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I pressed my face into his shoulder, trying to escape the prying, curious eyes of those watching us.

I was asleep by the time we reached the tent.

10

ESTRELLA

My back was warm from the heat sinking into my skin through the fabric of my tunic. My face felt too hot against the bare skin pressed into it. I pulled away slowly, shifting lower and sinking into the fabric of the bedroll beneath me as I slowly peeled my eyes open. The canvas walls of the tent surrounded me, billowing gently in the wind that was almost nonexistent compared to the howling I recalled from the night before.

I turned to glance at Caldris over my shoulder, his eyes closed as he slept peacefully. The chains of my shackles clinked as I moved, drawing a wince from me as I waited for him to wake from his slumber. In his sleep, his face always smoothed into a relaxed expression that I so rarely saw on him. With the absence of emotion, he looked all the more like the carvings and portraits I’d seen of my Fae mate.

Void of all humanity, a specimen of unrivaled beauty who was missing that spark of life inside of him, as if he spent far too much time with the dead he held power over.

I turned forward, trying to ignore the throbbing of my heart and the way my blood heated as I studied him. My visceral reaction to him erased any doubt I might’ve had about the truth to his confession that he was my mate. After rolling slowly so I wouldn’t alert him as I moved, I screamed as a play of shadows materialized in the tent.

A wisp of dark tendrils in the air, he was even less tangible than the ghosts that had accompanied the Wild Hunt the day before. Here was nothing but a tangle of darkness and gleaming golden eyes.

Caldris moved from behind me, jerking into a sitting position as the sound of his sword being pulled from its scabbard rippled through the early morning air. I stared up in horror at the shade of a man lingering at the entrance to our tent.

“Pardon me, ma’am, but would you happen to know how I got here?” the shadow asked, leaning forward with a curious expression on his face. His feet were rooted into the snow-covered grass, the tendrils of shadow sinking into the earth itself as if it was what connected him to the plane of the living.

Caldris dropped the tip of his sword to the ground in front of me as his body shook our bed with laughter. “What the fuck is so funny?!” I asked, swinging my hand out as I spun to look at him over my shoulder. He’d gotten to his knees behind me, his trousers pressed into the bedroll beneath him as his golden skin gleamed in the dawn light.

“You screamed like you were about to die,” Caldris laughed, his chest shaking as he released the hilt of his sword entirely and let it drop to the ground in front of me. I resisted the urge to grab it up and use it to run him through.

Barely.

“Of course I screamed, you ass! There’s athingstaring at me,” I said, fumbling over the word for such a creature. He wasn’t a ghost, and he wasn’t a member of the Wild Hunt. He was somehow a being crafted from nothing but the air itself, with only the light from his eyes to distinguish his features.

“I have seen you attack a member of the Wild Hunt with all the bravery of a warrior and none of the fear that you should have felt,” he said, dropping to his side on the bedroll and snuggling into my back all over again. He curved his body around me until we fit like the perfect, seamless pair that he seemed determined to convince me we would be. “But the shadowed face of a shade is what drives fear into your heart.”

“What is it?” I asked, crossing my arms over my chest and forcing myself to sit up. I wanted nothing to do with the rumbling amusement bubbling in his chest behind me, or with the way his laughter warmed my soul against the cold surroundings.

“The shades are people who are drawn to the Wild Hunt, while they sleep. The soul leaves their body for a brief time as we pass near them, giving them the opportunity to join the Wild Hunt while it rides. They are just the unrealized potential of the soul before it has fully vacated the body,” he explained, wrapping strong arms around my waist and tugging me down to lie on the bedroll.

He shifted, leaning his upper body over mine as one arm came down on the opposite side of my head and he filled my vision. Then he spared a single glance for the shade lurking in the corner, whose expression plagued me with an odd sense of curiosity.

He looked so…lost.

“Go haunt someone else,” Caldris said, his voice deep with command. As if compelled, the shade retreated from our tent, dissipating through the canvas and disappearing into the early morning light.

“If he isn’t dead, does he still need to listen to your command?” I asked, thinking about the potential reach of the powers of the God of the Dead. How close did one need to be to heed his orders? Could he control the living in the same way?

“He is neither dead or alive at the moment. His heart continues to beat in his body, and he’ll return to it with the sunrise believing he’s had an adventurous dream. He listened because only a fool would remain when a male tells him to get out when he has the warmth of his mate beneath him,” he said, leaning forward to run his nose along the side of mine.

The odd intimacy was something he so often did, which I’d grown to appreciate and even love in our brief time together.

“Oh,” I said, shifting my gaze to where the shade had drifted through the fabric. It was so different from the corporeal forms of the Wild Hunt, leaving me to struggle to wrap my head around all the creatures that existed and I had somehow never experienced. “Why can I see them now when I never did before?”

“The magic of Alfheimr has opened humans up to all sorts of senses they didn’t possess when it was confined to the other realm. The spirits and shades have always been there, even when you couldn’t see them, but you are not likely to see that which you do not open yourself to,” he explained. Seeing my discontent at that explanation, he leaned over to touch a kiss to my wrist.

“How are you feeling?” he asked, drawing my attention away from the erotic image of his mouth against my skin. It should have been a sweet moment when he simply tended to a minor injury.

Even if he was the reason it was necessary.

“Tired,” I admitted, sighing when he raised my hand to rest beside my head. He threaded his fingers through mine, mirroring the motion with his other hand as well. With the shade gone, I glanced around the tent, trying to remember how we’d come to be lying upon the bedroll when the specter had appeared. “What happened?”

“You fell asleep as I was carrying you in from the storm,” Caldris murmured, leaning his body over mine as he stared down at me. “Until you accept the bond and the power that comes with it, theViniculumwill pull the energy it gives you when I use too much of my own too quickly. You’ve had a very long, tiring few days, and I suspect theViniculumwas all that sustained you for so long. The power will return slowly, and I’ll do my best not to overdraw again.”