I walked at Caelum’s side with Beck and Melian ahead of us as we approached the river at the top of Calfalls. A quick glance over the
edge of the cliff showed the remnants of a prosperous city, with nothing but a pile of rubble in place of what had once been gleaming towers of white and silver. The metal and stone of the buildings were twisted or shattered, giving us a perfect, panoramic view of the destruction below. It was covered in a thin dusting of snow, masking the horrors from centuries ago as the sun reflected off of it.
“What could have done this?” I asked, even though deep down I already knew the answer. I’d heard the legends.
Heard his name whispered as a cautionary tale of the monsters beyond the Veil.
He was the worst of the Fae. The worst of the creatures who could kill without thought and bring entire cities to their knees. Just as he’d done with what had once been a shining city.
“Caldris. The God of the Dead,” Melian answered mockingly. She spat on the ground at her feet as she approached the river feeding the enormous waterfall that flowed through the Ruined City. “God, my ass. There’s nothing holy about a monster who could do something like this.”
“But…how? Why?” I asked, thinking of the rage it must have taken to do something so horrific. Caelum was silent at my side as he stared down at the evidence of the carnage from centuries prior, something like hatred burning in his eyes.
I understood that emotion well.
“This was his city,” Melian explained, approaching a pathway laid out across the river. Boulders jutted up from the current, leaving Beck to take the lead as he jumped to the first one while Melian turned back to face me. “He lived here, letting the people who lived here worship him like the God he claimed to be. When King Bellham revealed the truth about what they were, most of the Fae fled back to Alfheimr until tensions settled down. According to the texts written by our ancestors, Caldris chose to remain in the human realm, in his precious city where the humans cared for him,” she explained, jumping to the first stone as Beck moved forward across the river. “But Calfalls turned on him, and the people who’d once worshiped him attacked him. They stabbed him with iron, hanging him from the gallows above the city to wave their triumph.”
“But how did he survive if they stabbed him with iron?” I asked, jumping to the first stone as she moved forward. I focused on my balance, trying to deny my interest in her words as Caelum hovered behind me, making sure I didn’t fall and get lost to the deadly drop of the falls.
“The knowledge that iron could be used against them was new, and it wasn’t clearly known that he needed to be stabbed in the heart. they weakened him with the blades they left in his body, so that he lost consciousness for hours while they mutilated what they believed to be his corpse. But he awoke again that night and managed to get free, crawling to a dark corner to heal the worst of his injuries and knit his flesh back together. They discovered him missing the next morning, and he sought his revenge for what they’d done by laying waste to the entire city and everyone in it.”
I ignored the sympathy that thrummed through my chest, shoving down the moment of wondering what I would have done in that situation. It was impossible to know if he was a cruel God before they’d turned their backs on him, but to wake to a mutilated body…
I shuddered as I jumped to the next stone. “But why did they turn on him in the first place? Was he cruel to them?”
“He allowed them to worship him, even knowing that he was not worthy of such a thing. The Fae allowing us to lay sacrifices at their feet? To prostate ourselves before them; it was a deception. They may be the children of the Primordials, but we were created by a Primordial just the same. Why should they be above us?” Melian said.
I ignored the clear imbalance of power that must have led to centuries of building tension. “What did they do to him?” I asked, swallowing past the nausea swirling in my gut.
“Perhaps some things are better left in the past, my star,” Caelum said gently, jumping onto the stone behind me as I navigated the dozen that created the path across the river.
“Aside from hanging him up like a piece of meat?” Melian asked with a bitter chuckle as she gladly continued on with the story she clearly believed all of humanity should take pride in.
The time they’d bested the God of the Dead, but at what cost?
“They pulled his legs from his body and sawed through the cock he loved so much and fed it to the pigs. They disemboweled him, letting his guts hang down to the ground from where he hung, and tore his piercing blue eyes from his skull before they let the birds peck at his eye sockets.”
“That’s horrible,” I said, holding steady against the glare that she aimed at me.
“How could you think that a man capable of this deserved anything less?” she asked, jumping from the last stone to the shore on the other side of the river. I followed after her, wondering if Melian and I had as much in common as I’d initially hoped. No matter that the Fae were my enemy, no matter what they had in store for me, I was not and would never be capable of cruelty like that. “He is the reason we now burn our dead. He raised them from their graves and ordered them to attack the living. His army only grew more and more with every death, and when there was no one living left, he had them destroy entire buildings. They buried themselves in rubble, one by one, and made the city a tomb.”
“If we were capable of doing something like that to a male we thought was dead, were we ever really any better?” I asked, sighing when Caelum lent me the warmth of his hand on top of my shoulder in silent support.
I wanted to wither when Melian pierced me with one of the fiercest glares she usually saved for Caelum, but she rolled her eyes and turned on her heel. “I would think someone like you would understand what it is to be beaten down by someone more powerful than you,” she said, in reference to my scars she’d seen in confidence. “What would you do to get retribution against the man who wronged you?”
I paused, considering all that I’d suffered at Lord Byron’s hand, and his command as an extension, mulling over the need for revenge I’d felt once.
There’d been a time when I wanted nothing more than to watch him suffer for everything he’d done to me.
Now the idea of it just made me tired.
“Nothing,” I answered, shocked at the revelation. “I’m free. That’s all the revenge I need.” The words hung between us as she and Beck angled toward the pathway at the edge of the cliff, where the waterfall disappeared to pour into the plunge pool below. The pathway zigzagged down the rocky cliff face, the steepness of it taking my breath away.
