Page 13 of What Hunts Inside the Shadows

“Don’t,” he said quietly, pulling back to stare down at me. He cupped my neck with his hand, his gaze soft as those unfamiliar eyes studied me from within a face that I didn’t wholly recognize. “It is natural to seek comfort in the arms of your mate. Don’t carve this into something ugly.”

“This could never be anythingbutugly,” I said, my throat clenching around the sob that tried to escape. “I let you…”

“You are grieving, my star. The loss of someone you were growing to admire, the loss of the man you thought I was and the human life we could share. You will do whatever it takes to chase away that well of numbness that exists inside of you, even if that drives you into my arms,” he said, the words striking me in the chest. They were too knowing, too similar to what I referred to as the hollow inside of me that threatened to swallow me whole.

With every day, with every revelation, it grew into a widening chasm I would never escape if I fell into it. There was only the gleaming of stars in the sky to look up at from a well surrounded by shadows.

“Don’t talk to me as if you know anything about me,” I said, shaking my head to rid myself of the comfort that came from someone understanding what existed inside of me. Something alive had been there before the fall of the Veil, watching and waiting, as if it were alive and tangible, knowing it's time would come soon enough.

“We are the same. I spent centuries chasing away that void within me before you were born to your first life, taking small comforts wherever I could find them. I do not know what it is within us that leads us to that empty well, only that nothing good can come of falling in,” he said, touching his forehead to mine. The show of gentle affection made the rebellion within me wither and die, the tears that burned my throat finally reaching my eyes as I pinched them closed.

“I need you to get off of me, Caelum,” I said, pulling my hands from his chest, awkwardly gesturing to our hips where we remained joined. Where the God of the Dead was still inside of me.

“Please,” I whispered, the quiet word sounding more like an admission than I wanted. He could have my rage and my anger, my betrayal. But he couldn’t have my pain.

He was silent as he withdrew from me, finally slipping free as my body seemed to mourn the loss of him. It was so at odds with the relief in my mind, the panic worrying at the edges fading when he rose to stand between my feet. His footsteps scuffled over the rubble-laden street as he moved away from me, leaving me to slowly open my eyes and push up to a sitting position. Wrapping my arms across my chest and fighting back the sudden chill in my body, I curled my knees up and tried to slow my panicked breaths.

Fae Fucker.

The words rang in my ears, knowing that while I might have been able to claim ignorance all the other times I’d allowed him to touch me,thistime I’d known exactly what I was doing.

I rested my cheek against my knees for a moment, staring in the opposite direction of where Caelum stood. I was all too aware of his presence by my side, my body feeling his closeness even if I hadn’t heard his quiet footsteps as he moved. Fabric rending finally forced me to turn my attention toward him, resting my other, wet cheek against my knees.

He held a scrap of cloth in his hand, torn from the hem of his shirt. He dropped it back to the ground next to him in a pile of the clothing he’d gathered. Holding out his other hand to help me up, he raised a brow as if it was as innocent a gesture as any, but nothing he did was harmless, everything served a purpose.

I wanted nothing to do with any of it.

I set my hands on the ground beside me, pushing myself to stand on shaking legs. They wanted to buckle beneath me—to give into the bone-deep weariness that radiated from within. I swayed slightly as I forced myself to stand before the God of the Dead with my chin high. Shaking off the vulnerable girl who’d tried to huddle in on herself with shame for what she’d done, I stared into the dark eyes of a monster and refused to cower.

“There’s my star,” he said, folding the scrap of cloth in his hands. He flattened it against his open palm, reaching forward as he held my stare in a silent challenge. Sliding it between my thighs, he used it to clean the evidence of his pleasure from my skin. Never glancing down at what he did or where he touched me, he quirked a brow when I refused to flinch from the sensitivity between my legs. “See how brightly you burn when you lean into all that hatred in your heart? Think of what you could do if you didn’t waste it on the one person in this world who loves you more than anything.”

He tossed the scrap of fabric to the ground, straightening his pants and retying the laces. I stood pantless before him while he began to dress himself, glancing down at my missing clothing for a moment before I returned my attention to him. “I will never forget the man I thought you were, or how much I loved him. But I will spend the rest of my life trying to forget you ever existed.”

He winced as I crouched down to grab my pants, turning them right side out and shoving my legs into the holes. Yanking them up my legs until they settled around my hips, I did my best to ignore the flash of pain that I felt from him. It was dampened, as if it was my own emotion circled back at me, weaker but recognizable all the same.

“Don’t make me your villain,” he said, staring at me. With his shirt still lying on the ground beside him, his golden skin gleamed where the sun drifted over the horizon. The moon appeared in the twilight of the evening sky, dancing with the sun in a brief serenade before she would vanish for the night.

“You did that all on your own, Caldris,” I said, his name on my tongue feeling wrong in every way. He grimaced as if he agreed, even though it was his name in truth.

He heaved a sigh, bending down to angrily snatch his shirt from the ground as I sat in front of him and pulled on my socks and boots. He shoved it over his head, forcing his arms through the sleeves as his hair danced in the light breeze. “One day, you will realize that you know nothing of this world, Little One. A lesser male, a lessermate, would leave you to rot in the misery you would create from your own ignorance.”

“But let me guess? You will never let me go,” I said, rising to my feet and standing before him. “That doesn’t sound like they’re lesser to me. It sounds like you’re just more selfish.”

His features twisted as he studied me, his top lip twitching as if an animalistic need to snarl threatened to break through his composure. “Is it selfish to protect you against your recklessness? Against how quick you are to judge me for something you do not even begin to understand? I told you once; I would burn the world for you if you so much as asked it of me. What do you think I would do if I lost you? What exactly do you think the purpose of a mate bond is? The witches created them to right the balance of the world—between the Fae and the humans—so that nothing was out of order. A mate is chosen to be our balance.Youare my balance. Everything good that exists inside of me comes from you. If I lost you, you might as well burn the world to ash,” he said, stepping closer until he leaned over me. Forced to tip my head back to meet his gaze, I almost wished I hadn’t bothered. “So tell me again, Little One, am I the selfish one?”

He stared at me, his eyes glimmering as my own anger raised to match his frustration that rolled off of him in waves, coating the air with the sickly scent of death. I glanced over at Melian’s grave, the reminder of it causing something completely foreign to sweep over me, striking into my chest and threatening to knock me off my feet.

“You can’t put that on me,” I said, staring at him in horror. He couldn’t possibly mean to put the fate of the world on my shoulders. As if in rejecting him, I rejected the world and condemned it to a fate worse than death. He raised his arms, gesturing out to the city around us and the rubble of the streets and skeletal remains of buildings that had probably gleamed in magnificence during their prime.

“I ruined this city for vengeance over what they’d done to me. For the way they betrayed me. Is this what you want the world to look like? Is this your hope for your home and the people you claim to love and want to protect?” he asked, scoffing because he already knew the answer. He knew I would do what was necessary for the greater good, because where he didn’t care, I did.

“Of course not,” I said, shaking my head from side to side. Calfalls was devoid of life. It was death and decay and destruction. There wasn’t a single trace of humanity left, aside from the Fae Marked hiding in the rubble, so desperate for protection from the Fae that they would hide in a place where there was no food or water that wasn’t tainted by the ash of the city’s remains.

There was just nothing.

“You can’t use the world and this twisted sense of the greater good to force me to be with you. To make me love you. That’s not how it works, Caelum,” I said, my voice coming out strangled. He stepped closer, touching his hand to my cheek and cupping it gently. So at odds with the tension pulsing through his body, as if he was a moment away from exploding into a violent rage.

As if he was just a second from madness.

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