Chapter Seven. Fallon
SEVEN
FALLON
Estrella screamed, the sound shattering something within me. I took a step forward to reach her, grimacing as Etan grabbed my forearm with a vise grip that prevented me from moving.
A blade protruded from Caldris’s heart, Mab’s iron dagger making him sputter and cling to the last vestiges of life. “Let me go!” I screamed, desperate to make my way to Estrella. She needed me, needed the bond that swayed between us as her bond with her mate prepared to sever.
She couldn’t be alone if he left this world—couldn’t be alone when she followed after him.
“Stay out of the way,” Etan murmured, leaning close so that the words hung between us.
“I won’t let you risk yourself for her. Estrella made her bed with every moment she chose to defy Mab.
There is nothing you can do to change her fate now,” he said, casting his gaze toward his King.
Rheaghan lingered at the edge, his mouth tight and hands fisted at his side.
As if he wanted to step in to interfere with his sister’s violence but knew better than to defy her.
But like so many of us, something in Estrella’s pain drew us closer. Something in that love made her striking ability to pull us into her orbit even stronger.
Mab pulled back the blade with her good hand as she cradled her injured one as protectively as she could, and I watched in stunned horror as a surge of blood rose to the surface and dribbled down Caldris’s chest in tune with the beating of his heart.
I pulled at Etan’s grip, trying to get free to no avail.
He simply pulled me into his chest, tucking my back against him and holding steady.
His arms wrapped around my chest, entrapping me in a cage I had no hope of freeing myself from no matter how I writhed against him.
“Settle, Fallon,” he said, keeping his breathing slow and even.
It was such a contrast to mine, so in opposition to the racing of my heart.
My finger throbbed where the teardrop marked Estrella and me as bonded, the need to intervene coursing through me.
Estrella dropped to her knees at Caldris’s side, pressing her hands to his wound as he toppled to his side. She caught him, pulling him into her lap as tears splashed down her face.
“There’s been a change of plans,” Mab said, her voice calm. It was the perfect display of just how little she cared for anything living—anything breathing.
Caldris was her stepson, the son of her husband, and she’d known him since he was a boy. Her cruelty knew no bounds, to only finally kill him when he was so close to being mated, so close to reaching his euphoria.
Mab wiped her knife on the fabric of her dress, staining it with Caldris’s blood.
“I love you,” Caldris whispered, the words meant only for his mate. I screamed, knowing about the bond Estrella and Caldris had sworn.
Where one went, the other would follow.
“You don’t understand,” I whimpered, the sound as broken as I felt inside. Etan shushed me quietly, intending to soothe me as it made his chest vibrate at my spine.
I felt like my heart might tear in two, and Etan held me tight as Mab’s curious gaze swung toward me.
She studied me as if she couldn’t comprehend my heartache, as if love were a weakness that made no sense in this instant.
I couldn’t even blame her, because she didn’t yet understand what she’d done.
She didn’t understand that she’d ripped Estrella from me. I felt as if I were waiting for a piece of my soul to be torn from my chest, for the inexplicable bond that I felt with Estrella to vanish and take me with it.
She was the only person in this world who could understand. Who knew what it had been like living in Nothrek and belonging in Alfheimr. She may not have known it in her mind, but she’d felt that call coming from the other side of the Veil.
She was the only one capable of offering me the freedom that could only come when Mab was dead. She was my only hope.
“Caldris will be the Godly sacrifice. Consider yourself fortunate, Ilaria,” she said, the implication of that statement making something in Estrella go blank. Her expression dropped from her face, her anguish vanishing in a moment as she settled inside.
I knew her well enough to know the moment that creature within her rose up to comfort her, wrapping her in an embrace that was so cold that nothing could live within it.
This was the Estrella that Mab did not know to fear, the one who made her ramblings about power seem like child’s play.
The day that Estrella learned to control that part of her would be the day she conquered the world, plunging us into chaos and darkness.
Caldris turned pale, his eyes beginning to glaze over as Estrella’s claws extended into talons. She dragged one over her wrist, making a sharp slice across her skin. The scent of blood was metallic in the air, turning my stomach with the strength of it.
