Page 99 of What Hunts Inside the Shadows

“I would go anywhere else with you. Anywhere but Alfheimr. Remember when you told me that her daughter was better off for having been stolen?” I said, reaching up to guide the hand that held his dagger down to my heart. I touched the tip to it, staring up at him as the first of my tears fell free. “I wanted to spend eternity with you.”

“Don’t.”

“I love you,” I said, admitting the truth in my heart; he still owned me as if I could never claw him out.

“We will have our eternity,” he said, pressing his wrist to my lips. I struggled against his grip, silently pleading with my eyes for him to stop. He pushed hard enough that my lips parted, the sweetness of him touching my teeth and gums. He slid inside me, coating my tongue with his essence.

My wound healed, my flesh knitting itself back together as he stared down at my stomach, watching it seal shut as he dropped his forehead to mine.

My gaze fell to the dagger at his side, the horror of what I would need to do to escape the fate that waited for me rushing through me.

I choked back a sob, lunging to my feet as my stomach twinged with the pain of my still healing wound. I wrapped my fingers around the handle, turning to face my mate where he stood before me with raised hands.

As if he were a victim, and not the male who wanted to take me to the one place I couldn’t go. “I don’t want to go,” I said, spinning the weapon in my grip to point toward him. His eyes fell on it, a sad sort of smile consuming his face before he raised them back to me.

“I know.”

43

ESTRELLA

He didn’t make a move for either of his swords that lay just a short distance away. He just stared at me with those sad, understanding eyes as I lifted the sword at my side. “I’ll do anything to keep you safe,” he said, taking a single step toward me.

He paused, watching me warily to see if I would move to strike. My brow furrowed as I willed my arm to move, trying to convince it that killing the male in front of me was my only chance not to face the woman I believed to be my mother. “How can you protect me? You can’t even protect yourself!” I accused, my voice trailing higher as I became too aware of the audience watching our drama play out. With Lord Byron dead and the witches convinced to stop their fight, the Wild Hunt picked off any of the remaining Mist Guard who’d stayed behind to fight. Most of them fled, darting into the same woods I’d escaped in only a few weeks before.

It seemed impossible, for so much to have changed in such a short time.

“Estrella?” my mother asked. Her voice hitched, and I glanced toward her where she sat, in mystified, staring at the sword clutched in my hand. “Where is your brother?”

I didn’t answer; couldn’t keep my attention on her long enough to find the words to tell her that her only son was dead. “Gone,” Caldris answered, his voice short and ill-tempered at the reminder of what my brother had tried to do. “The Wild Hunt killed him when he tried to stab Estrella.”

“He failed,” my mother breathed, her voice and face dropping with what I had to assume was grief. Her words washed over me, the meaning behind them striking me in the chest so harshly that I stumbled back a step. She held my eyes. “Then you have to be the one to do it.”

“You knew?” I asked, feeling tears well in my eyes.

“He was only a boy when your father found him. At least he came to us as one,” she said, her voice strangled as she swallowed past the burn of the tears making her eyes glisten. “He swore the day would come when you needed his protection. Your father would have sworn he was half-delirious from starvation, if he hadn’t changed before our eyes to prove what he said was true.”

“He was the missing Lunar Witch,” I said, the words feeling torn from me. It was such a startling confession to make out loud, to voice it to someone who could confirm it.

My mother nodded in agreement. “He said he was your guardian, and that he would allow us to raise you so long as we took him in and told everyone he was your father’s son from an affair on the road. Nobody questioned it, because nobody cares when people like us have illegitimate heirs.”

“Could he be alive?” I asked, twisting to look at Caldris in shock.

“It’s possible,” he agreed, nodding. But if Brann had survived that day on the cliff, why hadn’t he found me in the weeks that had passed since?

“Whatever happened to your brother, you have to consider what he wanted for you. I don’t understand what’s waiting for you in Alfheimr or why he swore everything would change the moment you stepped foot on Faerie soil, but I know that he loved you more thananything. For him to make a choice that your death was necessary, I truly fear what will happen if you cross that boundary, Estrella,” my mother said, and I knew it pained her to admit it. I’d seen the anguish in her eyes the day they’d tried to sacrifice me to the Veil, and I knew my mother loved me.

I nodded back to her, tightening my grip on the sword before I turned my gaze back to the God of the Dead. “I know,” I said, sinking my teeth into my bottom lip and trying to push back the cloying sadness that threatened to draw me under. I’d never be able to do what needed to be done, not with him alive to heal me.

Caldris smiled, stepping toward me as he unlaced the ties on the leather and metal covering his chest. He dropped it to the ground as he took another step, moving closer until the tip of my sword pressed into the fabric of his shirt. “I told you once before, I would rather die than go on without you.”

I swallowed, the lump of sorrow in my throat making it hard to breathe. “Caldris,” I murmured, the anguish in my voice palpable in the air. We were too far past the point where I could pretend I didn’t care for him, that he didn’t own my soul. Even if I hated him for putting me in this position, for saving me when I hadn’t wanted it. Death would have been far more convenient than the horror that was coming for me.

That part of me that was his continued to reach across the gap between us, wanting nothing more than to stare into his blue eyes until my last breath. “Just promise me that your face will be the last thing I see before the darkness claims me.”

“You aren’t supposed to accept it,” I said, barely resisting the urge to drop the sword so I could punch him. “You’re supposed to fight me.”

He reached out, wrapping his palm around the sharp edge of the blade. His blood slid free as he cut himself, mixing with the blood of all the men he’d killed in his attempt to get to me.

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