The cold sank into my bones despite the warm clothes designed to protect me from it. After spending days in the humid warmth of
the tunnels, I didn’t know if I would ever be able to tolerate the cold again in the same way. I’d spent my entire life being well-acquainted with the winter and never having enough warmth, but there was something about it now that reached inside me much more easily, as if that cold hollow at my center called to the wind itself.
We’d been walking all day, first in the labyrinth of narrow tunnels that extended through the entirety of the Hollow Mountains. They weren’t the same as the tunnels within the Resistance camp itself, but far smaller and more suffocating. Only wide enough for us to walk in a single-file line, the walls pressed in on us as we passed through. I’d taken in a deep, shuddering breath of frosty air the moment we’d emerged into the sun, more grateful than I could explain for the space at my sides and above my head.
We’d emerged on the other side of the Hollows from where Caelum and I had traveled, the deep chasm of the strait between the Main Continent and the Isle of Ruin at our side. The pathway between the mountain range and the rapidly flowing body of water that stretched on and on left just enough space for us to walk comfortably, without fear of slipping on the snow- covered ground. It was only a dusting, the first hint of the coming cold season that lay atop the grass, but it was enough that we would leave footprints for any who found themselves on the mostly abandoned side of the Hollows.
Caelum walked ahead of me with some of Melian’s personal team, discussing strategy about infiltrating the city. I followed behind at a slower pace with Melian at my side, trying not to walk funny from the unfamiliar feeling of pants covering my legs.
“There’s something off about this Caelum of yours,” she said, knocking into my shoulder with hers as the front row of men walked further ahead. There were still guards of Melian’s at our back, protecting their leader from all threats as the others led Caelum away from whatever she needed to say to me. As if they’d prepared for the conversation she knew we needed to have.
In the time since coming to the Resistance, I’d had a few moments where I’d bonded with Melian despite Caelum’s protests. She was blunt to a fault, but I found I appreciated the fact that she didn’t play games. I always knew where she stood on an issue, for better or worse, and while I didn’t always agree with her stance, I could respect it was one she’d taken for the safety of everyone she was responsible for.
“I’m sure that has nothing to do with the fact that you know we’ve been intimate, and that I’ve not taken any of your men to my bed, despite your warnings about getting too attached,” I said, turning a saccharine smile her way.
She snorted, huffing back a laugh as she lifted a hand and flicked me on the nose. “Such a smart tongue. It will get you into trouble one of these days.”
“It already has,” I laughed.
“But I am serious, Estrella. I don’t trust him, and I’m not certain you should either,” she said pointedly, watching as Caelum guided one of her men through a move he used often in their sparring sessions, continuing to walk as he did it with a coordination I envied.
“You don’t have to, because I do. He sacrificed himself to save me multiple times. How could I not trust him after that?” I asked.
“Have you ever known a man who could single handedly destroy a cave beast? You didn’t see the carnage after that fight, but I did. There was nothing left, Estrella. He reduced the creature to strips of meat not even fit for a stew,” she argued.
A cool wind kissed my cheeks as we strolled through a break in the tree line. We wouldn’t arrive in Calfalls until the next day, and the prospect of
enduring another one of her lectures sounded more exhausting than trekking through Nothrek itself.
“His Viniculum protected him, and he’s gifted with a sword. Those are hardly crimes, and you don’t seem hesitant to use them to your advantage when it suits you. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be out here accompanying you to Calfalls,” I said, glancing over at her. “If you don’t trust him so much, why did you bring us?”
“Better to keep an eye on him myself than leave him with my people,” she said, kicking the snow with her boots as she walked. “If anyone should suffer the consequences of trusting the wrong man and allowing him into our midst, it should be the ones who made the choice in the first place. It should be you and I.”
I reached out, gathering a clump of snow off the stone side of the mountain. It melted against the fabric of the gloves Melian had lent me, the unique flakes disappearing quickly. “What is it that you think he’s going to do exactly? Kill me? He’s had hundreds of opportunities. Give me to the Mist Guard? He could have easily done that before we arrived at the mountains. There is no other purpose or ulterior motive. He just wants to be with me. Is that really so hard to believe?” I asked, letting a rare moment of vulnerability shine through.
Her face softened for a moment of understanding as she shook her head. “It isn’t hard to believe at all that he would want to be with you. That isn’t what drives my concern. I only worry that you’re so blinded by your feelings for him you aren’t thinking clearly. I can’t help but think you’re keeping things from me to protect him,” she said, reminding me of the information that I had, actually, kept from her. Caelum had said he’d escaped the Wild Hunt because of their desire to find me. Whether or not that was true, I couldn’t say, but surely nothing good would come of admitting it to her.
