65
The Lilac Woods
Melody
A single candle burns in my room when I enter. I close the door behind me, and it takes me a moment to make out Caryan’s silhouette standing out against the blue light of the moon.
My stupid heart stops dead when he spreads his wings a little, as if to stretch them as he turns toward me. How fast did he fly here? I took my time walking back to my room, but….
“Shouldn’t you be somewhere else?” I manage to say.
He stretches his neck as if easing invisible tension while he regards me, his slate-gray irises bleeding into a sky-blue gleaming in the darkness. “I find those occasions rather dreadful. And since you left, there was nothing to hold my attention any longer.”
I swallow, struggling to remind my body how to breathe. Was that an actual, twisted sort of compliment?
“Why are you here?” Hells, out with it. If he wants me to find his brother and go back to the archives, here I am.
But to my surprise, he holds out his elegant, strong hand. “I want to go flying, and I thought you might want to join me.”
I frown at his hand, my heart still a violent, rebellious thing in my chest, raging against my ribcage as if it wants to break free. I know he can hear it.
I shouldn’t go with him—because part of me already knows what’s going to happen tonight.
It’s inevitable.
The rational part of me hates it. Hates this insane attraction I can’t explain, can’t even comprehend. It’s like a current dragging me toward him, relentless, and I’m far too weak to fight it.
I want to.
And I don’t.
Still, I take his hand.
He sweeps me into his arms, and damn me if it doesn’t feel good—being pressed against his strong body, engulfed by a scent I could drown in.
Without warning, he jumps out the window, and we’re airborne.
I lace my arms around his neck. His eyes lock with mine before my gaze drifts upward, to the fat blue moon above us—the twin to the second red moon in Caryan’s kingdom.
Time slips.
Reality thins.
There’s only the open sky. His warmth. His strength. His scent. The stars wheeling above us.
At last, he angles toward the forest, slipping effortlessly through the dense canopy before landing with quiet elegance in a meadow.
I stare, taking it all in.
Lilac woods.
The woods from my dreams.
Memory crashes into me all at once. I thought I never dreamed—but that isn’t true. I always did. Even when Lyrian locked me away in that cell for days on end.
There had always been a man in those dreams.
An angel.
And he always brought me here.
“I dreamed about this…” I breathe, my mind reeling, trying to grasp what the hells is happening. It feels like a lid has been torn from some buried corner of my memory, and now everything is rushing back, unstoppable. “I knew you…”
“I suppose you did,” he says, voice rough.
“I walked with you in those dreams.” I look from the sea of night-blooming lilac flowers and trees to him. He just stands there, as still as one eternal creature can be. And as beautiful too.
And ancient.
His face softens. “Yes. I’ve come to you in your dreams since you were a child.” He swallows thickly, looking away, and my heart squeezes as my stomach hollows out. “We always had a connection. Until Lyrian found a way to block it, and I could no longer visit you.”
I stare at him as everything I thought I knew crumbles like ash between my fingers. “You were the one who read The Last Unicorn to me.”
A small, gentle smile touches his mouth.“Yes.”
I draw back when he tries to step closer. Because he’s always been there for me. Even when I was a small child. And now we….
“What is this fucked-up thing between us?” I blurt out, anger rushing through my veins, and lightning crackling at my fingertips.
He lifts his chin but stops where he is.
Where I expect fury, there is only shadow crossing his achingly perfect face—those sharp cheekbones, that straight nose, those absurdly soft lips.
“I admit that it is strange. For me too. I’ve known you since you were a child.
I swear I never felt that way toward you until I found you years later—and you’ve grown into the woman you are. ”
My blood rushes and pounds in my ears while I try to comprehend what he’s saying. “What is this bond between us?” My voice is surprisingly steady, although inwardly, I feel like falling apart.
“A mating bond,” he says finally.
A split second later, a crack of lightning shoots down, aimed directly at him. He doesn’t even look up before he contains it with his shadows.
He takes a step toward me again, but I draw back. “Don’t fucking touch me!” I seethe, my upper lip curling back. For once, he lets me. He’s not even angry. He just stands there, watching me with the insane patience and calm I guess can only come from an infinite lifespan. “When did you know?”
