My knees almost collapsed with the rush of power returning to my body. My Mark glowed as white as freshly fallen snow, the inky

shadows twirling within it in tandem with the moving Mark on his neck.

I slapped his hands away, wanting nothing to do with them on my skin, knowing that it must have all been a lie. His claim of love. His desire for me. I’d been stupid enough to fall for all of it, while he’d played me like a fool and used me to get to the Resistance.

He grabbed me by the chin with unyielding fingers, tilting my head to the side as he inspected the burn marks on my throat from where the iron had scorched my skin. His brow furrowed momentarily, and then he released me as suddenly as he’d caught me.

Lifting his dagger to his wrist, he slid the sharp edge of the blade against his skin. Blood welled from the wound, flowing over his skin and dripping on the ground as he raised it toward me. He placed his wrist at my mouth, wincing as I drew back from the pressure of his arm against my lips. “Drink,” he ordered, his lips twisting into a snarl when I shook my head and pressed back farther into the wall.

He shoved his wrist against my lips, applying so much pressure that I had no choice but to part them or they’d tear open against my teeth. The taste of him sank inside me, coating my tongue and dripping down my throat with molten heat. With lava flooding through my veins and yet deadly cold, all at once.

He warmed me from the inside, his blood sinking into my belly and making me feel complete for the first time. I squeezed my thighs together, desire building in me even though I knew, logically, that I wanted to murder him for what he’d done to me.

I swayed toward him when he pulled his wrist away from my mouth finally, craving more of the substance that had filled me with euphoria like I’d never known. My body awakened, my skin buzzing with awareness as the sun above us seemed to gleam a little brighter. He drew back and stared down at the wounds covering my hand from when I’d fallen to the rubble after being hit with the iron chain. I watched in fascination as the cuts stitched themselves back together, new skin growing to fill in the bloodied slashes, until there was nothing but a slight pink tinge left.

When I turned my stare back up to him from the healing of my injuries, his eyes were transfixed on my lips. I licked them, finding the slightest taste of blood coating them and drawing it inside me against my better judgment. “Fuck,” Caelum groaned, grabbing me around the side of my neck. The moment his palm came down on the Mark itself, power flooded my veins.

The cold breath of winter. The shadows that chased the sun.

The dominance of the God in front of me as he tilted my face up and his mouth conquered mine. His tongue swept inside, tasting his blood as he devoured me, obliterating any delusion I might have had that he’d ever kissed me before. He’d been nothing but a gentleman, civilized as could be compared to the way that he now tried to meld our bodies, pinning me to the wall.

I melted into him, feeling the familiar edge to his embrace that meshed with the reality of who he was, and what he was, hanging between us. With the truth in the open, he was finally free to be himself.

With that thought, I placed a hand at each of his shoulders and pushed him back. He separated from me the moment I demanded it, pulling his mouth off of mine as he turned a frustrated stare down at me in question.

I shook my head, turning my eyes away as they burned with the threat of tears. I couldn’t let him see me cry. I couldn’t let him see how thoroughly he’d destroyed me.

I’d loved him. Loved every one of his lies.

“How could you?” I asked finally, swallowing past the burn in my nose to pin him with a glare. “You encouraged me to be more independent. For

what? After all your talk of having a choice with you? What kind of a choice is it, if I don’t know the truth?”

“I’m better because you love me,” he said, raising his chin in challenge and daring me to defy the words we both knew were true. “I will do this for us. For the future we will have, even though you are far too young to see past your kind’s blind hatred for us.”

“I’ve read the books. I know the atrocities your kind committed and what you do with your mates! I know what you did here. The number of people you slaughtered,” I snarled, trying to twist away from his grip on my neck.

“The books lied. The Veil didn’t save the humans from monsters who wanted to own them; it cut off half your fucking soul, you foolish girl. We never wanted the war, but you can bet everything you know it was the Fae who finally ended it,” he said, shocking me into a moment of silence.

“The witches–”

“Wouldn’t have been able to form the Veil without the help of a Fae who gave his life to it. And it was me who tore it down after centuries,” he said, leaning into my space. His face came over mine, hovering only inches above me. “If I didn’t allow that to come between us, do you really think there is anything that can keep me from you?”

I scoffed. “You didn’t even know me.”

Caelum, Caldris, smirked. Menace danced over his features, twisted and cruel. “You’re still in denial, I see. So let me spell it out for you, my star.” He touched his lips to my cheek with a mocking gentleness that seemed so at odds with the brutal expression on his face. “I didn’t have to know you, because I could feel you.” He grasped my hand in his, lifting it to press against the spot where his heart beat inside his chest.

It echoed the beat of mine, pumping in tandem with the one that pounded in my chest.

Oh fuck.

No.

“I waited for you for centuries,” he said, his fingers pressing my hand into his chest more firmly when I shook my head and tried to pull back.

“No,” I said, the protest loud in my desperation to not hear what he had to say.

“I felt you live and die for countless lives, felt every one of your life cycles end and grieved the woman I never got to meet. I know you, because

you are the other half of me.” Those foreign blue eyes bled to black as he stared at me, and his magic hummed between us. “You are my mate, Estrella, and nothing will come between us now that I have you at my side.”

The end…for now.