Page 94 of What Hunts Inside the Shadows

Finally, Imelda turned her attention back to the girl’s wounds, the flush staining her cheeks the only sign that anything had happened. Holt clenched his jaw, turning and storming off to help with the assembly of the tents.

“What was that?” I asked, staring at the side of her face.

“Nothing. That was nothing at all,” she said, her voice a low murmur. I wasn’t certain if she was trying to convince herself or me, but it was clear there was more to the story than Fallon and I knew.

I ran my fingers through the girl’s hair, wishing I could do more than offer her comfort as she slept, and that she would have a familiar face to wake up to, instead of the fear that would come from being surrounded by strangers and the Wild Hunt.

“Look at you pretending you care about what happens to her,” Jensen said, the sneer tipping the unruined side of his mouth up. He bared his teeth as I watched, that monster trapped within me coiling and tensing her body.

I slid away from the girl’s head as I stood, lowering myself down from the cart. “He isn’t worth your energy,” Imelda said, never taking her eyes off the girl’s back as she worked.

I stalked forward, my gaze snagged on Jensen and the gleaming golden thread that pulsed through the center of his filmy, ghostly figure. His sneer hardened into a glare as I approached, the condescending expression on his face only fueling my determination.

“What are you going to do? Glare at me? I’m already dead, you dumb bitch,” he taunted, a laugh making his chest shake.

I stepped forward, stopping when I was only a breath from him and the energy of his soul kissed my skin. Raising a single hand, I grasped him by the front of the throat. His entire frame jolted when my touch landed and I squeezed against what would have been the muscles of his neck if he’d been alive. He wheezed, his chest rattling when I pinched my fingers together. My right hand reached into the transparent mass of his chest, grasping the golden threads that ran from his headto his feet.

Catching them with my fingers, I yanked them free from his ethereal body. “Estrella,” he gasped, staring down at me as I felt the coldness within me rush forth. The darkness within me filled my eyes, taking me back to the place where the monster had control.

She controlled my movements as I released his throat, pinching the top of a thread where it pulled taut away from his body. I held an end in each hand, pulling them in opposite directions until I felt the exact moment the threads snapped, cleaving his soul in two as the ruined threads fell to the ground. The golden light from them faded to gray as they fell, landing upon the snow.

A look of shock filled Jensen’s face as he looked down at his feet. They melted away, fading from view, caught in the wind that blew though the clearing in the woods. Bit by bit, the wind took what remained of his essence and scattered it across the ground.

His ruined face faded from view last, leaving me to stare at Caldris where he stood on the other side of what was now an empty space between us. He looked down at the gray threads on the ground, stepping forward as he lifted one touched the fine length of it. “Threads,” he said, and I realized that he could see them. He could see the gray, destroyed threads that had been Jensen’s tether to this world. “Where is he? Where did you send him?”

“He’s no longer here. Isn’t that all that matters?” I asked, staring back at the mate who looked at me as if I was both a monster and a savior in a single breath.As if he himself couldn’t tell the difference between the two.

In truth, neither could I.

42

ESTRELLA

The forest surrounding us became familiar, the same paths I’d walked regularly in the lifetime I’d spent in this village. All the years, I’d wandered in the woods at night, drawn to the Veil I wasn’t supposed to stray too close to; They’d all led me to Caldris, and to the moment we met in the barn that night, even without me knowing fate had wrapped its golden threads around us centuries before.

Caldris looked around warily. I imagined him trying to see the forest through my eyes and to think of how they must have felt to a young girl who was stifled by the village and the Lord determined to force her into a mold that didn’t fit.

I would never be the Lady of the Manor. I would never again be docile and complicit in my own suffering; not when I’d once chosen death over that fate already.

When the end of my time came, I would walk willingly into the Void to await the judgment of The Father and The Mother. Holding my head high in the knowledge that, come whatever may, my choices had led me to this path.

Caldris’s arms tightened around me as we rode with the Wild Hunt and the procession of his dead army at our backs. I stretched out an arm to point at a clearing to the side of us. The snow fluffed against the ground as I reached out with my senses to tickle those golden threads that floated off of it. Adelphia stepped out of the procession, moving to lay a hand on the log where we’d all sat that day that seemed so far away. “This is where we celebrated Samhain,” I said, turning to look at Caldris over my shoulder.

Adelphia stepped away from the log, coming up beside me as she reached into the bag strapped across her shoulder. She pulled the skull free, the gleaming off-white of the bone catching the light from the sun filtering down through the canopy of trees and reflecting off the snow.

I reached down, allowing my mate to hold my hips steady. “Jonab,” I said, feeling Caldris’s body go still at the mention of the God of Changing Seasons. He’d been killed during the First Fae War between the Seelie and Unseelie Courts, when Mab fought against her brother Rheaghan.

Caldris looked down at the woman standing beside the horse, holding the reins in one hand so that he could take the skull from me. He stared at it as if he’d never seen a skull before; as if it was as foreign to the God of the Dead as it might have been to the Goddess of Light.

“It has been passed down through generations of my family for centuries,” Adelphia said, turning her stare to me so suddenly that my breath caught. Something lingered in that stare that I hadn’t seen before, something ancient and knowing. “Every year, without fail, we’ve used it on the night of Samhain to draw the Fae souls who may have been trapped inside human vessels when the witches erected the Veil. When the child was stolen from the tunnels, a group of our ancestors set out to find her, seeking to protect her through the lifetimes until her final life when the Veil would fall.”

“When the Veil would fall?” I asked, turning my stare to Imelda who watched as realization dawned on her face. I’d known it was destined to fall; it had only been meant to be temporary. Imelda had said as much, but even still….

“I did not possess enough of the magic of my ancestors to tear it down myself. The magic of my mother has been lost to time, but with all of us combined, we were able to weaken it. We were able to pour what remained of our magic into you, Estrella. You and your mate did the rest,” she said with a sad smile, leaving the skull in our possession as I stared down at it.

“I touched the Veil,” I whispered, the words coming from the deepest recesses of my mind. That day had been pure chaos; it had plunged the world into the darkness.

In the moments before the Veil fell, I’d had one half of my soul partway to the Void, and the other had reached out to the Veil itself, stroking the magic for the briefest of moments. Caldris had been on the other side, the impossibility of blue eyes shining back at me as I’d let my eyes drift closed and welcomed my true death.

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