Caelum pulled back the curtain to our private room, sewn from scraps of fabric and thick enough to block light and some sound, stepping
into the warren of tunnels. I followed behind him, keeping close in my uncertainty with the new place, and with the new people who would be our neighbors if we stayed. Being a woman had taught me more than I cared to admit about needing to read the room and figure out where my place would be with those around me.
In Mistfell, most of the time I’d needed to pretend to be a demure lady, saving herself for marriage, but every now and then I’d found companionship with people who allowed me to be myself.
With my family. With Loris.
My heart panged with the loss of all of them, hoping that my mother was coping and surviving in the chaos that must have come after the Veil shattered. There was no one left to protect her; not when Brann had come with me and died for it. He’d have been better off staying with her and trying to hide from the army of Fae that had most likely descended upon Mistfell.
“You alright?” Caelum asked, touching a gentle thumb to the side of my jaw. I nodded, not quite able to find the words to answer him. I would survive, but it was hard not to feel like I’d left the girl I’d been back home.
We continued down the hall of doorways and alcoves, the only light in the space coming from the torches that lined the stone corridor. The walls pressed in on me, oppressive and nauseating. I’d always loved the darkness,
but something about being locked away under the ground was unnatural— unnerving.
I trailed a hand over the rough surface as I took a deep breath of humid air. The warmth inside the tunnels was a blessing; my cloak had been left behind in our shared bedroom as I wouldn’t need it, but I craved a lighter dress, as well, or a shirt like the men’s to pair with the leggings, instead.
We finally emerged into the common space where most of the Resistance appeared to congregate. The room was circular, with the ceiling in this part of the underground cavern curving to an apex at the center. Wooden posts acted as support, wedged between the rough stone floor and the high ceiling above. The space felt less claustrophobic than the tunnels we’d traveled to get here or the small bedroom Caelum and I shared, the space above my head serving to give me room to breathe.
I paused to look around, taking in the dozens of people socializing and talking over wooden tables with maps laid out on them. Caelum and I exchanged a glance between us as we debated whether we should introduce ourselves or wait for someone to notice us.
It didn’t take long; only a few moments passed before the people who hunched over the tables and the documents spread out on them sensed the strangers in their presence. Most of them had seen us come in earlier, but they hadn’t made any move to approach, as if they knew we weren’t both enthusiastic about being here.
Caelum’s steps faltered as we walked into the center of the space, making our presence fully known and waiting for someone to approach. I was far too uncertain to make myself at home and introduce myself, especially with the tension rolling off of Caelum that set me on edge.
I turned to look at him, following his pointed stare to a woman who stood lurking in the background of those bent over the tables. One of her eyes glowed like moonlight, shining out from her umber skin, whereas the other was as dark as the night sky. Her hair fell in long waves, curling around her shoulders like freshly fallen snow. She was absolutely, heartbreakingly beautiful with flawless skin and lips painted red.
She raised a hand to the moon that shone on her forehead, casting a soft glow on her fingers that were tipped in darkness, shimmering like the starlight of the Veil itself.
Those eyes were fixated on Caelum, returning the intensity he gave her. My attention shifted between them, feeling something pass that I didn’t
understand.
My suspicions rose, my stomach dropping like lead. They knew each other, I realized with another twist of my gut.
Caelum turned to me, wrapping an arm around my back, soothing parts of me that he shouldn’t have been able to touch; the wounded girl who didn’t want to admit I wouldn’t stand a chance of holding onto him.
It was why I never should have let him under my skin in the first place.
He buried his face into the curtain of my tangled hair, his lips brushing against the shell of my ear. “She’s a witch,” he murmured, his voice low enough that I knew he didn’t want the others to hear.
The glowing mark, the fingers that had been dipped into the shadows of the night itself, the eerie mismatched eyes: all of it made sense with her being Other. Her eyes fell to me, studying me intently as she pursed her lips briefly before smiling.
As quickly as she’d studied us, she turned her attention back to the maps on the table, closing us off as if she hadn’t examined us from the inside out. “That’s Imelda,” a woman said, stepping up in front of me. I forced my eyes off the witch to meet the kind, gray-eyed gaze of a human woman. “And I’m Amalie. She’s taught some of us to see through Fae glamour, but no one is better at it than a witch.”
