My entire body throbbed as I fought my way to my knees, gasping through the pain that erupted inside me, as if my very soul was
being burned alive and ripped in two, tearing through my skin until it was open for all to see.
My determination to check on my family was enough motivation to push through. I sank one hand into the dirt beneath me, clawing at the grains until they wedged under my nails. The other went to the searing pain on my neck, covering the skin that felt hot to the touch. I tore my hand away before the burn could scald it, my neck sizzling like a fresh brand on a horse’s hide.
I spun as I stood, glancing over to where Brann knelt over our mother, her chair knocked backwards by the force of the shattering Veil. His gaze met mine, his wide eyes filled with terror as I closed the distance between us. The High Priest and Lord Byron hadn’t yet managed to get to their feet, lying on the ground as I moved past them in confusion.
Why wasn’t anyone else moving?
Brann shoved our mother’s chair upright as I knelt in front of her, grasping my cloak and bunching it up around my neck. My skin burned anew when his fingers brushed against me, and I barely resisted the urge to scream out in pain, to vent my agony into the darkened sky, but something written in the lines of his face warned me to stay quiet.
I drew in deep lungfuls of air instead as my eyes watered, my throat closing around the need to free the icy fire spreading through my body. “It
hurts,” I whispered as my mother snagged my gaze, her eyes filling with tears while she stared at me and then slowly nodded to Brann with some meaning that I didn’t understand.
“Shh. You have to be quiet,” Brann murmured, taking my elbow and helping me back to my feet. The Mist Guards around the gardens had finally shoved their way to their feet, as well, gripping their blades tightly as they moved through the people who remained lying on the ground.
My mother grabbed my hands, squeezing them and leaning forward to place a lingering kiss on the back of each one. “Take her and go,” she said to my brother, her voice dropping low, in command despite the tremble of her bottom lip.
“What? Why would we—” I fell silent when Brann nudged me with his elbow, taking my hands from our mother’s. He lifted the hood on my cloak up to cover my neck fully, pulling the braid out of my hair with frenzied fingers that tugged at the strands until they fell around my shoulders and hung around my face. “Brann,” I murmured, lost in the urgency of his expression.
What was wrong with him?
He caught my hand in his, starting to inch us back toward the woods at the edge of the gardens. We watched to see if anyone would notice as we slipped away while Mother nodded in encouragement. My gaze went back and forth between them, not understanding what was happening.
Where were we going?
Brann paused, wincing as his eyes caught on something in the front row of twilight berries. A Mist Guard stood over Rook, one of the swordsmiths from our village, and glared down at the spot where he clutched his neck. Pain had transformed his face into a picture of torment, and I lifted a hand to touch the same spot on my body—the very same place that had burned with cold heat when Brann’s hand brushed against it.
“Please, don’t!” Rook yelled. The guard ignored him, shoving his blade through the smith’s chest and pinning him to the ground before he withdrew it. The villager’s eyes relaxed almost instantly, his chest shuddering with his final breath as I lifted a hand to cover my mouth and keep silent.
He’d been a well-loved member of the community. He’d supplied the Mist Guard with the very swords he’d used to run him through. There’d been no moment when I ever thought they would be capable of executing him so coldly.
But with the Fae able to walk among us once again, anything was possible.
“He was Marked,” my brother said pointedly, his eyes dropping to the cape that concealed my burning flesh, which seemed to worsen with every moment that passed. As if something cut through me, bit by bit, tearing the skin from my body to reveal that which should have always been there.
The Mist Guard kicked Rook’s hand away from his neck, giving me my first view of the swirling patterns on his skin. They glowed the color of freshly grown grass in spring, the Mark of the Fae whose magic claimed him as her consort. An otherworldly scream filled with anguish made the ground tremble all over again, and it took me far too long to realize it hadn’t been one of the beasts from the caves in the woods.
The sound came from a female on the other side of the Mist, feeling the loss of a treasure she’d only just found.
Something like her would come for me.
I reached up, sliding my hand inside my cloak to touch that cold fire on my skin as understanding crashed over me in sudden awareness.
Oh Gods.
