6. Caly
6
CALY
“S o Moirai is at Lake Sheridon?” It had been too quiet during our last stretch of forest, and I was asking just to hear Mendax’s voice—or wanting the creepy forest to hear his voice. It didn’t matter how much time I spent in these faerie realms, I would never get used to it. It was unlike anything in the human world. The magic that radiated made every single thing so full of energy that sometimes it was overwhelming just to be surrounded by all of it.
The farther we walked, the stranger the snowy forest felt. The idea of Eli being out here alone made my insides clench and cramp, though that may have been the snowberries I just ate. What if something happened to him along the way? How would we ever find him? He would have lost his mind if I had gone off on my own.
Awareness drifted to my feet temporarily. My boots were solid and strong, but they hadn’t stopped the blisters from forming. My toes were completely numb, whether from trying to keep pace with a six-foot-five fae or from the freezing cold weather, I wasn’t sure.
I had been so much warmer when Eli had been here. His SunTamer magic meant he naturally radiated a significant amount of heat, but I was starting to wonder if something else was going on. Before Eli and Mendax had become injured fighting the sickle, I’d thought the snow hardly felt cold. On top of that, I hadn’t had but the smallest ache in my body. Even in places I had been sore for months, I felt great. I would even go so far as to say healed. The bond and tie had been taking it out of me for a while before this journey. The boys had made it abundantly clear that because I was ninety-nine percent human, those magical links would take me out first—that I would begin to feel the effects of the bond and tie, and my health would begin to deteriorate. They had. My body was struggling to heal even the simplest cuts and had begun to break down and hurt. Of course I hadn’t mentioned it to anyone though. Why would I?
Then, all of a sudden, one day, it stopped. I felt as healthy as an ox. Not even the normal pain in my leg that always hung around or typical things, like cramps, were gone. (First trick to making an awkward journey? Try to explain human menstruation to two male fae. Spoiler alert: female fae, along with obnoxiously good looks and perfect skin, also apparently didn’t experience monthly courses.)
I didn’t know if it was even possible, but I couldn’t help but wonder if one of them had been doing something through our tie or bond somehow.
“Huh?” Mendax grunted, obviously thinking about something else far, far away.
“Moirai. You know, the place where the Fates are. Where the Ascended live with my father? Where you and I will both probably die?” I added sarcastically.
Mendax’s blue eyes held mine in a threatening stare that of course made my thighs feel the need to clench. I cleared my throat and tried to hide a grin.
Suns, I was fucked up.
“Lake Sheridon is Lake Sheridon,” he stated, sounding a little annoyed.
“The prince of smoke and prose, I see. Would you care to elaborate, oh philosophical one?” I had to look away from him to keep a straight face. He wasn’t as used to my sarcasm as Eli. I couldn’t see it, but I most definitely felt his sexy, broody, dagger-like scowl on the back of my head.
“Moirai appears. At least that’s what they say. Clearly they’ve not extended me an invitation prior to this, so I wouldn’t know. It is an incredibly small group that goes and a significantly smaller one that returns. It is always by invitation only, and I’ve heard tales from the very few who have returned that it moves and relocates, appearing only by necessity so as to keep the Fates and the Ascended from harm.”
He grabbed ahold of my hand casually as we walked.
Stunned by the simple gesture, my mouth gaped open like a trout as I watched the prince of death and darkness hold my hand like a fourteen-year-old trying out affection for the first time. It felt so…normal.
Mendax squeezed my hand in his, making certain it was in just the position that he wanted, and then continued on as if it was the most natural, common thing in the world.
And it was.
My fish mouth continued to suck in cold air as I stared at our casual connection of flesh. My barely mended heart swelled nearly painfully. I squeezed his palm back and was hit with a depressing wave of sadness. I would have given anything to get to feel this feeling years ago, when I could have relished and marinated in it for a lifetime. Now, I felt like I was counting the minutes we had left together.
