Page 3

O NE

CALDRIS

Estrella vanished beneath the surface, leaving me staring at the water for several moments in disbelief. She was the last one taken, the last of the figures at the surface to disappear. The water rippled as she was sucked under, tiny splashes rising above the surface and crashing together in the air. The water lightened, the shadows lurking there fading as they sank into the depths.

Taking my mate with them, stripping her from my view as I knelt on the sands of the beach. I could do nothing but watch as they took her from me. Those surrounding me went quiet as they watched, as Estrella vanished so quickly there was no time to say goodbye. My heart was surrounded with darkness, the light fading out from my world in a sweep of shadows that seemed like they would never leave.

There was no sun without her—no stars to light the night sky as silence pressed in on me.

“Estrella!” I roared, the sound filling the quiet air with a shock of rage. Pushing against the hands that touched my shoulders and held me on my knees, I fought to get to my feet. Even knowing it was futile, my body could no more bear the separation from my mate than my heart could.

The daemons pinning me were unnecessary, what with the way Mab watched me intently. After the surge of power that Estrella’s blood had given me, she’d have me watched constantly until she was certain the effects of it had faded from my body. She clutched her mangled hand to her chest, her repeated use of the hand only exacerbating the pain she had to feel. The flesh beneath had mostly regrown, but the shape of her severed hand was a mangled and twisted mess, as if someone had crushed her bones together.

My entire world narrowed down to the surface of the water as it went still, searching for my mate’s terror down the bond. A sharp, acute emotion like that should have flooded the bond, making me suffer along with her in the interest of forcing me to save her.

The bond was a tangible thing between us, oriented toward self-preservation and the salvation of that bond above all else. Without Estrella there would be no one, there would be no life within me because I too would cave to the afterlife.

She wasn’t dead; I could feel that she existed.

She’d closed the window.

I realized it like a bolt of lightning in my core, that even in her moments of pure, absolute terror, Estrella was protecting me . I’d thought, in a small comfort, that I would at least be able to feel her through our bond. That I’d know she was okay, that she wasn’t in pain or suffering, but she’d taken even that from me, leaving me empty and hollow—broken.

I shouted my rage into the sky, hoping she could feel it even as she left the realm of the living. Reaching behind me with a single hand, I swiped the dagger from the thigh sheath of the male standing behind me. He gasped as I stabbed it into the side of his thigh, rotating on my knees in a move I’d seen my mate use more often than I could count. The grains of sand dug into my knees even through my trousers, the slight pain grounding me as I pulled the knife free and stabbed the male in the groin.

He screamed, his voice high-pitched and full of agony as he cupped himself with his hands, falling to his knees in front of me. I didn’t waste time with delivering him to death once he was out of my way, pushing to my feet quickly and going toward the next of Mab’s loyal followers who stood too close. My rage drove me into absolute determination, forcing me to take down as many of her people as possible.

She’d stripped everything from me. The right to complete my bond. The mate I loved more than anything.

“Bring her back!” I shouted, evading the blade Gunthard thrust for my gut with a sidestep. I dragged my stolen dagger across his throat, splitting the skin open and wasting only a moment of satisfaction to watch the way his blood poured over the hands he used to try to quell it. His eyes went glassy quickly as I moved on, his chest moving beneath his armor as Mab’s snake chewed its way out from his flesh, fighting for freedom from its no-longer-living host.

Mab’s dark eyes glimmered with morbid curiosity as she watched the display, her lack of care over those who served her dying in front of her apparent. It should have been enough to make those loyal to her hesitate, to prove to them that they would never be more than useful tools in her arsenal of weapons, ultimately disposable and replaceable.

Another came for me, a swift sweep of my shadows lashing out like a whip to cut him in two. It cut through the air in a tangible line, the darkness held within it shimmering with the faintest golden light—like pinpricks of stars in the sky. Even now, the blood she’d given me tainted my magic with hers, offering aid in what should have been a difficult fight. His torso slid down from his legs where I’d cut him at an angle, leaving him to topple over in a disgusting pile of wasted flesh where his entrails pooled on the sand.

