Page 59 of What Lies Beyond the Veil

My heart panged with the loss of all of them, hoping that my mother was coping and surviving in the chaos that must have come after the Veil shattered. There was no one left to protect her; not when Brann had come with me and died for it. He’d have been better off staying with her and trying to hide from the army of Fae that had most likely descended upon Mistfell.

“You alright?” Caelum asked, touching a gentle thumb to the side of my jaw. I nodded, not quite able to find the words to answer him. I would survive, but it was hard not to feel like I’d left the girl I’d been back home.

We continued down the hall of doorways and alcoves, the only light in the space coming from the torches that lined the stone corridor. The walls pressed in on me, oppressive and nauseating. I’d always loved the darkness, but something about being locked away under the ground was unnatural—unnerving.

I trailed a hand over the rough surface as I took a deep breath of humid air. The warmth inside the tunnels was a blessing; my cloak had been left behind in our shared bedroom as I wouldn’t need it, but I craved a lighter dress, as well, or a shirt like the men’s to pair with the leggings, instead.

We finally emerged into the common space where most of the Resistance appeared to congregate. The room was circular, with the ceiling in this part of the underground cavern curving to an apex at the center. Wooden posts acted as support, wedged between the rough stone floor and the high ceiling above. The space felt less claustrophobic than the tunnels we’d traveled to get here or the small bedroom Caelum and I shared, the space above my head serving to give me room to breathe.

I paused to look around, taking in the dozens of people socializing and talking over wooden tables with maps laid out on them. Caelum and I exchanged a glance between us as we debated whether we should introduce ourselves or wait for someone to notice us.

It didn’t take long; only a few moments passed before the people who hunched over the tables and the documents spread out on them sensed the strangers in their presence. Most of them had seen us come in earlier, but they hadn’t made any move to approach, as if they knew we weren’t both enthusiastic about being here.

Caelum’s steps faltered as we walked into the center of the space, making our presence fully known and waiting for someone to approach. I was far too uncertain to make myself at home and introduce myself, especially with the tension rolling off of Caelum that set me on edge.

I turned to look at him, following his pointed stare to a woman who stood lurking in the background of those bent over the tables. One of her eyes glowed like moonlight, shining out from her umber skin, whereas the other was as dark as the night sky. Her hair fell in long waves, curling around her shoulders like freshly fallen snow. She was absolutely, heartbreakingly beautiful with flawless skin and lips painted red.

She raised a hand to the moon that shone on her forehead, casting a soft glow on her fingers that were tipped in darkness, shimmering like the starlight of the Veil itself.

Those eyes were fixated on Caelum, returning the intensity he gave her. My attention shifted between them, feeling something pass that I didn’t understand.

My suspicions rose, my stomach dropping like lead.They knew each other,I realized with another twist of my gut.

Caelum turned to me, wrapping an arm around my back, soothing parts of me that he shouldn’t have been able to touch; the wounded girl who didn’t want to admit I wouldn’t stand a chance of holding onto him.

It was why I never should have let him under my skin in the first place.

He buried his face into the curtain of my tangled hair, his lips brushing against the shell of my ear. “She’s a witch,” he murmured, his voice low enough that I knew he didn’t want the others to hear.

The glowing mark, the fingers that had been dipped into the shadows of the night itself, the eerie mismatched eyes: all of it made sense with her beingOther.Her eyes fell to me, studying me intently as she pursed her lips briefly before smiling.

As quickly as she’d studied us, she turned her attention back to the maps on the table, closing us off as if she hadn’t examined us from the inside out. “That’s Imelda,” a woman said, stepping up in front of me. I forced my eyes off the witch to meet the kind, gray-eyed gaze of a human woman. “And I’m Amalie. She’s taught some of us to see through Fae glamour, but no one is better at it than a witch.”

“A witch?” I asked, pretending Caelum hadn’t recognized her for what she was. I couldn’t be certain that his knowledge wouldn’t be used against us or make us look suspicious, having questioned it myself when we first met, as well.

Brann had been cautious in the face of Caelum’s knowledge, leading us straight to his death out of that fear. My heart faltered in my chest; with the promise of a safe place to rest my head that night, the pain of the loss of him seemed more blinding. I didn’t have to focus on keeping my feet moving, or on where my next meal would come from. I didn’t have the same kind of life-changing distractions.

“Yes. She is how we keep the tunnels warded,” the woman said, the explanation bringing that multicolored stare back to us. “They draw their power from the nature around them, and their magic isn’t tied so directly to Alfheimr, like the Fae.”

“I thought they were all dead?” I asked, thinking of the stories that told of how the last of the ancient witches had given their lives to create the Veil, to protect humans from the wrath of the Fae.

“Most of them are,” Imelda said, raising her chin to meet my inquisitive stare. She stepped around the edge of the table, coming to stand next to the woman who had greeted us. “But there are some of us here, some of us alive in Alfheimr, as well, I suspect. The Crown tried to kill off the rest of us who survived the Veil to fit their narrative of events, but we’re still here.”

She leaned into me, her face stopping only a breath from mine as she looked down my body. She drew air into her lungs, smelling me as her brow furrowed and she tilted her head to the side. “Death is calling to you,” she said, her words echoing what had been foretold in the woods on Samhain.

I swallowed when Caelum’s hand tightened around my waist, his arm twitching against my spine. “Is that a threat?” he asked, his voice dropping low in warning. Only he would be foolish enough to think he could stand against a witch.

The mark on her forehead pulsed with light, answering the quiet violence hidden in his words. “I don’t mean either of you any harm. Death stalks her, as if she is halfway to the grave already. From the look in her eye, this is not the first time she has heard such a thing,” Imelda answered, turning her back on us and vacating the common space.

Caelum’s stare burned into the side of my face as I ignored him, smiling gently at the woman who’d been kind enough to greet us. I didn’t want to speak of the night in the woods or the death that I felt pacing at the edges of my life, waiting for me to make one fatal mistake.

Waiting for the knife to press against my throat once more, to take the life the Fae had denied it when they broke through the Veil.

“Sorry,” the woman said with a little laugh, shaking out her chestnut hair. “She can be a little intense.”

“So can he,” I said, nodding my head toward where Caelum refused to release me.

A child raced up to the woman, grabbing her around the legs and gazing up at her with all the affection I’d given to my own parents as a girl. She knelt down to tend to the child while we watched, smiling apologetically when the young girl refused to release her. The fact that there were children living in their community brought a smile to my face, the bittersweet reality of their survival and relative freedom from the harsh life above the surface tempered by the fact that they probably rarely got to feel the sun on their skin.

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