Page 23 of What Sleeps Within the Cove

“Then let him die,” Brann said, the hollowness of the words shocking me. He didn’t care for the pain that would cause me, completely ignoring the fact that I would likely be unable to continue on without him.

“Let him die?” I asked. For someone who’d lived alongside the Fae for centuries, he was a fool to the truth of the bond.

“If Mab has him, it would be a mercy,” he said, his gaze sliding to the side. He couldn’t be bothered to look at me, to witness the devastation his words caused with his lack of care.

I knelt in front of him, drawing my blade from the sheath. “I would burn this world and the next to the ground before I ever lived a day without my mate in it,” I snapped, glaring and grimacing in warning. Fenrir growled behind me, echoing the sentiment with his own rage. He might have belonged to me, been my familiar, but he’d been at Caldris’s side for centuries before that.

Over my fucking dead body.

“Estrella,” Brann warned, his gaze dropping to the short sword I held in front of me. He looked at me as if I was something to fear, as if he saw me for the first time, and it shocked me how much I reveled in that moment. All my life, he’d treated me as something to be protected.

Something to contain.

He wasmyprison.

Never again would I allow someone to make me small.

I shifted my sword to the side, raising it above the last bit connecting his chains to the stone. “If you free him, the Primordial responsible may require you to take his place,” Badb warned, echoing the warning she’d given me earlier.

Brann deserved to be punished for going back on his word, especially when we would never know what his choices might have caused. But he would suffer while he watched the world suffer at Mab’s hands, knowing he’d chosen to protect me against the best interest ofeveryone else.

I cracked the sharp edge of the blade down upon the chain, severing it entirely. “Let Khaos come and imprison me, then. I’d like to have a word with him,” I said, standing and making my way back to Fenrir. He stood but lowered himself to the ground so that I could ride him, leaving me to collect the sword from the dead creature’sthroat. I yanked it free, staring into the hole it had created as Brann grimaced back from the squelching sound of it pulling out of flesh.

I shoved the bloodied blade back into my sheath, swinging a leg over Fenrir’s back and settling in comfortably. Brann would slow us down. I knew that, and yet I couldn’t exactly leave him behind.

Badb stepped up before me, her gaze weighted and heavy. “He wronged you,” she said, her eyes darting over my face. I knew she could see every emotion playing out within me, the hurt, the betrayal, the confusion, the rage.

“He was my brother,” I said with a shrug, downplaying all the ways I fought to understand if I could trust him going forward. I couldn’t decide if he was being honest or continuing to lie, if this was just another twist of reality and a way to attempt to manipulate me back into the cage he wanted for me.

If he’d put me there out of love or some selfish motivation.

“And still, he wronged you. Yet you forgive him enough to free him from his punishment for doing so, anyway, at risk to yourself,” she responded, tilting her head to the side in thought. “You have passed your second trial.”

“No more fucking secrets, Brander,” I said, using his true name to display just how much knowledge I had of him. Of the way he’d used magic to grow at my side, making it seem like he’d been a child growing up with me when he’d really just been using the moon and lunar magic to glamour himself.

“You know who your father is? And still you’re here?” he asked, pushing to his feet.

“I would do anything for my mate,” I said as Fenrir started walking in the direction of the river. “After a lifetime of being lied to, I’d also do just about anything for the truth, and I have a feeling Khaos is the only one who can give it to me,” I said, ignoring the way Brann stepped back from the accusation in those words.

I didn’t allow the guilt of them to sink inside me, telling myself he’d deserved my anger for all the things he’d kept from me over the years.

I was done believing in the value of secrets.

FIFTEEN

CALDRIS

I stared at the wall in front of me, ignoring the carnage happening. Mab had once again killed one of her loyal followers, showing no discrepancy in who became a victim of her violence. All I wanted was for it to stop, but after a certain point, the constant screams would desensitize anyone to it.

I’d reached that point centuries prior, and the carnage of her court was nothing like this. Not normally.

Something was wrong—even more wrong than usual.

It was the third death since I’d returned from the entrance to the Void. The third death in a matter of hours. It would give me a reason to return and tell the ferryman that I would be able to meet him at the secret entrance to the Void.

If only I knew where that place was.

I couldn’t be bothered to care about the fact that she was reducing the numbers of her own followers, but those who got caught up in her violence and weren’t loyal were unfortunate. Another Lliadhehad suffered at her hands, and as much as I hated to think of it in such a callous manner, all I could think about was the fact that she was fanning the flames of the rebellion.

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