She would either condemn him for doing the impossible or kick us out because of the potential danger I posed to them.
“What could I possibly be keeping from you? I don’t understand what you think there is to know about him that matters,” I said, my exasperation leaking through my voice. Whatever secrets he kept about his twisted childhood aside, what could possibly be important enough that Melian thought it meant she couldn’t trust him.
“Then tell me about him,” she said, pursing her lips as she pierced me with an intense stare. “What town was his home before the Veil fell? What’s his family name?”
I paused, heat tinting my cheeks red when I couldn’t answer either of those questions. “He’s the bastard son of a member of the nobility,” I said, providing the only information I had.
“What line of nobility?” she asked, crossing her arms over her chest. She saw the weakness she’d exploited, realizing how little I truly knew of the man I’d taken as my lover. “You don’t know even that?”
“He doesn’t like to talk about his family,” I said, rubbing a hand over my face. That much was true. I’d seen the melancholy on his face when I tried to pry into his life with his family.
“He is feeding you vague bits of information to keep you satisfied, without ever providing anything of use for identifying him. If that doesn’t tell you there’s something off about him, then I don’t know what will,” she said.
“What? What could possibly be so wrong with him that we need to worry about our safety? He’s not Fae,” I snapped.
“He could be working with the Mist Guard,” she said, eyeing the swords strapped across his shoulders.
“He would have killed me long before we reached the Hollows if that was the case,” I said, my disbelieving chuckle hanging between us. “I’ve had the misfortune of encountering them a few times. They don’t generally let the Fae Marked just walk away.”
“What if the Mist Guard somehow heard of our existence? They would know that we wouldn’t turn away a Fae Marked person in need of refuge, or at least they’d suspect it. He could have bargained for his own life, promising to help them find more of us. People will do anything to save their own skin, Estrella,” she said, the words such an echo of Brann’s concerns about Caelum that my heart stalled in my chest.
“He’s not working with the Mist Guard,” I said, feeling the truth of my words in my soul, despite the pain that lanced through me at the thought.
“So stubborn. I just hope it isn’t the death of us all,” she said, shaking her head to signal the conversation was over as Caelum glanced back over his shoulder at us. He leveled a look that did nothing to ease her distrust, something in his eyes twinkling knowingly.
He was far enough away that it was impossible he’d heard her.
Right?
 |
In the dark of night, Jensen dropped down from the thick branch of the tree, landing on the snow-covered ground and bending at the
knees to absorb the shock. “The meadow is crawling with members of the Mist Guard,” he said, rising to full height. He only spared a moment to glare at me before turning his attention to Melian. She raised her brow at him, conveying that she would deal with him personally if he didn’t pretend I no longer existed.
“We’ll have to go through the city to get to the tunnel in the tree line on the other side, so we can make our way to Calfalls,” she said, her chest heaving with a disgruntled sigh. “This was far easier before the Veil fell, when we were just raiding the deliveries sent from the Royal Guard.”
“What do you mean we’ll have to go through the city?” Caelum asked, glaring at the stronghold on the other side of the strait. “It has to be crawling with Mist Guard.”
“We can’t take the bridges across the strait for obvious reasons. That leaves us with no choice but to cross here, because the flow of water isn’t so strong that we’ll be swept away with the current. With the Mist Guard surrounding the city walls, we won’t make it around the perimeter. What else would you propose we do in this situation?” she asked, returning his glare with one of her own.
The two of them would be the death of me.
“Turn back. We are of no good to anyone if we’re dead ourselves,” Caelum answered, earning a sharp gasp from me. He was always so focused on our safety and protecting us from the things hunting us down, sometimes it was easy to forget that he did not extend that kindness to others.
“You would leave half a dozen Fae Marked to die, in order to save yourself?” Jensen asked, the steel of his voice putting me on edge.
“No,” Caelum said, turning to the man he wanted to bleed with a fierce glower that made even me wither on the spot. “But I would do it to save her.” All eyes turned to me, waiting for my response. I wanted to condemn
Caelum for being willing to sacrifice so many for my sake, but there was something about being the most important person in his world that rendered me unable to voice the words.
His willingness to leave them to die was wrong. It spoke of something lacking within him, that he didn’t care enough to save them, but he didn’t do it out of heartlessness.
He did it because he loved me. Because my life was all that mattered.
