I sat outside the caves as the sun set, the shadows starting to dance on the horizon as it faded from the sky. The light it cast through the

canopy of branches and evergreen needles bathed the forest floor in an eerie sort of glow as Caelum stalked through the underbrush. Running his palms over tree roots and stumps, he felt for moss and a type of leaf that he said could be made into a poultice to help with the swelling on my ankle.

I’d never expected a man like Caelum to know about poultices, and I had to wonder if that knowledge came from his father’s library, too. He went to a cave opening; a much larger entrance that immediately set my nerves on edge. It felt too obvious, less hidden.

Big enough for cave beasts to use it to come in and out under the cover of darkness.

Stashing the herbs and moss he’d collected in his pack, he swung it over his shoulder and onto his back before coming to collect me from the stump where he’d deposited me. He picked me up without fanfare, draping me over his shoulder as he swung the axe on his other side.

“There are kinder ways to carry me,” I sniped, lifting my head just enough that the blood wouldn’t rush to it and make me dizzy as he ambled through the cave entrance. He whistled as he walked, entirely unconcerned with the body draped over his shoulder like a sack of root vegetables.

“I can drop you faster this way if I need to fight off a cave beast,” he said, his steps remaining sure as he made his way deeper into the cave carved into the mountainside.

“Oh, that’s much better. I do so love the idea of being dropped onto the stones,” I said, feeling the need to argue with him just for the sake of it. I hated being reliant on him. I hated the fact that I couldn’t even walk on my own, let alone survive without him to take care of me.

“I’d rather that than see the flesh torn from your bones. It’s such pretty flesh, after all,” he said, using the hand that he’d wrapped supportively around the backs of my thighs to smack me on the ass.

“Hey!”

“Quiet,” he ordered, the word a murmur. “I need to listen.”

“Convenient,” I grumbled, but I kept my mouth closed after the single word of protest. Arguing wasn’t worth leaving him unawares. I, too, liked my flesh on my bones.

Caelum walked through the cave entrance until it curved to the side, offering us protection from the colder temperatures. When we came to an alcove, he lowered me to the ground carefully and pulled the ingredients for the poultice out, along with the wood he’d collected for a fire for the night.

I stretched my leg out in front of me, leaning my back against the cave wall and sighing. We hadn’t eaten since that morning, and it seemed like that would probably become the normal routine when the sun was already starting to set by the time we stopped for the day. Maybe the time it would take my ankle to heal would allow us some time to gather food, if we could brave exposure outside the cave during the day long enough to try to find some berries or vegetables or something to harvest.

We’d need to hurry before they died for the season.

Once the fire was established, Caelum grabbed two rocks and used them to grind the herbs. A small splash of water turned them into a paste. “I can do it,” I said, protesting when he pulled my boot off. He tugged my sock all the way off, rinsing it with some of the water from a canteen and placing it beside the fire to dry overnight.

He ignored my assurance that I was capable of tending to my own injury, shifting forward to sit in front of me with his side to the fire. He drew my foot into his lap, running gentle fingers over the bruising before he bent it forward and back, testing the movement. Pain shot up my leg with each bend, but I knew without a doubt it was nothing more than a sprain.

I hadn’t broken the bone or done anything to damage it permanently.

“I think you’ll be okay to walk in the morning,” he said, shocking me as he dipped his fingertips into the paste he’d created. “We’ll check the traps

and eat something before we head out.”

“What do you mean I’ll be okay to walk in the morning?” I asked, scoffing at him. There was no way the swelling I had would just disappear overnight.

“You aren’t entirely human anymore, Little One. The Viniculum doesn’t just make you stronger or more agile, it makes you heal faster, as well. Your scratches already look better. They’ll be gone by morning.” I followed his gaze down to my hands and the cuts that had felt like my skin had been torn from my fingers only hours before.

Sure enough, all that remained were slightly swollen pink lines. Something that would have taken days of healing a little over a week ago had magically happened over the course of a few hours.

He touched the paste to the swelling on my ankle, rubbing it across the injured joint. A tingle spread across it immediately, a cooling sensation flowing over the skin as he leaned forward and blew on the paste intently.

