Forty-One
F ORTY - O NE
ESTRELLA
The burst of gleaming, golden light was nearly blinding. It shimmered so completely, making everything within me feel whole. It was impossible to realize how empty I had been before, how I’d truly only been half of myself without him and his soul fully entwined with mine.
Now feeling complete for the first time, I wondered how I’d ever lived without the comfort of his mind with mine, his soul making itself at home within my body. Just as quickly as the light had blinded me, the darkness of the shadows surrounding our bond plunged me into night.
The breath was stolen from my lungs, catapulting me into a darkness that I wasn’t certain I would ever be able to find my way out of. I followed that single thread of gold that connected Caldris and I, tugging on it with my mind in desperation.
The pressure from the other side reassured me that he was still there, that he was still with me. The fear of being completely alone was immense, the darkness vibrating over my skin like the low, tormenting touch of a lover in the night. It was far too familiar with me, as if it knew each and every point on my body to touch to draw a shiver from me. That touch lingered over my skin, touching every part of me as it pressed in and surrounded me, but there was no arousal in spite of the tickle on my body.
There was only fear. A fear that struck so deep inside of me that when my breath finally returned, it came in deep, ragged gasps.
I fell back, landing on my ass on a surface that sprang in response to my touch. My fingertips were wet as they drifted below the surface, digging into the flowing water beneath me. I stared down into the waters of the Void in horror as I drew my touch back, ensuring that none of the creatures within could grasp me. The ferryman was nowhere in sight, and after his words when he left Caldris with me, I wasn’t so sure he would interfere on my behalf a second time.
The Void was empty, devoid of life in a way that felt wrong. With all the souls who lingered here too long trapped within the waters of the flowing water, I had one pressing question that I couldn’t seem to answer.
Where was everyone else?
The Void should have been teeming with souls as they waited for The Father and The Mother to wrap them up in their eternal embrace, but time and time again when I made my journey into the Void, I found it empty of such creatures.
I got to my feet slowly, rocking on unsteady heels as the strange boundary between the river and I wobbled beneath me. Spinning in a circle, I looked for any sign of my mate. I felt him at the other side of the bond, his presence shimmering away with a mix of shadows and the first winter’s frost. I wrapped the thread around my hand, pressing it to my heart and holding it tight as I turned in the direction it guided me.
Something was wrong.
I felt it in my flesh, felt the simmering in my blood and the hardening in my bones. Caldris and I had completed our bond, connected in a way that was permanent and could not be severed by any but through death. I’d been awake, when the only other times I’d been dragged into the Void had been when I slept or was on the brink of death. When my suffering was too much, this place protected me from the agony and sheltered me in a cocoon of numbness.
I took a single, cautious step, halting suddenly when the waters swirled at my feet. Stumbling back, I watched transfixed as they rose up out of the river and formed an archway. Barely taller than myself, the surface of the water hardened as if Caldris had kissed it with the cold of winter. A smooth sheen of ice waited in front of me, forming a perfect mirror as I stared at myself in shock.
I was as I remembered being before leaving Mistfell. My eyes were the deep green I’d come to recognize in Medusa, my hair braided neatly in spite of my tattered and torn green dress. There were no Fae Marks gracing my collarbone or slithering out from beneath my sleeve to touch the back of my hand. I raised it to my face, studying the fingertips that were covered in tiny scratches from the Twilight Berry bush. I shook my head as I stumbled back, refusing to acknowledge the hollow that formed inside me at the thought of losing everything I’d worked for. Everything I’d suffered for.
I would not go back.
I would never go back to that life, to that girl.
I pressed my lips together, turning my back on the mirror that showed me my past. The water swirled again as I shook my head and attempted to flee in the other direction. I didn’t want to see whatever it had to share with me.
Waters rose all around me, the chill of a winter breeze blowing through the Void around me. It swirled over the surface of the water, picking up a spray that reminded me of the sea and splashing it over my face and skin as mirrors hardened all around me. I spun in a circle slowly, looking for a place to squeeze through. The mirrors were empty except that first, leaving me trapped without showing me anything.
A flicker of slow movement appeared in the mirror to my left, forcing me to raise my stare from the water at my feet to squint at what moved in the distance. The figure was a woman, clad in a white dress that draped over one of her shoulders and fell to her feet. There was a shimmer of golden jewelry across the front of her throat, the lights of the swirling golden and black lines tattooed over her hand and arm playing off the shimmering surface. Her dark hair flowed freely around her shoulders, swaying lightly as she made her way toward me.
Her eyes were the depth of the night sky, a universe trapped in her gaze. In the mirror behind her, the stars seemed to pulse in tune with her Fae Marks as they slithered over her skin, the twin moons shining behind her as I swallowed. I recognized her at the same time I didn’t, her immortal skin far more smooth than mine could ever dream to be. Her ears were pointed, her mouth set into a neutral line as she looked me up and down. There wasn’t a trace of emotion of any kind on that cold, impassive face of the monster that was both me and not me.
No disdain for my humanity. No sympathy for the panic that made my heart beat so quickly I thought it might fail.
She leaned into the surface of the mirror, pressing a hand to the other side of the ice. Golden light pulsed against her skin, warming the ice just enough that a trickle of sweat dripped down my side.
She tipped her head to the side, studying me as her mouth tipped up into a cruel, callous smirk and she spoke a command that made me swallow and shake my head.
“Let. Me. Out.” Each word was carefully enunciated, her voice hoarse from disuse. It was both mine and not, the power within it making the ice of the mirror quake.
“I won’t,” I said, shaking my head at the figure in front of me. I knew without a doubt that she was that monster I felt lingering beneath my skin, the one that intervened when the horrors were too much for me to handle on my own.
The one I could turn to who would kill my enemies without batting an eye.
She was a part of me, and I had accepted that and accepted her during my trials, but that didn’t mean I would ever willingly let her erase the person I had fought so hard to become. She belonged within me, within us.
“Let me out!” she screamed, banging her fist against the ice between us. My body jerked, as if I could feel her thrashing against my rib cage and trying to fight her way out through my flesh and bone. She grinned as she did it again, forcing my body closer to the ice until I was certain I would be able to scent her if it were not for the barrier between us. My ribs ached with the force of her blow, even as I watched her do it before me. I let out a loose rasp, gritting my teeth against the pain as my palm touched my ribs that throbbed in pain.
“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 is our mate,” 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 would never believe 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 that the 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.