Another night passed without Caelum doing anything more than kiss me in the privacy of our shared room. After our moment in the library
when he’d touched me, part of me wondered if something had happened to take away his sense of urgency. The other part of me was grateful, because I still hadn’t worked up the courage to bathe with an audience just yet and had to settle for a few awkward sponge baths instead.
That would change today; I knew the activity of the morning would drive me to need a true bath, as I followed Caelum to the training cavern. Even knowing that Melian may not be pleased with the decision to come here, and at the end of the day I would still return to those books and the knowledge they contained, I couldn’t not have some form of activity.
I couldn’t sit on my hands and eat the food Melian had delivered to me as I read, letting my body fall into disuse. I’d been easily exhausted and unable to run when I’d needed to escape Mistfell.
I wouldn’t allow it to happen again.
We made our way through the commons, accepting the light breakfast of buttered bread and the tea they gave me, made from lily of the valley plants, to prevent unwanted pregnancy. I ignored Caelum’s pointed stare while I downed the drink, handing my empty cup back to the woman who passed them out to any who wanted it.
We continued on our way, and I winced when all eyes turned to me the moment we entered the caves where the fighters trained, and I knew there
had been conversations about me since Melian had assigned me to the texts. I didn’t belong here; not when I had another task that needed my attention.
“She can’t expect you to spend all day locked up in that cave alone,” Caelum murmured at my side. His voice dropped lower, his tone becoming scathing. He didn’t approve of the task Melian had given me; rather, he didn’t approve of the fact that I would need to do it alone, away from him. “Perhaps I should mention that I can also read the Old Tongue. If translating these texts is so important to her, surely my time is better spent there than having me train with her fighters.”
“She believes we need to be kept separate as much as possible. I highly doubt she’ll approve of giving us more time together,” I said, scoffing as Caelum guided me toward the center of the training space. He hefted two practice swords off the rack, tossing one to me that I stumbled to catch by the hilt.
I hadn’t been able to lift Loris’s sword when he’d taught me how to defend myself, so we’d focused on daggers and my own body being my weapons. The wooden practice sword was weighty, but not to the point that my arms ached. Or perhaps that was due to the changes in me since being marked, since the increased strength had changed me from human into something more.
Caelum lifted his sword, eyes bright as he waited for me to strike. It went against everything I knew of fighting for me to make the first move, because my smaller body would always be at a disadvantage. I didn’t know how to fight when my opponent didn’t think me incompetent, and was prepared for even my minimal level of skill.
I spun the sword in my hand, testing the weight and adjusting to the unfamiliar object. I hated to think that my first time truly fighting with a sword would be with an audience to judge me, but I would not allow myself to be discovered helpless.
Never again.
“Come on, my star. Show them how bright you burn,” Caelum murmured softly. The soothing intensity of his eyes on mine shoved away those insecurities, bolstering me. The point of the exercise wasn’t to show off the skills I already had. It wasn’t to prove something to anyone but myself.
It was to learn.
I struck, moving my body in the way I’d so often seen the men do when they trained at the barracks at Mistfell. Caelum blocked the blow with a swift swipe, knocking my sword to the side.
I did it again, feeling awkward with the too-long weapon in my hand, trying to find a way not to have my weight thrown off balance.
“It is an extension of your body. Your sword is a part of you, Estrella. Not the most important part, not even your sole focus. You have the movements and the ability to fight inside of you. I’ve seen you disarm men with no weapon at all. This is just another tool. Nothing more, nothing less. Sink into that place you go when your life is actually in danger,” he said.
I inhaled deeply, letting my eyes drift closed as I reflected back to my terror in the woods on the day I’d lifted the tree branch to fight the Wild Hunt, and to the ghostly rider I’d stabbed with his own weapon. To the fear I’d felt in the caves the moment I’d awoken with a sword pressed to my chest.
