Page 8 of What Lurks Between the Fates

“Nothing,” I said, shaking my head, determined that it had been only a figment of my imagination; a moment in a dream where I tried to grasp onto something even remotely familiar in a time when everything I’d ever known had been torn from my hands.

“Say. It. Again,” Caldris ordered, his voice dropping lower with the tone of command I recognized. It was the same one he’d used on me that day in the tunnels, when something had compelled me to flee the cave beast and leave him behind.

My mouth dropped open, ready to confess all my secrets at the first word from him.

I clamped it shut in defiance. “You willnotdo that ever again,” I snapped, forcing the same tone to my voice.

Caldris’s eyes flashed in a moment of darkness, black bleeding through the bright blue of his stare. We didn’t know what I was; we didn’t know if whatever it was would ever stand as his equal or if I would remain lesser next to his status as a God.

His lips tipped into a smirk, confirming my suspicions that he would enjoy every second of the battle if I proved to be a worthy opponent in every way. Just as he enjoyed me when I threatened to bleed him, he would never desire a mate whoalwaysdid as she was told.

“All right, my star. Then tell me what I want to know. I can feel it rattling around inside your head, but I want to hear you say the words,” he said, dropping his hands to his side. Theyclenched into fists, his frustration pulsating down the bond. He wanted to touch me, wanted to reach me, but the hall that separated us and the iron bars prevented it.

I raised my chin, severing our eye contact to look around the cell that would probably be my new home. Water ran down the stone in the hallway just outside, and iron bars surrounded me on all sides of the small square I occupied. Chains dangled from the ceiling in the hallway outside, and torture instruments hung from the walls. I swallowed.

“Some secrets are better left in the dark,” I whispered, raising my eyes to his dark stare once more.

“Show me,” he murmured, the command less forceful than the last. Instead of feeling like it would tear submission from me, it tickled the edges of my consciousness, playing the threads of our bond like a violin.

I closed my eyes, drawing in a deep breath as I drew the memory of what I’d seen, of the teeth and golden eyes, to the forefront of my mind. My father’s words struck me in the chest, haunting me from the form of someone who was not him. Someone who could not and would never be him.

No father of mine would have rowed away from me, leaving me lying on the top of the river. He’d have pulled me up and put me in the boat with him, finally reunited with me after death had separated us for years.

And my father did not possess the glowing golden eyes that sank into my soul and tormented me.

“The ferryman,” Caldris murmured softly, his gaze snagging mine as the memory ended.

I jolted back to my body, pulled from the immersive experience of witnessing it with Caldris for the first time.

“Why would the ferryman use the same phrases as my father?” I asked, swallowing as my mate’s stare turned confused.

“Your father said, ‘some secrets are better left in the dark’?” he asked, pushing to his feet.

He lifted a hand to his face as he paced around the cell. He limped lightly, as if his body was still repairing itself from whatever harm had been done to him before he’d found his way to me.

His hand brushed against the front of his throat, drawing my attention to the remnants of a white scar. I swallowed, knowing his face and his body by heart.Thatscar had not been there before we’d arrived on the shores of Alfheimr.

Rage simmered in my blood, forcing me to my feet so that I could pace around my own cell. He would bear the scar of that iron for the rest of his days. I glanced down at my forearm, at the unblemished skin that had glowed with golden light. I’d somehow known for a fact that the shadow whip had been dipped in iron, that it was the very tool Mab had used to scar Caldris’s back.

Yet my skin was free from scars.

I swallowed, looking back at my mate, who couldn’t seem to take his eyes off the unblemished parts of me. It wasn’t jealousy or bitterness that flowed to me through the bond, but curiosity and comfort.

Whatever I was didn’t matter to him. All that mattered was that it seemed I would be even harder tokill.

“He did,” I agreed finally. “It was a frequent saying of his when I grew too curious. When I’d wander toward the Veil as a girl or get into some kind of trouble meant only for boys.” I rolled my eyes. The phrase was meant to warn me awayfrom exploring things I shouldn’t have any knowledge of, and somehow that mentality had carried through my life.

Even now, I felt guilt over my desire to know what blood flowed through my veins. Logically, I knew that the secret was better left untouched so that it couldn’t be used against me.

“His nickname for me was Little Bird,” I said, watching as Caldris froze, turning his head to face me suddenly.

“Interesting,” he said, nodding. I knew that Caldris and the ferryman knew one another, that they’d often worked in tandem to deliver souls to the Void.

“Is my father the ferryman somehow? I don’t understand how any of this is possible,” I asked, running my hand over the unblemished arm. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I didn’t belong in this place, that its very nature was wrong for me.

I came alive in the darkness, but something about the Court of Shadows made my skin crawl.

“The ferryman isn’t any one person. They are a collective entity composed of souls chosen by the Fates to be the keepers of the Void. The collective is meant to erase human experience and create an unbiased guardian with only the best interest of Fate in mind, creating something new. Their interference in not allowing you to be devoured by the lost spirit goes against everything they’re meant to be,” Caldris said.

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