“A witch?” I asked, pretending Caelum hadn’t recognized her for what she was. I couldn’t be certain that his knowledge wouldn’t be used against us or make us look suspicious, having questioned it myself when we first met, as well.
Brann had been cautious in the face of Caelum’s knowledge, leading us straight to his death out of that fear. My heart faltered in my chest; with the promise of a safe place to rest my head that night, the pain of the loss of him seemed more blinding. I didn’t have to focus on keeping my feet moving, or on where my next meal would come from. I didn’t have the same kind of life-changing distractions.
“Yes. She is how we keep the tunnels warded,” the woman said, the explanation bringing that multicolored stare back to us. “They draw their power from the nature around them, and their magic isn’t tied so directly to Alfheimr, like the Fae.”
“I thought they were all dead?” I asked, thinking of the stories that told of how the last of the ancient witches had given their lives to create the Veil, to protect humans from the wrath of the Fae.
“Most of them are,” Imelda said, raising her chin to meet my inquisitive stare. She stepped around the edge of the table, coming to stand next to the woman who had greeted us. “But there are some of us here, some of us alive in Alfheimr, as well, I suspect. The Crown tried to kill off the rest of us who survived the Veil to fit their narrative of events, but we’re still here.” She leaned into me, her face stopping only a breath from mine as she looked down my body. She drew air into her lungs, smelling me as her brow furrowed and she tilted her head to the side. “Death is calling to you,” she said, her words echoing what had been foretold in the woods on
Samhain.
I swallowed when Caelum’s hand tightened around my waist, his arm twitching against my spine. “Is that a threat?” he asked, his voice dropping low in warning. Only he would be foolish enough to think he could stand against a witch.
The mark on her forehead pulsed with light, answering the quiet violence hidden in his words. “I don’t mean either of you any harm. Death stalks her, as if she is halfway to the grave already. From the look in her eye, this is not the first time she has heard such a thing,” Imelda answered, turning her back on us and vacating the common space.
Caelum’s stare burned into the side of my face as I ignored him, smiling gently at the woman who’d been kind enough to greet us. I didn’t want to speak of the night in the woods or the death that I felt pacing at the edges of my life, waiting for me to make one fatal mistake.
Waiting for the knife to press against my throat once more, to take the life the Fae had denied it when they broke through the Veil.
“Sorry,” the woman said with a little laugh, shaking out her chestnut hair. “She can be a little intense.”
“So can he,” I said, nodding my head toward where Caelum refused to release me.
A child raced up to the woman, grabbing her around the legs and gazing up at her with all the affection I’d given to my own parents as a girl. She knelt down to tend to the child while we watched, smiling apologetically when the young girl refused to release her. The fact that there were children living in their community brought a smile to my face, the bittersweet reality of their survival and relative freedom from the harsh life above the surface tempered by the fact that they probably rarely got to feel the sun on their skin.
Jensen crossed the distance, emerging from behind the table and coming to stand in front of us. “We got off on the wrong foot, but you must be hungry. Let me take you to get something to eat.”
He gestured for us to follow him, and Caelum and I did so silently. The pessimistic part of me wondered if we should trust food provided by people we didn’t know at all, but my stomach grumbled with hunger as if to protest my thoughts of turning down an opportunity for a meal.
There’d been nothing but wild hare and fish in the days since Caelum and I had started traveling, because while I didn’t doubt his ability to hunt or snare something larger, the time it would take to butcher it wasn’t worth the risk.
Walking through the maze of tunnels and descending down stairs carved into the rock itself, we curved around a center room. “How is it so warm in here?” I still hadn’t seen any sign of a fire or stove and given that they could cause a risk of suffocation, I would have been surprised.
“These mountains are warm in general. All the springs surrounding it are hot springs. We aren’t sure why it is, exactly, but the further into the center of the mountain range you go, the hotter it gets. The core of the central mountain is hot enough to make you sweat,” Jensen answered, pushing open a door as he stopped at the bottom of the stairway.
The scent of food immediately wafted through the doorway, the heat of the kitchen seeming stifling as a handful of women labored over the fireplaces.
