67
The Mate and the Monster
Melody
I sit in my room after Caryan brings me back. Blair is already here, curled asleep around Aris, while he quietly watches me.
“He’s my mate, Aris.”
The words fall between us like a veil, only now fully registering, finally sinking into my brain—which somehow never functions properly when Caryan is close.
Aris just blinks once.
“Don’t you want to say anything?”
He snorts, smoke curling from his nostrils. “I suspected it, little one. He always behaved…unusually toward you.”
“And you never told me?”
“Would any good have come from me telling you?” he asks gently.
“It would have been nice to know,” I snap, glowering at him as I start to strip the heavy dress off me.
“I wasn’t sure. What if I had been wrong?”
I shake my head and turn my back on him, stalking over to my dresser, rifling through my underwear drawer before I even know what I’m doing.
I’m looking for the stone.
It’s warm when it finally settles into my palm, brimming and thrumming with its otherworldly yet strangely familiar magic. It feels a little like Caryan’s, and at the same time I know it isn’t. It’s different.
Darker.
If that’s even possible.
I stare at it for a long moment.
“I was worried, you know, when I came back and couldn’t reach you,” Aris says, and there’s no small amount of hurt in his thoughts.
Guilt twists in my chest. “I’m sorry. I should have told you.”
“I know you were with him,” he grunts furiously. “But this is not how it’s supposed to be between us. You just disappearing.”
“I know, but—wait. How do you know I was with him?” I whirl toward him.
“Because he can talk to me. He let me know.”
The words hit like a slap.
“What? All this time you could…talk with Caryan? ” I struggle to keep my mental voice down. Damn demon.
“I heard that,” he snaps.
“Good!”
He shakes his head. “I can talk to Caryan. But I don’t. Because of you.” His golden eyes burn with emotion. “But you cannot just block me out and vanish, little one.”
I slump down onto the bed beside him. His scaly body presses against mine, and the contact feels good.
Right.
Like home.
I hug him, not caring that I’m in my underwear as I squeeze him tight. “The queen is dead,” I say finally. “How?”
He shakes his head, adjusting his scales after my assault as he sits upright. “I know no more than you.”
“Now Caryan’s taking over Avandal,” I say quietly, thinking back to our conversation earlier. “Do you think he had something to do with her death?”
Aris’s tail swishes against my back.
His silence is confirmation enough, and his aura is brimming.
Holy shit.
Caryan probably killed her.
And I—
I just spent the night with this man.
The man who is my mate.
I get up, slip into yoga pants and a top, then head for the door.
“Where are you going, little one?” Aris asks behind me.
I whirl on him when he makes a move to follow. “ I’m going for a jog. Alone. I need some time alone.”
Aris looks hurt but stays put.
I quietly close the door behind me.
Then I start to run.
The corridors are clean, all decorations from last night gone as if they’d never existed—which only makes it feel more like a strange fever dream.
Holy shit.
Caryan is my mate.
The weight of that knowledge slowly settles into my bones, making every step feel heavier.
I run through the meadow and toward the woods until something silvery catches my eye—something darting through the trees, fast.
A massive wolf bursts through the underbrush, landing right in front of me.
“Ryder,” I gasp, stumbling back.
He shifts instantly. “Where’s Faye? I tried to find her, but she suddenly disappeared. She said she wanted to fetch her dragon earrings from her nightstand, but she never came back. I thought she ditched me, but then I asked around, and she isn’t in her room.”
He sounds frantic, running his hands through his shoulder-length brown hair.
Dread twists my gut into a knot.
“Okay. I’ll go check on her. I’ll let you know as soon as I know more. But calm down—maybe she just…got sick?” I offer weakly.
“Get on my back. I’ll run you to campus.”
He shifts back without waiting for an answer. I dig my hands into his soft fur and swing myself up onto his back, holding on for dear life as he shoots forward.
We reach the campus minutes later. He nearly barrels into a few students coming out of the main gate, and we slip inside.
“Sorry,” I call after them.
Ryder darts down a corridor. He finally stops in front of the archives. “You have to go alone. The archives only accept scribes and acolytes…and you,” he says with a pained expression after I slide off his back and he shifts back into his fae form.
“I know. I’ll go alone.”
“Please find her and bring her back, Melody.”
I nod at him and run inside, through the vast library hall and down the corridor.
I throw out my talent, and a prickle of premonition runs through me as my gift tugs me toward the third level.
Shit. Something isn’t right.