I turned back to my mother, her words lost to the wind that howled toward us over the open water where the Veil had once been, but her lips moved clearly, making sure I could understand even with the distance between us. “Go. Quickly,” my mother mouthed, turning to watch Lord Byron as Brann pulled me toward the trees. The woods were dark and menacing without the sun shining down between the branches, and fear lodged deep in my chest. Even I didn’t dare to wander in the woods in this kind of darkness, without the moon and stars to illuminate the dangers waiting for us.
I didn’t want to leave her, to abandon her to the village and the danger that was coming.
“Brann, the woods—”
“At least you’ll stand a chance this way,” he said, picking up his pace as we ducked beneath the low-hanging branches at the edge of the forest. Even having seen what had come of Rook, even understanding what that Mark on his neck had meant in the vaguest sense, the reality of what that meant for me lingered just out of reach.
All that mattered in the moment was survival, and that the people I’d worked alongside, who’d been a part of my life for as long as I could
remember, would now want me dead.
The very same man who’d only moments ago been determined to stall my execution, so he could get me into his bed, would now be the one to order it, as if I’d never existed in the first place, wiped from memory and record. I’d been willing to die, but not like this.
“Find her!” Lord Byron shouted behind us, and Brann and I exchanged a quick glance before we picked up our pace.
I could barely make out his features as he ran by my side, barely see my hand in front of my face with the darkness spreading across the sky. My cloak slipped as I hurried, dropping away from my neck, and the sudden burst of white light that filled the trees drew a startled gasp from me as I stumbled.
Any doubt I might’ve had whether the magic of Faerie had claimed me was gone in that moment.
The rest of my left arm burned, a line trailing down from my neck until even my fingers felt like they’d been lit on fire. I watched as black and luminous white swirls appeared on my wrist, giving way to a black moon that covered the top of my hand as I came to a complete halt in the middle of the clearing.
My legs stopped moving. They stopped listening to my brain entirely as I pulled my unmarked hand away from Brann and met his eyes with fear. “Estrella, what are you doing?!”
“They won’t stop,” I said, a ragged breath leaving me with the realization. They would hunt me down until they found me, kill anyone who helped me, and burn entire cities to keep me from being taken by the Fae who would make me his consort.
From the Fae who would become stronger with his mate at his side.
“We’ll deal with that later. Please,” he said, reaching out to take my hand once again. I knew without a doubt that all I would achieve by running with him was to put him in danger, and I couldn’t risk his life for this.
Even if we managed to get away. Even if the Fae didn’t cross the Mist, what kind of life could he have on the run with me? What kind of life could our mother have without either of us to take care of her?
“I love you,” I whispered. Taking his hand in mine, I squeezed one last time and then pushed him so hard he stumbled back into the brush on the edge of the narrow path and disappeared beneath the massive fern leaves.
The footsteps that sounded behind me seemed to loosen my feet, letting me turn slowly to face the guards who had watched me grow up. Who had known me when I’d been nothing more than a child, and would still put a blade through my heart without hesitation, ensuring that I would never reincarnate. There would be no more lives for me, not with my soul destroyed along with my heart.
The Fae could never be allowed to have their human consorts, in this life or the next. Of all the myths that had been lost over the centuries, all the legends, and the reasons and the whys, that one truth remained.
When a Fae took his human consort, the consequences were devastating.
“Gods,” Loris murmured as he stared at me, and I felt the glowing marks on my skin pulse in response to his words, as if they’d awakened something within me. “Is that…” he trailed off, and my heart dropped into my stomach when he seemed like he didn’t dare to speak of that which had marked my skin.
Of the monster who sought to own me.
I didn’t know enough of the legends, because only the guards needed to know the specifics of what they might face when the Fae finally broke through the Veil. The rest of us knew only what they deemed necessary.
When the Fae crossed the Veil once more, all would be lost.
“Kill her. Quickly,” one of the oldest guards said as he came up behind the younger two. The one at Loris’s side was his friend, someone I’d seen him with often during his hours on duty. “Don’t let her suffer,” the older man said, and tears stained my cheeks as I turned back to Loris and our eyes connected.