“I don’t want to leave them,” I murmured, keeping my face gentle as I stared back at Caelum and silently begged for him to understand. Those people were like me. They were what might have become of me, if he hadn’t found me and saved me.
They needed a Caelum to protect them, and for once in my life, I wanted to be a part of something bigger. I wanted to be one of the ones helping instead of the person who needed rescued.
Caelum clenched his jaw tight, the frustration bringing out his chiseled square jawline. “If you get hurt…” His narrowed gaze and the fury rolling off of him were just as threatening as any words he could have uttered.
He would blame any and everyone involved, whether it was Melian or the Mist Guard. I wouldn’t want to be on the other side of that wrath. He closed the distance between us, laying a hand on the side of my neck. His thumb tipped my head up, uncaring of the audience of four, who watched us intently.
“You will not do anything foolish or put yourself at risk. Do you understand me?” I narrowed my eyes, attempting to tear my neck away from his grip, but he followed.
His eyes flashed with warning, as if pushing him too hard on this would be a fatal mistake. “Caelum,” I said, my voice dropping into a low warning of my own in response.
“You will do as I tell you to do, or I will drag you back to the tunnels, even if I have to carry you,” he said, crowding his body into mine as he towered over me. “And if you growl at me again, I can tell you exactly what we’ll be doing the moment we get there.”
I swallowed past the desire his low threat created, my throat dry as I forced myself to concede. “Fine.” In addition to the Fae Marked hiding in Calfalls, my curiosity about the legendary Ruined City itself served to drive me forward. The destruction caused by the God of the Dead during the war had been the perfect cautionary tale to make us fear the Fae.
“I don’t have good feelings about his resolve to get the lot of us through Tradesholde alive,” Jensen said with a grimace, turning away from us as if he couldn’t stand to watch the display any longer. Melian’s personal guards, Beck and Duncan, followed after him in stoic silence, grabbing the pile of brush that disguised a boat tied to a tree by the shoreline.
“Get in if you’re coming; turn back if you’re not, but stay out of my way,” Melian barked at Caelum as the three men turned it around and held it steady at the shore. She climbed into the large rowboat, taking the front seat and looking out over the strait.
“Shouldn’t we at least wait for daylight?” I asked.
“Until we have the cover of trees, moving at night is better. We’ll find a place to sleep for the night on the other side of Tradesholde,” Beck answered, climbing in after Melian. I followed after him, moving to the middle seat with Caelum at my side. Jensen and Duncan took up the rear, pushing the boat off the shoreline as they hurried to scramble inside. Melian passed back oars, handing one to Caelum and Jensen respectively so the two men could paddle on opposite sides.
The current threatened to sweep us away, even in the place where the strait widened and it became less forceful. I wrapped my fingers around the edge of the boat, looking over the side into the dark waters beneath us.
It was as if there was no bottom, and it plunged into a chasm that connected to the home of tortured souls who displeased The Father and The Mother. The bridge across the strait wasn’t far enough away to leave me with any sense of comfort, knowing that one strong current would be all it took to expose us to the Mist Guard waiting downstream.
The walled city on the other side of the strait was bigger than anything I’d ever seen, jutting up out of the barren landscape with gleaming torches to light the stone. It made the Mist Guard fortress at home seem like a playhouse, and it wasn’t even the capitol.
We hurried out of the boat the moment we touched the shore on the other side, the men rushing to cover it with brambles to the side of the beach area. Jensen swore as one caught the skin of his wrist, drawing it into his mouth to stem the flow of blood before he could leave a red stain on the snow.
“Let’s go!” Melian whispered, taking my forearm in her grip. She pulled me toward the stone wall of the city, shoving a moss-covered stone out of the way to reveal a narrow passage. We stepped inside the darkened tunnel,
the walls oppressive as the men followed behind us and pulled the cover closed to disguise the entrance.
“How do you know about this?” I asked, keeping my voice quiet. “Cover your marks,” she said, urging Caelum, Jensen, and I to pull our
hoods tighter about our necks as she did the same. Beck and Duncan weren’t Fae Marked, and far more able to pass any inspection the Mist Guard might make if we were caught. “The Ladies of the Night might not be treated well above the surface, but they see everything. The Lord of Tradesholde likes opium, and this is one of the ways he sneaks it into the city.”
Lord Byron had done the opposite, allowing his companions to enter through the front door and pass by his wife in the sitting room as they went to service him. I was his only dirty secret; the only one he bothered to hide.
It made sense, as he couldn’t have married me if the High Priest thought he’d already played with me.
