Page 71 of What Hunts Inside the Shadows

We’d been fortunate enough that the snow was minimal; it wasn’t deep on the ground, and when it did actively snow, it was a light flurry instead of a blizzard. But those too would come, and we were risking the onset extreme weather with every moment we delayed.

The shackles reappeared. I sank as low into the water as I could, turning my back to the other Fae Marked as I reached up onto the stone ledge to grasp one of the cloths the dead had laid out for us to use to wash. I didn’t allow myself to think about what my life had come to—corpses setting out my bathing linens. There wasn’t any soap, but the warm water would do the trick to some extent.

My fingers wrapped around the cloth, dipping it into the water to get it wet as I raised it to touch my face. I saw Fallon and Imelda moving toward me from the corner of my eye, and I had the briefest moment of gratitude that they would make me feel less alone in a spring full of strangers.

Two hands touched each of my shoulders, pressing down firmly. There was no time to scream. No time to make a sound before I plunged beneath the surface. Water filled my lungs as I triedanyway. The strangled sound was distorted as the water surrounded me. I thrashed, swinging my arms as one of the people who’d touched me swept my legs out from under me.

I plunged deeper, so low their feet came down atop my back to hold me beneath the surface. I flailed, grabbing onto the ankles of one of those close enough. The water tinted pink as I dug my nails into their bare skin, clawing through their flesh in my struggle to survive.

Still they didn’t let me up, keeping me pinned to the stone and waiting for my death. With the blood rushing into my head, the water burning in my lungs, and my breath stolen from me, my head spun.

I tried to grasp Caldris’s power of winter, tried to find a way to freeze some of the water, but nothing came to me. Nothing responded to my dire need in my panic.

I couldn’t focus, couldn’t feel the cold when I was onfire.

Reaching out with the other part of my bond, I sank into it and wrapped that golden string of fate around my hand. Tugging it toward me, I allowed my panic to flow through me and reach out toward Caldris. I just hoped he was close enough, but I knew I didn’t havetime.

I’d lost too much air already, and clinging to the very last bit in my lungs would only do so much good.

I tugged on our bond again, following it to the army of the dead waiting on the other side. They felt strange, like empty vessels without a soul. Wrong on a level I couldn’t explain. I hated touching them, hated feeling their stain upon me.

But I grabbed one, wrapping it in the golden thread of our bond that connected us, visualizing myself yanking it into the water.

Above the surface, someone screamed, the sound muted by the water making my lungs burn. Consciousness slipped away, but I held onto that bond, focusing on it and refusing to release it.

I would bury them all.

My eyes drifted closed, cutting off reality as it all went black.

30

ESTRELLA

There was no twinkle of starlight around me. Only the depths of an inky gloom the likes of which I’d never known. There was no trickle of sunlight, no light of a campfire. I sat up, spinning to look behind me as my hands scraped over the smooth surface beneath me. Even that had no substance, as if crafted from the clouds in the sky, and yet I never fell through to plummet back to the ground below me.

“Caelum?” I called, my lungs feeling as if they might seize, but there was no breath, no movement in my breast. My heart was quiet and still.

I turned forward once more, frantically raising my hand to my chest. My nails clawed at the skin covering the heart that refused to beat, my fear pushing me to my feet. A male figure stepped out of the darkness, shadows twining around his form. His skin was paler than the darkness surrounding him, his eyes set deep into his face and gleaming with the light of stars. Golden threads twined up his arms, wrapping around his hands and forearms until they finally settled against his bare shoulders.

I swallowed, not daring to speak as he took measured, leisurely steps toward me, as if time was a construct he didn’t understand, because he had eons of it.

“Hello, Estrella,” he said, his voice striking me in the chest. It was deeper than I’d thought possible, the vibrations of it sinking inside of me. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from those golden threads covering his arms, and only his amused chuckle forced me to look up into his star-filled, black stare. “Only you would be in my presence and be more interested in the threads of fate than in me.”

“Who are you? Where am I?” I asked, swallowing as he finally halted directly in front of me. Golden threads rose out of the clouds at my feet to wrap around my wrist.

“Answers will come when you’re ready for them,” he said, reaching forward with a single hand. He stroked a finger over the flesh of my cheek, then air filled my lungs suddenly. I bent over in pain, glaring up at the male as he patted my head soothingly. “But it is not your time yet, child.”

I woke from my dream lying on the rough stone beside the hot spring. I sputtered, coughing as water expelled from my lungs. Twisting my body to the side, I vomited the water from my stomach, emptying my lungs of all the fluid trapped in them. One of the skeletons stood between me and the Fae Marked still in the spring, his spine straight as my vision returned.

Holt stood, staring over in shock as I tightened my grip on that golden thread clutched in my grasp. The skeleton crumbled to the ground, giving me a perfect view of the people who had attacked me. Of the four faces I would remember until my dying days, their arms marred with bloodied scratches I assumed they’d gotten from the skeleton who’d pulled me from the water.

Fallon leaned over me, her face flushed and twisted in concern. I had the vaguest sense of her breathing air into my lungs—of her pressing on my chest in an effort to awaken me.

The cold finally touched my skin, making me realize that I lay upon the stone naked for all to see. I pulled on that golden thread once more, flinching back from Fallon’s gentle hands as she touched my face. She mouthed something, her words lost to the roaring of my rage in my head.

At the corner of my eye, the skeleton rose to his feet once more as I lifted the hand wrapped in my mate bond. It rolled its neck around on its shoulders, the bones and vertebrae cracking and drawing Fallon’s shocked eyes to the place where it jumped down into the water of the hot spring.

I pushed on the stone, maneuvering to my feet and staring down at the women who had wronged me in such a malicious way. I didn’t move my feet, allowing the skeleton to be the one to step forward.

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