The Hollow Mountains were larger than I’d ever dreamed they could be, the rolling peaks towering over us as we traveled along
the base. All the texts I’d read in Lord Byron’s library talked of how small they were compared to the Mountains at Rochpar, and even smaller compared to the legendary mountains of Faerie that existed on the other side of the boundary.
Caelum followed my gaze as it tracked up the face for the hundredth time. True to his word, we’d reached the range before dark, but now the sun retreated behind the peaks, bathing the forest at their feet in an eerie golden glow. This far from the boundary with Faerie, the leaves had already turned yellow and orange with the frost and begun falling to the ground. The magic of Faerie was too far to sustain the signs of life through the cold autumn nights.
He’d only spoken to me in passing since the claim that I would come to him, that I’d give him my body willingly one day soon. He couldn’t possibly understand that, while I had no notion of a happily ever after with a man who would be my husband one day, I needed something more than the promise of one night of pleasure.
No matter how I might want to keep my heart my own, I suspected a man like Caelum would slither his way inside and take it for himself, if I let him. With no promise of a tomorrow, or a future at all, such an attachment could only end in heartbreak for me, whether we lived or died. I wasn’t
naive enough to think that a man like him would stay interested for long after his initial conquest, if we ever found others like us, anyway.
Such was the way of his intensity—of his power—as it rolled over my skin when he turned his gaze on me. It wasn’t the same as the power I’d felt from the Wild Hunt or the magic of Faerie when the Veil had shattered, but still a force that came from within him.
It wasn’t magical in nature at all, I suspected, but something he’d possessed long before the Mark. It was just Caelum, and that made him all the more dangerous.
“We should find a place to camp for the night,” I murmured finally, hating the way my voice shook with the slightest tremor at the thought of another night exposed to the darkness of the woods.
“I have a better idea. Come with me,” he said, reaching across the space between us to take my hand in his. My hand throbbed with the contact, tiny sparks passing between where we touched and careening up my arm until it glowed with soft white light. It was the first time my Mark had reacted to him so vividly, sending a jolt of shock through me. The dark in his mirrored mine, the faintest hint of purple illuminating the black as his Mark recognized the call from mine.
Something had changed in us; something had shifted, and I was terrified to admit that it might have been my acknowledging the fact that I wanted him in spite of the consequences. Now, my Mark fed on that reaction to his touch.
He led me into the tree line beside us, pausing at the line of thick branches. Peeling back one of them with a mystified smile on his face, he revealed a narrow pathway while I stared in stunned silence.
“I can’t believe this is still here. It’s been years since I last traveled through the Hollows,” he said. The path curved up the side of one of the foothills, disappearing into the darkness of the shaded trees. He pulled me into the pathway, releasing the branch that hid the entrance so that it snapped back into place and disguised it once more.
“What is this place?” I asked, wonder lighting up my eyes as he led me to the very base of the hill, which, standing apart from the other foothills, was more like a butte. Where the path started up the side, curving around to create an easier to manage incline, someone had carved steps into the stone in the areas where it became too steep. More stone lined the path as we
rounded the bend to the back of the hill, the surfaces stained with age and cracked from what appeared to be years of neglect.
Trees lined the path on the outside, where Caelum walked beside me, shielding us from view if anyone happened to look up at the butte. On my right, I lifted a hand to trail over the stone of the face. As if the earth itself had melted away to make the walkway, the same stone that lined the steps went as high as I could see when I tipped my head back.
Faces were carved into the surface, ethereal beings with slightly pointed ears and harsh planes in their bone structures. I’d heard that their features were sharper, their characteristics more defined. I couldn’t be sure how much of that was emphasized by the stone work and how much was true to their appearance.
The only Fae I’d seen had been transparent, but the members of the Wild Hunt were a breed all of their own within Alfheimr. My fingers ran over the thin lips of a man whose features seemed particularly jagged, his hair surrounded by snowflakes. “According to the legends, these are the faces of the Old Gods,” Caelum said, stepping up behind me. I hadn’t even realized that I had turned to the rock face, my hands shifting from the man’s mouth to the woman at his side. Her hair somehow seemed lighter than the others at her side, as if her presence had been imbued into the rock. “Twyla, The Goddess of the Moon,” Caelum said, his hands shifting up to my waist. He dragged my hand with his along the fabric of my dress and then behind me, to the small of my back. The awkward angle of my arm gave me pause, the tips of his fingers pressing into my spine and the swell of my backside as he leaned in until his breath tickled my cheek. “It’s said she is the Queen of the Winter Court.”
“How do you know so much about the Fae? Your father’s library?” I whispered, shuffling to the side. Caelum followed me seamlessly, his body mirroring mine to the point that we seemed to move in synchronization. I touched the Goddess next to Twyla, my fingers sinking into the harsh lines of her beautiful face. Her eyes had been painted, the rock itself glimmering as dark as night with specks of lightness within.
Long hair fell to her shoulders, the color lost to the rocks as if the carver hadn’t put as much essence into her likeness as they had Twyla’s.
“My father believed that, in order to fight them, we would have to know them. When the rest of the realm sought to destroy the knowledge of our enemies, he collected it. Studied it. He taught me about them,” he answered,
his lips brushing against my skin as he spoke. His words from earlier in the day, the taunt that he knew I would welcome him into my body one day, sat heavy in my mind.
It couldn’t happen, and yet there was no mistaking the goosebumps that rose along my skin where he touched me.
“Who is she?” I asked, clearing my throat, determined to focus on the subject at hand. His father’s teachings interested me far more than I cared to admit, out of habit. Curiosity about the Fae was condemned, my interest in the Veil enough to have me hanged if I hadn’t had the protection of a Lord.
To know about the creatures hunting us, could anything ever be more useful than that?