“What have I told you about sneaking down here before mealtime?” one of the younger women asked, raising a wooden spoon from the pot she’d been stirring to wave it at him as she scolded him. Above the stove, there was a little alcove carved into the rock for the smoke to vent upward. Cool air filtered in from the corridor, so a breeze flowing through brought fresh air and ventilated the kitchen.
“It isn’t for me this time, Skye. I swear,” Jensen said, reaching back to grasp my hand and tug me further into the room. Caelum’s eyes narrowed on the contact, and Jensen released me immediately upon seeing the glare for what it was. “They’ve just arrived from above ground.”
“Oh! You must be starved. Sit, sit,” Skye said, fussing as she grabbed two bowls off the counter and ladled soup into each one. Setting them in front of us, she pointed Jensen toward the metal spoons off to the side and he grabbed one for each of us as Caelum and I pulled out the chairs and
lowered into them slowly. Skye cut a wedge of bread off the loaf, dropping it onto the table in front of us as the aroma of freshly-baked dough made my stomach growl.
I lifted the bread to my nose, inhaling the scent for a moment as I tried to pretend to just enjoy the smell, but also tried to detect any of the poisonous plants I was familiar with. If a Lord could slowly poison his own wife, I would put nothing past a community of people I didn’t know.
“You really think I’d be ballsy enough to poison that oaf of a man next to you?” Skye asked, drawing my attention up to her. Her hand dropped to her hip, head cocking to the side as she raised her eyebrows at me in challenge. “I’d need to feed him the whole loaf, you hear me? Eat.”
“Sorry,” I mumbled sheepishly, taking the first bite of the bread as Caelum chuckled at my side and lifted the hot stew to his mouth.
“I feel like I should take offense to being called an oaf. I am not stupid or clumsy,” he said, earning a smile from the woman as she laughed under her breath.
“Apologies then. You’re too pretty to be smart. I shouldn’t have assumed,” she said, turning back to the pot of stew as her cheeks turned pink. I swallowed, the loaf of bread feeling like a heavy weight in my stomach.
Had she been flirting with Caelum? More importantly, had he been flirting back?
Maybe being on our own was preferable to having others like us around. It would have been difficult for him to stray if there weren’t other women around, but now that there were…I sighed.
Caelum dropped a hand to my thigh, his fingertips digging into the fabric covering my skin as if he could sense the squirming, throbbing jealousy that threatened to make me sink into my bedroll and never reemerge.
I hadn’t wanted this. I hadn’t wanted to want him. I definitely hadn’t wanted to get so attached that the thought of him touching another woman made depression swirl in my gut and threaten to overwhelm me. The bastard had worked his way beneath my skin with what were probably false promises, and there would be nothing left of me when he tossed me aside.
“Eat, my star,” he said, leaning into my side. His mouth hovered just above my ear, his words sinking inside me along with the proximity I’d come to crave.
“That has got to be the sweetest nickname I think I’ve ever heard,” Skye said, turning back and staring at us. “You don’t look like siblings. How do you two know each other?”
Jensen’s eyes felt heavy on the side of my face as I lifted my spoon to my mouth and ate a bite, using it as an excuse to give Caelum the opportunity to define us. As much as I wanted to stake my claim, it seemed far smarter to let him put a label to what was happening between us.
“We aren’t siblings. Estrella and I are together,” he answered, the words soothing the part of me that I hadn’t wanted to be frayed in the first place.
“Oh!” she said, glancing out the side of her eye to where Jensen stared at me. “We tend to be more…open in our relationships. You should probably be ready to bathe him in piss if you want the other girls to know they aren’t able to take him for a ride,” she said, a teasing lilt coming into her voice.
I didn’t have any desire to mark my territory. Okay, I did, but I didn’t want to have to. Any man who couldn’t be trusted to label himself as off- limits wasn’t worth my energy.
Caelum could have just about anyone he wanted. I’d never be able to stop him from wandering unless it was what he wanted. Understanding that brought me a certain measure of peace, knowing it would probably be inevitable for us to end, giving me a twisted satisfaction.
He was jealous enough that I could just imagine his rage over seeing me with someone else if that ever happened. I’d enjoy every minute of tormenting him, in that case.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said instead of voicing my bitter thoughts.
“It won’t be an issue,” Caelum said, reassuring both of us as he dug back into his stew. I dunked my bread into the broth, lifting it my lips and taking a bite. The flavors and herbs of the two combined to create a symphony in my mouth.
