Page 32 of What Hunts Inside the Shadows

I wasn’t sure why I defended my relationship with him, not when I’d been so determined to get out of it, but the bastard was in my head, swimming along with my thoughts even after he’d left me alone. I hated him. I wanted him. There was no middle ground in the passion between us, no neutral space for indifference.

“The power of the Gods does not have limitations,” she said back, raising her shackled wrists. “They are not weakened by iron or by something so insignificant as love.”

“Or maybe the Gods you believe in are just grandiose tales told by men who want to keep you subdued within the confines of the world they created. All I know is that I will never stand a chance at wielding the kind of power Caldris has. I’ll never have a fraction of his ability to bring the winter, or of his dominion over the dead. That makes him a God to me. If The Father and The Mother would like to argue otherwise, I’ll be waiting for that riveting discussion. As they do not waste time with paltry peasants like me, though—” I shrugged, grinning at her with a smile that felt torn straight from the depths of the underworld “—I’ll stick to the God who can be bothered.”

“Interestingly enough, he seems to have lost interest in you already though, hasn’t he?” the man asked, smirking arrogantly. “Or is there some other reason that you’ve been abandoned?”

“Trouble in paradise already?” a woman asked, their scathing laughter echoing through the air.

“Am I a whore for entertaining him? Or am I pathetic for losing his interest so quickly? I do apologize, but I can’t seem to decide which logic is more convenient for you at this moment,” I said, earning a chuckle from the rider on the skeletal steed that pulled our cart. The woman beside me grasped my forearm at my eyeroll, digging her nails into it, her features harsh.

“His lack of interest in you after you’ve whored yourself out is what makes you pathetic. You couldn’t have been half as good a lay as you seem to think you are for him to abandon you so readily,” the man said.

“Would you care to find out for yourself?” I asked, smiling sweetly. “We can even place wagers on how long it takes for Caldris to kill you when he finds out you touched me.” The crack of the older woman’s hand across my cheek snapped my head to the side, my skin burning as I processed my shock.

“Okay,” Holt interjected. He pulled his steed to a halt, dropping back to pace beside the cart until the rider stopped as well. “Let’s go, Beasty,” he said, sighing in frustration as he reached underneath my armpits and lifted me from the cart.

Depositing me on the front of his saddle, he did the best he could to refrain from touching me more than necessary. His arms closed around me, that pervasive sense of wrongness filling me as his cool body touched mine.

“I don’t like it any more than you do, I promise you that,” he grunted, kicking his horse into a steady walk once more. “Try not to move too much. I do like my head attached to my shoulders. Growing a new one is painfully slow and inconvenient, and we have a lot of ground to cover. No time for Caldris to sever it for me when he returns for you.”

“What the fuck is wrong with them?” I asked, my frustration leaking into my voice as I turned to glare back at the humans who seemed much more comfortable with me gone.

“They’re human,” Holt scoffed. “All of you lot have that same attitude. Whatever they’ve told you in the centuries since the Fae have been gone from these lands, the teachings lodged deep. It will take time to undo all that hatred.”

“And yet you are not so patient with me and would condemn me for the fact that I am not fully committed to my mate yet,” I said, trailing a finger over one of the bones making up his horse’s neck. It felt exactly how I imagined a bone would, the surface smooth and somehow porous-feeling all at once. I sighed, looking out at the expansive plains around us.

Would it be so much to ask for some change in scenery?

“You’re different from the rest of them,” Holt said, his voice dropping low as if he knew it was an unfair assessment. “You knew him before you knew what he was. You loved him exactly as he is, now he is just more. They did not have that benefit. They will go to their mates knowing what they are, and their own prejudice will stand in the way of their happiness. It is unfortunate for them because they will likely waste countless years to their own bitterness. You have the chance to finding happiness before you arrive in Alfheimr. The chance to stand united with your mate before you face all that will try to tear you apart once you arrive in Faerie. You would be a fool to waste such an opportunity.”

“Or perhaps I would be wise to be cautious,” I said, snorting at the black and white way he saw Caldris’s and my relationship. There was no room for the betrayal of his deception or the fact that I was still recovering from it.

“Sometimes, we fight with the most fervor against those things that we need most,” he said, his voice dropping lower until it was barely more than a murmur. “Would you like to hear a story, Beasty? Caldris says you quite enjoy them.” I flushed, not wanting to even consider what else he’d told Holt about me.

“What kind of a story?” I asked, my words a mirror of what I’d said to Caldris the first time he’d tried to tell me a story to settle me down for the night.

“The story of how I came to be the leader of the Wild Hunt,” Holt said, shifting me forward in the saddle to gain some more room for himself. “I was a hunter—called to the hunt when I was alive as well. My band of men and I traveled around Alfheimr, taking trophies of the most brutal of Faerie creatures. Until we encountered the Erymanthian Boar, I’d never known defeat. But that boar sliced my arm open with his tusk,” he said, holding out his arm and lifting his fur-lined coat to reveal a long, jagged scar carved into the ghost of his flesh.

“It doesn’t look fatal,” I said, taking his arm in my grip. I twisted it from side to side, staring at the way the flesh glimmered in the sunlight streaming down upon us.

“If it had been a normal boar, it wouldn’t have been,” he said, pulling his arm back from my grip as one of the other members of the Wild Hunt raised a brow at him in warning. I rolled my eyes to the sky, retracting my own hands from what had been an entirely innocent touch. “But the Erymanthian Boar has poison in its tusks.”

“Poison strong enough to kill a Fae?” I asked, blinking back my shock.

“Yes. It sinks into the blood and travels through the body until it reaches the heart, slowly dissolving the beating flesh. There is no cure, so I was killed by that damned boar. When I went to the Void, The Father offered me refuge from the Asphodel Meadows in the Kingdom of Valhalla.”

“What are the Asphodel Meadows?” I asked, wrapping my mouth around the unfamiliar term. Holt froze at my question.

“It is where the majority of souls go upon their final death,” he said, his voice laced with confusion. “They didn’t teach you about that?”

“They told us that all souls are selected to either join The Father in Valhalla or The Mother in Folkvangr. There is no other final resting place.”

“That is simply appalling,” Holt said, shaking his head. “There is Valhalla, Folkvangr, the Asphodel Meadows, and Tartarus. Where you are destined to go depends on your soul; on the quality of it and the calling that runs through your very being. The Father chose me for Valhalla since the hunt was in my blood, but I offended him greatly when I asked to be given a second chance at life, so I could continue with my purpose of hunting. I chose what I thought I wanted over the peace I needed.”

“You rejected The Father himself?” I asked, unable to withhold a snort . If the image painted by the Temple and the High Priest was anything to go by, The Father was not a portrait of forgiveness.

“I did, and he cursed me to the Wild Hunt for all eternity for it. I stalked the realms, searching for criminals who needed to be punished within the depths of Tartarus, so that I might drag their souls to the underworld. Until Mab came into power, anyway.”

---