Page 18 of What Hunts Inside the Shadows

“Yes,” he agreed. There wasn’t even a cursory nod to accompany his statement, nothing to indicate that he’d just shaken my world upside down again, turning it over until everything spilled upon the very ground at my feet.

“That implies we have some control over theViniculum. That would imply we can learn to wield it as a weapon,” I said.

“Because you can,” he returned, nodding his head. “TheViniculumis an instinctive power that is there for your protection whether you seek to use it or not, but that doesn’t mean you can’t practice and learn it like any other kind of magic. You can call upon it when you wish. All you need to do is try.” The statement recalled the revelation that I could raise the dead, an echo of his power existing within my body.

“I don’t want to be like you,” I said, thinking of the darkness that lurked inside of me. I didn’t want to touch it; didn’t want it to come out more or to once again feel all of that rage come bubbling to the surface.

“Oh, min asteren,” he said, pausing as he tilted his head and studied me. Sympathy filled his gaze, remarkably similar to pity, and for the first time when he looked at me I felt naive and childlike. “You already are.” There was a barely present taunt in his voice, a note that someone who didn’t know him as well as I did might not have even noticed.

But I did. I saw it for what it was—a reminder of everything I didn’t want to be.

“I’m not,” I argued, clenching my jaw as I stared back at him, willing him to see everything I hated in him. “I could never do what you have done.”

The Wild Hunt continued to shackle the Fae Marked, the cries of their misery and pain striking me in the chest each time as I stared at my mate who would condemn them to such a fate. I didn’t think it would have been necessary to shackle them at all, if it hadn’t been for me and the way they’d tried to hurt me.

He was willing to agonize a dozen men and women, plunging them into the depths of exhaustion, all to keep me safe from harm. Under any other circumstances it might have been almost sweet, but in this it was only wrong. “You think I don’t feel the need for revenge that courses through you? I know how much you long to make Lord Byron bleed for what he did to you,” he said, snagging my gaze with his.

“That doesn’t mean I should embrace that part of me. Nobody is in control of my actions but me. If I sink to his level, I’m no better than he was,” I returned, shaking my head sadly. There were many things in the world I didn’t think I wanted to be, but being like him was the worst I could imagine.

“You have never harmed an innocent. You’ve never violated a girl who should have been under your protection. You will never be Lord Byron of Mistfell, Estrella. But what you can be is an avenging fury on the battlefield.” He leaned into my space, finishing in a growl, “And I cannot wait to see you burn it all to the ground.” His lips tipped up into the slightest hint of a smirk, as if he could just imagine the portrait he’d painted in his mind.

“The only thing I intend to burn is you,” I hissed, ignoring the whimper of one of the wolves as he stepped up to my side. Without thinking, I rested a hand on his head, unable to stop myself from glancing down at the red-eared beast.

Caldris’s eyes dropped to the affectionate touch I gave to the animal, his lips tipping higher in satisfaction. The insufferable ass acted as if it was him I petted and not the wolf. All of his satisfaction quickly faded from his face as Holt stepped up to his side, holding out a pair of shackles. “In you get, Beasty,” he said to me, his voice sympathetic.

“Over my dead fucking body,” I said, the memory of iron searing into my skin fresh in my mind. The others didn’t seem so affected, their bodies weakened but not outright harmed.

“It’s not necessary. She won’t hurt the others,” Caldris said, hand on Holt’s arm as he pushed the shackles down and away from me. I felt the weight of the probing stares of the Fae Marked watching our interaction, waiting to see if I would be forced to endure the same fate as them.

Holt turned to him in surprise as he lowered his voice. “If you show her preferential treatment, you’ll only make them hate her,” he said.

“How fortunate for me that they already do,” I retorted, crossing my arms over my chest and glaring at the leader of the Wild Hunt.

“Then do not give them another reason to act on that hate. You are one of them. The only difference is that you’re lucky enough to have your mate here with you. He’s not stuck waiting back in Alfheimr for you to be delivered to Mab. Only a select few Fae have been allowed to cross into Nothrek to search for their mates—those who are most loyal to her. You are already privileged enough. I have to insist, Cal.” Even past the clear friendship between the two of them, Holt still looked to Caldris for approval. I turned his statement over in my head, wondering how many of the Fae had been ordered to remain in Alfheimr and had to rely on the Wild Hunt to find their mates.

I shook off my curiosity, turning to glare at Caldris as he slowly accepted the shackles from Holt. “We are people, who have done absolutely nothing wrong. We are people who you claim to value. If this is how you treat your valued equals, I should hate to be your enemy. You cannot treat us like prisoners.”

“You know nothing of imprisonment,” the God of the Dead snarled, the sudden vehemence in his voice knocking me back a step. His face twisted with the words, with the absolute scorn on his features. “You think I am your captor? That I’m the equivalent of a jailor?”

I took a step back as he moved even closer, his breath kissing my cheek as he arched a brow in cruel mockery. “Stop it,” I said.

“I will always treat you well, min asteren. Even when you are too foolish to see the truth right in front of you. You were determined as mine before your soul was ever born. This bond is not a prison. It is a haven from the ugliness of this world, a person predetermined to love you. To belong to you.” He cupped my cheek in his palm, his touch gentle despite the scathing reprimand on his face.

I reached forward, grabbing the dagger from his side and touching the tip of the blade to his throat. A warning. A silent demand that he keep his distance and not press his fortune when I wasn’t feeling too receptive to his advances. What I’d done before had been a mistake—any doubt I’d had of that had vanished the moment he put the other Fae Marked in chains.

“Your haven feels like a dungeon,” I said, twisting the knife in my hand when he leaned closer. His eyes gleamed, something like amusement shifting across the tension of his face.

“You really must stop pointing sharp things at my throat, my star. One of these days, you might slip. Then just imagine how guilty you would feel,” he said. He suddenly lifted his arm, grasping my wrist and pulling my arm away from his throat quicker than I could even follow the movements.

He freed the dagger from my grip, shoving it back into its sheath and lowering my hands to the front of my body until they were pinned between us, with his grip tight on my arms but not painful.

“I will fight this war with you until the day I die,” he said, dropping his forehead to mine. He clasped the first shackle around my wrist, watching as my legs caved beneath me from the shock of energy fleeing my body. The iron didn’t burn me, some sort of barrier protected me as he winced. He clasped the second around my other wrist, his eyes filled with remorse as he treated me like the prisoner his very words claimed I was not. Warmth pulsed off the shackles, as if the iron knew there was only a thin barrier between it and my skin, and if it could just burn through it, it would burn through me.

“I’m sorry, min asteren. This isn’t how I wanted it to be.” My skin itched beneath the shackles, the flesh reddening from the heat coming off of the iron. Caldris’s gaze dropped to them, to the growing redness that seemed to spread like a rash. Holt followed his stare, his brow furrowing when he found what Caldris was fixated on. “That’s not supposed to happen,” Caldris said, turning to look at the other Fae Marked, who seemed unharmed.

“It must have something to do with your magic being more potent as the grandson of a primordial. None of the others have been affected in this way,” Holt said, clenching his jaw as he stared down at the shackles.

“Give me the keys,” Caldris said, holding out his hand.

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