4. Caly
4
CALY
“D on’t,” I snapped at Eli. My voice bounced off the limestone walls of the cave. My feet were blistered and aching, and my mind hardly felt much better. I could barely contain my terrible mood, and his incessant pokes and prods were not being accepted with near as much patience as I would have wished. I was just in so much pain today for some reason.
The fae weakly lifted his palms in surrender from the ground where he lay. “Okay, okay. I just think that maybe you’ve let the grief of losing your whole family turn into anger. What if your anger is just sadness that had nowhere to go?”
This was just like him to overanalyze the situation, to try to fix it before any violence or death came to pass. I knew he meant well and was really just upset that he had been there with me the whole time as my best friend but had no idea the gravity of everything that I had been going through. He couldn’t stand for anyone to be unhappy for long, and knowing that his closest friend was about nine shades morally darker than he had thought made him uncomfortable.
“Leave it alone, Aurelius.” I made certain to enunciate his full name so he knew I was done. “I’m killing my father the second I get into Moirai, and I’m not waiting a minute longer.”
This topic seemed to have been eating Eli alive the entire trip but more viciously the closer we got to the end of our journey. This, like all the other times he’d brought it up, was hardly an opportune moment to be discussing whether I should kill my father.
“I’m just saying, maybe you should talk to him first, get some closure before you cut his head off, hear his reasoning. Suns, have you always been this…murdery?” he chuckled.
“I was your mother’s assassin in the human realm. You know I’ve always been this murdery , as you put it,” I snapped again, not in the mood to talk and feeling rather lethargic. “Leave it alone. You don’t understand what I went through?—”
“No, you’re right. I don’t. Both of my parents are dead, so I don’t get the option of asking them their reasoning for any of their actions.” The masseter muscle in his jaw flared as we glared at each other.
Silence took over the cave once again as we let the conversation die.
We were both far too hungry and weak to be having any type of meaningful conversation. I knew he meant well, but how could he not be more on my side about this? He knew what my father had done to my sister.
“Feuhn kai greeyth,” he offered from across the dimly lit enclosure of rock.
The familiar saying instantly grounded me and returned my mind to what mattered. “Feuhn kai greeyth,” I returned.
No matter what happened between us, no matter how angry or upset one of us got, how severely one of us had messed up, our love and friendship would surpass it and come out on the other side stronger than ever. Our friendship and love were never-ending and would last forever, in all the phases of life or death.
I was hungry, and nothing good ever came of that. All I wanted to do was lie down on the floor of the damp cave, ignore my stomach pangs, close my eyes, and rest for days.
The three of us had barely made it a few miles toward Lake Sheridon before we had stumbled across a giant, hollowed-out tree a few feet away from a damp and dark cave. Mendax and Eli could hardly walk, but that hadn’t stopped them from somehow mustering enough energy to argue about whether we should stay inside the tree or the cave. Eventually the cave won out after it was reluctantly agreed upon by all three of us that we were cold and in desperate need of a fire, which also was thrice agreed upon would be a terrible idea in a tree. Eli finally gave in, and camp was set in the neat-looking cave.
Over our weeks of travel, more often than not, we had been required to sleep outside. None of us minded. Eli and I had actually come to prefer it. All the other times we’d set up camp, we’d fallen into a familiar rhythm as we completed our designated tasks. Mendax would beat the shit out of a tree or whatever it was that he did when he collected our firewood. Eli would use his SunTamer abilities to start a fire, and I would work on cooking whatever random things we had gathered or Mendax had killed.
This time, things were different. Mendax was too weak to grab more than a few thick branches from the sludgy forest ground; Eli was unable to make a fire and instead collapsed somewhat gracefully on the limestone floor the moment we entered. We had no berries, no meat, no stray roots or patcha (it was a category of wild foods the fae often consumed), nothing, and I was starving . For some reason, maybe anxiety, as soon as the fight against the sickle was over, I felt sick and weak. I needed to find something to eat. My bones and joints felt like they were starting to fail me, I was so hungry.