The whip was stronger than it had ever been—the cut far cleaner like a precisely sharpened blade. Estrella would have been horrified by the show of violence, and the knowledge that her magic had made it all the more gruesome, her human notions standing in her way sometimes when death was as necessary as the very breaths of life. It saddened me to think what Tartarus might do to the innocence of my mate, stripping it from her far more quickly than was just.

Two of Mab’s personal guard stepped up, one throwing an axe at me. I sent a wave of awareness through my fingertips, imagining the way it would spread out from there until it reached the intact body of Gunthard where it lay before me. His awareness was gone, and it didn’t matter that the Fae who had once called that flesh home had belonged to Mab in life. His soul had left along with her snake, escaping the prison of his body to wander without me to deliver him into the Void, and his corpse that remained as an empty shell became mine to control. He rose on command, taking the axe intended for me to the chest with barely a flinch, and then turning on one of my attackers.

Once hers, now he was mine.

With him to distract those who would have killed me for her benefit, I took a step closer to the true target of my wrath, staring the Queen of Air and Darkness in the face.

Mab reached out with a shadow whip of her own, catching me around the arm that held my dagger. She wrapped that tendril tight, cutting circulation and forcing the skin to part beneath the pressure she exerted. Her injured hand reached out in front of her, a warning as I turned and took a single step toward her. “Not another step, Caldris,” she warned, squeezing her fingers tighter. Her voice lacked the power I was used to hearing in it, lacked the command and rage as she gave into her fear with the slightest of trembles.

My heart clenched in my chest, the snake there tightening in warning. I swallowed, taking another step through the suffocation that seemed to take the breath from my lungs with the stilling of my heart. She squeezed tighter, her eyes widening when I did not stop.

I took another step, roaring as I forced myself to move through the command she tried to instill in me. That vice around my heart came with the command, a silent word that I felt in every muscle of my body as it protested.

It wanted to give in, to do as it was told.

Fuck that.

I growled as I took another step, each one heavily weighted and leaving me vulnerable. I couldn’t stomach the thought of not getting vengeance for my mate, even as my body locked up and my knee buckled and made me stumble. I kept pushing, kept going through that grip on my heart. This was the closest I’d ever come to vengeance, to overpowering the very person who had made my life a living Hel.

I was only a few steps from Mab, close enough to see the utter terror in her eyes as I forced myself closer. She could kill me; she could shred my heart. But then nothing would keep Estrella bound, the deal between them would be null and void.

With my death, she would free Estrella from the bond she’d agreed to.

It was a sacrifice we both knew I would be willing to make, were it not for the vows Estrella and I had sworn in private. I was aware of the consequence of my death and what that would mean for Estrella, but Mab was not. That lack of knowledge on her part was a strength of mine, letting her believe that my death would set my mate free.

“Caldris, stop,” Mab begged, her voice quieter than normal and laced with a vulnerability I didn’t recognize. She didn’t want her followers to know just how desperately she’d lost control of me.

“Bring her back,” I growled, forcing another step even as my knee caved in on itself, and I knelt at her feet. The dagger was still held in my hand, her whip wrapped around my forearm and pulling me away. I forced all my fight into that arm, dragging it away from her grip that was determined to keep me from killing her.

“She’s beyond my reach now. Surely you know that,” Mab argued softly, and for a moment I wondered if a bit of humanity peeked through those sharp, dark eyes.

“Then you shouldn’t have fucking sent her,” I said, yanking on my arm. Her shadows pulled tighter, fighting to hold me still as she reached down and bent my wrist back. My frustrated roar felt like it came from my very soul as she pinned me down finally, holding me still as my lungs heaved with the effort to escape her bounds. I’d been so fucking close I could smell her death in the air, the bittersweet copper of her blood coating my hands when I ripped out her fucking heart and rid all of Alfheimr of her cruelty.

