Page 91 of What Hunts Inside the Shadows

“Min asteren,” Caldris said, his voice soft as he stepped forward. “What have you done?” He stared down at the golden ball, the threads gone and blended together so seamlessly that it was as if I held a miniature sun in my grasp. I wrapped my fingers around it, around the warmth of it.

Squeezing them shut, I watched the light fade slowly until only snowflakes remained, falling to the ground like the winter snow.

“Gave him a far more peaceful passage to the Void than he deserved,” I said, staring at the empty, breathing husk of a man. Nothing remained inside him, and yet his chest rose with each breath.

“Animate him,” I said, tilting my head to the side when I couldn’t force him to rise. There were no golden tendrils surrounding him in the way I’d gotten used to summoning Caldris’s power.

“I cannot. He isn’t dead, Little One,” he said, stepping over the body and staring down at it.

Caldris spun suddenly, drawing his sword in a fluid motion and thrusting it into the gut of the Mist Guard who remained. He made to stab my mate, but his sword never reached its target as he stopped and gaped at the God of the Dead.

At his friend lying lifelessly on the forest floor, but somehow alive all the same. He wouldn’t be for long.

As the last body crumpled to the ground, the brush in the woods moved as something large slithered through it. The basilisk emerged. Covering its body, its scales were dark as midnight but gleaming in the fading light of the sun as it slithered into the clearing.

Caldris grabbed my hand, pulling me behind him and raising his sword to face the creature. Shaking him off, I stepped around him and felt the way my chest vibrated in response to it. It wasn’t quite words, yet wasn’t quite the way a snake would sound either, but the blind thing heard it anyway.

Turning its head to where I walked over to the warm body of the man I’d sent to the Void, I crouched down beside him. “Are you hungry?” I asked, reaching out to touch the snake’s nose. It leaned into the touch, almost nuzzling into my skin before it dropped against the ground once more.

It opened its jaw.

And the basilisk ate.

40

CALDRIS

Ihated snakes, so of course by the force of her nature my mate had to treat them like pets. Her gentle care as she watched the basilisk swallow her enemies whole both delighted me and horrified me.

Why did it have to be snakes? She couldn’t have had an affinity for puppies?

She stood as the basilisk finished its meal, swallowing heavily as it devoured the last of the bodies she’d left behind. Without another acknowledgement for the woman who had summoned it, the basilisk disappeared into the woods once more.

“Help me cut her down.” She moved toward the woman whose head hung forward. She was limp when my mate wrapped her arms around her waist, the woman’s head resting against her shoulder. I swung my sword at the ropes tying her to the tree branch, letting her fall against Estrella’s braced form.

The prisoner was far too thin, life on the run from the Mist Guard hunting her had not been kind. My mate lowered her to the ground, pressing the burning wounds on her back into the snow as the woman jerked in her grasp.

“You’re safe now,” Estrella murmured, cupping the woman’s face as her lashes fluttered against her cheek. She didn’t open them, her body far too drained of all energy from the ordeal she’d suffered.

The riders of the Wild Hunt stepped out from the tree line, their gazes meeting mine in silent question. They’d seen too much of what Estrella had done to deny what she most likely was, but I would remain foolhardy in my willful ignorance.

My mate was not the daughter of Mab.

She couldn’t be; not when she only woke the monster that slept within her to protect rather than harm.

One of the riders stepped over, standing over Estrella as she looked up at him. “Let me get her back to the carts. Imelda can tend to her wounds,” he said, his voice soft as he studied her. Respectful.

Reverent.

I wasn’t the only one who saw what lived inside her, and the potential of what was waiting to be let out. Mab’s daughter or not, my mate was no Sidhe.

She was no Fae Marked female who could only draw power from me. She was something almost unheard of in a bonded pair. A match for me. Something in perfect harmony for my soul. She would have helped my ability to fight Mab when I’d thought she was a human. Now, I couldn’t even think of what might happen when we completed the bond.

There had only been two pairs who’d both been Gods in the past: my parents and the King and Queen of the Spring Court. Their daughter and I were the only second-generation Gods in existence to my knowledge. Our bond being fulfilled would be nearly unprecedented, and there was no telling what our heritage would do to such a thing. I still couldn’t wait to find out.

Estrella nodded, allowing the rider to take the woman into his arms and lift her up to the other rider who sat upon his horse, waiting.

“We’ll join you when we’re ready. I need to have a discussion with my mate,” I said, and the male nodded before mounting his skeletal steed. They disappeared into the woods, and I looked around the clearing. It had been wiped clean of any sign of what’d happened here, the bodies devoured by my mate’s pet.

---