Unfortunately, none of us were in any shape to be wandering around the in-between’s forest looking for food. I’d managed to find chunks of flint within the limestone that surrounded us, and after collecting the driest kindling I could locate, I shaved off about a nickel’s worth of the flint rock before flipping it over and scraping the rock against my blade until yellow sparks flew. It felt like it took an eternity for the damp kindling to catch, but at least it finally had, and we had a fire now. I had clearly grown spoiled with Eli’s simple point-a-finger-and-shoot method.
Eli tossed his shirts at me—again—and returned to his previous sleeping position on the ground. He refused to take his shirts back after seeing me shake off my hands one time while the fire was getting started. The truth was I was freezing, but I didn’t want to constantly be the whining, complaining, weak one of the group. Eli knew my little tells too well, and there was no use in hiding it from him.
So I kept laying the shirts over him like a blanket while he was asleep. I was still cold, especially without the cozy shirt of his that always seemed to be warm, but a different type of coldness seeped through my bones and hid inside my heart when his chest was exposed. I couldn’t bear to look at the scars covering the tan skin of his chest any longer. Not when the man who created them lay six feet away from him.
I watched both men sleep. The bright moon reflected off the crisp snow and into the opening of the cave, giving just enough light to watch them. Thoughts of each of them swirled inside my skull like a whirlpool as I pondered what life would be like with one of them dead. My analytical mind pulled and stretched at every fact I knew about the tie and the bond.
I didn’t want to be tied or bonded to anyone. I couldn’t stand the thought of being responsible for anyone else’s life but my own, but especially not these two. Growing up, I’d always felt that I wasn’t meant to love anything, that if I did, it was guaranteed a grave ending, and this was just further proof—everything I loved died because of me.
The cold, heavy scent of geosmin permeated my senses. The perfume of dead cyanobacteria and actinobacteria microbes filled the cave, giving it that trapped and musty just-rained aroma.
Mendax’s long body lay still on the hard ground. I imagined that was what he’d look like if they killed him—perhaps with more blood. My stomach clenched to the point of pain as the thought ripped through me. Already I had believed him to be dead twice. I knew exactly how hard it would be, and it scraped the last bits of decency and independence from my hard shell until my entire soul felt like soft underbelly, like it could no longer survive.
I struggled to stand as a sudden tight, intense pain fought to stop the muscles of my legs—like a cramp but worse. What was happening to my body? I began to fall but steadied myself against the rough wall and continued to make my way to Eli so I could cover him with his shirts once more and hope this time he remained asleep. He was and had always been a real friend to me—my only friend—when I had no one. I couldn’t begin to imagine myself having any kind of a life without him in it.
I was the one who should die, not them. What did I have to lose? I was nothing.
The cogs of my tired brain began to turn. I needed to form a plan for when we got to Moirai. If I killed my father before we stood trial in front of the Fates, then they would kill me. Which would leave both Mendax and Eli alive.
I squeezed the small vial adorned with white gold vines that hung like a memory and a noose around my neck. It contained my sister’s ashes—at least a teaspoon of them. I never did become an official Seelie royal, so I wouldn’t get to see Adrianna in the Elysian Fields and tell her how sorry I was. She was Artemi, and I was still human. Keeping the stolen droplet of her animal gift wasn’t enough to change what I was. I would never get to see her and apologize, to tell her that I had finally gotten them all back for what they did to her—every last one of them.
Especially him.
Just the thought of being in the same room as my father made me want to rip the flesh from someone’s bones. It instantly sent the darkest of my thoughts to the front of my mind—the ones that told me I should end this all, burn the entire world to the ground, and piss on the ashes.