“If the Viniculum supposedly makes me more agile, why doesn’t it stop me from tripping over my own feet?” I asked, glaring at the amused expression he turned up to my face. With his lips pursed while he blew on my ankle and his gleaming eyes staring up at me through his lashes, something low in my belly clenched, the sudden image of that expression on his face while he blew on other places taking me out of the moment.

The bastard smirked as if he knew it, too.

“You know how a newborn fawn has to learn to walk on new legs?” he asked, his lips curving into a smile despite the tension thrumming between us.

I gasped, staring at him in shock. “Did you just compare me to something that’s never walked before?”

“It isn’t an exact metaphor, but it’s similar. Your body is different than it was before. You move more swiftly, come upon obstacles quicker. Your reflexes need to catch up and work more efficiently now.”

“First, I have the sense of direction of a hydra and now I walk like a stumbling newborn deer. You truly know how to compliment the woman you’re trying to bed, Caelum the Marked,” I said, shaking my head as a disbelieving smile tugged at the corners of my mouth. The humor dancing in his eyes couldn’t be denied, something contagious passing between us as I tried to fight off the desire to return it.

“Tell me which part wasn’t true, and I will gladly rectify it, Estrella the Star,” he said, raising a brow as he waited for me to argue. I wanted nothing more than to prove him wrong, but knew well enough that I’d be lost within a moment of wandering on my own, and my swollen ankle made it impossible to argue my ability to function on my own two legs. “The silence is positively deafening,” he said, his face breaking into a full-blown smile.

“Do shut up. We can’t all be perfect men who know how to navigate and fight and walk flawlessly,” I said, biting my tongue before I could tell him something about the way his trousers hugged his ass and hips as he moved.

“You’re perfect just as you are, Little One, stumbling on awkward legs and horrible sense of direction included. I could spend the rest of the night telling you about all the parts of you that I would never allow anyone to change,” he said, his voice dropping to a low rumble as he spoke the words. That tension throbbed between us once more, all brevity of the moment lost to the spark of energy. “But I don’t think you’re ready for that just yet. One day, I’ll whisper it against your skin as I explore every piece of you with my mouth.”

“And what would you do if I returned the favor?” I asked, my voice breathless. It felt like baiting a tiger, playing games with a predator as those dark eyes deepened to the blackest of night skies.

“Memorize the way the words felt when your lips moved against me. Control myself as long as possible before rolling you beneath me and sinking inside of you,” he said, his voice deep and carefully controlled. As if he knew that in spite of my words and the way I’d walked him into the conversation, he was one wrong word away from sending me scurrying backward in discomfort with how much I wanted that.

I cleared my throat, tearing my eyes away from his and shifting my attention back to my ankle, breaking the moment between us before I could do something I might regret.

“Where did you learn about poultices like this?” I asked, making conversation to stifle the awkwardness I felt over his proximity. He leaned forward toward the place where he’d lifted my dress and pushed my leggings up my legs, lingering over the spot where he stroked my calf and shin with smooth caresses.

“My father’s personal library,” he said, confirming the suspicions I’d had not long before. “He had all manner of book there, most of them very forbidden and worthy of a death sentence if he was ever discovered.”

“You miss him. It comes through every time you speak of him,” I said, picking up on the melancholy note, and the way he always turned his gaze to the side and never looked me in the eye when speaking of his father. His attention shifted back, a sad smile gracing his lips as he finally met my stare.

“I miss the idea of him. I miss what we could have been if circumstances had been different,” he admitted.

“You mean if your stepmother hadn’t been…” I trailed off, not wanting to put words in his mouth. The details he’d provided of her had been so sparing, so vague that I couldn’t form a realistic picture of the woman who’d helped raise him.

“Cruel? Yes. If she hadn’t been so evil, I believe my father would have made the sacrifices necessary to be with my mother. Who knows what my life might have been then?” he asked, shifting his weight so that he stretched his legs out in front of him.

I hated the sadness etched into the lines of his face, the vulnerability lingering beneath the surface of this stunningly handsome man with the playful attitude I wished I could have. His depth was subtle, existing more in the moments when he shifted his expression, when there was no mask to be shown, revealing the raw emotion underneath. If I hadn’t watched him so intently, to memorize every detail of the face that I could see myself falling in love with, I might not have even seen it.