Stealing the dagger from my hand, she nodded to the males behind me. Four sets of hands hauled me to my feet, fighting to control me as Mab kept that hand squeezed and her snake clenched around my heart. “Take him to the dungeon. Make sure he’s locked tight,” she said. I didn’t miss the swallow of nerves or the glance of hesitation one of her men gave her.

She knew exactly what I knew.

I’d been so fucking close .

A laugh bubbled in my throat, chaotic and bitter, filled with the madness I felt at having freedom so close only for it to be ripped away all over again.

“I almost had you,” I said, the manic sound of my own voice shocking even me. The laughter was hysterical, unhinged as the bloodlust of being separated from my mate so violently rode my body and threatened to take everything from me. “And we both know you brought enough witnesses for the Tithe, that your entire Kingdom will know it soon enough. They’ll know just how close you were to death. What do you think they’ll do with that knowledge?”

She shrugged, pursing her lips as she glanced toward the very witnesses she’d brought to display her strength—the same ones who had nearly watched her fall. “Almost does not accomplish much in the end, does it?” Mab asked, forcing her face back to the carefully controlled mask that she needed more than ever. The weakness couldn’t be seen as lasting, not if she wanted to maintain control over Alfheimr in the same way she always had. “I should hope everyone watching will remember your punishment when I come to the dungeon to tear the meat from your bones and hang the ribbons of it in my throne room. I should hope they will be smart enough to avoid such a fate.”

“I almost had you. When it was just me, with my mate as far away as she could possibly be. How long do you think you’ll continue to breathe when she returns?” I asked, holding her stare with my own as her men forced me away. They shoved and kicked at my feet, making me walk toward the halls that would lead back into the palace and then to the dungeon that I’d become just as comfortable in as my own room.

My laughter echoed through the halls as we left, and I hoped the sound would haunt the Queen of Air and Darkness when she fell asleep that night.

My cell was exactly the same as I remembered it as I paced back and forth. It was still too short, leaving me with no choice but to bend over so that my head did not touch the bars at the top of the cell, but I could not simply sit and wait, not with the excess energy driven by my anger and Estrella’s residual magic flooding through me. The same creaking of iron as the guards closed it. The same tang of metal and blood in the air. The same dampness to every breath with the steady stream of water that drained through the dungeon at the center of the walkway between cells. My wrists burned with the pain from the iron shackles her guards had placed on me before dragging me here, keeping me weakened enough to supervise my journey to the dungeons.

The hewn stone had worn away because of the constant flow of water in the center, only a single lantern lighting the space and the torture instruments hanging on the walls. The weapons were rusted over and covered in dried blood, any and all attempts to clean them long since forgotten. It was the slightly curved blade that drew my attention the most, the knowledge of Mab’s threat to tear my flesh from my bones sitting fresh in my mind.

That knife was her favored tool when she wanted to make an example of her victim.

Lozu and Monos lingered in the cell across the hall that had once been where my mate slept, and I never thought I’d see the day when I wished for her to return to it. I would have taken her imprisonment here with me over her banishment to Tartarus any day.

I missed her already, and didn’t understand how I was supposed to survive thirteen days without her at my side under good circumstances. In the worst-case scenario, it was very possible that my mate would never return. That the sight of her vanishing into the waters of the cove would be the last time I ever saw her. It was an emptiness sitting in my gut, a hollow, yawning ache that couldn’t be ignored.

We’d been so close to completing our bond, so close to her being entirely mine, and nothing would stop me from completing it the moment she returned from Tartarus. The white-hot rage of her being lost to me still simmered in my blood. Seeing the moment of fear on Mab’s face had reminded me of something that I’d long ago forgotten.