“Please don’t leave me,” she begged, silent tears tracking down her cheeks as she pressed her bleeding wrist to her mate’s mouth.
Caldris’s eyes drifted closed, and I watched in dawning horror as Estrella’s viniculum pulsed with shadows.
The black seemed to writhe on her skin in agitation, the shadows stretching and twirling as they threatened to consume her.
Her eyes were wide, a manic energy I’d never seen on her face.
The white of her Fae Mark spread, shimmering with golden light as it shifted and pushed back the dark.
Her blood vanished into Caldris’s mouth, the stain of it sparkling with gold where it touched his lips.
“If you are not strong enough to free yourself from this bond that cripples you, then I will do it for you, Little Mouse,” Mab said, sneering as Estrella turned her gaze away from her dying mate.
The hatred written into the lines of her face promised retribution; it promised violence and vengeance and all the things that would plunge Alfheimr into war.
I knew without a doubt that if Estrella lost Caldris, I would lose her.
Even before she followed after him in mere moments, her soul would fray in ways that would never be fixed.
She would destroy the entire world, burn it all to the ground if it meant tearing Mab’s head from her shoulders.
Her eyes glowed with golden light, her magic pulsing from within her.
Mab had the intelligence to stagger back half a step, trying to disguise her fear over the monster she’d so foolishly unleashed. Her ownership over Caldris had been the one thing controlling Estrella, had been the one piece that kept her from destruction.
Mab realized her folly as she summoned her daemon to guard her, watching as the creature who could siphon Estrella’s magic took up guard beside the Queen who had summoned him from Hel.
Mab’s soldiers grabbed Caldris by the legs, attempting to drag his limp form out of Estrella’s grip.
She held tight with one hand, making them eye her warily as she managed to cling to him.
It should have been impossible, the strength she asserted against two men with a single hand to cling to her lost love.
“She’s going to kill us all,” I said, warning Etan of the coming danger. If Caldris was lost to us, Estrella’s rage simmered beneath the surface—ready to explode into the cove with the violence of a thousand storms.
Etan swallowed with a nod, holding my gaze with something far too intimate in his expression.
He reached up to cup my cheek, releasing his hold from my chest with that one arm to give me affection in what could very well be our final moments.
“No. We’ll have plenty of time to fight yet,” he said, earning a disgruntled chuckle from me.
He would have absolutely no control over Estrella.
Her hands fisted at her sides, her fingers twining around the frayed edges of the golden thread of their bond.
I couldn’t see it, but the phantom magic of it touched my teardrop mark, the feeling pulsing down our bond as she clung to Caldris.
Her brow knit, furrowing to mimic the deep scowl that toyed with her mouth as her nostrils flared.
Her head tilted to the side as she watched Mab’s growing concern, that promise of violence becoming a deep, slithering thing that we all felt in the cove alongside us, until it was a tangible creature of its own.
Her face relaxed so suddenly my heart stopped, her hand releasing its iron grip on the thread and splaying across Caldris’s chest for a brief moment as she felt something I couldn’t see.
His eyes flung open, the piercing blue of frost lost to the golden light of fate that mirrored Estrella’s gaze.
Mab gasped, and the daemon swung his sword toward the impending threat.
The impossible threat that came with the realization that Estrella had healed a heart stabbed with iron. That she’d kept her mate from the very clutches of the afterlife.
There would be consequences for robbing the Void of the life it was owed, I knew. I knew and didn’t care, because it meant that Estrella was whole, that those magical eyes shone with relief.
Estrella realized the intended path of the daemon’s blade, as she laid herself over his body, using her own flesh to shield the mate she’d only just saved. I screamed my warning, her name lost to the ringing in my ears as the wind of the daemon’s strike moved the hair on Estrella’s neck.
No.
Etan tightened his grip as I tried to move to her, to get in the way of the death calling her name this time. I couldn’t reach her, couldn’t protect her from what I knew would be fatal.…