“I knew for certain when I first drank your blood, though I suspected it from the very beginning, because my soul was linked to yours.”
“And you never thought to tell me?”
Again, he swallows. His voice is unusually rough when he says, “I wanted you to choose freely. But a mating bond is not something either of us can truly defy.”
His words fall like drops in a cave. One by one by one. Even the forest and the wind have fallen quiet to watch us. I can feel it. Fate itself is watching us.
I know that a mating bond is woven into the stars. I know that, but—
I shove him with all the strength I have. He takes a step back, but only not to hurt me, I know. I want to slap him, but he grabs both of my wrists.
“Let me fucking go!” I scream at him. More lightning crackles over my skin, but his shadows flare in answer, suffocating it while he holds me like a vise. “What is this? You raised me only to fuck me? To groom me into what?”
“It is not that simple, Melody. And I agree that it is fucked up, to put it in your words. Do not believe for a second that this is not as strange to me as it is to you.”
“Strange is a nice way to put it,” I spit. “But why? Why keep me as your slave?” My voice breaks and tears run down my cheeks unhindered as the truth winds around my heart. The truth I always knew deep in my bones. “Why be so cruel? Why treat me like that?”
I try to yank my hands back. Try to kick him, but he doesn’t budge an inch. He doesn’t let go of me. I want to scratch his face. Bite him. Tear his skin with my teeth. Hurt him.
His throat works once, the only damn sign of emotion on him. “Because I did not know what to do with you,” he finally admits.
“Liar!” I scream, because believing him would hurt too much.
“I searched for you,” he says, voice roughening.
“I searched for you like mad once Lyrian severed you from me. I tore through the human world. I abandoned the hunt for my own brother just to find you. It drove me insane, knowing that monster had you. Knowing he hurt you. Locked you away in the dark while I couldn’t reach you—”
His fangs bare. A low, feral growl vibrates through every syllable, and his eyes—gods—his eyes darken until they’re nothing but swirling blackness. Endless. Hungry. I feel like I could drown in them.
“You were a child,” he chokes. “And I was supposed to protect you.”
His voice breaks.
“And I failed.”
The word shatters between us.
Then—
He drops the shroud over his aura. Drops the ever-present gray mist that hides it, and I see everything .
I see the truth. The desperation. Madness. Desire and love for me. All of it swirling inside him like a storm-torn sea.
He lets go of my wrists too suddenly and steps back. The veil stays down for a few heartbeats longer before he drags it up again. But not before something brushes my mind.
A talon. Scraping gently along the inside of my mental wall. Gently. A request.
If his aura already feels like a raging ocean of blackness and wrath and vengeance, I know what opening myself would mean. It would swallow me whole. Break over me like a flood and drag me under until there’s nothing left of me at all.
I shake my head at him in answer. He bares his teeth, but then nods his acceptance.
“I swear I only meant to find you. I never planned any of this. But once I found you, I expected you to be the child I knew. The child I never felt anything for other than love. Never anything remotely close to sexual.”
He looks back at me at the last part, face serene, the blue bleeding back into his remarkable eyes. I know it is true. I know I always loved him too. Trusted him. He was the one who tethered me all the years with Lyrian. If not for him, I wouldn’t be the person I am now. I might not even be alive.
And that realization twists like a serrated knife in my guts.
His jaw works and he looks away at his next words. “When I found you, you had grown into a beautiful woman. I never expected to be drawn to you the way I am.”
I remember how he looked at me the first time he saw me. Then the first time he drank my blood. Remember the disgust on his face.
“You…you were disgusted by me,” I say, my voice shaking and utterly raw.
He looks at me for a very long time. Then he shakes his head once. “I wasn’t disgusted by you . I was disgusted by this bond that makes me feel the way I do,” he says finally, but gently. “I only ever planned on freeing you from the clutches of that monster.”
Again, rage barrels through me, and a blast of lightning strikes out of me, spearing for him.
Shadows get in the way, eating it up.
“Yeah, but my talent is a convenient side effect. So what was the plan? Accept that bond? Use me and fuck me, because that’s how the fae world is, right? Forgive me, but that doesn’t sound too bad for you!”
Shadows explode all around us, but he reins them in before they drown us in their darkness.