Caelum wrapped his arm around my back supportively, ducking low to keep from hitting his head on the roof of the low tunnel carved into the very foundation of the city. Water streamed through it, serving as a drain for the streets inside the city, trickling over the rock base as we slowly made our way through. With Melian at the lead and her men taking up the rear behind us, I kept my hand near the dagger strapped to my thigh, ready to draw it at the first sign of a fight.
Melian turned back when she reached the end of the tunnel, her gaze landing on each of us momentarily before she spoke softly. “The tunnel to exit Tradesholde is by the stables on the other side. If we’re separated, look for a stone cover carved with poppies on the right edge. It’s another way they deliver the Lord his opium supply.”
Beck and Duncan squeezed past us and stepped up beside her, shoving their shoulders into the cover in front of the entrance to the city. It slid to the side, slowly opening to reveal the quiet street of a city at night. Cobblestone lined the walkway at his feet as Duncan stepped out, looking around carefully before he waved a hand and summoned Melian and Beck to follow. Jensen followed in a hurry, not wasting any time with us. “Move,” he ordered, starting to heave the cover closed as Caelum and I emerged into the darkened city. Melian nodded once before she and the other men darted off, hurrying through the city as if they knew the way well.
“You stay with me,” Caelum growled as we tried to follow, his voice dropping low in a commanding reminder.
Melian’s concerns nagged at the back of my mind, joining with the questions I’d asked myself the night before, which had driven me to the library for more information. Despite my assurances to Melian, I couldn’t help but wonder about the man at my side. How he’d come to find me, why he’d cared enough to follow me that night the Wild Hunt attacked Brann and I, and how he’d come to know about the Resistance.
I looked up at Caelum, finding his gaze heavy on my face as he studied me intently. He took my hand as he pulled me through the streets, navigating as though he expected something to jump out and attack at any moment. Even so, suspicion still lurked in his eyes, as if he could see through my assurances and knew the doubt I’d warred with since he killed the cave beast.
Something had changed in our relationship in that moment, and Caelum damn well knew it.
“Is there something you want to talk about, my star?” Caelum asked, tilting his head to the side as he drew in a breath.
“Just nervous,” I lied, feeling the need to protect my thoughts from him. I couldn’t say what Caelum would do if he discovered I’d wondered about his intentions and his obsession with me, but whatever it was, I didn’t think it would be good, and the walls closed in around me some more.
“You could have stayed in the safety of the Resistance,” he remarked, tugging me around a corner as Melian and the others melted into one of the alleyways in the distance. “You’d be warm and comfortable there, waiting for me to wake you up with my cock.”
“Is that all you care about now? I am more than just something for you to fuck,” I said, my voice dropping low. I loved his innuendos and his desire for me, but in the moments when I had to wonder about the intensity of our relationship, the last thing I wanted was to feel as if I didn’t matter beyond the hole between my legs.
He stopped in the middle of the alleyway, looking down to glare at me in warning. “Trust me when I tell you that I know exactly what you’re worth, Little One. I know exactly how irreplaceable you are. That is why I would much rather see you waiting back in the tunnels, safe and sound where nothing can take you away from me,” he said, leaning forward to touch his lips to my forehead in a tender moment.
I tried to shrug off Melian’s concerns and the way they’d melded with mine, creating a symphony of worry inside of me that I couldn’t seem to shake. I sensed that I was dancing on the edge of something, missing what was right in front of my face.
“I don’t know what I’ve done to make you mistake me for a woman of leisure, Caelum, but I most certainly am not,” I said primly as my lips curved up, watching as his brow smoothed in the face of my sudden sass and the dissipation of the tension from a moment before.
“Not yet, anyway. I’d very much like to see you live a comfortable life one day,” he said, stepping up to the corner of an alley. He peeked around it, guiding me out onto the main street as we followed the shadows of Melian and her men in the distance. He walked at my back as I crossed the open space, hugging the shadows outside the circles of torchlight. I drew my dagger from its sheath and clutched it in my hand, taking comfort in the small blade that drew less attention than a sword would have.
Every set of eyes that fell on me from the windows of the homes lining the street felt like they would sound the alarm, like they would turn us in out of fear they might suffer the consequences of our freedom. We ducked into another narrow cross street, leaving me to breathe a sigh of relief at being less exposed.
“Are we going to talk about what you’re keeping from me?” Caelum whispered, his voice hushed as he walked at my back. I inhaled raggedly, the chilly air filling my lungs as I didn’t dare to look back at him.
