Page 9 of What Hunts Inside the Shadows

4

ESTRELLA

Caldris turned to me once Melian was gone from sight, his gaze softening as he took in the moisture on my cheeks. “I’m sorry, Little One,” he said, reaching down to grasp my chin between two of his fingers. The coolness of his skin against mine penetrated through the numbness claiming my body, filling me with a cloying sadness that threatened to overwhelm me.

For a few moments, there hadn’t been the fear for my survival or of what would come, if I didn’t get away from the male who wanted to claim me as his mate. There’d only been the strange, lingering desire to once again feel that contentedness I’d felt at the edge of the Veil. With the Void waiting for me and calling my name, I’d known that for even just a little while, there wouldn’t be any more pain.

This world was ugly. It was raw and bitter and filled with far too much death to be worth continuing on. The ghosts of my past and the people I’d loved would haunt me for an eternity if Caldris had it his way, and I didn’t think I was strong enough to survive that.

“I want a funeral pyre, when my time comes,” I said, the words sounding empty as the hollowness of my voice penetrated the small distance between us. I focused my attention on his face and the pain that twisted his features at my harsh declaration. He recognized it for what it was: a rejection of everything that defined him. “No coins on my eyes. I want my soul to wander and wait for passage. I want more time before I come back to you in the next life.”

His eyes drifted closed, his lips twisting to the side as he sank his teeth into the bottom one aggressively. The melancholy that shone in his dark eyes when he opened them once more nearly stole the breath from my lungs. “You want to hurt me, my star? Is that your goal? As if I did not already have to endure centuries without you?”

I stood from the place where I’d knelt in the dirt and watched the skeletons bury Melian, rising to full height as Caldris’s hand fell away. “I only want nothing to do with you,” I said, lifting my chin high as I looked him in the eye. “If that means I must wander aimlessly without a place to call home, then so be it.”

He smiled sadly, lifting his hand and resting it against the Fae Mark on the side of my neck. “You would only be punishing yourself. There will be no next life for you. No more reincarnation to bring you back to me. This is your final life, min asteren. We have already lost so many years,” he said, grabbing my hand from my side. He placed it on hisViniculum, mirroring his positioning as a pulse of warmth flooded my body. Like a closed circle, his energy thrummed through me and back to him, connecting us in a way that felt far more intimate than the nights he’d been inside of me with his glamour between us. “Please, do not waste our last chance at happiness.”

“It is bold of you to assume I could ever be happy with the man who lied to me,” I said, my voice breathy as he touched his forehead to mine. The darkness in his eyes peered into my soul, threatening to steal the thoughts from my very mind. I had no doubt he would use them against me if he could find them.

“I am not a man, min asteren. You’ll have to stop holding me to the standards you would place upon a human,” he said, his thumb caressing the length of my jaw. “The Fae have different urges. If a human were to lose his wife, he would find another eventually. The Fae have only one mate. There is only one being in all of creation who can make us feel complete. Only one who can bring us the joy of children. What do you think a human man would do if he were placed under those circumstances?”

I kept silent, the empty air between us all the answer I needed to give. Human men took what they wanted without thought. They forced us to be subservient to their needs, all while acting as if we were revolving doors.

Replaceable.

“The fact that they would behave badly doesn’t excuse your behavior. It just means that you’re all evil, and I’d clung to the hope that maybe there was one good man in this Gods-forsaken world. Thank you for showing me how wrong I was to hope,” I said, tearing my eyes away from his. The severance of the connection between us made it feel impossible to breathe in the moments that followed immediately after.

“Perhaps then I should have taken you from the companionship of your brother that night in the barn? Cut him down for daring to stand between me and my mate and taken you to my home then and there? I gave you what most never have‌: a chance to know me, a chance to love me, before I stripped away everything you thought you knew about yourself.” The hand at the mark on my neck shifted downward, his palm pressing into the edges where it paused just above my heart. “You can pretend to hate me all you want, min asteren, because I know the truth.”

“What truth is that?” I asked, my voice trembling as he dug his fingers into where the neckline of my dress revealed my chest. My breath caught with his bare skin against mine, only the slick coating of mud separating us.

He guided my hand down from his neck, shoving it inside the loose laces on his tunic to touch the bare, golden skin beneath. Resting it over his heart in a direct mirror of his on me, he smirked as he struck his palm against me.

My heart stopped beating.

One second passed. Then another. I waited for the steady thrum to fill me all over again, waited for my body to feel like it could function once more as I glanced down in horror at his hand where it touched me. The silence around us seemed too loud without the echoing of my heart pumping blood through my veins.

I strained against the strangled breath I fought to release, my eyes flying wide in panic. Even through the haze of terror, my palm against his chest remained still. There was no beating of his heart in his chest, either; nothing to show that he was even alive as his face twisted with the grimace that must match my own.

He pushed his hand against my breast once again, the beat of my heart resuming as if it had never stopped. My chest expanded, the breath I hadn’t realized he’d robbed me of filling my lungs. His heart throbbed in a rhythmic chorus with mine, matching the exact cadence of mine’s song. “We are two halves of one soul. The heart that beats inside your chest is mine and mine alone.”

“Don’t ever do that again.” My lungs heaved as I tore myself back from his embrace, putting much-needed distance between us. I nearly fell to my ass with the force of removing myself from the connection that strengthened with every moment I spent with him in his true form. He raised his gaze to mine, letting his hand drop to his side as he peered at me through his lashes with his eyes glimmering dangerously.

“Do what?” he asked, his head tilting to the side as something feral stole over his features. He reminded me of a predator watching its prey in the moments before it strikes. “Remind you that we are irrevocably bound, no matter what feeble lies you tell yourself? The Fates have chosen us for one another. Even with our bond incomplete, it is stronger than most.”

He raised his hand, his palm facing mine. My hand rose as if commanded, pressing against an invisible barrier between us that reminded me so much of the day I’d touched the Veil and felt a presence on the other side for a fleeting moment. A single golden thread of fate appeared, glittering in the fading light as I watched my fingers move back and forth. The strand wrapped around my middle finger and extended across the gap between us to wrap around his.

“Even you cannot escape your fate, my star,” he said, pressing his hand forward until the thread wound its way around our joined hands. “If you die, I will follow.”

“I have died twelve times, and yet you’re still here to torture me,” I said, pulling back as he entwined our fingers.

“We had not met then. Our bond hadn’t strengthened. You weren’t in your final life, min asteren. All of those things contribute to whether a Fae will follow his mate into the afterlife. Bond completed or not, we’re connected now,” he answered, watching as the thread disappeared from view. I tore my hand away, finally, freeing myself as I stumbled backward. I turned to face the rubble covered road that would take me back to the other Fae Marked.

“How can the bond strengthen when I can’t even stand to look at you?” I asked, glancing briefly at him over my shoulder. The remnants of the man I’d thought I loved nearly cleaved my heart in two, but the male staring back at me was so much more than he’d ever been. Taller, broader, more menacing and dangerous, and somehow breathtakingly beautiful, in spite of the harsh set of his ethereal features.

“The first rule of existing in the world of the Fae: you should never turn your back on a predator,” he said, stepping up behind me. He didn’t touch me for just a moment, his presence lingering at my spine. I kept still, refusing to turn to look at him and give him the weight of my gaze. Not with the way my eyes burned with tears, or the way my grief clung to my every limb.

I hadn’t known Melian for long, and I hadn’t always liked her, with her abrasive personality, but she’d become someone I cared for and respected in that time. Knowing that she’d joined the numbers of the dead—she was past my reach alongside my brother—the grief I hadn’t allowed myself to feel when my life had been in danger threatened to swallow me whole.

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