Sixty-Four
S IXTY - F OUR
CALDRIS
There was no trace of the thing that had once been Estrella’s father remaining in the ferryman while he rowed us up the tangle of rivers to the secret entrance to Tartarus. It was the impossibility of the situation that kept me quiet, kept me from prying and trying to find the man who would have been horrified to know that his daughter was prepared to die in the Cradle of Creation.
That whatever her purpose was and whatever destiny had drawn her to this place and this time, she accepted that her life was the price the Fates demanded. I knew now the words that had made her believe that was true, and my fingers danced along my thigh as I stood on the boat. Even Brann, who seemed incapable of shutting his mouth, didn’t dare to speak to me for fear of the consequences, his own face twisted into a sorrowful expression that reminded me of the hole where my heart had once been.
My heart beat outside my chest, because it thudded within hers. Without the ability to feel her, with the bond silenced by this strange barrier between us, I felt as if I were alone all over again. As if the Veil still existed and I could only feel the faintest of whispers of her existence. My heart was still, my life feeling pointless.
I had to have faith in her ability to return, in the fact that her mother would not have brought her into that temple knowing that her death would come. Estrella had been warned of her coming death since that night in the woods of Mistfell when Adelphia had warned her that death was coming for her after her candle fell from the stone. There was no other choice but to accept that two types of death existed, that Estrella still clung to the woman she’d been as a human. There was a figurative death in that loss that she failed to anticipate the power of. Letting go of that version of herself would feel like a sacrifice, it would feel like she was being torn from her body if she were to ever give that girl up in truth. I loved that human girl, the innocence of her gaze when it had found me staring at her in that barn. While life may not have been kind to her, there was a certain quality to her that could only exist because of her young life.
Age hardened you. It tore the kindness from your soul and ripped the care from your bones. It had long since made me cynical and forced me to see the worst in people, but Estrella always hoped for the best. She hoped people would prove her right and be as gentle as she would be to any who loved her, but she hadn’t yet felt centuries of disappointment when people acted for their own selfish gain.
Age tore the innocence away. Age took your ability to be hurt and morphed it into a fever dream, a breathing, tangible thing that you could never seem to shake. Age made it so that you anticipated the pain of that betrayal with every step you took.
I didn’t know that I had it in me to believe that the people who had my mate were good . I just had to hope that their own self-interest aligned with mine, that they needed my mate alive far more than they needed her dead. In that, I had to trust.
Otherwise I’d have flung myself into the closest river, gladly joining her in this Hel forever.
Instead, I stood in silence as the ferryman guided us out through the cave we’d entered, returning Brann and I to the land of the living as the Priestess had requested. It was a bittersweet thing to be returning to my home, knowing that my mother was dead and I was the King of Winter. That I’d had to leave my mate behind after all my desire to help her. I didn’t think I’d managed to do anything for her in this place except to be a shoulder for her to lean on, a comfort to her emotionally. These trials weren’t for me, and the helplessness of that fact and my helplessness in what would come didn’t sit right with me.
“Do you think she’ll be okay?” Brann asked as we emerged into the light of day. The sun was far too bright on my face, after the time spent in the dimness of Tartarus, and I turned my head to stare at the floor of the boat as the ferryman continued to row.
“She will be,” I said, letting my resolve power the words. If there was one thing I knew about my mate, it was that her ability to survive anything life threw at her was her true magic. She would adapt and change as she needed, serving whatever purpose was necessary so that she could come back to me. She’d live through sheer determination alone, bending the will of the Fates to hers.
That was who she was. That was her strength.
Holt and the rest of the Wild Hunt waited on the shores when we finally reached the sands of the coast where Brann had once fallen to certain death. I’d been prepared for a great many things when we finally returned to the land of the living, all that was left to reunite my spirit with my body.
What I hadn’t been ready for was the reality that Holt and Brann clearly knew one another, their glares a matching set as they sized one another up. “Brander,” Holt said, his voice stern and unforgiving. It was so unlike the male who was usually full of lightness and humor even in the darkest of times.
“Huntsman,” Brann returned, the bite in his voice matching his lack of desire to use the man’s real name. He reduced him to his title, a disrespect that would have been equivalent to calling Brann a witch.
Reducing him to his magic, or in Holt’s case, his curse.
“I’ve a name,” Holt snapped, turning to his horse. There weren’t enough horses to carry us, so I sighed as I guided Brann up to ride at my back. He shook his head, denying the ride.
“She never referred to you by anything other than Huntsman,” Brann said.
“What I allow Imelda to call me is none of your business, and you are not gifted the same courtesy,” Holt said, staring down at where Brann seemed determined to go his separate way. To escape the coming war, I had no doubt.
The fucking coward.
“Why not?”
“Because I like her ,” Holt said, guiding his horse into a trot up the narrow path. I followed after him, leaving Brann behind. There wasn’t time to reason with him, to convince him that Estrella would want to find him with the rest of her loved ones when she emerged from Tartarus. If he didn’t already know that, if he didn’t want to be there when she walked the earth again, then he didn’t fucking deserve her in the first place. I had better things to do than babysit an immortal, stubborn witch. I had an army to gather for my mate.
He could rot, for all I cared.