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“The Queen of Air and Darkness,” he said, something in his voice compelling me to glance over my shoulder at him. “Mab is the Queen of the Court of Shadows.” His face was stern, set into harsh lines as he stared at the likeness of the breathtaking female.

“She’s beautiful,” I said, my heart sinking at his study of her. Menace lingered in the sharp lines of her face, seeming to stare out at me through her dark eyes.

“According to the books,” he said, shuffling me to the side, to the next of the Old Gods. The sun continued to set behind us, casting an eerie glow over the rock face as we passed by the male at Mab’s side. “She’s the greatest evil the world has ever known.”

“I thought that was the Fae in general,” I teased, smiling up at him and trying to lighten his mood. His grip on me had hardened, not painful in the slightest but more rigid, as if he couldn’t stand to release me.

He smiled down at me softly, turning his attention back to the next God as we sidestepped. “I imagine the Fae are much like people. Some are good, some are bad, and most are just trying to survive. I don’t believe an entire species can be evil. Do you?” he asked, the words softly spoken in my ear.

There was a challenge in his voice, a threat to everything he knew I’d been taught. The Fae were the greatest evil to walk the earth, condemning those that were Marked to a life of imprisonment within the realm of the Fae.

There was no freedom in captivity, no choice in the life they offered.

“You said your father thought the best way to fight our enemies was to know about them. If you don’t believe they’re evil, then why—”

“I believe some of them are evil. The things in the books about Mab would give a grown man nightmares. So long as evil is as powerful as she’s rumored to be, then light can never truly reign in their realm. There can never be any hope for peace between our races.”

“You think there could be peace without her?” I asked, the idea rattling around in my head as my eyes landed on the God in front of me. The eyes carved from stone felt like they watched me, his unforgiving stare looking down at me, as if the carvers had wanted to use it to intimidate those who walked this path.

“I think the alternative is another war where we destroy each other. I have to hope there’s a solution for peace.” I had to as well, since the last of the witches had given their lives to create the Veil. We wouldn’t be so lucky a second time.

His cheek touched mine, his chest pressing into my back as he leaned forward. His hand released mine finally, his arms wrapping around me to circle my stomach as if he could sense the sudden chill that had swept over me. “Eerie, isn’t he?” he asked, rubbing his stubbled cheek against mine. “The God of the Dead has always been the one to scare people away from this place.”

Everything inside me froze. Even though I hadn’t learned much of the Fae, the Old Gods were whispered about here and there. The God of the Dead more than any of the others.

The stone God staring back at me was the one who had leveled an entire city during The Great Wars, the one who’d killed more humans than any record could track. He was the harbinger of death, the sole Fae who could reanimate the corpses of our loved ones to use against us. If anything could be deemed the most vile of this world, I doubted it was Mab.

It was him.

Caelum sensed my unease, slowly gliding his hands on my stomach until only one arm remained wrapped around my hip. He pulled me into his side, and in the wake of the chill that had swept over me staring at the God of the Dead, I allowed the touch to warm me as he guided me up the walkway and away from the faces in the wall.

We ascended the stone path in silence, my heart heavy with confliction about Caelum’s words. Part of me wanted so badly to believe the creatures hunting us weren’t all bad, and there could be peace and an end to the miserable fate of being Fae Marked.

Were humans so perfect, if they were determined to slaughter us all because of a Mark on our neck that we had no control over? The answer wasn’t the one I wished for.

“Why do humans kill the Fae Marked?” I asked, a hush falling over the woods with my words. It was as if Caelum forgot to breathe for a moment, the tension claiming his body bleeding through to me. “What difference does it make to them if we’re dead or taken? Why isn’t that our choice to make?”

He sighed, tilting his head down as we walked, and I felt his chin touch the top of my head. “Being mated makes the Fae even stronger. That’s what theViniculumis—why it protects us. Somewhere, there’s a mate looking for us, seeking to claim us as theirs. The establishment of a mate bond increases a Fae’s power. If you can keep a Fae from their mate, you can keep them stagnant. Unable to increase their power, and if you do successfully manage to kill the mate, some Fae don’t survive.” I’d heard that mates strengthened their Fae, in whispers, but I’d thought them the dramatic whispers meant to cause fear.

“They die with us?” I asked, staring up at him as he pulled his chin away from my head.

“When it’s the final death? Sometimes,” he answered. “Sometimes they’re lost to madness. Sometimes they seem to go mad before they ever find their mate.”

“Are mates ever other Fae? Or is it always humans?” I asked, peppering him with questions and not even caring that it implied I was more interested than I should have let on. All the rules of my past were null and void, now that being Marked was my reality.

Knowledge was my only power.

“Sometimes,” he said with a shrug. “It happens, but not nearly as often as a mating pair between a Fae and a human. That was the consequence of the witches’ curse to maintain the balance between realms. I’m sure you can imagine what mating to another Fae does for both their magic, if a human soul acts as an amplifier. Two Fae being mated is even stronger than that.”

“Having a mate who has a very limited lifespan must be terrible, if they have any feelings whatsoever for the human, anyway,” I said, hating the thought of belonging to a male who would watch me age and wither and die while he remained eternally young.

“Human mates do not age, Estrella. Once the bond is completed, the life forces of the two are joined. So long as our Fae live, so would we.”

“But the Fae don’t die,” I said.Unless you stabbed them through the heart with iron or severed the head from their shoulders, anyway,I didn’t add. They could be killed, but diseases and aging didn’t touch them. From what I did know, the Old Gods were at least a thousand years old.

“No, they don’t,” he agreed, walking up the last of the stairs until he reached a plateau on the side of the butte. He took my hand, helping me up the last of the steep steps until my feet fell on the stone landing.

All thoughts of living forever immediately fled my mind at the wonder before me.