Twenty-Two
T WENTY - T WO
CALDRIS
I stepped into the abandoned hallway outside Estrella’s rooms. Nila lingered in the room, tending to the space as if Estrella would return at any moment and require her services.
The table was covered in wildflowers, a slow procession of Lliadhe making their way in and out of the room in silence in direct opposition to Mab. I imagined she hadn’t wandered into this part of the palace, hadn’t had any reason to with Estrella gone from it, but if she ever did, she’d be furious to find the quiet rebellion in support of my mate.
“What’s going on?” I asked, clearing my throat. Nila and the wide-eyed acalica Estrella had drawn into her dance in the throne room looked up from where they worked to carefully arrange the display. The acalica ’s fingers were long and spindly, her teeth razor-sharp as she turned her stare to me.
“Does she have a favorite flower?” Nila asked, glancing around at what remained on the table. Her energy was nervous, her movement frenzied as she tried to straighten them as if it wasn’t likely to take Estrella days to return yet.
I ran through the possibilities in my mind, examining the memory of the flowers we’d passed in our journeys. There were few options with the approach of winter upon us, most of the true flowers had died already. But there was one memory, a drawing in a book during our stay with the Resistance that she’d run her fingers over, pausing to study it.
I imagined she’d never seen it before, the trees responsible not likely to be favored in a village designed for growing crops to feed Nothrek.
“Night Blossoms,” I said, referring to the flowers that budded on the Loreth trees in the peak of summer. They existed only at the fringes of the Summer Court where it touched Spring and Autumn, favoring sticky, balmy nights. The flowers emerged from their buds beneath the light of the full moon, their petals the deepest purple of the midnight sky.
Nila turned to the acalica , nodding her head in encouragement. “Tell the others. They can relay the message to those who are free to find the flowers.”
The Lliadhe faerie fled the bedroom, leaving Nila and I alone. Her eyes were sad, her features expressing every bit of worry she felt for my mate. “She’ll come back,” I said, attempting to keep my voice strong. My mate collected people, collected the souls of those who earned kindness and had been denied it by those who would force them into submission.
The Lliadhe saw something of themselves in Estrella. They saw a woman the world had been determined to make small, standing up to her oppressors even if it meant carrying the weight of her punishments.
“How do you know she’ll be back? How do you know she’ll survive this?” Nila asked, her voice barely a whisper. She looked to the door, and it struck me that Nila had taken the duty of keeping their hope alive. She’d been forced to remain strong for the others, but in this moment, she knew she could be vulnerable.
She knew I missed more than what the Llaidhe saw as their savior. I missed the woman I loved.
“Because she would never allow anything to force her to leave us to suffer. She would never leave this world knowing there are people who need her help,” I said, taking a step toward Nila. I didn’t touch her, and she didn’t dare to cross the gap between us either.
“She would never leave you here without her,” Nila said, a small smile appearing on her face.
“She would never leave me. She’ll do whatever it takes to survive,” I agreed, allowing the confidence of those words to sink deep inside me. Estrella was distant, the bond pulled taut between us and leaving me at the fringes of her emotions. I couldn’t make them out, but I still felt closer to her than I had in those moments after she discovered my true identity.
Then I’d had to wonder if my mate would ever forgive me, accept me, choose me. Now I was settled in the knowledge that she would choose me every day for the rest of her life, doing whatever it took to return to my side.
That was love. It was the undeniable bond between us that even she couldn’t deny any longer.
It was what had driven her to forgive my deception in the first place.
“They need her to come back. She gave them hope,” Nila said, looking toward the empty doorway as if she expected another Lliadhe to appear at any moment. She rubbed her hands over her face, wiping away any traces of emotion and donning the mask she must have worn to keep them all going.
“These are offerings,” I said, my voice quiet as I studied the flowers on the table.
“They don’t have much,” Nila said, explaining the lack of gold that the humans had once left in the temples of the Gods they worshipped.
Estrella wouldn’t have wanted gold or coin anyway. Those things meant nothing to her but suffering.
“But they give what they can,” I said, smiling as I thought of a young Estrella who might have done the same in a different life.
“The humans have their Gods,” Nila said, even now with the knowledge that they’d chosen The Father and The Mother over the Fae Gods of Old, they still made offerings to the beings they believed would bring them eternal peace. “Now the Lliadhe have theirs.”