Frustrated beyond all measure, I walked back to my shadowy nook and crouched until my back rested against the rock and I could slide down to the ground. The fire was as full as it was going to get, and I needed to get some sleep as well. The boys said that they only needed a few hours and then they would be healed enough to continue. I hoped for the same magical healing that I had experienced before. I knew they healed fast, but even their estimate seemed like quite the feat that I wasn’t sure would happen. Mendax had a hole in his shoulder, and Eli’s face and legs were covered in huge gashes from the sickle.
I grabbed my leather pouch and pulled out the cloth-covered scroll that my father had sent me. It was unlike anything I had ever seen, and it somehow made me hate even more that something having to do with him gave me such a sense of wonder. It was some sort of glass that had the ability to be folded and rolled while still maintaining its glossy, cold texture. It was something my fact-based mind couldn’t quite wrap itself around.
The words on the scroll were so familiar to me by now, I didn’t even bother to skim them. At least a thousand times along this journey, I had scoured the scroll in the hopes of finding clues that might give me an advantage in Moirai once the time came. The note was cryptic, leaving me at a loss for what was actually going to happen once we got there.
Calypso Petranova,
Good day. You have been summoned before the Fates in requisition of Ties and Bonds with breach to laws 14.2 and 370.003.
Failure to appear before the Fates will result in the application of death to all parties forthwith.
Further instructions will be located in the Lake of Sheridon.
On behalf of the Fates,
Zef
a.k.a. Your Father
I rolled up the scroll again and replaced it in my bag before settling closer to the fire. I watched as the orange flames licked and tickled at the dead tree branches, coaxing and caressing the wood until it turned black. Exhaustion overpowered hunger, and soon I was asleep.
When I woke again, I shot up, nerves coursing through me, terrified that Eli and Mendax had left me. My heart pounded so hard, I swear I heard it clicking against my skull.
My neck and shoulders rolled as I took account of how I was feeling—still not normal but significantly better, surprisingly. Food would help, and I needed to get more wood for the fire.
Like little spiders crawling across the hair on the back of my neck, I felt the tickle of someone’s attention. I turned to see Mendax sitting up against the cave wall, his sinister eyes fastened on me. How long had he been awake, watching me? Why was it his broodiness always seemed to evoke such a visceral reaction from me?
“You’re awake?—”
“I’ll kill him for you. Your blade will be untouched by his blood.” His steely eyes glanced in Eli’s direction. Had his shadowed irises not glinted against the reflection of the fire, I wouldn’t have known for sure that he watched me from where he was hidden in the shallow depths of the dark cave. The shadows welcomed him as their own, blurring the lines of his body.
“Who will you kill for me?” My voice was thick and raspy, as it so often was when I spoke to Mendax. Was he referring to my father or Eli?
“Everyone.”
My shoulder blades trembled as a chill overtook me; awareness of his intensity dug between them like a knife. I knew from experience that he made no false threats and delivered on his words. He would kill everyone for me. Whether it was to hunt me down and find me or because he didn’t like them looking at me, one by one, he would kill everyone who existed until it was only us if he wanted to—if I wanted him to.
Under his shadowed gaze, I felt like a rabbit that had just caught the notice of a wolf lying in wait with a watering mouth. “And if I said that I wanted you to never kill another soul, would you ever kill again?” I asked slowly. The crackle of energy was dark and sensual as it pushed between us and into the bond.
“Yes,” he stated without a moment’s hesitation. “I am not offering to kill for your ease or desire. I am threatening to kill for you. This effort is purely selfish, I assure you. Your wants sit far beneath my need to possess you.”
I could almost feel him touching my skin, the tension of the bond was so explosive. “In Moirai, they will choose you to die. We both know they will decide to sever the bond that ties Zef’s daughter to evil.” I stood, so entranced with this man that I hardly registered the small pains in my body. It was like a live wire was connecting us. “Then what will you do?”
“You assume at the point we enter Moirai, there will be another man to choose from.” One corner of his mouth lifted slightly, causing one dimple to appear in his cheek.
The blood drained from my face. “No matter what, promise me you will not kill E—” I started.
“No,” he cut me off.
