Page 12 of What Lurks Between the Fates

I swallowed hard. The haunting image of his memory surged free from his walls and struck me straight in the chest. The pain that hit me was beyond imagining, tearing me in two in a way I’d only ever experienced when I’d been remade when I touched Alfheimr.

The image of him pulling on his arm until the blades cut through him and his flesh hung off his body in ribbons would never be erased from my mind. I swallowed, holding my head in my hands as I watched him yank the knife from his throat, struggling to get to his feet. He couldn’t do it, his body too weighed down by the iron weapons that had been used to immobilize him. He fought his way to his hands and knees, his bones protruding from his wounds as blood poured out of the hole in his throat that refused to heal.

He slipped in his own blood as he crawled across the snow, staining the ground red as he went.

“I would have dragged my broken body across the snow until I reached you,” Caldris said, forcing me to remove the hands from my face and meet his stare. Both empathy and fury lurked in his eyes, somehow a mix of softness and rage coming through our bond. I couldn’t even blame him.

What I’d done was a violation, and even after realizing what was happening, I’d continued on, anyway.

I clamped my mouth shut, swallowing the apology that tried to make its way up my throat. If the roles had been reversed, he wouldn’t have apologized for doing it to me.

But neither of us had expected for me to have that kind of power over him, and I didn’t know where that left us. What could I be that would be more powerful than a God?

The son of two Gods. The grandchild of the Primordials. He was one of the only second-generation Gods in existence, purely because he was so powerful that none could possibly compare.

“We need to set boundaries,” he said, swallowing as he realized how unfair that was.

“Funny that when I use it against you, it is time for boundaries, but when you do it, it’s for my own good,” I said, raising an eyebrow and trying to highlight his ridiculous double standards.

“I do it to protect you. Not to make you confess your secrets,” he said.

“Perhaps it is time for you to realize that I am not the one in need of protection,” I murmured, letting the words linger between us.

Silence met me in response, because neither of us had been willing to consider the fact that I may be somethingmore.

More powerful than my mate.

3

Estrella

I woke slowly, the feel of unyielding stone beneath me far from the most comfortable of surfaces I’d ever experienced.

I couldn’t say it was the worst either, though.

My body ached as I stretched out my limbs, uncurling from where I’d twisted my body into the fetal position in an attempt to keep warm. I didn’t know where exactly Mab’s court was located, but the distinct chill in the air felt far too much like winter for my comfort.

Why did it always have to be fucking cold? I wanted a land of eternal summer and warm, balmy nights or, at the very least, a fire to read beside with a pile of blankets to keep me comfortable.

“Be warmer if pretty dress wasn’t torn,” a small voice said, the deep tone of it so at odds for how quiet it seemed. Even in the silence, it was barely murmur in the dungeon we now called home.

I sat up suddenly, glancing around the cell and heaving a sigh of relief when my eyes landed on the figures of two very different shades looming beside me. The one who had spoken was small enough to fit in my hand. His silver beard was pulled into two braids that went down to his feet. A purple hat rested above his head, slightly too large for him so that it appeared to be drooping down into his eyes. With his beard covering most of his mouth, all that I could truly see of his face was a bulbous nose.

The other shade was the spectral form of a woman. Her legs were bare, only small strips of cloth covering her breasts and intimate area. I glanced toward Caldris’s sleeping form, relieved to find his eyes still closed. The jealousy that pulsed through me wasn’t natural, but neither was it something that could be contained—even despite the fact that she was dead. Turning my attention back to her with guilt in my heart, I watched as her skin shimmered in the dim lighting. She shifted beneath my scrutiny, the lines of the scales of a fish covering her flesh.

“It’s rude to watch people sleep,” I mumbled, tearing my eyes from the unusual sight. I’d barely seen fish, what with them being inedible according to the laws of Nothrek because of the magic of Faerie coursing through the waters between realms.

“It’s rude to make yourself at home in someone’s favorite haunt, but you don’t see us calling you out for your lack of manners,” the small male figure said, the tone in his voice scolding.

He took a step toward me, bold and brave despite his size. I supposed a small stature hardly mattered after death, but there were those who lurked within the walls of the Court of Shadows that I suspected could make even the dead suffer.

“Trust me, you’d be welcome to your favorite haunt if I had my way,” I said, shifting and continuing to stretch out my aching back.

The scale-covered woman lingered behind him; her features carefully blank as she studied me. I watched as her attention drifted to the other cell, pausing on my mate where he slept. The low growl in my throat shocked both of us, drawing her eyes back to me as I curled my legs beneath me and glared at her.

The little creature shrugged, oblivious to the moment passing between the women inhabiting the cell. Such was the way of men, existing with their heads buried in the sand so much that they didn’t see the threats coming until it was too late.

“Human won’t be here long, anyway. They never are,” he said, shrugging his shoulders as if my life, and subsequent death, were inconsequential to him. Unsurprising, if he’d seen countless victims come and go in this very cell.

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