I was one of the strongest Gods to live. I’d brought entire cities to their knees and commanded armies at Mab’s behest, but I’d forgotten what I was capable of when I acted of my own free will.

Maybe I’d never really known it in the first place—too afraid to reach my own potential because of what that would mean if it wasn’t enough to overcome her. If I embraced my full power and could not win against her, what kind of weapon would I become in her hands?

But now there could be no question left. If Estrella returned, we would be enough.

And we would make Mab tremble on her knees before us.

“Where is your mate?” Monos asked, drifting from the cell she called home and coming into mine. Lozu followed behind her, somewhat reluctantly, but even the grumpy man had formed an attachment to Estrella. She collected allies with every step she took, distributing kindnesses that nobody else seemed willing to give.

“Mab sent her to Tartarus,” I explained, knowing they’d been in these cells long enough to have experienced the way Mab often gave prisoners a choice: life in the cells or a quest to Tartarus.

Monos’s face dropped, that ever present, hollow sort of smile fading from her expression. “All is truly lost then,” she said, glancing toward Lozu and hanging her head as if she hadn’t just insinuated that my mate wouldn’t be coming home. At some point, they’d hung their hopes on a girl who was centuries younger than they were… The irony wasn’t lost on me.

“Don’t you fucking dare,” I snapped, a growl rumbling up my throat. Monos jumped back, and the motion of the woman who had otherwise found comfort in my presence settled me some. The beast in me prowled beneath the surface, not wanting to frighten the Selkie, but he missed his mate just as much as I did. He would not tolerate anyone doubting her or the sacrifice she’d made to save me.

She’d had no choice, I knew that. So why was I so fucking furious with her for making the choice I would have made if our roles had been reversed?

“As long as she’s still breathing, Estrella will do whatever it takes to come back to us. If you doubt that, then you doubt her, and you aren’t worthy of the loyalty she would show you.”

Monos nodded slowly, her smile returning. But there was something particularly placating in it, as if I was losing my shit, and I could no longer tell reality from fantasy.

Maybe she was right, but it would do nothing to stop me from believing I’d see her again soon.

“Okay, Caldris,” Monos said, bowing her head forward in a slow display of reverence.

“So what are you going to do to help her when she does?” I asked, raising a brow to keep from punching something. The ghosts wouldn’t be the appropriate target for my rage, and the only other items within my cell were made of iron and would cause far more damage than I needed to suffer through when Mab was likely to take out her anger on me all on her own.

Monos and Lozu exchanged a glance, and the gnome nodded before he spoke.

“We’ll rally the Lliadhe to fight, should the Princess return,” he said, nodding his head supportively in spite of the doubt in those words.

“When she returns,” I corrected, lowering my bent-over body to sit in my cell.

“When she returns,” Monos agreed.

“Why would the Lliadhe help? They’ve never concerned themselves with the politics of the Sidhe before?” In all my centuries of life, I’d never seen them even bother to follow the gossip of the Sidhe beyond passing curiosity. While we were all Fae, the lines had long since been drawn between our two classes. It was past time for the lines to be removed, for us to move together into the future in a united front.

“What difference has it made in the past? Sidhe treats us no differently than another. We are merely servants and entertainment to most; the nobles are the worst,” Lozu answered, moving to the corner of the cell to pick through any flesh that might have remained from an occupant who stayed here after my last trip to the dungeon.

“But your mate treats us as if we matter. As if we are equal. Perhaps with her in charge, the Lliadhe will finally know some peace within Alfheimr,” Monos said, her gaze going distant as she glanced toward the door of the dungeon and the guard I knew waited there. “She took a lashing meant for one of our own. She danced with us when most do not acknowledge we exist. She was kind when others only brought pain. Even if there was no chance of her victory, we would stand beside her. We would do anything for your mate for she sees us as her equals.”

I nodded, following her gaze to the dungeon door and wondering how many beyond it would feel the same. “So would I,” I echoed.

So would all of them.