I was certain the foods Lord Byron had fed me in the privacy of his library at night had been more decadent, but there was nothing like the first bite of actual flavor after weeks of near-starvation and bland, roasted meat. “This is really good,” I said, swallowing the bite in my mouth.
Skye turned a bright smile my way. “She has manners. Imagine that.” The sly look she leveled at Jensen erased any of my worry that she might have thought me rude in the moments leading up to the compliment.
“It isn’t his fault. Men have no need of manners,” I said, shifting in my seat to look at Caelum from the corner of my eye.
He set his spoon into his bowl loudly as he finished shoveling the stew into his mouth. “What are you trying to say?”
“That you’re more beast than man half the time, clearly. Don’t be daft. You just told Skye you had a brain; now isn’t the time to prove yourself wrong,” I argued, smirking at the mock-incredulous expression he wore on his features.
“That’s rich coming from you,” he said. “I seem to recall you putting a knife to my throat when we first met. I hardly think that’s a polite way to greet a newcomer.”
“You intruded on my shelter for the night,” I said, taking another bite of bread and chewing thoughtfully. If we’d just stayed like I’d wanted, would Brann still be alive? Would he and Caelum have found a way to coexist?
I swallowed. Not if Caelum had insisted on being intimate and touchy with me. Brann would have castrated him while he slept.
“I believe I was there first,” he said, picking up the spoon I’d abandoned in favor of my bread. He scooped a spoonful of it and lifted it to my mouth, touching it to my lips as I parted and let him feed me. It again reminded me of the day when he’d fed me fish so I didn’t have to touch it with dirty, bloodstained hands.
It should have reminded me first of Lord Byron’s aged fingers feeding me delicacies I’d never asked for and calling it a gift. But nothing Caelum could do would ever feel as slithering and disgusting as the actions of the Lord who’d tried to groom me from childhood. Who’d made me watch the High Priest sacrifice my father, and then tried to force me into his bed.
I shivered, chewing the stew that suddenly tasted like ash in my mouth.
He continued to feed me while Skye and Jensen watched, the moment between us feeling far too intimate for their prying eyes. It was such a simple thing—letting him guide nourishment to my mouth and swallowing what he gave me—but the gleaming expression on his face was haunting.
As if feeding me appealed to him on an animalistic level, his need to provide for me rose to the surface with the uncertainty and risk of death behind us. He scraped the last of the broth out of the bowl, resting the spoon on my tongue and letting me swallow the liquid down while he stared at my mouth in fascination.
Skye cleared her throat, turning her attention back to the pot behind her as Jensen snapped out of whatever trance he’d gone into while we had our moment. “I’ll show you to the baths in case you’d like to get cleaned up. We’ll see if we can find something more fitting for you to wear, Estrella. Dresses are fine in the caves, but if you ever go to the surface, we recommend all the women skip them and just wear pants. They’re warmer and easier to maneuver in.”
I stood, letting Caelum take my hand in his grip as we followed behind Jensen. His possessiveness in the face of a man who’d expressed a tiny inkling of interest wasn’t lost on me, and I let it warm me from the inside. I had to hope it meant he didn’t intend to mess around with other women, especially now knowing I could have options, as well.
We passed by the members of the Resistance as we made our way even lower into the caves. The cave complex seemed to go on forever, curving and twining until the air grew humid. “There are far fewer women than men here,” I observed, noting every person we passed.
Jensen turned back to me with a sad smile. “Most women aren’t taught to be able to protect themselves. It’s much more difficult for them to escape when the Mist Guard comes for them. Most of them never so much as made it out of their villages before they were cut down. We’ve had lots of Fae Marked men join our numbers since the Veil fell, but only two women have made it to the Hollows that we know of.”
“But the Viniculum should have protected them, shouldn’t it?” I asked, glancing toward Caelum. He nodded, but his face dropped with sorrow.
“There are ways to prevent the magic of the Viniculum. Faerie magic cannot survive the touch of iron. If they managed to capture them with iron somehow, the Marked would be defenseless entirely.” I thought back to the collar the Mist Guard had placed on my neck and the way it had drained my energy away from me, rendering the snowy magic useless. My stomach filled with dread, thinking of being hunted down and killed with that heavy collar on my neck and no brother to help save me.
