49 #3
“Things are never only black and white, Melody. They’re much more complicated.
There’s no thing that’s only good, nor is there only bad.
” When he looks back to me, a deep, dark blue has started to leak back into his black eyes.
“We angels were horrendous creatures, feared for our wildness, power, wrath. But we were also glorified by some. Enslaved by others.”
He pauses, surveying me, his eyes snagging on the blood in my cut palms. “I once was a wild creature. As wild as these worlds can be. A creature of instinct and little else. This was before they forced us to adapt. To become domesticated.” He spits the word out.
I hold my breath. Imagining Caryan wild and untamed is terrifying. But sometimes I wonder whether he isn’t even more terrifying when he’s cold and collected.
“But they wouldn’t let us be. Let us live.”
“What…what ruins are those?”
“Those are the ruins of a palace. The elves took over. Marched into these territories with their armies and dragons. Killed the hellborns and demons.”
I just stare. He knows so many things. He knows everything . Everything I’m slowly trying to unravel—every lost knowledge I’m trying to bring back into this world—he holds it all in his memory. The fact is almost too much for me to grasp. I still know so little.
“Riven is a hellborn, right?” I ask slowly, feeling dumb. “Like—Nefarians are hellborns?”
“In theory, yes. Hellborns were races with demonic bloodlines, usually born here before the fae world existed. This world holds the name Rhonyx. But Riven was born in the fae world,” Caryan says with a long side glance at me, which makes my insides do funny things and my heart push fervently against my chest.
“And—there were real dragons?” I ask, quickly steering the topic off Riven.
“Of course,” he says, almost to himself as he looks over the ruins covered in black sand.
I swallow, sensing that there’s a reason he brought me here. “Why did you destroy it?” I ask carefully.
He looks at me again for a long while, until I start to writhe under his fierce gaze, remembering too clearly what almost happened between us. How he felt over me. Hard muscles and planes and power. Heat spears through my body, and I look away.
“They became too mighty. There needs to be a balance to things. They killed the demons.”
“But demons are bad,” I say—regretting it the instant he snarls.
“Demons are creatures, like wolves and bears and other predators. They need to be there. They need to balance things. Darkness needs light and light needs darkness, or the two can’t exist. But that’s what the elves never understood.
Nor did the witches. Nor any other creature, because they all strive for dominance.
For power. To crush everything else under their heel. ”
He suddenly looks tired when his eyes settle back on me.
Blue now. Clear blue, like fresh water, reflecting the twilight sun above us.
I still try to make sense of what I see in his face.
In his eyes. Try to make sense of his words and how this all adds up with what I’ve read.
How this all adds up to the man I’ve learned is half a monster.
“I don’t understand,” I admit finally. “I read so many books about these worlds. About two princes from hell who killed everything and everyone.”
His eyes flicker, and I think I shouldn’t have told him about that book.
“Did you know them—the princes?” I ask when he says nothing, only watching me, suddenly like a predator studying his prey. “Kirachat and Rhyxun.”
“I did. In a sense.”
“They were bad, weren’t they? They could control demons.”
“One of them could. Rhyxun,” he says darkly.
“But define bad, Melody.” He comes for me, and it takes everything in me to stay rooted to the ground.
“You, with your little life. You don’t know how many atrocities have been committed in the name of peace—and in truth, only served the hunger for power. ” His fangs flash at every word.
“So…you were on their side?” I ask, not sure I should. But suddenly I need to know.
“There was no side, Melody.”
I hold my breath as his fingers graze my cheek.
“There never was a choice.”
I want to shake my head. To tell him I don’t understand what he’s telling me. But a part of me doesn’t want to know. The stone in my pocket is humming stronger in his presence. I pray he can’t feel it as he draws even closer to me.
“Why bring me here?” I ask, my voice little more than a whisper as his fingers come to my lips.
He frowns as he watches me intently. “Maybe I was feeling melancholic. Nostalgic. Maybe I wanted you to see it.”
“Why?”
“Because I lived here once. In the very beginning. Before it was a civilization.”