“They’ll die before she returns,” I said, glancing down to the flowers.
“And every day, they will bring more. Maybe she can feel it, feel our belief. The Fae Gods were said to be stronger when the humans believed . Maybe she will be, too,” Nila said, studying my face for any sign that it might have been true.
It was so long ago, I didn’t know when I’d settled into my life of servitude to a Queen I hated. Once, I’d been strong enough to oppose her in my own way, but it wasn’t until Estrella that I felt like I could rid us of her in truth.
“Maybe she will,” I said, agreeing with Nila’s belief. Even if it didn’t help Estrella, it helped those she’d been forced to leave behind.
It would help the army she had at her disposal when she returned.
“What if Mab sees them? Aren’t you afraid of the consequences for you?” I asked. Given that Nila had been tasked with caring for Estrella and her rooms during her time at Tar Mesa, she would be the first suspect on Mab’s warpath if the time came.
“Then let her see,” Nila said with a shrug that felt so defeated compared to the hopeful woman I’d witnessed at Estrella’s side. “But she has no reason to come to this part of the castle now.”
“And what of her spies?” I asked, glancing back to the open door. The others who had come and gone from this space did so hurriedly, but Nila was willful enough to know there was no point to her hiding this with the location being what it was.
“None are willing to stand before her long enough to report what we’ve done anymore. They’re too busy hiding from her wrath, and I must admit that has brought us some freedom to move throughout the castle. Mab’s real power has always been her far reach and the eyes she has everywhere. Without that outright loyalty, she’s weakened herself slightly at least,” Nila said, returning to fussing over the contents of the room. She’d clearly taken to keeping the space perfect for Estrella, for when she returned, but she was riddled with anxious energy in a way that felt unnatural.
She stopped, sighing and forcing herself to be still as she finally looked at me. Her smile was hesitant. “Is there anything else we can do?” Nila asked, studying my face.
“I need to leave Tar Mesa,” I said, watching her eyes widen. To not be here when Estrella returned was unthinkable to both of us, but I would need to do it to be there for her while she was gone. “I have a way to sneak into Tartarus, but it will require me to soul-walk for a time. The ritual is risky without a witch at my side, and I haven’t seen Imelda since that day at the cove.” Worry laced my words as I spoke them, and Nila’s pinched brow was all I needed to know that she had not either.
“The Wild Hunt is here,” Nila said, reaching out to grasp my arm in shock. She jolted back immediately, turning for the door. “They’ve brought more of the human mates to the dungeons below. If you hurry, you may catch them before they leave.”
Holt would need to disobey his Queen to play the song that could pull my soul from my body in the night, but he could do it.
I turned, leaving Estrella’s bedroom behind me without a second thought. I kept my pace controlled but quick as I navigated the halls of Tar Mesa. Carefully avoiding making eye contact with any of Mab’s followers, none of them interfered as I moved through the shadows and stepped into the shadow realm.
My magic took me where I needed to go, the inky darkness surrounding me as soon as I’d put enough distance between Estrella’s room and the wards placed there and myself. It was like coming home, like a cool winter’s night by the hearth enveloping me in its warmth. The shadows drifted over my skin, tickling against the edges of my armor affectionately.
I emerged within the human dungeons, staring at Holt as he and the Wild Hunt ushered the newest batch of mates into a cell. His eyes widened as I stepped out of the shadow realm, placing one foot in front of the other and coming to a stop in front of him. “Caldris,” he said, his voice dropping low.
He looked over my shoulder, studying the space behind me for my mate or the witch he so desperately wished to see. He wouldn’t admit it out loud, not when she clearly detested him for what had transpired between them centuries before.
“I need your help,” I said, glancing over his shoulder to find Aramis standing behind Holt. Behind them, the other members of the Wild Hunt grimaced as they closed the doors to the cells that now occupied dozens of human mates. I couldn’t stop to think of what fate might wait for them here when Mab realized I was missing. Not when Estrella’s life, and all our lives, depended on me finding her in Tartarus.
“Anything,” Holt said, stepping forward. He raised his hand, allowing me to place mine in his and gripping it tight in the male version of affection.