The trail was narrow, forcing us to walk in single file as we descended from the top and picked our way down into the valley of the city. I trailed my hand over the rocks at my side, hugging them as tightly as I dared and staying away from the sheer drop on the other side. Melian walked in front of me as she followed Beck with quick, assured steps. Her body was a testament to the training she’d endured through her life, fine-tuned muscle that gave her the confident stance I wished I had.
“If you so much as twitch toward that edge, I swear to Gods I will tie you up and drag you behind me, Estrella,” Caelum ordered, following closely behind me.
“I don’t have a death wish today,” I said, glancing over my shoulder to smile at his unamused face.
“Tell that to every cliff or hill you’ve ever met,” he grumbled, his hand remaining only a few inches away from mine, as if he could catch me and save me from falling if I really did decide to try to fly.
“Being around you two is absolutely maddening,” Melian groaned. “Not every word you speak to one another needs to be flirtatious.”
“I don’t flirt,” Caelum said, his voice dropping disingenuously. “That’s too juvenile for what happens between Estrella and I,” he added smugly.
“Just stop it and hurry up. We need to get back to the tunnels before Imelda’s warding wears off, and we’ll have to take the long way if we want to avoid Tradesholde.” Melian glanced around the city as we approached the bottom of the cliff. The ruins of the town were everywhere, buildings leveled into piles of rubble. The ones that remained standing were stone behemoths with entire sides missing, rising into the sky as if they had reached for freedom from what had destroyed them.
She continued into the ruined city, disappearing around the corner of a building as Caelum helped me down from the ledge of the walkway. “She’s going to get us killed,” he growled, keeping pace with me as I hurried to
keep up with Melian. It wasn’t safe for us to get separated here, not when we’d already encountered the Fae once on this venture.
“She’s grieving and trying to make sure the Fae don’t take any more of us. Can you blame her for being a little reckless?” I asked, turning to stare up at the side of his face as he looked all around the ruined city.
“I can blame her for just about anything if her behavior puts you at risk,” he said, turning that square jaw until his dark eyes pinned me in place.
“I’m not that fragile,” I said, hurrying along the side of the building.
Caelum grabbed me by the arm, spinning me until my back pressed to the tarnished silver of the building behind me. He leaned over me, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear as I squirmed away from the touch. “You don’t have the first idea just how fragile you are.”
His hand touched the side of my neck and the Mark there before trailing over the front of my throat. He grasped it gently, squeezing his fingers into the skin ever-so-slightly, as if considering the fact that he could snap it with a twist of his hand.
I stared into his eyes as a deep chill took over his features. Something ancient peered out from behind the dark eyes I’d gotten so familiar with over our weeks together. “Stop looking for answers you aren’t yet ready for, my star,” he warned, leaning forward until his lips touched the side of my neck.
Everything in me froze at his murmured words, a jolt of panic spreading to my limbs. He erased all of it by trailing his tongue over my mark, finding the top of the writhing tendrils that seemed to dance beneath his touch.
He sank his teeth into my flesh, using them to grip me hard enough that they bruised me all over again, but he didn’t break the skin. My resistance fled, my body sagging beneath the hold, against my will. He pulled back and stared into my face with singular focus that drew a whimper from me, all my fears about him rushing to the surface all over again.
“What are you keeping from me?” I asked, flinching when he took my hand tightly in his and drew me around the corner suddenly. His face was crazed, as if he could sense something that I couldn’t. Up ahead, Melian’s head of blond hair gleamed from the shadows of the ruined city as I tugged my hand out of Caelum’s grip and hurried to follow after her.
Something was wrong. I felt it in my bones, and from the tension in Caelum’s body, he did too.
I didn’t care about the ruckus I made in my urgency to escape Caelum, while I felt him following at my back, his presence heavy with the weight of an unfinished confession.
But a confession of what?
He hurried to my side while the something Other retreated from his face, all traces of anything but worry gone as he glanced from side to side. Grabbing my arm, he pulled me to a halt and touched a finger to his lips in warning.
“What?” I whispered, staring at him in surprise. His expression was ominous as he turned his focus up to Melian. I followed his stare, watching as she spun back around and looked at the ruined city with her brow furrowed.
Beck was gone.
Melian continued to spin, searching for the man who had been ahead of her only a few moments before. There wasn’t any sign of him, and I watched her hand slowly reach toward the sword secured at her waist.
“Did you hear that?” she asked, turning to face us directly. With the rubble of one of the buildings at her side, she glanced across the broken cobblestone street. I listened, trying not to breathe as Caelum kept his grip tight on me.
There was nothing, not even the rustle of trees in the distance, or birds or other wildlife scurrying through the ashes of what had once been a prosperous tribute the God of the Dead.
“Melian…” I hated the distance between us, and Caelum’s grip that kept me from going to her. His body was as rigid as a statue in the moments before he took swift strides toward the courageous woman who led the Resistance.
I moved at his side, hurrying to close the distance to Melian so we could stand together against what would come. I had to hope it was the Fae Marked and whatever security they’d implemented, but the concern on her face made me think otherwise.
She took a few steps away from us, shaking her head to deter us from following and holding out a hand in a signal to wait. I stopped at Caelum’s side when he followed the order.
She looked at her feet, watching the debris blow across the street with a sudden burst of wind. Then her eyes rose to mine, her brow furrowing in confusion. “I must be hearing thin—” her words cut off abruptly.
Melian gurgled, blood trickling at the corner of her mouth and dripping down her chin as she glanced down to her chest.
To the tip of the sword that slowly skewered her alive, puncturing through her ribcage and gleaming in the sunlight with the stain of her blood as it dripped onto the ground at her feet.
It pulled back as slowly as it had appeared, leaving her to crumple to the stone and debris beneath her. A woman’s scream erupted through the air, accentuating the death with the sound of a banshee wailing.
But there was no banshee to be found. There was only me.