“And what happened?”
He swallows and I follow the movement of his Adam’s apple. I reach up and hold his hand that’s still on my cheek. “Tell me what happened to you.”
I see him hesitating. See him wanting to pull back, but I hold his hand firm. Not that I could hold him if he didn’t want me to, but he relents and lets me.
“They trapped me. Me and my brother.”
My heart aches and clenches, wrenching for him when I see the pain on his face—and because Noxus was as terrifying as I imagine the worst of hells, the memory of him alone enough to wrack my body with shivers.
“My twin brother.” Caryan swallows again, clenching his teeth, his jaw working as he turns his head away.
“Where is he?” I ask, playing my part.
“I don’t know,” he growls, fangs flashing again—but not at me.
“They trapped us so many times I lost count. They locked us away. Tortured us. Burned us. Whipped us. Cut off our wings. All to bend us to their will.” His voice is so quiet now, his eyes almost silver, they are that light.
As if my magic still were somewhere in his body, flowing from my hand into him and filling him up.
“They once trapped me in darkness so total I wondered whether I still had a body. Eyes. I couldn’t feel my legs, my arms, my heart.
Couldn’t see anything. For years, Melody.
For centuries. I wasn’t dead. But I wasn’t alive.
I could only feel when they came to break my bones.
One by one. Shatter them and grind them to dust.”
My heart stops. Truly stops. The words echo, brutal and deliberate, and for a moment I can’t breathe.
“But funnily enough, it was the pain that kept me sane,” he continues. “Tethered. It allowed me to count time.”
The ground seems to drop out from under me. I feel like I’m falling—like something inside my chest has cracked open and there’s nothing to catch me. What he just told me…gods. How unbearable must that have been?
Lyrian locked me away, yes—but I could still see the moon. The stars. I knew he would come back, that he would let me out again after a few days.
And even that nearly broke me.
“Who?” My words are barely more than a breath, and tears stream down my cheeks for him. For all the tears he never shed.
“The elves. The witches. Nefarians. Hellborns. Anyone who had power.”
“Why?”
“Because I was dangerous to their plans and didn’t bend to their whims.” He gently wipes away my tears, one by one.
He’s standing so close I can smell him—this smell that speaks directly to my soul, of evergreen forests and absolute wilderness.
Of the sky and the dark screams he wrenches from it.
Of rain and moss and thunder. And I can feel his heat, too.
“But it drove me almost insane. Almost.”
He leans down to me, cradling my cheek in his large hand. I allow myself to close my eyes for a second. And that dark, bonded part in me rejoices. Sings with joy at his touch.
Craves more.
I force myself to open my eyes again. To remember what Caryan did to me. And what he would do again without so much as a blink. He is dangerous. Even to me.
We look at each other for a few moments, the air still crackling around us with something unlived, unshed.
It takes everything not to put my hand against his shirt.
To graze the stretch of bare skin where his shirt is open, his collarbones on display.
I look at his lips and wonder how they would taste. Wonder how he would kiss me. Fuck me.
I know it would be all-consuming. He would take everything from me—and more. Probably more than I could give. More than I could take.
Because he’s an angel, and I’m a half-mortal.
I make myself step back.
“I understand you, Melody. More than you might think. There is but one thing I fear, and it is to be trapped again.” He grazes our bargain, tattooed on my wrist next to the gold-and-black runes. “That’s why I gave you this power. So you never have to be shackled again.”
“But I’m shackled by you ,” I say quietly. To you , I think. “Because I’m still your slave.” My mouth tastes bitter at the last words.
“What would you rather be?”
He once asked me the same question, and I give him the same answer as I did back then. “Free.”
Again, his fingers splay against my cheek as he snorts. I wonder whether this has been a test of some kind. I can’t tell whether the result pleased him or not.
He says, “I told you I’d let you be free once you found what I’m looking for.”
“What? The artifacts,” I deadpan.
“No. Not only. I changed the rules a bit. First, we find my brother.”