“Malum, please ,” I whispered. “Anyone but him. The rest of my life’s happiness depends upon it. I’m begging you. Please.”
Mendax clenched his jaw and turned toward the cave’s darkly lit opening for a moment before his eyes returned to me. I could practically see the anger pouring from his irises. “And what makes you think I care at all about your life’s happiness?” he questioned in his deep voice.
“Because I know how much you love me. You forget I can feel you through the bond as well,” I replied. “The feelings you send aren’t as threatening and dangerous as you would wish me and others to believe.” I stared at the ground in front of my foot for a moment, searching for anything that would make him promise. “Please don’t kill Aurelius. He saved my life, and now I will save his. Please?” I quietly pleaded.
For a moment, we watched each other in silence. A thousand feelings pushed through the bond from each side in an emotion-filled torrent, each wave stronger than the last.
I broke eye contact first and added the last of our wood to the fire before I slowly took a step toward where Mendax sat with his back against the wall. His long, muscled legs stretched out leisurely in front of him, his hands laced behind his head, highlighting the smooth skin of his arms that peeked out of his black sleeves.
My feet slowly carried me to him. He was like a siren calling to a ship lost at sea—I was powerless against the pull.
I stood in front of him, heaviness pulling my mouth into something like a frown, though not as expressive. I stared and stared, waiting for it all to make sense, but it never would—or perhaps it already did. Mendax and I were cut from the same cloth. We had been spoon-fed our venom and malice from the same ladle. When our enemies tried to rip out our throats, we made certain they choked on it. We became our own demons, so we had nothing to fear.
I think Mendax would have stayed staring at me like that all day. But my eyes snagged on the hole in his shirt, where his wound was now closed with fresh pink skin. I wanted to turn my head and check on Eli, to see if he was awake yet, but my eyes couldn’t seem to move from Mendax. My knees ground into the stone floor as I straddled him. When my skin touched his, my eyelids flickered like butterfly wings as I fought against the urge to weep. Instantly, his hands moved to my back, spreading across my tired muscles. A heavy sigh escaped me. I waited for him to grip my neck seductively or press against me and say something deliciously sensual, but he never did.
“I will help you kill your father,” he whispered.
My fingertips ghosted along his smooth jawline, feeling the silky roughness of his skin. I pulled back slightly. “I don’t need your help killing him. I want to be the one to do it,” I said. No one would take this away from me.
He nodded in understanding. “You’re cold.” His eyebrows stitched together with concern while his hands wrapped around me in something of a hug. “I can offer you nothing but coldness,” he said and glanced to where Eli slept.
Already, the fake way I held myself together was unfolding from the tenderness of Mendax’s hug.
The snow of the in-between did not feel as cold as human snow, but I remained cold and hungry, confused and at a loss for what would soon be happening in my life. I was guaranteed to lose the love of my life in one form or another, and his rough facsimile of a hug had just undone the last of the tired seams that held me together.
“I’m lost,” I murmured into the crevice of his neck as a few stray tears welled and spilled over from my eyes. I didn’t want to unravel like this, but every flutter of my stomach or touching word the men said left me questioning if it might be one of the last core memories I would have of them. But a large part of me refused to believe one of them was going to die at the end of this.
“Though it feels that way, I promise you’ll never be lost ever again. I’ll always be following you. No matter what.” In that moment, Mendax’s eyes looked like the softest cloud-filled blue sky. A sentiment I didn’t understand him to be capable of poured through the bond.
I shifted my legs together and tucked myself as far into his chest as our flesh would let me, letting myself feel the comforting beat of his heart. No matter what, I wouldn’t let them take either of these men away from me. There had to be another way.
He enveloped me, and for a minute, it almost felt like our skin melted together we were so close. I felt the expansion of his chest as he inhaled more deeply than normal, then let it out. This could be really awkward if Eli woke to see this. I didn’t want either of them to feel bad or be upset, but I didn’t want to feel bad either, and this was the only thing my bruised soul cried for.