I had to figure out a way to get Mendax out of Moirai alive—and Eli. I was the only one who should be killed. Others may not see the good in Mendax, but I did, and I would do anything to keep him alive and safe. No one else would die because of me. I wouldn’t let that happen.
“Besides.” Mendax interrupted my panicked thoughts, bringing me back to the cold, eerie forest. “Moirai isn’t going to be at Lake Sheridon.”
I pulled back and looked at him as a scowl creased my forehead. “What do you mean? The scroll says in order to get to Moirai, we have to go to Lake Sheridon.”
“It says further instructions will be located at Lake Sheridon.” A few minutes later, he broke the silence again. “We should be close… There. See it?” He pointed to a spot just behind a snowy hill in front of us.
All I saw was a field of white with edges of greenish-blue fir trees that were cloaked in snow. I used to love snow, but after this, I doubted I’d ever be able to look at snow the same.
“There,” he said again as he moved behind me to point my head in the right direction.
Past the tip of his finger, there was a black patch in the snow tucked into the far-off white mountains, nearly hidden by surrounding trees. It looked like a drowning pool where nightmares went to swim and breed.
“Do—do you think Eli’s there?” I asked with a swallow. Why couldn’t I have fucking controlled myself around Mendax? Had I stayed on my side of the cave, Eli never would have left. Suns , I bet he was so upset with me. Technically we were still engaged, not that it really mattered considering one or all of us may be dead in a few hours, not to mention things had seemed…different between he and I after being together so much on this journey. Not bad, just…different. Things didn’t feel romantic, and I couldn’t help but wonder—and, dare I say, hope?—that he felt the change too.
“He’s there. I can sense his heart beating from here. It’s going a mile a minute. There are a few others as well,” Mendax said as he closed his eyes and tilted his head ever so slightly to the left.
Well, isn’t that a creepy party trick.
“We need to hurry. What if something is happening?” I bellowed after I had taken off running. “Hurry! You can get to him faster than I can. I’ll follow in your footprints,” I called behind me. Despite my best efforts at being speedy, Mendax was still right behind me.
“No,” he stated.
I struggled to keep in front of him, even in a run now. Damn his long legs.
“He is not my friend. I hope he dies,” he grumbled.
I couldn’t do this anymore.
My steps faltered, and I stared at the ground. Mendax’s boot prints in the snow looked harsh and dirty next to the crisp untouched blanket of snow that surrounded them. “I don’t care what the two of you have fought about. All because of your mommies . I am so sick of hearing the threats! The—the scars and threats! Every time I leave the room, you two try to kill each other. You. Can’t. Kill. Him!”
“Not yet—” he growled after stopping a few feet ahead.
“Not ever,” I snapped. The snow crunched beneath my feet as I took the remaining steps into him until the towering fae was nearly bent over looking at me. “I couldn’t protect my mother or Adrianna. Eli is the only person I consider family left alive, and I will not fail at protecting him. Do you understand me?” Stubborn tears slid down my cheek, leaving a cold trail on my skin. “I will kill you if I have to, Malum, but you will not hurt Eli.” My eyes pulsed with the threat of more tears, but the cold and bitter stare I kept secured on Mendax held them off.
The Unseelie prince blinked for a moment, processing my words.
The breath was ripped from my chest as his hand latched around my throat and I was shoved back until my back met with the bark of a tall pine tree. I didn’t attempt to break the hold—I doubted I could, and frankly, I didn’t want to. I enjoyed when Mendax gave me his anger. I understood it. It was something we both spoke fluently.
“You would kill me to keep him alive?” he questioned. The anger on his face creased his forehead and eyes. It was evident everywhere but his voice. His whisper was instead cut with something akin to pain. His grip lightened a fraction, so I broke his hold with my arm, shoving him a step away. He didn’t fight it, which made the ache in my chest hurt even more.
“You could never understand,” I shouted as I stiffened my jaw. “I love you both in very different ways. I understand that now, but Eli might as well be blood.”
My eyes picked out every detail of his handsome face as I waited for what his next reaction would be.