My heart almost stops as the stone in my pocket hums so fast it’s nearly singing. Shit. I’m one sentence away from having to obey because of our bargain. If he says the words, voices them as an order, I’ll be forced to do it. No matter what.
The warning of that acolyte echoes sharp in my head. Don’t ever call him. It’s a trap. It would change everything.
But why?
I want to ask Caryan, but I can’t. How can I get answers without him knowing? How can I possibly wriggle out of this? And what about that flash of pain when he mentioned his brother?
I don’t even want to imagine what Caryan would do if he found out I had the stone to call his brother all along. That I’ve kept something so important from him.
“He was the one who finally found me. Freed me. Can you imagine what it’s like to be separated from your other half?” he asks, standing so close I can feel his breath on my face—on my lips.
“No,” I say, because I truly can’t. “But I imagine it would have broken my heart.”
He stares at me for a long moment. But I hold his gaze, refusing to break, refusing to confess that I know a way to find his brother.
I don’t know why I’m still keeping it from him—call it a hunch, a dark sense of foreboding.
But the story of Kirachat and Rhyxun, and that creepy acolyte in the archives, still thrums beneath my skin.
“Where is he?” Caryan asks, his voice deep, his eyes cutting through me.
“I can’t sense him anywhere,” I answer quietly, and it’s the truth. My talent seems to work only in this world, and his brother—Noxus—is clearly somewhere else.
He looks away, but his expression tells me he expected that answer all along. “I need you to search for portals to other worlds in the library. He’s trapped in another realm, and I need to open a portal to reach him.” Oh great.
“Do you know the name of the world where they keep him?” I ask carefully.
He hesitates. For a moment, I think he won’t answer, before he finally says, “No. I do not. Not even this.” He spits the words, his fangs flashing.
I just nod. “I will. I’ll try to find out where he is,” I promise. I swallow, steadying my breath before I ask, “But why now? You said you needed the artifacts to win the war. Why does your brother suddenly take priority?”
For a second, he looks as though he hadn’t expected me to question him—as if I were an obedient little thing, too eager to do his bidding in exchange for freedom.
Then his brows draw together. “I don’t know who I can trust anymore,” he says.
“I need him by my side. A part of me hoped that, at this point, I would be able to open a portal to the world where he’s bound. ”
“At what point?” I press, remembering the night the rift tore open—and what Riven had said. That he suspected Caryan had found one of the artifacts.
He doesn’t answer.
“You found the flute, didn’t you?” I ask slowly.
He snarls, but this time I don’t flinch.
“Answer me.”
“I am a king, and you are a girl. Watch your tone.”
“You once promised me truths, and I’m holding you to it,” I shoot back.
His eyes flash, sweeping over my face with a strange kind of appreciation—as if I’ve managed to impress him.
“Very well,” he says finally. “I did find the flute.”
I’m so taken aback by his honesty that all I can do is stare. “So you caused that rip in the worlds—so close to Avandal.”
He shrugs, as if it’s nothing. Just shrugs.
“And the demon at the campus?” I demand, anger bubbling up.
“What did you expect? That I’d stop claiming the artifacts? It’s inevitable that rifts will appear when I find them.”
“So you know the cost.”
“Of course, I know the cost, Melody,” he says flatly, as if I’m a child scolding him for something he’s long accepted.
And maybe I am. Maybe I should know better. What did I expect of him? That he’d stop? That he’d care?
I glare at him and start to turn away, but he catches my wrist.
“I did it to find him too,” he says, his tone a fraction softer, “if that makes it easier for your fragile little heart.”
For a heartbeat, I see it—the grief, the flicker of hope in his face. Then it’s gone, hidden beneath his usual cold mask.
But it was there. I wasn’t wrong. So he can still feel something after all.
And pathetic little me clings to that with all my might.
“So find him,” he says coolly, covering whatever emotion had slipped through. “If you want your freedom.”
“I will,” I snap, trying to wrench free. But he doesn’t let go.
“Good girl,” he drawls—and that’s when the world starts to spin and warp, darkness curling around us—