“What do you need?” Aramis asked, stepping forward with the rest of the Wild Hunt at his back.
“Estrella is in Tartarus,” I explained, watching as Holt flinched. We both knew the horrors that waited for her there, the torment she would need to endure in her efforts to find Medusa.
“Caldris,” he said, shaking his head as he pulled his hand back from mine. I gripped him tighter, pulling him close enough that the breastplate of my armor touched his tattooed skin.
“She was injured, Holt,” I said, staring him in the face and daring him to deny me this. Centuries of friendship did not equate to turning his back on me when I needed him the most. “I don’t need to explain to you what happens to me if she dies.”
“You’re a fucking idiot,” Holt grumbled, but he nodded his head anyway. “There’s a doorway.”
“I know,” I said, already certain of the placement where I would need to meet the ferryman. “But I cannot enter into it with my physical form.”
Holt scoffed. “You want me to call you to join the Hunt for the night,” he said, a disbelieving laugh bubbling up in his throat. While some of the souls Holt called to join the Wild Hunt came from those who were already dead or dying, others were people who simply slept too soundly, feeling compelled to the call and joined instead of resting peacefully.
“It’s the only way,” I said, not bothering to deny my plan.
“It’s dangerous. You’ll be little more than a shade, and that will make you susceptible to the claims of Tartarus. If you stay too long, you’ll never escape,” Holt said, the warning on his tongue sounding like something I should heed. Hopefully I would have enough time to aid Estrella in her quest and see her home safely, because I didn’t think I would be able to leave her.
“We’ll need somewhere to hide my body. Otherwise Mab’s minions will run me through while I sleep to be rid of me once and for all,” I said, looking around the dungeon. It was too risky to leave the dungeon again, the chances of Mab realizing I was up to something slim, but possible.
If she interrogated me, I’d have to tell her the truth. I couldn’t lie.
“Through here,” Tara said, breaking off from the rest of the Wild Hunt who watched and rushing to the side of the dungeon. She rounded the corner, going out of sight of the humans as Holt and I followed behind her. She held a finger to her lips, warning us to be silent as she groped along the stone. She touched the stones on the wall, feeling across them as she searched for something that only she could feel. Finally pressing her fingers more firmly into one of the rocks, she stepped back as the panel slid to the side as if by magic.
The small room within was littered with bones. The dead who had once been placed in solitary in this place long since forgotten.
“What is this place?” I asked as I stepped into the little room.
“It was your father’s favored cell for his prisoners that he didn’t want Mab to know about,” she said, gesturing to the skeletons that littered the room. “He tended to them personally. No one but us knows of this room’s existence.”
I ran my hand over the stones within, to the dangling instruments of torture on the walls. “How do you know of it then?” I asked, watching as she wrung her hands in front of her.
“There was a time when he used this room to have secret rendezvous with your mother,” she said, watching as my eyes lit with understanding. My parents had shared more than the one forbidden night that led to my birth.
My mother had been in Tar Mesa to see him.
But they’d never allowed me to join, because my curse to serve Mab had made it impossible for me to guard their secret.
Everything in me went cold, and my hand dropped off the stone as hurt flashed through me. It radiated with heat, a burning, writhing thing with a mind of its own.
“I brought her here through the river entrance. There was no reason for Mab to believe I had any ties to either of them,” she said, finishing the thought as I sank to the floor and found a spot that was cleared of bones.
I lay back on the stone, staring up at the ceiling and refusing to think of what had transpired in this cell.
Our fate would not be the same as that of my parents.
“She was never the same after she lost him,” Tara said, continuing on. “I served her in the Winter Court before my death, and she was always so full of life. So vibrant, but now even she dances on the edge of madness. If you were to take your rightful place on the throne, I believe she would pass into the Void willingly to join him.”
Abandoning me yet again, but I couldn’t even muster up the energy to be angry with her for that.
A life without Estrella wasn’t worth living at all.
I placed my hands behind my head, attempting to get comfortable as I let my eyes drift closed. Holt seemed to realize that my need for understanding had passed, the history between my parents and I no longer relevant.
They’d chosen one another over time with me, and I couldn’t fault them for it.
Not when I would have sacrificed them both to save her. Holt spoke, silencing Tara with his voice.
“Sleep, God of the Dead. For when you wake, we ride.”