My heart would have been safer if I hadn’t.

“Will you tell me another story?” I asked, swallowing around the thick feeling building in my throat. I wanted nothing more than to give in to the pulsing attraction between us, and I might have, in a moment of rebellion against the Crown and all it demanded of me, if it wasn’t for the way my heart fluttered in my chest every time he met my eyes. I would have leaped, if it wasn’t for the way my stomach thrilled with a surge of something between nervousness and excitement every time he laid a hand on me.

If it wasn’t for the fact that I could very easily fall in love with this man who could never be mine, because even if he didn’t move on to someone else, he would never belong to me in the first place. The Fae Mark meant he

had a mate out there, someone who would search for him until his dying day.

I didn’t know what happened when she found him, or when the male searching for me found me. Would all previous attachments just disappear? Did it work that way, or was it strictly a physical bond that eclipsed all else? Did humans even feel it, or did they spend an eternity with someone they never loved?

Each possibility was just another reason why Caelum and I had to remain free. I didn’t want that for me, but even more so, I didn’t want that for him.

I was in so much trouble.

“Yes, Little One. I’ll tell you another story,” he said as he reached into the pack and pulled out the blanket he’d stolen. He lay near the fire, leaving the place directly next to it for me to claim. He tapped the ground beside him, and I eyed the spot nervously.

I hadn’t agreed to sleep curled up in his embrace the night before, but even that felt more innocent than doing it tonight. After he’d kissed me senseless, I couldn’t help but wonder exactly what would happen the moment I lay next to him.

But it was cold, even with the fire going at my side, and there was only one blanket.

Shoving down my nerves to a place where I hoped he couldn’t see them, I moved into the space he’d left for me and stretched out on my back, turning my head to face him. He rolled to his side, facing me and sliding an arm beneath my head to protect it from the packed dirt beneath us. “What kind of story would you like to hear?” he asked, draping his other hand across my belly.

I sucked in a breath, forcing words to come out when all I could do was fixate on the touch. “Do you know any about the Fae and their mates?”

“I do,” he said, his voice sounding surprised as he nodded slowly. “The mates came to be a very long time ago. The Fae were cursed by the witches who fought against them in endless wars, their souls fractured in two upon their birth and their other half planted into another person entirely. Some were human, others were Fae as well, but being without their other half was said to be a painful experience. Like being half a person.”

“This is more like a history book than a story,” I teased.

“Alright, Little One,” he laughed. “There once was a Fae who waited over three hundred years for his mate to be born into her first life. This wasn’t typical, anything over one hundred years tended to push even the most stable of Fae past their breaking point. A life without half your soul was unthinkably cruel. And then one night, he felt the moment she reached adulthood, and he wept with joy.”

“What happened?” I asked, sensing from the seriousness on his face that this was not a story with a happy ending. I’d need to give him that caveat in the future. All romantic stories needed to end with them spending their lives together.

Life was hard and brutal enough as it was. The last thing I needed was a reminder of my loneliness in my bedtime stories that were meant to distract me from my grief.

“The witches shielded her from his view so that he could not get to her. They wrapped her in a cloaking spell, disguising her location and keeping him from her for many life cycles. But the spell didn’t protect him from feeling her. It didn’t stop him from falling in love with the essence of her every time she reached adulthood. It didn’t stop him from feeling every time she died, her life fading away as he wept for another life wasted. On and on it went over centuries. Over thirteen lives, he waited and fought to find a way to get to his mate before she could die the true death and he would lose her forever.”

“Did he ever find her?” I asked, swallowing back the burn of tears in my throat. I shouldn’t have felt sorry for the nameless Fae male. I shouldn’t have felt anything for him, knowing that he would have taken that human woman from everything she’d known if given the chance.

I’d been taught we were nothing but property to them, a being whose desires didn’t matter in comparison to the needs of the Fae, but now sorrow pierced my gut at the thought of spending all those centuries alone. Of feeling the other half of my soul die repeatedly. To think that somewhere out there was a male who was supposedly the other half of me was unthinkable; impossible. How could the other half of me exist outside my body?