“The Queen of Air and Darkness,” he said, something in his voice compelling me to glance over my shoulder at him. “Mab is the Queen of the Court of Shadows.” His face was stern, set into harsh lines as he stared at the likeness of the breathtaking female.
“She’s beautiful,” I said, my heart sinking at his study of her. Menace lingered in the sharp lines of her face, seeming to stare out at me through her dark eyes.
“According to the books,” he said, shuffling me to the side, to the next of the Old Gods. The sun continued to set behind us, casting an eerie glow over the rock face as we passed by the male at Mab’s side. “She’s the greatest evil the world has ever known.”
“I thought that was the Fae in general,” I teased, smiling up at him and trying to lighten his mood. His grip on me had hardened, not painful in the slightest but more rigid, as if he couldn’t stand to release me.
He smiled down at me softly, turning his attention back to the next God as we sidestepped. “I imagine the Fae are much like people. Some are good, some are bad, and most are just trying to survive. I don’t believe an entire species can be evil. Do you?” he asked, the words softly spoken in my ear.
There was a challenge in his voice, a threat to everything he knew I’d been taught. The Fae were the greatest evil to walk the earth, condemning those that were Marked to a life of imprisonment within the realm of the Fae.
There was no freedom in captivity, no choice in the life they offered.
“You said your father thought the best way to fight our enemies was to know about them. If you don’t believe they’re evil, then why—”
“I believe some of them are evil. The things in the books about Mab would give a grown man nightmares. So long as evil is as powerful as she’s rumored to be, then light can never truly reign in their realm. There can never be any hope for peace between our races.”
“You think there could be peace without her?” I asked, the idea rattling around in my head as my eyes landed on the God in front of me. The eyes carved from stone felt like they watched me, his unforgiving stare looking down at me, as if the carvers had wanted to use it to intimidate those who walked this path.
“I think the alternative is another war where we destroy each other. I have to hope there’s a solution for peace.” I had to as well, since the last of the witches had given their lives to create the Veil. We wouldn’t be so lucky a second time.
His cheek touched mine, his chest pressing into my back as he leaned forward. His hand released mine finally, his arms wrapping around me to circle my stomach as if he could sense the sudden chill that had swept over me. “Eerie, isn’t he?” he asked, rubbing his stubbled cheek against mine. “The God of the Dead has always been the one to scare people away from this place.”
Everything inside me froze. Even though I hadn’t learned much of the Fae, the Old Gods were whispered about here and there. The God of the Dead more than any of the others.
The stone God staring back at me was the one who had leveled an entire city during The Great Wars, the one who’d killed more humans than any record could track. He was the harbinger of death, the sole Fae who could reanimate the corpses of our loved ones to use against us. If anything could be deemed the most vile of this world, I doubted it was Mab.
It was him.
Caelum sensed my unease, slowly gliding his hands on my stomach until only one arm remained wrapped around my hip. He pulled me into his side, and in the wake of the chill that had swept over me staring at the God of the Dead, I allowed the touch to warm me as he guided me up the walkway and away from the faces in the wall.
We ascended the stone path in silence, my heart heavy with confliction about Caelum’s words. Part of me wanted so badly to believe the creatures hunting us weren’t all bad, and there could be peace and an end to the miserable fate of being Fae Marked.
Were humans so perfect, if they were determined to slaughter us all because of a Mark on our neck that we had no control over? The answer wasn’t the one I wished for.
“Why do humans kill the Fae Marked?” I asked, a hush falling over the woods with my words. It was as if Caelum forgot to breathe for a moment, the tension claiming his body bleeding through to me. “What difference does it make to them if we’re dead or taken? Why isn’t that our choice to make?”
He sighed, tilting his head down as we walked, and I felt his chin touch the top of my head. “Being mated makes the Fae even stronger. That’s what the Viniculum is—why it protects us. Somewhere, there’s a mate looking for us, seeking to claim us as theirs. The establishment of a mate bond increases a Fae’s power. If you can keep a Fae from their mate, you can keep them stagnant. Unable to increase their power, and if you do successfully manage to kill the mate, some Fae don’t survive.” I’d heard that mates strengthened their Fae, in whispers, but I’d thought them the dramatic whispers meant to cause fear.
“They die with us?” I asked, staring up at him as he pulled his chin away from my head.
“When it’s the final death? Sometimes,” he answered. “Sometimes they’re lost to madness. Sometimes they seem to go mad before they ever find their mate.”
“Are mates ever other Fae? Or is it always humans?” I asked, peppering him with questions and not even caring that it implied I was more interested than I should have let on. All the rules of my past were null and void, now that being Marked was my reality.
Knowledge was my only power.
“Sometimes,” he said with a shrug. “It happens, but not nearly as often as a mating pair between a Fae and a human. That was the consequence of the witches’ curse to maintain the balance between realms. I’m sure you can imagine what mating to another Fae does for both their magic, if a human soul acts as an amplifier. Two Fae being mated is even stronger than that.”
“Having a mate who has a very limited lifespan must be terrible, if they have any feelings whatsoever for the human, anyway,” I said, hating the thought of belonging to a male who would watch me age and wither and die while he remained eternally young.
“Human mates do not age, Estrella. Once the bond is completed, the life forces of the two are joined. So long as our Fae live, so would we.”
“But the Fae don’t die,” I said. Unless you stabbed them through the heart with iron or severed the head from their shoulders, anyway, I didn’t add. They could be killed, but diseases and aging didn’t touch them. From what I did know, the Old Gods were at least a thousand years old.
“No, they don’t,” he agreed, walking up the last of the stairs until he reached a plateau on the side of the butte. He took my hand, helping me up the last of the steep steps until my feet fell on the stone landing.
All thoughts of living forever immediately fled my mind at the wonder before me.
