Page 65 of What Hunts Inside the Shadows

By the light of the moon.

“What are you doing? That hurts!” I repeated, yanking my hand away as a searing pain lit my skin. I turned my eyes to Caldris, finding him staring down at my hand with something akin to horror on his face.

But I couldn’t see past the blinding pain, past what was worse than any of the moments when iron had touched my skin. Imelda twisted my hand in her grip, showing me the place where my skin burned and fell to the snow at my feet in ashes. “Revealing your truth,” she said, her eyes sad as a crescent moon appeared on my hand.

Fallon stepped up beside us as if she were in a daze, placing her hand next to mine and staring down at the marks on our skin. At the identical moons that marked us as protected by the lunar clan of witches.

I sucked in a breath, snatching my hand away from them both to cradle it to my chest. The smell of burning flesh tickled my nose, easing when Caldris took my hand in his and brushed a cool winter breeze along my skin.

Ending the suffering. Ending the magical branding that was permanently etched on my body.

“How could you not have known this before?” Caldris asked Imelda. “How did you not see it?”

“The mountain cut me off from the moonlight, and the warding I’ve placed on the tunnels makes it difficult to see through magic that mimics my own, since it covers everything. As soon as we stepped outside, I could see where lunar magic clung to her skin. Where is your guardian, Estrella?” Imelda asked, making me turn a stunned stare up to Caldris.

“I don’t have one,” I said, shaking my head. "I don’t—” My denial cut off, leaving me with nothing but the twisted sense of horror that I would never be able to erase.

All the secrets he’d kept. All the things he’d known and hid from me—all his vague nonsensical statements. The things he swore he would tell me, but had never had the chance.

Brann.

“Where is he?!” Imelda demanded, and I couldn’t decide if she wished she could cause his death or if she wanted him for some other purpose.

“He’s dead,” I croaked, turning my stare up to my mate. “The Wild Hunt killed him when he tried to kill me.” I held Caelum’s stare. I’d never admitted that part to him outright, but I doubted he didn’t know it already from conversations with the riders of the Wild Hunt.

What Brann had tried to do was no secret, but the way Caelum’s gaze hardened and a cold wind swept through the woods, I knew he hadn’t been aware.

“What does this mean? I can’t be the other child. That’s…impossible,” I said, turning back to Imelda and trying to ignore the raging fury pulsing off of Caelum.

“It means that one of you is the child of Mab, and the other is something else. Who was he to you? Who did you believe him to be?” Imelda asked, and the genuine concern in her eyes made me believe that she had been close to my brother once.

“My brother,” I said, heaving out a sigh. “He told me he was my brother, but he wasn’t, was he?” Trying to wrap my head around the new truth, I cradled my hand closer to my chest, blinking back the tears that came with not knowing what I was. Had he been keeping me from Alfheimr so desperately because he’d known I was the daughter of Mab? Or because I was some other kind of monster from the depths of Faerie?

“He told me I could never go to Alfheimr,” I said, stepping forward into Caelum’s embrace. He wrapped his arms around me, pulling me closer to his chest. “He knew something, but I never pushed to know the truth. He said there was nothing waiting for me in Alfheimr but darkness and torment.”

Caelum stilled, the meaning of those words crashing over both of us. If I was Mab’s daughter, I was the child of the person who had tormented my mate for centuries. I was the offspring of the Queen of Air and Darkness.

Gods.

I tugged away from him, trying to put distance between us. If it were true, I was the daughter of the woman who had imprisoned him for centuries and wrapped snakes around his heart to keep him obedient.

“We don’t know anything for sure yet,” Caelum said, squeezing me tighter and preventing me from stepping away, but I felt the look he exchanged with Imelda.

I’d summoned darkness when I was angry. I’d seen a vision of a bird reincarnated into a snake when I touched it, and there was a snake wrapped around my mate’s heart courtesy of Mab. “If he was my guardian, does that mean he was an elder witch? Can witches evenbemale?” I asked, considering the reality that my brother wasn’t human. He wasn’t my brother.

But I’d grown up alongside him. I had memories of him being a child at my side.

How was that possible?

“It’s less common, but entirely possible. Some of the strongest witches are male because of the way magic manifests. If your brother was your guardian, he was one of the most powerful witches I knew. That was why Twyla named him to the Council as one of the Lunar Elders,” she explained, bowing her head out of respect.

“Was his name even Brann?” I asked, sorrow coming in a torrent—a wave crashing over me. I hadn’t known Caelum’s real name, but to think that I’d gone through my entire life without knowing my brother was an entirely different kind of pain.

“We knew him as Brander,” Imelda said, and something inside me eased. It may not have been the same name, but it was similar enough that I felt like I’d still had a piece of him. “He loved you. In all your lives, he stood beside both of you and was your greatest protector until the day he took you away.”

“He couldn’t have loved me very much if he left me behind,” Fallon said, her glare settling on my face. It lacked the heat I would have expected from someone who was interested in making a grudge personal, feeling more like the attention of a woman who felt at odds with herself.

Was she supposed to mourn the loss of someone she didn’t even remember?

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