“How does it feel?” I asked as I grazed the skin around his freshly healed wound. I tipped my chin up so he could hear my whisper. My lips moved against the silky skin, just under the sharp line of his jaw. He let out the softest breath, something so faint, I likely wouldn’t have heard it had my ear not been pressed against his throat.
“Our health will eventually regenerate. We will be fine. I am fine. How do you feel?” He moved his mouth so that his pink lips pressed against the space between the corner of my closed eyes and my ear. My pulse began to race.
“Why would you be asking how I feel?” I asked as I shifted myself slightly on his lap.
I was barely keeping my lustful thoughts at bay with our closeness, but when I felt him stiffen beneath me, my thoughts became dazed and filled with urgency. Being in the quiet, dark cave in the middle of a blizzard on what could possibly be our last night together made it disturbingly easy to forget what I should and shouldn’t be doing while Eli lay asleep not so far away. I shifted in Mendax’s lap again, trying to get control of myself. His strong hand pressed into the curve of my hip, stilling my movement. My head swirled with blurry, incoherent thoughts. I recalled what Eli had said earlier about smelling my arousal and wondered if Mendax had the same talent.
Mendax gripped my face, a gentle hand on each of my cheeks, and kissed me in the most tender, loving way conceivable. Emotions I could never have imagined either of us capable of feeling cascaded through it.
As I let myself fall into the kiss, it felt like a piece of my heart was crying. My eyes dampened as I pressed into him harder. I felt as if I was going to combust from the squall of emotions. Countless times, this fae had brought me to the point of exasperation with lust or anger, but this was different. This was within us, this acceptance that the two of us might not be alive together at the end of all this.
The tender exchange grew feverish. Mendax pulled the leather tie of my pants and tugged the lacing loose. I threw my leg over to straddle his lap again, and as I did so, he slipped his hand inside my pants and slid his palm across my center. As my body came down to rest on him, he pressed two of his thick fingers inside me. My arms wrapped around his neck as I sat on his lap, rolling my hips to feel the length of his fingers hungrily exploring me. My hips rolled harder against his lap while his fingers sped up. The feel of his erection added friction to where it was needed most as I squirmed and wriggled on his lap. The sounds of how wet I was were loud and crude as they swirled in the quiet cavern while he pulled his fingers out of me and ran them over my clit. He pulled the leather tie from the eyelets and continued to place kisses across every sensitive spot on my neck and chest. In the mix of tongues and panting, I felt the hot tip of his bare cock glide down my wetness, parting me only enough to moisten himself and let me feel how steely hard he was.
I lifted myself off him only enough to slide my pants off, and when I restraddled him, his length was free, rigid, and waiting for me. My arms wrapped around his neck, and I kissed him frantically. It felt like I might die if my lips parted from his. With greedy, panting movements, I moved myself over him until the head of his cock slid past the barrier and burrowed deep inside me with one movement. I didn’t have the composure for anything less than this. His hungry kisses, still filled with sentiment, lit up my body with sparks that couldn’t be doused. He thrust and ground against me with the same primitive, ferocious urgency that our lips clung to the other’s with, parting only for bites and tongues. There was no emotion that could ever compare to what I felt in that moment.
Up until now, I had done my best to remain quiet. It had been somewhat easy, as we were so consumed by each other that sights and sounds blurred together in a flurry of ecstasy and need. But my ability to remain quiet quickly concluded as Mendax slowed the pace and pressed inside me as deep as possible.
“I love you,” he said breathily.
My orgasm erupted. It felt like an internal explosion of happiness, love, and goodbyes swirled into one act. “I love you,” I panted. His thrusting gained speed, and I knew he was close. Coming down from my own orgasm, my senses began to sharpen. Being away from the castle, I had been taking no contraceptive tea or herbs for this situation. Did it even matter? Especially if not all of us would probably be dead soon as it was. “You should pull out. I’m not taking anything,” I said through moans as I canted my hips along with him, refusing to let a single second of this be wasted.