My heart pounds faster, and for a moment I think I should call Aris, but then reconsider. He wouldn’t sanction this.
But who else would be able to find her?
None of the high lords can enter the archives either, so I’m on my own.
Damn.
I sprint through the endless aisles of books, down the winding stairs to level three, and straight into the labyrinth of corridors beyond. And as they did the last times, they grow treacherously dark the farther I venture.
My heart pounds harder, my breath coming jagged, until I suddenly find myself in a cavernous, round room.
Faye is on the ground, curled into a ball.
Her eyes are closed—but, thank gods, her chest is rising and falling.
“Finally. We are running out of time.”
My head snaps around at the sound of the eerie, ancient voice.
The acolyte .
“I thought you would never come. I can only roam freely for a few hours on the few days the blue moon shines. Then I am restricted again to these confines—and this shadow-demon’s claws.”
The woman stands a little way off, her eyes gleaming and strange, her fingers flexing at her sides as if they were talons.
“What did you do to her?” I snarl, baring my teeth.
“She is just sleeping.”
I run over to Faye, crouching low and gently touching her cheek.
But she doesn’t wake.
“What did you do to her?” I ask again, my tone sharp as I glare at the woman.
I can’t see her face, because beneath that hood there is only darkness, pierced by two blue eyes gleaming—twin to her unusual hair.
“Careful, halfling. You should watch your tone. Give me the stone and let me destroy it.” She holds out her palm, as if she expects me to simply take the stone—now suddenly back in my pocket—and toss it to her.
“What? Why are you so obsessed with the stone?”
“Because, ignorant, love-sick girl, it holds the key to everything. Hand it to me and you can take your friend.”
Just as she draws closer, the cavern shakes and trembles. Rocks fall—and somewhere behind us, books tumble from the shelves.
Then shadows explode into the room, taking the form of a bodyless monster with two eyes and long, shadowy claws.
“See? You have dallied too long. Now it is returning,” the acolyte screeches.
My magic reacts on instinct, and silver streams coil around Faye and me, forming a dome that makes the monster recoil.
It shrieks and hisses, and it takes me a moment to realize it’s actually speaking.
And thanks to my talent, I can understand the words.
“Silver elf, your kind should be extinct here. Why do you hold the stone of my master?”
“What are you?” I ask back in my own tongue, but it seems to understand me anyway.
“A creation of my liege. A nightmare made flesh. His most loyal servant. But I feel his presence here. So long was he lost; so long did we hunger without him. So long did I wait here and watch this hateful creature. I’ve killed her again and again and again. But then I felt you—and his stone.”
“What?” My eyes dart between the monster and the acolyte, who continues to screech and hiss, clearly angry and terrified of the monster’s presence. “What the hells are you talking about?”
“She cannot die—the hateful sister. They locked her here, chained her to this place. But she cannot die, so I have to guard her. Watch her. Kill her over and over.”
Magic pours off the creature in swaths of smoke until it solidifies, taking the shape of a horse with three lion-like tails, large eyes, and enormous clawed paws instead of hooves.
Fangs protrude from a mouth lined with rows of jagged, razor-sharp teeth.
“What…sister?” I ask, one hand still raised to maintain the shield, though it’s starting to tremble under the strain of expending so much of my magic.
I look back at the acolyte, who has started to draw back against the wall, as if she could melt into it.
“Hand me the stone, girl, and this shall end. The stone can control this monster,” she seethes, sounding more inhuman than ever. “It has taken too many lives already.”
“Three sisters of fate,” the monster to my right hisses. “One Kalleandara. One Zinthrea. And this one, Vor. My lord caged her here, and I shall watch her until his return. But now, with the stone near, he shall come. Call him.”
“You must not allow this, stupid girl,” the acolyte shrieks from her corner. “Hand me the stone and leave.”
I ignore her. “Kalleandara—the oracle?”
“Yessssss. The very one,” the demon hisses, his tongue flicking like a snake’s. “Call my lord.”
Movement flickers in my peripheral vision. My head swivels just in time to see the acolyte lunging at me, her gnarly fingers ready to shred into my skin.
But a ball of lightning slams into her gut and catapults her against the wall. She screams, then falls quiet and slumps to the ground.
I pant hard, sweat snaking down my clothes while the demon’s black magic claws at my shield, trying to crack it. I already spent a good amount of my magic blasting the acolyte away.
“Who’s your master?”
“Rhyxun,” the monster drawls, flexing its claws as if readying itself to lunge.
My heart stutters.
What?