Page 75 of What Hunts Inside the Shadows

Fallon walked at my side, chattering happily with Imelda. She seemed completely content to avoid the other Fae Marked, even though she must have grown up alongside some of them for the entirety of her life.

“They knew what I was. Or rather what I might be,” she said, her voice dropping low as she tipped her head forward. She’d braided my hair away from my face beside the fire the night before, her fingers moving against my head bringing me a strange comfort. It had been welcome after the events of the hot spring. I never wanted to look at the others again after what they’d done, knowing that I would be just as likely to kill them as I would to understand the hatred.

It was a hard place to be, knowing that only a few weeks prior I would have hated the woman I’d become and the choices I’d made. How many of those decisions were made of my free will, with the bond convoluting my free thought and making me question everything I’d been raised to believe?

“Did they treat you poorly?” I asked, trying to ignore the way I felt the heated stare of my mate on my back. He hadn’t been pleased when I’d asked to walk alongside Fallon and Imelda for a while, but he didn’t question it, either.

As much as I was learning to accept the love that echoed between us no matter what the circumstances, he needed to learn to allow me to have other relationships and bonds that I could cherish. My relationship with Imelda and Fallon was new, but that thread of fate danced between Fallon and I all the same.

I didn’t get the impression she could see it, and it didn’t flare as brightly as the bond between Caldris and I, but it was there nonetheless, ever since the moment Imelda had revealed the crescent moon burned into the side of my palm.

“Not particularly,” Fallon said, shrugging her shoulders. “Some of them were very kind, obviously, but others kept their distance more than anything. I spent most of my time with my family and Imelda.”

“It’s a shame there wasn’t a way to train her to channel any magic she might possess with the Veil up. With the amount of time she spent chasing after me as a girl, she might have been an expert at witchcraft if nothing else at this point,” Imelda said, knocking her hip into Fallon’s side. The human-looking girl grinned, reaching out to grasp the witch’s hand affectionately.

The bond between them was so familial, so recognizable and similar to what I might have had with Brann, that my heart throbbed in my chest. The knowledge that he’d been a witch, and that he’d been a guardian to watch over Fallon and I; the relationship was even more similar than it might seem at a glance.

“Are you alright?” Fallon asked, releasing Imelda’s hand and curling her fingers around mine. I nodded, swallowing past the tears burning my throat and trying to ignore the surge of emotion. If Caldris felt it through the bond, he’d pick me up and put me on that horse whether I liked it or not.

“It’s been difficult to come to terms with who Brann was and all that he did. I just don’t understand how the boy I grew up with was centuries old, and killed to take me away from the Resistance.Why?How is that even possible?”

“Anything is possible through magic. Brann’s magic was stronger than I could ever dream of. It would have taken everything he had, but he could have maintained an illusion—sort of a witch form of Faerie glamour—if he was determined enough. When it comes to thewhy, the Veil was never meant to be permanent,” Imelda admitted, looking at me over the top of Fallon’s head. Fallon was similar to me in height, and her hair had the same blue undertones as mine. Where my skin was bronze-toned and darker, she was fair and unblemished from the sun.

In another life, we could have been sisters in truth to match the crescent moons that marked us, connecting us through lifetimes with a magical bond, which I felt as much as saw, shimmering in the sun.

“What do you mean?” Fallon asked, her brows drawing together as she spun away from me to face Imelda. Fenrir stepped up beside me, nuzzling my shoulder and pressing his wet nose into my neck as I patted the top of his head impatiently.

“I don’t know all the details. I might have served as your guardian in the absence of the elders, but I was nevermeantto be a guardian. All I know is that Veil was supposed to come down when the first of you entered your thirteenth life. But when Brander took you from us, I lost track of your lives. Fallon is only on her twelfth life,” Imelda explained.

“I’m surprised she’s an entire life behind me,” I said, reaching up to scratch at the side of my nose.

“At least the timing is right then. You both die relatively young. Whatever your souls are, they are not meant to be trapped within human vessels in this way. You eat through your bodies at a faster rate than a human soul would and your life spans display that, but some lifespans were shorter than others. It would make sense that perhaps one of you died younger than the other. Without knowing what the other one of you is, there’s no way to speculate if it has something to do with the potency of your soul because of that lineage,” she explained.

I nodded, pacing forward steadily even though it felt like my life had been uprooted and turned on its head over and over again in a very short period of time. Why could I not seem to reach the end of the revelations? Of the ways my life had changed and the hints that I might be Mab’s daughter?

It would make sense for the daughter of a Goddess to be a more potent soul. To burn through her human bodies at a faster rate.

Fallon squeezed my hand tighter, the mark on hers feeling like fire against my skin. She turned her hazel eyes toward mine, the scar I didn’t dare to ask about gleaming against her skin as the sun touched it. “Whatever comes, we face it together,” she said, and I felt the pulse of heat that radiated off her mark. Turning sideways to face her, I pulled my left hand out of hers and gave her my right, the crescent moon of my mark pressing into her skin.

Golden threads wrapped around the joining, tugging our hands tighter to one another. “Together,” I agreed, sinking into the warmth that wrapped around us. Imelda stepped forward, lifting the knife she kept tucked into the pocket of her cloak and unsheathing it. She ignored my shocked gasp as she pressed the tip into my finger, blood welling as she repeated the process on Fallon’s finger quickly. The moon carved into the witch’s forehead glowed brightly as Fallon and I met each other’s stares. Her finger was just a breath from mine, blood dripping down her skin as the supernaturalpull of the blood magic bound us together.

The moment our fingers touched, my head flew back with a strangled gasp. It was undeniable, the way the blood oath sank into me, striking me in the chest. It wrapped around my heart, the golden threads tightening until they became painful. Fallon jolted back from the contact, clutching her finger to her chest as my lungs heaved.

I turned my hand over, staring at the white teardrop that had formed on my fingertip. The mark glowed like the moon, shining brightly as if it could capture the hope that rang true in the night and place it upon my skin. “All magic has a price,” Imelda said, her eyes meeting mine when I looked up from the mark.

“What will this cost?” I asked, staring down at it.

“You will not know until you pay it,” she said, reaching out to take my finger. She did the same with Fallon, holding the two mirror images beside one another as I heard the sound of a horse’s frantic gallop coming from behind us. “You will protect one another. In some moments, it may benefit you; in others it may cost you. But you will stand together, to face what is coming, as you were always meant to be.”

“But you don’t know what one of us is,” Fallon protested, looking toward me. She had felt the pull to me as I did her, and the mark on my finger changed nothing. I wouldn’t have been able to abandon her without it, anyway.

“No, but I do know that you’ll both be relevant. The guardians wouldn’t have placed you in the same hideaway if you weren’t meant to know one another. There is a method to all that they do, even if it seems to go against their life’s purpose,” she said, reaching out to cup my cheek. “Brander did what he believed to be right.”

“What the fuck were you thinking?” Caldris demanded, dismounting Azra and coming between Imelda and I. He severed the contact of her skin on mine, taking my finger in his grasp and swiping at the new mark as if he could sever it from my skin.

“We took an oath to face what’s coming together. We’ll protect each other,” Fallon answered, holding her chin high. She stared down the God of the Dead as if she didn’t need to fear him, and I supposed she didn’t.

I would never allow him to hurt her.

---