I moved then, twisting my body with the fluid grace I hadn’t been certain I possessed. My body was small, and I was able to curve through spaces with more natural rhythm than a larger person could use. I jabbed the sword toward Caelum as if I might aim for his chest, dropping to my knees and spinning on them in the dirt as he moved to block the blow to his chest that no longer came.
I cracked the flat side of my wooden sword against his knee cap hard enough that the smack echoed through the room. Caelum grunted, a chuckle rising in his voice as I leaped to my feet and backed away as quickly as I’d attacked.
“There she is,” he said, his voice dripping with approval and physical attraction.
“It really isn’t normal how much you enjoy it when I hit you,” I said, taking a step backward when he came toward me slowly. I forced myself to hold my ground, tightening my grip on the hilt of my sword and readying myself for the attack I knew had to be coming.
“If you can hit me, you can hit anyone,” he said, stabbing toward me with a quick jab. I bent backward to avoid it striking me in the chest. “And I will very much enjoy watching you cut down our enemies at my side one day.”
His second stab came toward me to accentuate those words, and I raised my sword in a quick arc to shove his to the side. Caelum went on the
offensive, stabbing and swiping at me so rapidly that all I could do was deflect his blows. There was no time for me to go on the offensive myself when I could barely defend myself against his attack.
“Come on, Estrella,” he pushed, aggravation tinting his voice as he urged me be faster. To be stronger than I was. “Sink into it and burn.”
I fought to regain my composure, searching for that place inside me where the flame of a star blazed, and for the ability to defend myself when I was too worried about death to fear a potential injury.
What I found inside me wasn’t a light. It didn’t burn with the brightness of a thousand stars in the night sky. What I found at the center of my body was a place so cold it burned as icy waters in the depths of winter burned, so far from the surface that nothing but inky darkness surrounded me.
I sank into that cold hollow inside of me, letting it wrap me into a familiar embrace. My fingers burned on the hilt of my sword as I shoved Caelum’s sword to the side, stepping toward him quickly and lifting my leg to press into his chest between his attacks.
I pushed him with all the strength in that leg, watching as he stumbled backward. He caught me by the ankle as a grin claimed his face, holding it so the bottom of my boot pressed to his chest. I bent my leg at the knee, leaning my weight into him and using it to drive him further away. Just enough that I could get my ankle loose from his grip and stand on my own two feet once more.
I hurried to strike while he was off balance, landing a sharp smack against the flesh of his belly as a woman’s laughter echoed through the room. Caelum paused, turning his attention to where Melian strode up to face us.
“It’s funny; this doesn’t look like my library,” she said, lifting her chin toward me in challenge. Her lips curved up into the hint of a dare to defy the challenge, as if she found me amusing in her own way.
“I can fight. It would be foolish for me to lose that ability while studying books that will still be there in an hour,” I said. My breath came in deep pants, the exertion of our sparring making me feel heavy as I pulled out of the space inside of me and returned to reality.
“I’ve no issue with you getting physical activity down here, Estrella. All that matters to me is that you continue your work with the texts. Your value is not as a body to be cut down by our enemies, but in the mind that holds information most of us lack.” Though her voice soft and soothing, there was
the gentle thrum of a command in it, as if she couldn’t quite turn off the leader, but it wasn’t harsh or cruel.
“That’s funny. I thought my worth was in spreading my legs and letting your men fuck me. According to Jensen anyway,” I said, the words carrying through the room. The first judgment of my usefulness would never go away. Her assessment would never erase that someone had thought to use me in the same way men had tried all my life.
“Jensen is being dealt with for his inappropriate behavior toward you. That I can promise you, Estrella. You will not be pressured to become something you do not want to be. Not here,” she said, the sadness in her voice bringing a pang inside me. To exist somewhere that I could be more than just a body to fuck or breed was still unfathomable to me, when that was all I’d been raised to believe was my future.
I had no smart reply in the face of knowing the man who’d made me uncomfortable would be dealt with, nothing else I could say to make my stance known.
“Come. You’ll train with me,” she said, nodding her head over to one of the other unclaimed spaces. I glanced back to Caelum, wincing when I found his glare on her.