“He did. She was in her final life cycle when the witches’ protection broke and he finally found her. But in order to complete the bond, he had to get her back to Faerie soil so that her life could be linked to his. Without it,

she would remain mortal and die the true death,” he said, leaning forward to touch his mouth to mine gently.

I drew back sharply, resisting the urge to growl my frustration at him. “Did they make it?”

He sighed, murmuring into the space between us. “I don’t know. The story was never completed. They could be living happily in Alfheimr, or they could both be gone. Her to the true death, him to the madness that would have consumed him after losing her.”

“Why would you tell me a story that you don’t even know the ending of?” I snapped, lifting his hand off my stomach in protest.

He chuckled, replacing it immediately and using it to turn my body to face him . “Because life isn’t always tidy. We don’t always have the answers we want, and love isn’t always pretty,” he said, his gaze pointed as I swallowed audibly. “It’s messy and painful, but it is always worthwhile. It is always the answer, my star, not the problem.”

“You’re saying I should love the Fae male who is supposedly my mate?” I asked, my brow furrowing as I thought about the inconsistency with what he’d said in the past. One more tick for the suspicion that we could only be temporary.

One more nail in the coffin of what could have grown between us, if not for the threats looming on the horizon.

“No. I’m saying you should let yourself love someone. If it is your mate, then so be it. But do not keep yourself guarded from the possibility of something more, out of fear of being hurt, because it is worth every moment of pain it will bring when it ends,” he said, the knowing expression on his golden-skinned face nearly taking my breath away. His words were so close to the very same thoughts I’d had earlier in the evening, an echo of something I’d known deep inside.

“What’s the point in loving someone if fate is determined to tear you apart?” I asked, the words a faint whisper that hovered between us. He closed the distance, caressing my bottom lip with his mouth briefly before it curved into the smile.

“Because even just for a little while, we don’t have to be alone. There is no guarantee they’ll ever find us. No guarantee that we’ll ever be taken back to Alfheimr, but if they do, do you want to go never having lived or made a choice for yourself? Or do you want to have enjoyed your freedom while you had it, before they strip it all away from you?” he asked.

It reminded me of the nights I’d spent wrapped in Loris’s embrace, risking death for a few moments of the pleasure that was forbidden to me. He hadn’t been someone who would have ever been meant for me, but he hadn’t been a danger to my heart, either.

Could I really risk my heart in the process? Or had it never really been mine to give?

“I can feel you thinking too hard,” he murmured, cupping my cheek in his hand beneath the curtain of my hair. He leaned in, his mouth coasting over mine once again and chasing away all rational thought. He rolled into me, moving me beneath him as his weight settled over me and pinned me to the ground.

Instead of feeling suffocating like it so often had when Loris did it, all I felt was comfort being wrapped in Caelum’s embrace. He kissed me, letting one of his hands skim down my body over my dress until he could grasp me around the back of my thigh.

I moaned into his mouth when his fingers brushed against my ass, guiding my leg out and around his waist so that he could sink further into me. So that he could cover me with his body.

I helped him, wrapping my legs around him until the twinge of pain that shot up my ankle drew a startled gasp from me. Caelum froze in place, pulling his mouth away and leaving me bereft, as if I needed to remember how to breathe on my own all over again.

He sighed, reaching back to guide my injured leg to the ground as he lifted himself up onto his forearms and stared down at me.

“I’m sorry. I’ll be fine, really,” I said, sinking my teeth into my bottom lip. I couldn’t bring myself to tell him I didn’t want him to stop, that I was ready for all the pleasure he’d offered me on countless occasions.

It seemed a betrayal to myself to voice the weakness he’d brought out in me, and to admit how desperately I needed to feel something after losing everything I’d ever loved.

Caelum’s presence was the only thing that made me feel alive, as if I hadn’t died with Brann on that cliff.

“You will be, but we have all the time in the world, Little One,” he said, rolling off of me and dragging my body to drape me over his. He positioned my injured ankle over his hips, gently depositing it there as if the injury would keep him from disturbing me in the night.

His eyes drifted closed, the only sign he gave me that the time had come to sleep. Disappointment fluttered in my belly, having been so close to crossing the line in a way I could never come back.

It was only a matter of time before I did. That much was clear from my brief time spent with Caelum.

The real question was what would remain of me when it was all over with.