“No,” he growled as he bit my earlobe.
I inhaled a sharp breath at the sting of pain. My nails dug into the flesh of his shoulders as he moved up and down.
“You are mine in every way.”
He pulled down the neckline of my shirt and began to bite and suck on my nipple. A moan left my mouth and quickly began to build as another orgasm. Sensing it, Mendax bit just hard enough on my nipple to cause a shot of pain surging straight between my legs. I cried out.
“The second you tighten around my cock, I am going to push every drop of my release into you. You’re going to look me in the eyes as your body pulls and works every bit of cum out of me and inside you.”
His filthy words were my undoing. My head dropped back as the orgasm threw me over the edge and consumed me. Mendax gently gripped the sides of my face and pulled it back to look him in the eye.
“Yes—uhh,” he moaned breathily as he held my face only an inch or so from his. One of his hands moved to my hip and grabbed it in a viselike grip while the other moved down to my neck as he fought to catch his breath with each thrust.
I gripped the wrist of the hand that held my neck and dug my nails in, knowing it would be the last thread before he too would be lost to the ecstasy.
“I will never leave you, Calypso, never. Stars—agh.” His thrusting slowed, and I felt the throb of his pulsing cock release inside me.
“Oh my suns,” I cried out, shocked with how strong this orgasm was. “Yes—yes—” I bit at his neck and curled my face into his chest as both our climaxes slowed.
Mendax pulled his slick cock out of me but stopped me when I tried to get up. He licked his four fingers and moved them over my sensitive clit before gliding them to my entrance. Immediately, my body bucked at the intensity of his touch, but he stilled me with a firm grip on the hip again. I could feel some of his warm cum dripping out of me.
“You wanted me to pull out, pet?” he said huskily. “That’s not ever going to happen again.” His four fingers glided over me, and this time, he swiped his fingers over the drips of cum and pushed them back inside me with two fingers. “We are in this together, always. You are mine only, regardless of the Fates’ decisions.”
I swore and gripped his shoulders, losing my breath all over again at the unbelievably raunchy things he was doing. He knew exactly what parts of me to touch, what to say—everything that lit my body on fire with lust and need. I pushed against his fingers as a shiver took over my body.
“You think I don’t want to put my offspring inside you? That I don’t want to be tied to you in every way possible?” Another swipe of his fingers as he pushed his cum back, farther inside me. This time, he bit his lower lip and continued to move his fingers in and out, enjoying the close view of me. “Fuck, Caly…” he moaned. It almost seemed as if he was enjoying it as much as me. “You should see how red and wet your pussy is after it’s been fucked. Yes, do it, come again for me.” He pulled out of me and gave a wet slap to my pussy. Stinging pain gripped my body as every muscle clenched. Mendax made a primal moan and moved his hands to my ass. Within a second, he had me pulled up against his mouth while his palms smoothed and gripped my ass cheeks, working me over with his tongue. The hot, gliding sensation of his tongue was delicious as he nipped and licked my clit.
“Mendax!” I cried out.
He instantly pulled away. “Tell me you’ll love me in every lifetime, and I will let you come,” he said with a cold smirk.
I moaned breathily, my face felt numb and tingly, and I needed to come. It was the easiest command he had ever given me. “In every lifetime, in every realm, in every span of time, I will love you endlessly, Malum.”
He descended on me like a starved man. Emotion wrecked me, and my eyes welled with tears as the most powerful and overwhelming climax took hold of me, reshaping every corner of my being.
I collapsed on top of him, completely spent and sated. We lay like this for a few moments, just holding each other and looking into each other’s eyes before I eventually came back to reality and realized we were not alone and there was no possible way Eli hadn’t heard us.
The second I thought of him, awareness filled me, and I knew something was wrong. I sat up to look at the place where Eli had been sleeping.
In Eli’s place lay nothing but the crumpled-up shirts that I had covered him with.
He was gone.