Page 40 of What Hunts Inside the Shadows

“Yes,” I agreed, giving him the verbal assent he required. My consent, in something of this magnitude especially, mattered to him. He would not take my mind by force.

Caldris nodded, raising his head slightly to stare down at me. He raised a hand, cupping my cheek and touching the edge of his palm to my Fae Mark. “Close your eyes,” he murmured softly, and I did as he commanded. Letting them drift closed, I focused on the comforting feeling of his thumb coaxing my skin. On the way it beckoned me to a place where part of me slumbered, waiting to awaken. “I want you to visualize the bond between us. What do you see?” he asked, his voice soft and low.

I hesitated, twisting my mouth and feeling exposed as I imagined the golden thread of fate between us. “It's a thread, like spun gold shimmering in the candlelight,” I said, lifting a hand as if I could touch it. I plucked it with a single finger, the vibration in the thread itself making my heart quicken, putting the rhythm of its beat out of time.

Caldris gasped, making my eyes fly wide open. He stared down at me in shock, touching a hand to his chest for a moment before he shook off whatever had come over him. “Keep your eyes closed, min asteren,” he said, smiling softly as I let them drift closed once more.

One day, I’d ask about the shock on his face when I’d touched the thread of our bond. One day, I’d gather that thread into my hands and play with its very creation.

“Follow that thread back to yourself. There’s something blocking our bond, something in the way, not allowing me to reach you. What is it?” he asked, that soft bass lulling me nearly to sleep. I forced the tiredness away, running my fingers along the thread. My soul hummed inside my body, the vibration of my touch along the thread pulsing through me entirely until I reached the blockade.

“It’s my window,” I said, abandoning the thread to reach trembling fingers out to touch the cracked glass of the window in my shack in Mistfell.

“Your window?” Caldris asked, his voice laced with confusion as I tapped a single finger against the crack.

“From home. It even has the fabric stuffed into the cracks in the wood beneath the window pane,” I said, the first hint of laughter coming into my voice. I hadn’t realized just how much I’d missed my freezing, half-decrepit bedroom. How much I wished to go back to those nights lying beside the fire to keep warm, the roof over my head doing nothing to protect me from the creatures that called to me in the night. “I used to sneak out through it at night and go wandering in the woods.”

Caldris chuckled, leaning downward to touch his forehead to mine. “Of course you did, min asteren,” he said. He ran his nose along the side of mine, the wintergreen of his breath tickling my cheek. “Open the window, Estrella. This time, I want you to let something in. I need you to open it and let me in.”

In the seam between the two window panes, the gold thread shimmered—pinched between the wood frame of each pane just below the latch. Opening it should have been a simple thing, but I couldn’t tear my fingers away from the crack that my father had complained about when he’d installed it in the house.

The very crack that was the reason we could afford the window at all; a castaway from one of the wealthier villagers who paid him for his labor with their discarded material.

Opening it to Caldris, letting him enter my private space where I laid my head at night without fear of judgment from the people around me, felt like opening myself to a new life.

To a new chapter.

“Open the window, Estrella,” Caldris said, his voice soft and coaxing. I shifted my fingers toward the latch at the center, and toward the golden thread that seemed to sway in the breeze outside the window, extending out into the dark of the night.

Calling to me. Summoning me to the darkest parts of myself.

The latch squeaked as I flicked it open, hanging on its hinges as it flipped to the other side. For a moment, nothing happened, and I stared at the still-closed window in surprise. Until the sudden gust of winter wind tore through, blowing the panes open in a sudden blast of frosted.

It struck me in the chest, sinking inside of me as visions of winter filled my head, of snow falling through the night sky. There was nothing but the bitter cold, nothing but the shock of damp wind upon my skin.

Somethingelsefilled me in the next breath, a shadowed figure making his way toward me in the vision. His silver hair gleamed in the moonlight, blue eyes glowing from within his shadowed face.

“Open your eyes, min asteren,” Caldris said, drawing me back from the imagery inside my head. I let my eyes open slowly, afraid of what I might find. When they settled on his stormy blue gaze, the breath tore from my lungs.

My back arched up from the bed as my consciousness filled with him so suddenly that I didn’t know what was me and what was him. He grasped my hands in his, pinning them gently to the bed beside my head as he lowered his mouth to my neck and ran his tongue over the mark of his possession.

My soul was full, his consciousness pressing against mine as he drew the pain from my body and absorbed it into his own. That hollow within me was nowhere to be found, so profoundly full that I had to wonder how I would ever return to the emptiness when the moment was over.

If I would ever want to.

For just a few moments, I was whole.

“Caelum,” I murmured, my voice coming out strangled as I fought my way through the waves of emotion pouring off of him: affection, pride and satisfaction.

Love.

Gods, the love felt endless, as if it would continue through an eternity and never bend, never break. He pulled his face out of my neck, brushing a strand of hair back from my cheek. His brow was furrowed with the pain he siphoned from me, taking and bearing as if it was his own, only to save me from suffering.

There was so much warmth in his gaze despite that pain, I would never be able to question whether or not he loved me. Never again. This was the kind of love stories were made of, the kind that poets wrote sonnets about. The kind little girls dreamed of finding when they lay in their beds at night and tried to imagine the man who would one day become their husband.

“There you are, my star,” he murmured, gently touching his lips to mine. I longed for more, longed to see inside his head, but I couldn’t do more than feel the emotions washing over me. There were no tangible thoughts or actions, only the emotions that drove him forward.

The motivation for his every action, every twisted truth, spilling out across the world for me to see.

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