“I think I’m perfectly capable of training her,” he said, sneering at the woman. He left me with no doubt that the two of them would remain at odds, even with the misunderstanding with Jensen behind us and being addressed. I wanted to like her, even admired her for the fact that she’d come to be in power in a movement that was filled with men and women alike.
“You’re holding back,” she said, cocking her hip to the side and crossing her arms over her chest as she met Caelum’s glare. “I have seen you cut through four of my men at a time. Estrella can fight, and she has the potential to be a great warrior one day if we teach her appropriately, but you will do her no favors by babying her. Her Viniculum will protect her against the Mist Guard unless they manage to trap her in irons. It is the Fae she needs to train for, and they are far greater fighters than you,” she said, stretching out a hand and catching me by my free one. She braved Caelum’s wrath to pull me away from him, taking me over to the space she’d gestured to before. A dummy sewn from cloth and stuffed with straw sat there waiting, the pointed ears on each side of its head leaving no doubt as to what it was meant to be.
“He won’t be happy with you,” I mumbled the moment we were out of earshot from Caelum. I pursed my lips together tightly to try to suppress the grin and chuckle that threatened to surface at the look she gave me.
“It’s cute that you think I care, but I promise you I am very much used to people not being happy with me. Such is the life of a leader who has to make the hard decisions when the consequences can mean life or death,” she said, her thin lips tipping up as she smiled down at me. “There are two ways to kill a Fae.”
She stepped up behind me, raising my practice sword to tap the dull edge of the blade against the neck of the dummy. “Cut off their head or stab them through the heart with iron. Anything else they can and will heal from in time,” she explained, pressing the tip of the sword to the spot where the dummy was marked with a bullseye.
“But iron weakens us, too,” I said, thinking back to the shackle that had been placed around my neck. I couldn’t imagine carrying something like that around all the time, dealing with the heavy feeling as it sank into my bones.
“Iron makes it so that our Viniculum cannot protect us,” she said, nodding in agreement. “Some of the Fae have spelled swords that do not weaken them, but they are few and far between, even among the Fae themselves. We have no such luxury, but you can render them immobile long enough to sever their head from their shoulders if you stab them in the heart with a silver sword. That is your goal, and the easiest way for you to deal with them.”
“Have you ever killed one of them?” I asked, turning a stare at her over my shoulder. I hadn’t seen one, had never laid eyes on them aside from the Wild Hunt.
“One,” she said, a shadow passing over her face, as if the memory was too much for her. “It took three of us to take him down when we went on a raid to a nearby village just after the Veil fell. Trisha cut down his legs. Jensen stabbed him in the heart. I took his head. He was Trisha’s mate, tracking her through the Kingdom when we were out for too long.”
“Do they all look like the Wild Hunt?” I asked, even though I felt fairly certain they didn’t, from the likenesses I’d seen in the texts and the statues at the hot springs. I needed the confirmation that the male coming for me would be different than the ghostly beings I’d seen, even if I didn’t want to know my mate, and never wanted even the misfortune of encountering him.
“When did you see the Wild Hunt?” she asked, going still.
“After the Veil fell. They almost found my brother and me, and then again a few nights later,” I explained. Her eyes drifted closed as she undoubtedly put together the pieces.
I’d had a brother with me. I didn’t anymore.
“Caelum saved me,” I said, giving her a soft smile and knowing it would partially explain my attachment to him. I’d have been taken by the Fae if he hadn’t intervened; already in the arms of the mate I didn’t want.
She nodded, turning to regard Caelum less severely than she usually did. “No. The Wild Hunt comes from the Shadow Court and is tasked with collecting the Fae Marked to bring back to Alfheimr. The Old Gods are humanoid, the children and sometimes grandchildren of the Primordials. The children of the Old Gods are known as the Sidhe. The Sidhe and the Old Gods look just like us, except more,” she said, her voice dropping lower.
“More what?” I asked, allowing her to guide my arm through the proper motions of swinging my practice sword.
“More everything.”