“Loris,” I said, swallowing past the lump in my throat. I didn’t have many friends, particularly not within the Mist Guard, since they were considered above and beyond the trivialities of man. But he’d been one of the few I trusted—enough to let him have my body, and to know about the nighttime walks in the woods, and to share those moments when I shed the roles I was expected to fill and just became me.
The betrayal threatened to cleave my heart in two, even knowing that he was right in his purpose. There was no point in escaping, because the alternative was a fate worse than death.
Being found by the Fae.
“I can’t,” he said, shaking his head and turning back to face his superior, staring into the face of the man who had trained him and been all but a father to him over the years.
“You will,” he ordered. “She’s not the girl you knew anymore. Now she’s nothing more than some Fae bastard’s whore.”
I winced, feeling those words resonate somewhere deep within me. My Mark revolted, writhing and twisting inside me as if it had a rage all its own, and I shoved it down. That was my future, if I lived. Death would be a blessing.
Loris stepped forward, his face twisting into a pained grimace when I made no move to run from the fate that was coming for me. The ferns at the edge of the path rustled as Brann moved, vaulting to his feet when he realized Loris intended to follow through. I pinned my brother with a look, trying to communicate the inevitability of what was coming.
“I’m sorry,” Loris said, and the pain in his voice left me with no doubt that his words were sincere. But duty came first.
“Me too,” I said, wishing it could have been anyone else. I had no relationship with any of the other Mist Guards and generally thought they were terrifying and cold.
But he’d been different.
He swallowed, lunging forward with his sword and looking to the side, as if he couldn’t bear to watch as he fulfilled his duty. I lifted my hands instinctively, flinching back from the impending blow with a shudder.
But the pain never came.
I opened my eyes to watch as Loris tried to pull his sword free from the ball of swirling light held between my hands. Tendrils of it climbed up over the hilt, twining around his wrist and up his arm while I watched on like a spectator. The icy fury in my hands was so cold it burned as a flame spread through my chest and the white fingers of light seared through Loris’s leathers to get to his skin beneath.
His eyes widened in a moment of shock, and then his mouth dropped open in a silent scream. “Estrella,” he gasped, and I released a loud sob as Brann took a step toward me.
“Don’t,” I warned him. There was no controlling the power that came from within me, nothing to stop the instinctive protection that acted without my permission. “Stop,” I begged the magic, whimpering as those vines of white crept up over Loris’s neck and touched his face. His brown eyes filled
with white, the skin on his face cracking, and he seemed to age before my eyes. And all I could do was watch in shock as I drained every hint of life from his body.
As the thing that had claimed my body used me as a weapon.
My old friend’s head twisted to the side suddenly, the snap of his neck echoing through the silent woods, and his body crumpled to the forest floor. By the time he touched the brittle leaves of autumn, he was nothing but a pile of snow on the ground.
The older guard stared down in surprise at what had been one of his men, his brow furrowing as his mind tried to make sense of what he’d seen. Of what I’d done, that even I couldn’t understand.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” I said, shaking my head from side to side. The magic in me didn’t care about what I wanted, only about keeping me alive, and preserving my safety until the male who commanded it could find me.
When the guard struck, I threw my weight back to the forest floor to try to spare his life, but the vines of white took what they wanted anyway, wrapping around his throat and squeezing. He dropped his sword to clutch at them, desperate with the need to breathe past the suffocating embrace of the magic. He soon joined the pile of snow by my feet as I let out a strangled sob. The single remaining Mist Guard retreated, hurrying back to Mistfell and safety from the power taking control of me.
It had all happened so quickly. They were there one moment, ready to kill me to save me from what would come, and then they were just…gone.
“We have to move,” Brann said, but he kept his distance and didn’t take my hand.
“I-I—” I tried to find words to communicate the emptiness that filled my chest. What I’d done could never be forgiven.
“Move!” he ordered, the sharp sound of his voice through the woods snapping me out of my moment.
Others would follow when they realized Loris and the other guard hadn’t returned.
I didn’t want to kill them, too.
