Nick snickered.
“I think I might have upped the ante,” Melody said with an apologetic look.
“Fuck,” Toby muttered, running out of the room and slamming the front door behind him.
Nick laughed outright. “If anything, Mel, I think you gave her some comedic relief.”
Melody stared at the front door, worried. She hoped so, but it wasn’t likely to be true. Besides, the staff had been told not to take Melody’s side, she didn’t want Mrs Hardinger to be fired again because of her.
She said as much to Nick, but he shook his head.
“Mel, she didn’t take your side if you think about it very carefully. She didn’t take Shawna’s either. She was pretty much her usual self. I don’t think you’ve got anything to worry about there. Now go get a shower and clean up. They’ll be waiting on us.”
She nodded woodenly, and headed off to the room that Toby had pointed to. Under other circumstances, she would have enjoyed taking a quiet look around, but her mind was busy and her heart was heavy.
More interviews by the council. What were they going to ask of her next?
34. Melody
Thankfully, Toby was waiting for them at the entrance to the other gymnasium, looking none-too-happy about it. Mrs Hardinger was nowhere in sight, probably the reason he was so grumpy.
That, and the fact that the council guards were being dicks and weren’t going to let Nick and Melody in. The whole reason Toby was waiting there for them in the first place.
“I’m telling you,” Toby said angrily. “This is the young woman that Councillor Argrum is waiting to see.”
“And I told you, mutt, that only one of them goes in. Either she goes in alone, or she don’t go in.”
Nick let out a low rumble, scales rippling across his skin as they appeared.
“Say that again…” he growled warningly.
“What the fuck kind of freak are you?” the guard snarled, unafraid.
“He’s a fucking dragon,” Councillor Argrum said angrily, and the guard paled. “And you’re lucky I don’t feed you to him for breakfast. You’re sacked.”
The councillor opened a small portal beside him and pointed to it. “That takes you back to your base. Pack your things, be gone before I get back.” He pointed to the other guard. “You, accompany him, make sure he takes only what is his.”
“But, Sir!” the other guard protested. “You need to be protected.”
Councillor Argrum pointed at Nick, at himself and then Melody. “Dragon. Me. Her. Between us, we’re covered.”
The guard hesitated and the councillor rolled his eyes. “Fine, send through two replacements while you see him out. Just stop wasting my time.”
“Yes, Sir!”
The two guards went through the portal, one pushing the other, and it closed behind them.
“How are they going to get back through?” Melody asked.
The councillor winked at her. “That’s their problem.”
He led the way back inside. The space, as Mrs Hardinger had said, was being used to hold the shifters who had been left behind by Bestia. What she hadn’t said, was that it was more like a hospital for the dying. Looking around, seeing so many faces she knew, Melody felt something inside of her break. Not just hurt, but shatter.
All those shifters. All those faces that she’d thought long dead, now resurrected to haunt her.
Melody sank to her knees, a wordless cry escaping her lips.
“What’s wrong with her?” the councillor asked, concerned.
“She knows them,” Nick replied. “She thought they were dead, long dead, and now she’s realising they’ve been tortured for years, possibly decades.”
“But it’s not her fault,” the councillor objected.
“She thinks it is. She was used to break them until the weaker witches could bond with them. She thinks she’s a monster.”
Melody flinched.
No, she didn’t think she was a monster. Looking at all these faces, seeing the years of torture, she knew she was. But she didn’t have the right to collapse, to grieve. That was a luxury, these people knew her, needed her, and she was going to be there for them.
Melody rose, wiped her face on the hem of her shirt, and went to the first cot where a withered man lay, his gaze dulled.
“He’s had pain drugs honey, you’re not going to get much from him,” a healer said. “He’s Leon …”
“Calder. I know,” Melody said quietly. “I’m not here for anything from him. I’m here for him. To give him whatever I can.”
“We can’t help him, he’s too weak to break his bond, and his witch is drawing on him, she’ll kill him before long. We’re just easing his pain.”
Melody looked up at the woman angrily. “Do you have a volunteer? Someone willing to take on his bond?”
The healer frowned at her. “I just told you, it will kill him to break it.”
“I used to hold his bond, I can take it back, but if I do that for everyone here, it’s more than I can hold. For any too weak to break the bond, find me a volunteer and I’ll transfer the bonds to them.”
“You can do that?” the healer asked her.
Melody shrugged. “He’s dying. He’s going to die if you break it. Wouldn’t it be better to try, than to let a leech suck him dry? Why should we give Bestia any more power than it already has.”
“I’d need the provost’s permission,” the healer said, hesitantly.
“Nonsense,” interrupted the councillor. “This is a council matter. You have mine. Go to the students, offer them the chance to bond shifters who won’t survive without it. Make sure they understand that the shifters will be traumatised and may not make it. How many are in this state?”
“Where we’re drugging them? Only seven. Ones that won’t survive the bond breaking? Another twenty.”
“Then find me thirty witches who would be willing,” he commanded.
“Final year students,” Nick told her. “Get final year students. They will be best prepared.”
The