“The Mist Guard has had centuries to devise ways to entrap the Marked when the time came again, and other ways to fight the Fae. Everything has changed since the war before the Veil,” Jensen agreed, shaking his head sadly. “Our only hope is to bring as many of us here as we can, and to wait out the worst of it.”
He walked through an open archway, stepping into what I knew had to be the bathing room. Steam billowed off the underground spring, filling the air with humidity and warmth. But that wasn’t the most shocking part of the bathing room.
Men and women bathed in the water together. Some of them minded their own business and kept to themselves. Others coupled off. A few were joined in groups of three or more.
“Gods,” I mumbled, cursing myself when both Caelum and Jensen turned to look at my flushed face. It was worse than the statues carved into the stone at the place Caelum had taken me to.
These people were real. They moved and writhed together.
“You’ll get used to it,” Jensen said with a laugh. “I’m sure it’s quite the shock compared to what you’re used to.”
“This is going to be a problem for us. I don’t relish the thought of other men looking at her. Is there nowhere we can bathe in privacy?” Caelum asked.
“The springs are limited in number. You’ll just have to try to time it so that they’re less crowded, if that’s your preference. While I’m sure many people wish we had springs where we could afford privacy to everyone, it just isn’t feasible with this many people using one bath.”
“Of course not,” I said, tearing my eyes from the scene in front of me. I didn’t want people to see me naked, but I wouldn’t be that spoiled and entitled brat who protested their way of life and acted as if I was above it. If this was to be my home, I’d need to assimilate to it sooner than later.
“Estrella, you don’t have to do something you aren’t comfortable with,” Caelum said.
“We’ll come when it’s more likely to be empty until I get used to it. I’m more concerned about your snake drawing too much attention,” I said, brushing off my nerves in favor of pretending I was unaffected.
Caelum would fixate if he knew how much my insecurities threatened to surface.
The naked women in the bath and at the edge of the spring were beautiful, with healthy and striking bodies. Not scarred and too thin to be appealing.
“Thank you for showing us the way,” I said, turning my attention to Jensen quickly.
“Melian has asked that Caelum report to the commons at first light for training exercises. You’ll need to consider what skill set you might have that could be useful here,” he said, turning his attention back to the baths, as if he wanted to convey something meaningful.
“I was a harvester,” I said, knowing that my skills with plants could come in handy.
“That will be very useful—when the warmer months come. As of now there is nothing left to harvest and the ground is too frozen to plant. You’ll need to find something you can contribute until then.” He glanced over his shoulder again. “Melian wouldn’t like me mentioning this so soon, but some ladies find the pleasures of the flesh to be a very worthwhile way to make themselves useful. With numbers uneven and more men being here than women, we have to consider things most groups of people don’t. Having a bunch of men locked up without something to fuck doesn’t benefit anyone. You’d be treated well.”
“I think it best that you shut your mouth before I break your jaw,” Caelum snapped, and for once I couldn’t force myself to protest the threat of violence. I had nothing against women using their bodies in such a way if it was what they truly wanted. I didn’t even begrudge the Resistance for needing such a service in the first place.
But that didn’t mean that I had to become a Lady of the Night myself.
“I can fight,” I said, interjecting myself into the conversation that centered around me. “I’d be much more useful at that than…. I wouldn’t even know how to begin with being a Lady of the Night.”
“I think you would find that our men are very capable of guiding you through exactly what they expect of you. You’re beautiful. It would be a shame to waste that face on fighting, where it’s likely to take a beating. Just think about it. If my choice was a life of pain and war or a life of pleasure and fucking, I know which one I would choose.”
“Stop,” I demanded, my face twisting into a glare. While I appreciated Caelum standing aside during the exchange of words, having now made my desires known, I did not appreciate the attempt to bully me into something I wasn’t comfortable with. With the way Jensen looked at me, I had no doubt he intended to be my first customer. “Caelum and I are monogamous. I’ll not be entertaining any other men.”
“Perhaps when he’s done with you then,” the rebel said, huffing a laugh as he turned on his heel and strode off, leaving me with a very pissed off
companion at my side.
“One of these days, I will enjoy watching him bleed to death.”
