Page 45 of What Sleeps Within the Cove

“Estrella!” I shouted, but we were too far for her to hear me over the rushing of the Styx at my back.

My mate dove face-first into the Acheron, disappearing beneath the surface as I scrambled to the front of the boat and frantically searched the waters for her. Kharon rowed us forward, swiftly approaching the place where Estrella had gone under. They stopped only when we were alongside the group she’d traveled with, allowing me to step over the edge and place my feet on the shore.

I searched the water from my new vantage point, stepping into the river and shrinking back from the sudden, burning agony that shot up my legs. I fell to my ass in the sand, my legs trembling as the muscles felt like they shriveled and died.

“Estrella!” I shouted, searching the water for her once again. There was no sign of her within the waters, as if the silt at the bottom had swallowed her whole and claimed her as part of it.

Forcing myself to my feet, I dove headfirst into the water after her. Pain tore through me, making my muscles lock up as the agonizing cramps and burning filled me. I couldn’t move, couldn’t function as it stole through me and trapped me in the river itself.

I screamed, water filling my mouth and pouring down my throat. It lit me on fire from the inside, sinking me deeper as my body could not fight to swim. Something gripped the back of my tunic, a monstrous force pulling me from the river. As we slid along the sandy bank, the pain lessened with each moment of fresh air on my skin.

Fenrir stood over me, shaking his massive white head at me in what I had to guess was disappointment. I sighed, reaching up and petting him in thanks even as I stared at the river where Estrella had disappeared. Had she not felt the pain? Was it a consequence of not truly having a body to protect me from the magic of the river?

“Where is she?” I asked Fenrir as I sat up, ignoring the small, pained whimpers of Lupa and Ylfa at my back. They pressed their noses into my spine, offering gentle assurances that I did not ask for. I scrambled to my feet.

“Where is my mate, Fenrir?!” I asked, throwing a hand out to the river.

The three non-Gorgon women stepped forward, coming to rest beside the wolf that should have protected Estrella at all costs. “Thisis not your test, God of the Dead,” the woman with the black hair said, her amber eyes shining in the dim, green lighting of the riverbank. “You should not have come.”

“She shouldn’t be alone,” I said, raising my chin as I stared down at her. Whoever the women were, there was something eternal in their stares as they watched me.

“Estrella Barlowe will never be alone in Tartarus. This is her home,” the black-haired woman retorted, her features twisted in anger. Lurking beneath that eternal stare was affection, as if my mate had wormed her way beneath the skin of her companions here as well as she did in the land of the living.

“The Child of Fate is among family. You may return to your realm, Caldris,” a Gorgon said, stepping up beside me. I noted the stance of her feet, the relaxation of her posture even as I refused to meet her gaze. I knew what would happen to me should I discover the color of her eyes.

A snake stretched toward me, appearing in my line of sight and placing itself beneath my chin. It applied pressure there, the strength in the curve of its body taking my breath away as it forced my gaze to meet the Gorgon’s.

Her eyes were the same mossy,serpentinegreen of Estrella’s, like looking into a mirror of what I’d seen in my mate’s eyes every day since meeting her. “You have nothing to fear from me, mate of my blood,” she said, and though I felt the cold, stonelike magic of hers pressing over my skin, it did nothing to turn me solid.

“I don’t understand,” I said, my brow furrowing as the snake left my chin. I looked around the group in confusion.

“Just as your magic lives within Estrella, so does hers live within you,” the Gorgon said, turning her gaze down to the river where Estrella had vanished. “You have simply never considered what the reality of your bond with her means, probably because you do not understand who or what she is. You’ve spent centuries believing you would be given a weaker human mate and your mind has not caught up with your reality.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You may be a God, Caldris,” she said, scoffing as if the magic I possessed came down to mere parlor tricks. I’d made cities tremble, destroyed mountains in my rage. “But you are nothing next tomy daughter. None of us are.”

“Medusa,” the black-haired woman warned, forcing the Gorgon to take a step back. The name washed over me, the reality that Estrella had already found the very being she was intended to search for.

And the very same creature was her mother.

TWENTY-NINE

ESTRELLA

I sank through the water, until the ground beneath me gave way. Dirt fell through the opening, the chasm spreading until I fit through the riverbed. Looking toward the surface, I would have sworn I’d seen the familiar ashen white hair of my mate through the shimmering water.

Just before the river swallowed me whole.

I fell through air, the wind of my fall whipping against my skin as I dropped. The surface I landed on was soft, leaving me to bounce off a cushion filled with the plushest of material. My cheek came to rest upon the velvety smooth surface, my fingers running over the buttons sewn into the cushion as I forced my body to sit.

The area around me was a tropical oasis, the clearing surrounded by trees and lush greenery. The vines that hung between the trees were longer than the roads in Mistfell, the trees taller than the ruins I’d seen in Calfalls.

Across the way, a single obelisk stood with a handful of peoplewaiting at the top. Khaos stood front and center, his face as expressionless as I’d ever seen it as the Primordial who oversaw the trials. I wanted nothing to do with the lack of emotion and care I found there as I got to my feet, the fresh wounds of Medusa’s words bleeding like open sores.

Whatever Medusa thought to be true of the man that was supposed to be my father, there was no trace of that affection as he stared down at me.

Gold jutted out from the earth below me, a single spike striving for the sky and the river that flowed overhead. A scale hung from a support beam overhead on either side, and it was on one of them that I stood.

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