Page 97 of What Hunts Inside the Shadows

I would die at the Veil. Give my life to the formation of the a one to save my mother. The villain of my story might have changed, shifting Lord Byron from my worst nightmare to someone barely worth a thought, but some fates were written in stone.

All the threads of my fate led me here.

“Use you?” Byron asked, taking a cautious step toward me. “Why would you agree to such a thing?”

“Because I love my mother. I love in ways that we both know you will never understand. Not with your own self-hatred and the way you’ve become the portrait of everything you hated as a boy,” I said, the answer resonating inside of me. Part of me wondered if it wasn’t for the best, if I needed to stay on this side of that boundary in spite of my promise to my mate. The reality that waited for me on the other side meant that my death might be a blessing to the world.

I was Mab’s lost daughter. There was no other explanation for the monstrous thing that existed inside my chest.

The Princess of Air and Darkness.

Byron nodded toward the Guard, watching as the man released my mother and stepped away from her chair. She heaved a sigh of relief, but her face shone with tears. “Estrella, don’t do this. You must let me go.”

The snake that had draped over me retreated when I glanced toward it, winding its way down my left arm and brushing against the mark on the back of my palm as it lowered itself to the ground. It slithered toward my mother, wrapping around her legs and settling on her lap as if it were a pet. The others abandoned the witch they fought with on the ground, grappling to steal her life the way they had the other.

They followed the larger snake, forming a barrier around her that even the Mist Guard would hesitate to cross. I stood alone, glaring at the man who’d tried to take everything that made me who I was, and who had tried to bury me under the weight of his expectations.

The man who’d replaced the love I’d had for my father with something hideous and loathsome.

The sea witch at his side stepped forward, rage stamped into her features as her sister rose to her feet beside her. Byron held out an arm to stop them both, his head nodding as he held out his other hand. The Guard placed an iron blade into his open palm, and Byron stepped back to gesture me forward toward where the sand at the very edge of the garden met the sea. “Come, Estrella. It is time for The Mother to cast her final judgment upon you. You understand you cannot be allowed to have the gift of another life. Not with a mate waiting for you.”

“The Father will take me to Valhalla,” I said, stepping forward slowly. I forced myself to ignore my mate’s shouts behind me and the slaughter of the men he killed in his effort to get to me.

I stepped up to the edge of the ocean, the icy water lapping against the toes of my boots. Byron grabbed a handful of my hair, yanking my head back to expose my throat as I stared up at him. My only regret in my death was that it would be at his hand. That I wouldn’t have the satisfaction of watching the life bleed from his eyes. “But I suggest you hurry. My mate seems quite angry.”

Byron narrowed his eyes, turning back to watch where Caldris fought with the Mist Guard’s elite army. I couldn’t see him fighting to get to me, but I could feel the rage in his bones.

I felt his anguish, his desperation, in spite of the way I’d cut off our bond, and my eyes burned with tears as the wave of his grief crashed into me, shattering the window I’d closed between us. His pain was a deep anguish, the surge of emotions overriding the burn of iron in his arm where he’d been injured. My own arm throbbed with pain, feeling heavy at my side as it connected again with his injury.

Please, don’t leave me alone again.

I squeezed my eyes closed, shoving back the burn of grief in my throat.

Where you go, I will follow.

Byron spun me around so suddenly that I stumbled over my own feet, that grip on my hair tipping my head back sharply. The iron of his blade pressed into the column of my throat, searing the flesh as I recoiled. Caelum fought to close the distance between us. With a few more moments of effort, he’d be able to reach us.

“Say his name,” Byron commanded, something curious in his voice making me clamp my mouth shut. He raised the knife from my throat, slashing a white-hot line across my cheekbone. Fire burned through the wound, setting my face ablaze as the blood dripped down. “Say it!”

“Caldris,” I said, his name echoing through the gardens of Mistfell. Something drummed between us as my mate cut down the last opponent standing in his way, a thick spray of blood arcing from the other man’s chest as the Fae tore his sword from the place where the Guard’s heart had once been.

“So this is the legendary God of the Dead,” Byron murmured, his voice soft against my ear. “What do you think the King will give me when I bring him the head of a God?”

I stilled suddenly, giving away far too much in the agony of the thought. I’d only wanted to save my mother, not condemn my mate to death. “You don’t like that. Don’t tell me you have feelings for this beast?”

“You are far greater a monster than he could ever dream to be,” I said vehemently, the conviction in those words shocking even me.

Caelum’s dark stare met mine as he wielded a sword in each hand, stepping as close as he dared before Byron adjusted the blade at my throat. My skin sizzled all over again as Caelum’s eyes dropped to where the blade touched me. His glare trailed over the cut on my cheek, his nostrils flaring as he clenched his jaw.

“It takes a truly pathetic excuse of a male to toy with a woman and to mark her flesh,” Caldris said, his glare honing in on where Byron loomed over my shoulder.

The Lord’s breath washed over my face when he leaned forward, saying the perfectly wrong thing in his absolute arrogance. “Estrella is well-acquainted with wearing the marks I leave on her skin.” His next words turned the earth of his own grave. “Aren’t you, sweetheart?”

Everything in Caldris froze, his entire being and soul pausing as the meaning beyond those words penetrated him. His eyes narrowed, bleeding to complete and utter black. “Byron,” he growled, and the memory of revealing my tormenter’s name to Caelum in the hot spring washed over me.

“How sweet of you to tell him about me,” Byron said smugly as he leaned forward into my back. “Did you tell him all the things I made you feel that he never could?”

“I told him you were so weak a man you couldn’t even beat me yourself most of the time,” I said, trying to shift his attention back to me. The tip of the blade cut into my throat and Caldris’s gaze snagged on the blood.

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