Mendax glanced at his feet for a moment of apparent thoughtfulness before he clenched his jaw and spoke. His words were flat, without hope or spirit—something I’d never picked up on in his voice until now when it was missing. “Well then, I suggest you hurry, because his heart rate implies your damsel is in distress.”
“Malum, I?—”
“Have you ever noticed you only call me that after you’ve set out to cut me in one form or another?” he said with a devilish purse of his mouth.
I rolled my eyes. “Come on!” I shouted at him as I took off running. I couldn’t think about how much I’d just hurt Mendax right now. Eli needed my help.
The back of my boots slid on the snow with every step, threatening to take me down. It felt deeper and harder to maneuver through than it had minutes before I knew Eli was in trouble. Every simple movement became impossible and too slow. This wintery forest was not made for fast.
“Fuck!” I shouted, almost in tears realizing the short distance I’d reached after having made so much effort. My cold, rosy knuckles cracked when my fists clenched at my sides. I kicked the few inches of snow on the ground in front of me, which did nothing but force bits of snow to tuck into the top of my boot and make my ankle cold. In that second, it felt like the last piece of my will was finally going to break. Eli needed me, and I was failing him, just as I’d failed them. I fought the frustration down and carried on, promising myself it would go smoother if my pace was a tad slower this time.
I lifted my foot to stomp on the snowy forest floor, but instead, my head spun, and I watched the white landscape of snowy branches and ground bounce and sway through a haze of black smoke.
“What the—” I realized Mendax had thrown me over his shoulder, but we were moving way too fast to be walking…and why were we bouncing as we were?
I barely believed my eyes when I turned and looked.
Two giant, translucent beasts made of black smoke bounded through the snow in front of us. Their misty-looking front legs cut through the snow like water. Mendax’s lupine creations snarled like demons. They had the features of a wolf but with the build of a horse. Hazy, black smoke shot out in clouds from their nostrils angrily. Mendax lifted two long, thick reins of smoke, cracking them down on the running beasts. The Unseelie prince was pulling us in a black sleigh of smoke.
The trees blurred when we sped past them. Flecks of cold snow kicked up and into my face where I hung down over Mendax’s back. As I let my body relax into the dark fae who held me, everything changed. I felt the shift in Mendax and gasped, just as his grip on my body lightened and I fell out of his arms and into a mound of snow and fallen branches.
The creatures of smoke were gone, completely evaporated, as if they never existed at all. Mendax stood, brushing snow from his shoulders with a look that was filled with disappointment, and I knew.
“You’re out—you didn’t have enough magic to sustain them, did you?” I asked through heaving breath.
Mendax’s eyes couldn’t hide secrets from me anymore. Cold blue eyes looked through me, completely defeated, and I nearly fell to the snow.
His jaw shifted as he ground his teeth. “I suppose that’s why he’s your hero, huh? Rescuing never was my thing,” he said grimly.
It took a minute, but I managed to stomp through the piles of snow until I reached him. “You’ve been giving me your powers, haven’t you? Through the bond?” I swore as all the pieces fell together. “And now look what you’ve done!” I shouted. “You’ve completely depleted yourself just before—suns only knows what! Why would you give me your power?” Fear appeared like a prowler inside my head. “Am I that bad off? Have the bond and tie really done that much to destroy me already? That’s why I have been in so much pain off and on.”
“You are a hum—” he began.
“I fucking know!” I shrieked, having fully lost any remaining composure. “I fucking know!” I turned around in a circle, completely exasperated and unsure of what to do to fix this. “Has Eli been doing it too, through the tie?” I asked, thinking more about the little signs I had so obtusely missed.
“I’m fairly certain of it, though it’s been unspoken between us,” he said, his voice remaining stiff and as cold as the icicles in the pine branches.
For a moment, we stared at each other.
I felt the click of my jaw as it tightened. “It doesn’t matter how good you are at rescuing, because I’ve never been one to want to be saved,” I reminded him.
With a nod of silent acknowledgment, we pushed forward.