I thought I was a slave.
” It takes all I have to keep my voice neutral and unaffected while—truthfully, after everything today—I just want to hide and crawl under my sheets and hope tomorrow will be a better day.
But I survived, and those fae today didn’t.
I’m going to survive a very moody angel.
“Those two don’t exclude each other,” he spits.
Gods. What is wrong with this man? I can understand that fae are cruel and all about power, but he is the epitome of every bad habit and characteristic of the fae in general. It makes my blood boil, as if a monster slumbered beneath my veins.
“Good. Then know this: If I am really a princess, you’d better get it into your head that I’m not going to be the sort of cruel ruler who stands by watching while others die. Why did you swoop in to rescue them, then?”
“Because you called me,” he growls, as if this were obvious.
“You’d have saved them regardless,” I say, wishing it to be true—but when I look into his eyes, watching how the black streaks seep into his irises, pushing back the gray, my stomach hollows out. Maybe he wouldn’t have….
“You can’t be serious,” I breathe.
A sneer tugs at the corners of his cruel mouth. “I’m an angel, little princess. Haven’t you heard—we aren’t known for mercy or altruism,” he snaps right into my face. “It’s about time you learn that. I don’t save people who are unworthy to fight for themselves.”
“You saved me ,” I hiss, not retreating an inch.
He looks down at me coolly, his fascinating eyes shimmering through his long, thick lashes. “I might come to think it’s a mistake every time I do,” he drawls, his voice suddenly smoky and dangerous.
Is he enjoying this?
“You know, every time I think you possess the shard of a soul in that body, you’re desperate to prove me wrong.”
“Good. Because there isn’t much left of a soul in me,” is all he says, as if it’s obvious and I don’t yet understand this about him because I’m a bit slow in the head.
Maybe I am. Maybe I just want to think he isn’t entirely a monster.
“Yeah. Because eternity ate it away?”
He tilts his head, his gaze dragging slowly over me. “Probably.”
I wonder what it is that makes him want to hurt me in that way only he can.
And I wonder what it is that makes me cling to my desperate wish that he could be different.
Is different, in fact. That beneath all this hardness and cruelty there is a feeling being, although he keeps claiming there isn’t.
“I know it’s not true.”
“You’re too young,” he says quietly, “and far too full of illusions, hopes, and dreams. I do the things I do—protect you, defend you, kill for you—to let you keep them a while longer, because it’s endearing to watch.
But there’ll come a time when you have to grow up, Melody.
When you will start to embrace your true nature. ”
“I’ll never be like you!” I come at him, shoving my palms against his hard, muscled chest—only to hurt myself, because he doesn’t even budge. I might as well have pushed a wall.
His eyes flash dangerously. “Don’t tell me you didn’t want to make them burn. See them suffer. Hurt. Humiliated for how they treated you, those wolves in the Black Forest.”
My heart stops as it all comes crashing down on me again. How does he know? He must have read the question on my face because he says, that terrifying smile widening:
“How do I know this? Because you and I are not so different. Because I see you for what you are at your core. And because your magic wouldn’t have done it if that weren’t true.
You didn’t kill them, but you wanted to make them suffer and burn.
And I’m done pampering you as Riven does, wrapping you in a false sense of reality.
It’s about time you face your darkness, Melody. ”
He raises his hand, and I flinch, expecting him to slap some sense into me, but instead he reaches out and grabs a strand of my hair, twirling it in front of my face.
I realize it’s the color of amethyst, sparkling in the strange light of this world.
The color is so close to that of Riven’s eyes I can’t think of anything else while looking at it.
As if Caryan is thinking the same, he lets out a guttural growl that works its way up his elegant throat. Vicious and terrifying. “What is this?”
“Not your business,” I snap, my heart beating in fear and crazy exhilaration at his proximity.
“Lilac?”
“Problem with that color?” I raise my brows at him in a challenge, although it must have happened by accident when I mixed the colors. I must have dipped a strand into the cauldron. But then—suddenly—I see Caryan look oddly…off. Not cold. Not amused.
What is that? Could he actually be jealous?
The thought hits me with a jolt of disbelief. Caryan is never jealous. Only now I’m pretty damn sure he actually is. The realization sends a sharp, exhilarating thrill through me—and, gods help me, I feel almost giddy knowing I’ve finally gotten under his skin.
“Get that out of your hair,” he growls.
He releases his grip, and I yank my hair back, heart pounding. “That a suggestion? Don’t you like it on me? Does it clash with my complexion?” I bat my lashes at him, fully aware I’m pushing him—but I’m so done with his control.
“It’s an order.”
“Hm, I’m sure it sounded almost like a compliment. I might even consider changing all of my hair to this color.”
I don’t know what it is that makes me court his ire, because I know it’s the fastest road to damnation. Caryan is power and darkness and cruelty wrapped up in a single man. But I can’t resist it. It’s a primal ache to rise to the challenge he presents.
I swear his eyes turn golden and his pupils might even morph into some kind of draconic slits like Aris has. What the actual hells?
“Try and see what happens.”
“Are you going to shear it off?” I croon, a fake-as-fuck smile plastered onto my face while I try to deny the effect his closeness has on my body.
“No. I’ll probably wrap it around my hand while I do something quite different to you to punish you for this impudence.”
Gods, I really don’t know what makes me say the next thing I say. “And what would that be?”
He leans down to me, his god-like body caging me in. “I’m going to bend you over and make you scream my name.”
I try to catch my breath, but he doesn’t let me. He turns away from me abruptly, as if he hadn’t just said he’d fuck me into submission.
“You’re going to aim today,” he growls, brutally grabbing my wrist and spinning me around with him as easily as if I were a puppet. Then he juts his chin toward a jagged mountain in the distance. “So—aim at that mountaintop. Miss, and we’ll see what happens next.”