“I’m not keeping anything from you,” I said, as I glanced toward a darkened corner of the alley and felt the sweet relief of nothing staring back at me.
We came to the mouth of the crossroad, Caelum pressing his spine into the wall at his back as he chanced a glance out into another main road. He raised two fingers, signaling me to hurry across the cobblestone roadway and into the alley on the opposite side. Once there, I waited, watching as Caelum ducked low and hurried to catch up behind me.
“If you aren’t keeping anything from me, then why do you sometimes act as if you’ve seen a ghost when you look at me, my star? Did I somehow become your enemy in the last two days?” he asked, walking at my side as we traveled down the darkened pathway between the main streets.
“Why would you be my enemy, Caelum? We’re on the same side.”
“Are we?” he asked, staring at me as I searched for any sign of Melian and the others. “The only side I’m on is the one that keeps you safe and mine. Beyond that, I couldn’t care less what happens to this world, no matter what you think that says about me.”
“You don’t care at all about saving the other Marked?” I asked, stopping in my tracks. I understood wanting me to stay safe, but to not care at all was brutal.
“I only care about you,” he reiterated. “I only came on this mission because I knew you would want me to. These people matter to you, so I’ll do my part. But I only do it out of loyalty to you, Little One. Not the Resistance.”
“They’re like us. How can you not want to help them?” I asked, forcing my feet to keep moving, because staying in one place would be too risky.
“Do you think us being like them would stop them from throwing us to the Mist Guard if it meant saving their own skins? Loyalty isn’t worth having if it doesn’t extend both ways,” he said, raising an eyebrow at me as if he could feel the way my thoughts had wandered since the cave beast. As if he could feel me pulling away from him, questioning him.
“Does that go for honesty as well?” I asked, swallowing past my nerves to act as he grabbed me by the front of the throat. He pressed me into the wall, letting the stone surface catch me.
I reached up, pressing the pointy end of my dagger to his throat as he grinned down at me. “That depends. There are some truths a person may not be ready to hear. Some omissions or lies are told for your protection. That goes for many things, my star,” he said, leaning into the sharp point until it broke the skin and a thin trail of blood dripped down his neck. “Like trust, but your tendency to put your knife to my throat would have me believe you do not trust me. Am I to understand I shouldn’t trust you in return?”
“How did you kill the cave beast, Caelum?” I asked, clinging to the event that had brought all the questions to my mind.
“Would you have rather I died?” he asked, his voice pained.
“Of course not! I just want to understand how. What is your Viniculum’s power that you could reduce the creature to nothing?”
“I see Melian has been talking again,” he sighed, shaking his head and seeming not to care about the way my blade scratched his skin. “I should’ve known she was the cause of your distance.”
“Is it not true?”
“It’s true. Our Viniculum is the same,” he said, touching a hand to the top of the white and black swirling lines on my neck. “That means we have the same magic flowing through us. I am not capable of anything that you aren’t, Little One.”
“My magic turned a man to snow,” I argued, snorting a laugh. “Not into a puddle of flesh and bone.”
“White is for the Winter Court.” He trailed a finger over the white line on his own neck, drawing my attention to the swirling line as it seemed to glow lightly in response to his touch. “Black is for the Shadow Court. It means our Fae have a parent from each Court, with both types of magic flowing through them. You seem to have a tendency toward the Winter side of your Viniculum, but I stray toward the Shadows and they control the most violent kinds of magic. So yes, Little One, I reduced a cave beast to a pile of flesh and bone, because he threatened you.”
I hadn’t thought the Viniculum worked like that, but even with it threatening me, Caelum had also needed to fight for his life.
It made enough sense to push back the worst of my questions, but something still remained, pressing at me though I couldn’t name it.
I dropped my forehead to his chest, the press of his hand still at the front of my throat reminding me of how much everything had shifted in such a short time. Pulling my dagger away from his throat, I sighed. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t let them turn you against me. They don’t do it for your benefit, but theirs. I will always have your best interest at heart, Estrella,” he said, releasing my throat in favor of cupping the back of my head.
“Why?”
“Because I love you. Because I will always love you. It is as simple as that.”
“As touching as this moment is, I feel the need to point out how inconceivably impossible that will be,” a male said, stepping into the mouth of the alleyway.
His face was angular, free from blemish, and his eyes glowed amber in the night. His body was thinner than I’d expected after studying the drawings of the Gods, but there was no question what he was when the pointed tips of his ears showed in the torchlight.
Fae.
