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“You’re not here,” I said, swallowing past the burn of the words in my throat. It wasn’t possible, not given Mab’s determination to keep us separated. She was so determined that we shouldn’t be permitted to complete our mate bond, knowing that our power would rise if we did.

The breath caught in my lungs, my bottom lip trembling as I fought back the tears that wanted to fall. For him to be here, trapped in Tartarus…

“You can’t be here,” I insisted.

For him to be here, he’d have to be dead. He would have had to die, and I had to believe I would feel that deep into my marrow. My sword dropped to my side as I shook my head. The thought that after all of it, after everything I’d been through to get back to him, he might have died while I was gone.

He might have died alone.

Medusa lingered nearby, holding out a hand with a snake coiled within her palm. The tiny creature’s tongue eased out, poking at my armor and drawing my attention to it as Fenrir nuzzled into my side. He raised his head high, snuggling his face into my neck and grounding me in reality.

“He’s alive,” he said, holding my gaze with the stern red of his eyes.

“He’s not dead?” I asked, resting my forehead against his snout.

I was vaguely aware of Caldris’s attention bouncing between us, studying every moment of the interaction as if he didn’t understand what was happening.

“Yes.”

“I’m not dead, Estrella,” he said, his voice making me turn back to look at him finally. I dropped my arm, letting my sword clatter to the sand at my feet. He took it for the invitation it was, closing the distance between us immediately and wrapping his arms around me. One pressed into my spine, pulling me so close I thought he might suck me into the middle of him, and the other wrapped around the back of my head and tugged me into his chest.

I touched my hands to him slowly, feeling the familiar strength of his muscles beneath my hands. It had only been a few days, and yet it seemed as if I’d been gone for months, like my entire being had been changed by my time here.

But I still fit into his embrace like I belonged. He still held me like he loved me—even though I felt forever changed. Tipping my head to look up at him, I drank in the sight of that tense, clenched jaw and the face I’d come to so heavily depend on even though the world seemed determined to keep us apart.

He tipped his head down, studying my face before he leaned forward and touched his mouth to mine. His mouth was gentle at first, giving me time to protest the connection. He didn’t forget that I’d been about to slit his throat only a moment before, that whatever I’d lived through, it had nearly forced me to do the unthinkable.

He pried my mouth open with his tongue, his urgency growing as he fought to drag me closer. Lifting my feet from the sands, he raised me high enough for me to wrap my legs around his waist, capturing his face in my hands as I returned his fervor.

I didn’t care how. I didn’t care why.

My mate was here, his mouth moving on mine, and all was right in my world. A life in Tartarus would be bearable if I had him at my side, and maybe we would be better off staying here.

Hiding away the same way the Primordials had.

I winced at the thought, hating the selfish nature of it. I could never really accept a life like that when I knew people were suffering at Mab’s hands. That it was my own blood who caused such pain.

What of Fallon and Imelda? Nila and Soren?

“Your mother is watching you,” Fenrir said, forcing me to pull my mouth off of Caldris’s. He followed after me, clearly not wanting the separation any more than I did. Unwinding my legs from his waist, I let myself slide down the smooth, hard expanse of his body until I stood in front of him. “How is this possible?” I asked, looking up into the sad smile he offered in return.

He tucked a stray hair behind my ear, raising his chin to gesture behind me. Looking over my shoulder to follow his gaze, I found the boat of the ferryman floating at the edge of the riverbank. Their oar was placed on the sand, the bottom sinking in as they held themself perfectly still. The eerie gold of their eyes never left me as I turned fully, approaching them slowly as they waited for me.

“You brought him here?” I asked, watching as his hood moved with his nod.

“One last favor, Little Bird,” he said, the quiet tone of his voice making something within me crack. My chest felt tight, my lungs caving in on themselves. In the wake of reliving his death, I couldn’t face the possibility of losing what I had left of him all over again. Thenickname in that voice that was so different from my father’s in my memory made the sting of tears in my throat worsen, the tenseness of my jaw making my head ache.

“When will I see you again?” I asked, stepping off the sand to put both feet in the boat with him. He glanced down at where I touched the surface of the skiff, as if he couldn’t believe I’d been willing to set foot on it.

“I suspect you’ll see us often in your immortal life, but we will not be as we are now the next time you see us. There will be consequences for what we’ve done,” he said, his grip tightening on his oar as he held the boat steady.

“He’ll be gone, you mean,” I said, referring to the part of Kharon that was my father. That had been my rock during my childhood until the High Priest took him from me.

“It is against the rules to interfere. We have disobeyed the Fates themselves by giving you something to hold onto while you break,” he said, acting as if it was not going to break my heart that I would lose him.

Having Caldris was a gift, the greatest gift I could have asked for. But I hated that the gift had cost me dearly.

“I have so many questions,” I said, wincing when the gleam of sharp teeth came through the hood. I wanted nothing more than to sit down with him, to ask him every question that I had about my childhood and what Brann might have told him, what the Fates might have said.