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“Are those tears for him, Little One?” Caldris asked, his voice dropping lower. Even if he hadn’t killed the man, I knew he would in this moment had he lived. He’d already wanted to in the past, and knowing I would have any kind of emotion for him would only worsen that.

“Not in the way you’re thinking,” I said, touching his hand to settle his rage. The last thing I wanted as we made our way through a city full of people was for him to go into a bloodlust over something that no longer mattered. “I just…I wouldn’t have thought he’d try to warn me. I would have imagined him wanting to leave me to the fate I chose, feeling self-satisfied when he died because he knew something I didn’t. When did I get so cynical?”

“You’ve probably always been cynical,” he said, his voice settling slightly as he fought off the hint of bloodlust, realizing that the turmoil he’d felt in me actually had almost nothing to do with the other man and everything to do with myself as a person, and the changes I hadn’t wanted to see. “The life you’ve lived would demand that. Those who have been taught to expect the worst tend to do just that. Jensen gave you no reason to expect otherwise from him. Not with his behavior in the short time you knew him.”

“He was a creep,” I agreed, trying to reconcile that with the man who had tried to save me from my own choices. I should have known better than to believe he was entirely evil. Real people existed in shades of gray.

Holt approached the gates, sitting astride his unearthly steed and leaving no doubt to the fact that he was anything but human. The Wild Hunt could not conceal what they were, so they would not even be bothered to try.

He pulled his sword from the sheath, letting it hang at his side as he tilted his head in that animalistic way the Fae had. “I promise you, I cannot die. But you can, and you will, if you choose to engage in this fight.”

His words echoed over the plain outside the keep, bouncing off the stone behind the guards’ backs as they exchanged frenzied looks with one another. I hated the knowledge that their deaths loomed, and even knowing their cause was not just, nothing could stop me from regretting the fact that they had to choose between life and what they believed in.

That was no choice at all.

The first guard laid down his spear, shaking his head at the others as he moved toward the gates. He spoke to someone on the inside, and I could just imagine the panic in his voice when he asked them to open the gates. To allow us passage, because the Wild Hunt would go through that city even if they had to scale the walls.

Caldris guided Azra forward, and I saw the moment of recognition when another one of the guards laid eyes upon him. He too dropped his sword, smacking his fellow guard in the chest and pointing with horror on his face.

“If you lay down your weapons, we will not kill you. We have no quarrel with those who do not wish us harm,” my mate said, his voice ringing with command. Everything inside of me warmed, knowing without a doubt that he would hold true to his word. Loving him for the show of mercy that others would not have given him.

He would never go back on his word like that, and if he tried, I’d gut him myself.

“We wish no one in the city any harm. We are merely passing through on our way to the boundary,” Holt called.

“You know we cannot allow you to reach the boundary!” a voice called from the top of the stone walls. The guard in question held a bow and arrow in his grasp, the quiver pulled taut and an arrow notched at the ready.

“Don’t throw away your life for someone else’s war. Life is about the choices you make, and you always have free will,” Holt said, something bitter entering his voice. I thought of all of those here who were cursed to ride for eternity, and of Caldris, who was enslaved to a woman who made him do all manner of things he didn’t believe in.

Would she make him hurt me? Force him to be the one to peel the flesh from my bones?

I swallowed back my nausea, wishing with every passing day there was another place we could go. That he was not bound to return to Mab’s side with her daughter in tow.

The gates opened and Holt hung his head forward. My body tensed, preparing for a trap as he guided his horse into the open city. We followed behind him, and Caldris wrapped his body around mine more tightly so that he could shield me from any attacks that came from above.

I couldn’t breathe, just thinking of what would happen and the innocent people who might be hurt if it came to a fight. Children raced through the courtyard, their mothers chasing after them as they caught sight of the Wild Hunt entering the gates.

A guard stepped forward, walking into our path as he tried desperately to keep his hand off his sword. His fingers twitched at his side, ready for anything, but Holt smiled.

Kindly, if not a little painfully, as if he wasn’t entirely used to offering human pleasantries.

“If you’ll follow me, we would like to see you through the city before the Lord awakes and realizes what we’ve done,” he said, his gaze darting around nervously.

“I do have one condition for our quick passage,” Caldris said, speaking up from behind me. The guard’s eyes shifted, tracking over me and the mark on my neck. He grimaced, closing his eyes as if he realized just how disastrous the legendary Caldris increasing his power could be for anyone who made themselves his enemy.

“What would that be?” the guard asked, his voice a low murmur.

“Cut down the dead and bury them in the earth,” Caldris commanded. He hesitated, as if he knew I would not like whatever he had to say next. “Except for that one,” he added, pointing toward Jensen’s desecrated corpse.

The guard hesitated, studying Caldris as he tried to figure out the motivation for such a request. We did not bury our dead. We did not treat them with the respect they were due, only burning their bodies in the way of the religion we’d had shoved down our throats forcefully since the time we were born. “It will be done. I’ll see to it personally,” the guard said finally, turning and walking the winding path through the city.

The Wild Hunt walked forward, following after him as I sat in shock and tried to come to terms with the declaration my mate had just made. “I thought everyone deserved a burial?” I asked, turning to look at Caldris over my shoulder.

His eyes were dark as he met my gaze, flurries of a winter storm floating through them. “Everyone but him,” he growled.

22

ESTRELLA