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“He is not yours,” she said, the cruel smile on her mouth revealing lightly pointed teeth at the corners of her mouth. They were so similar to the ones Caldris possessed that had terrified me that first day when he revealed himself in Calfalls, a sign of the immortality she possessed that remained just out of my reach.

“He’s my mate,” I said, arguing the words she spoke. There was no truth to them. I knew and felt Caldris in my soul like a tangible thing, but the sight of my Fae Marks upon her skin pushed at every insecurity I possessed.

“No. He isourmate,” she argued, raising one of her hands to trail over the Fae Marks on her skin. Not so long ago, I would have done anything to get rid of them, overjoyed at the sight of them upon someone else and the freedom that offered me.

But now? Now I just wanted to rip them from her flesh and wear her skin if that meant Caldris belonged to me and me alone.

I bared my teeth at her, snarling as I stepped closer to the mirror. She tipped her head to the side, studying my anger as her smile broadened. “Don’t worry, little human. Neither of us can exist without the other. I cannot have him without you, just like you cannot have him without me,” she said, pressing both hands to the ice. Her fingers curled against the surface, sharp black talons digging into the ice. I resisted the urge to raise my hands to meet hers, keeping them firmly pressed against the sides of my thighs.

“What are you?” I asked, swallowing back that part of me, that tiny, insignificant voice that remembered what it had been like to deny myself answers. To avoid asking hard questions because sometimes ignorance was far better than truth.

But this truth had haunted me through space and time, followed me from Nothrek to Alfheimr and finally Tartarus. There was no freedom from the truth that was already before me.

I could no longer remain ignorant to my own potential.

“I am you,” she said, her smile softening as those dark eyes flashed with gold. They lit something within her, power striking against the ice as I stared down at my hand. My Fae Marks returned, the glamour she’d placed on me fading in a smooth line up my arm to reveal the truth of who I’d already become. “I am your future and your past. I am what you were meant to be before your humanity tainted you.”

“My humanity protected me when Mab would have killed me,” I argued, dismissing the notion that to be human automatically meant weakness. It meant caring in a way that the Fae didn’t seem to understand, and I wouldneverbelieve that love was weakness.

“Maybe so,” she said, nodding her head in agreement, leaning in until her breath fogged the ice. “But it is not you who needs protection any longer. It is the rest of the world who needs to live in fear now.”

The words struck inside my chest, making my hands curl into fists at my side. “I don’t want to be a monster,” I said, swallowing back the fear that Melinoe had picked up on and attempted to use against me. I wondered if she possessed some power of foresight in addition to her control over the realm of dreams, understanding thatthe moment when she’d shown me myself had been so similar to this. I’d thought I’d already embraced the nightmare, but I still saw her as a separate entity to myself.

Still saw her as something within me that I could suppress until she was needed.

“Every monster is the hero of their own story, and every hero the villain of someone else’s. You will always be Mab’s villain, just as she is yours,” the woman in the mirror answered.

“That doesn’t mean I need to be like her,” I snapped. “It doesn’t mean I need to accept you as part of me if it means becoming cruel.”

“Even with me as part of you, you are not capable of cruelty like that. The Fates made sure of it,” she said, her eyes widening ever so slightly as I stepped closer.

“No,” I snarled, refusing to allow any of that credit to go to the creatures who had made my life miserable. I could have just as easily descended into the cruelty of the world as a result of my suffering, but I hadn’t. “The Fates didn’t do that.I did.”

She smirked, raising her head as if to agree. “Very well. You made sure of that.”

“What was our name? Our first name?” I asked, watching as her nostrils flared. It was the name of the monster, the name of the creature who could have and should have been if it hadn’t been for the threat to my life.

I’d been forced to the other side of a Veil and had my immortality stripped from me, the child of the King of the Primordials carefully crafted into a mortal girl and kept oblivious.

The Fae believed there was power in names, that they could be used against you if the wrong person learned them.

I wanted to know mine.

“Aella,” the woman said, the ice melting at her hands as I studied them. Her skin was pink as it poked through the ice, heat rolling off her flesh as that name thumped inside of me. I reached out my own hands, taking hers in mine and embracing her.

Embracing Aella.

FORTY-TWO

CALDRIS

She stood before me, bathed in darkness that clung to her skin as if it were a part of her. She didn’t seem frightened of the dark, and though she looked the same as the woman I had bound myself to, there was something distinctly different about the mate that raised a hand, gliding it through the void that surrounded her. She had yet to become aware of my presence as she spun her fingers through the air, and I sucked back a shocked breath at the thread of gold she wound around her fingers and clasped within her hand.

The threads of fate.

They were more than merely gold, I realized as I watched. They pulsed with power and magic that the Fae could only dream of achieving with the mediocre hint of power that flooded through our veins. The Primordials had given their offspring nothing but a taste of the magic at their fingertips, and I watched as Estrella tugged on the thread. Her gaze went skyward, her eyes gleaming with golden light as a star appeared in the darkness. Estrella’s face split into ablinding smile as she stared up at the star she’d brought into existence, the light she’d created in the darkness that attempted to swallow her whole. That was the moment I realized what had changed in her in the brief moments since I’d plummeted into the bond between us.

Estrella had found her peace.