Page 70 of What Hunts Inside the Shadows

“It’s worth more than you think. You may not believe you know one another, but you do. The soul remembers, even when the mind does not.”

29

ESTRELLA

We rode through the day, and by the time we made our way to the wall of the Gods and the hot spring that awaited on the side of the mountain, my exhaustion was growing to a level I’d never known. I couldn’t even begin to believe the way the night before had tired me out so I was falling asleep atop Azra through the day.

Caldris continued to push me, giving me moments of privacy and urging me to try to summon his magic to my command. There wasn’t much energy left for me to give, but I did the best I could. Sensing the renewed urgency that came from him, I did as he asked. I pushed, summoning and stretching that muscle that he was determined for me to train.

Neither of us spoke again of what would be waiting for me when I stepped foot in Alfheimr, of what I might become. It hung between us, renewing the distance in our relationship in a way that hadn’t been there since the first days after I discovered the truth of his identity.

It seemed fitting, in a horribly karmic way, that I would finally accept Caldris as my mate only for something to tear us apart. In this case, the knowledge that I seemed likely to be the daughter of his abuser. I couldn’t imagine what it must have been like, what he must have thought, to know the very woman he hated more than anything was the mother of the mate he’d so desperately waited for. I didn’t know everything Mab had subjected him to. I couldn’t, when he was always so hesitant to speak of her. I recognized the signs of abuse, the determination to keep his suffering buried, because I felt the same hesitance when talking about Byron.

The wolves whimpered as we dismounted our horses, sitting back on their haunches with sad looks on their wicked face. They were like the scariest dogs I’d ever seen, yet as sweet as the fluffiest of puppies. When they weren’t devouring Caldris’s enemies, anyway.

“We’ll be back soon,” I murmured, patting Fenris as I walked past. I leaned down to touch my lips to the top of his head, immediately regretting the way his fur clung to my face. He chortled as if he thought I deserved it for leaving him behind.

Rude.

We passed the wall of the Gods, walking the path carved into the side of the mountain. Holt led the charge and we left most of the Wild Hunt below with the horses. The dead Caldris had summoned to guard us kept the Fae Marked from throwing themselves off the mountain side to escape through death. That would have been my inclination, at least, but it didn’t seem as if many of them even considered the possibility.

No matter what they would have done for their freedom, I couldn’t judge them for it. Not when it hadn’t been so long since I would have done the same. The thought of jumping off a cliff immediately brought Brann to the front of my mind—filling me with a sense of wonder. We were close to the place where I’d lost him, nearing that very cliff where Aramis had thrown him over the edge and left him for dead. I wished I’d demanded answers from him while I’d had him at my side. I knew regret, and what it was to have answers at my fingertips but be so afraid of them, I lost them to time and death itself.

I couldn’t afford to make that mistake again.

We rounded the top of the path, the hot spring coming into view. I watched eyes widen as they took in the sight of the statues of the Gods in intimate positions, their reactions so like what I’d probably expressed the first time I’d seen them.

We were retracing our steps, making our way back to the boundary. I wished I could say it was like taking a walk down memory lane—a stroll through the evolution of our relationship. Instead, it felt like it had been another lifetime with the new tension thrumming through us.

I didn’t know what to make of it, or what to do about it.

“The dead will supervise as you bathe, to give you some privacy,” Holt said, sweeping a hand to point out the army of the corpses who had lined the edges of the landing. They blocked the pathway back to where the horses and the Wild Hunt waited below, forming a line as if they needed that connection to relay information.

“You can wait and we’ll bathe when they’re done,” Caldris said, taking my hand and guiding me back toward the mountain path as Holt settled onto a rock at the edge, facing away from the hot spring itself.

“Not unless you’d like my riders to see her in the nude,” Holt called, not bothering to turn around as he delivered the message. “We cannot afford to delay just so the two of you can have a fun romp in the spring. She either bathes with the women or she bathes with the men, there is no other option.”

“Have I told you how much I despise you lately?” I asked, narrowing my eyes into a glare that felt like it dripped venom. Even if he couldn’t see it, I wanted nothing more than to solidify that glare until phantom talons clawed down his back.

He twitched, rolling his shoulders as he spun to look at me with a shocked expression. I swallowed, keeping my face neutral in an attempt to disguise my guilt.

Had that…?

Nope. We were not going there.

“She has a point,” Caldris grunted, bending down to kiss my forehead. He made his way toward the path that curved down to the forest floor below, looking back over at us. “If anything happens to her, you’ll find your head on a spike when I’m finished with you.”

“Please refrain. Regrowing a head is quite time-consuming,” Holt called back, his tone dry. Caldris glared one last time before he disappeared around the corner, and I felt his annoyance course down the bond. He didn’t want to leave me; he worried about leaving me. But we all knew it was important we got to Alfheimr as quickly as possible, especially if we were trying to avoid Mab’s notice and slip into Catancia first.

“How are we supposed to take our clothes off?” one of the women asked, glaring into Holt’s back as she clanked the chains of her iron shackles together to prove her point.

He raised a hand, waving it through the air in a quick flick. The chains connecting the shackles vanished. “You have precisely one minute to get your clothes off. The chains will reappear when that time comes. I suggest you hurry,” he said when he didn’t hear anyone moving. I bolted into action, shrugging off my cloak as the other Fae Marked did the same. Imelda and Fallon weren’t shackled, but they stripped off their clothes quickly all the same, joining in the fray to get into the warmth of the water. Adelphia and the others moved more leisurely, and I got the sense they didn’t rush for anyone or anything.

Nobody wanted to be standing bare ass naked in the freezing cold. The moment I stripped off my tunic and the cold air touched my breasts, I wanted to shriek. My nipples would fall off before long. I shoved my pants down and stripped off my boots and socks, stepping down into the water as the others finished stripping.

I’d long since passed the point of caring that my body was on display for people who hated me. After I’d allowed a roomful of men and women to watch Caelum fuck me while we washed away the blood of a cave beast, being nude in front of a handful of women seemed insignificant.

Some of the other women stepped in behind me, their glares settling on my face but easing as the pleasure of the warm water touched their skin and sluiced over them, sinking into them and warming the insides that often felt as if they would never know warmth again.

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