Page 75 of What Sleeps Within the Cove

I refused to believe it, refused to believe that the Primordials who hid here would allow her to infiltrate the home they’d chosen after they’d retreated and abandoned their own children.

But there was no telling what the Primordials, who were willing to abandon their own children, were capable of. It depended entirely on what suited them in the moment, and Mab would undoubtedly attempt to convince them that she was the strongest ally.

“Caldris,” Holt’s low, cautious voice hissed, the sound penetrating my thoughts so suddenly that I stumbled over my own feet.

Estrella spun to look at me, hearing it through the bond that pulsed with golden light between us. Her thoughts stilled immediately, the silence in their absence jarring as she studied my face. I stared down at her, my hand tightening around hers in an attempt to reassure her.

“You have to come back. You’ve been in Tartarus too long to be safe, and Mab is on a warpath now that she knows you’re gone.”

His voice faded off with the muffled sound of footsteps in the silence. Estrella’s eyes turned glassy as she spun away from me, hiding the emotion that came with the thought of being away from me. To be separated so soon after we completed our bond would be the greatest of tortures, and I could not bear the thought of leaving her behind at all, let alone so soon.

“It doesn’t matter,” I argued, even as my jaw clenched with the knowledge that I would be forced to leave people at Mab’s mercy.

“Of course it matters! There are people we love there. What of Holt and Imelda? What of Fallon?” she asked, shaking her head.

I sighed, cupping her cheek in my hand and turning her attention back to me. In the distance, a raven flew above our heads, swooping toward the ground and finally bursting into the three women of theMorrigan. Badb tapped her fingers against her thigh impatiently, eager to reach the next river in our journey.

“We do not have the time to dally,” Macha echoed.

“Of course they matter. You know that is not what I meant,” I said, sighing and forcing myself to ignore the intrusion of the Morrigan chiming their thoughts about the pause they could not understand. The conversation that had happened entirely within my head did not extend to those around us. “But what am I to accomplish by returning now? If I return without you, I will only put myself at risk. We’re stronger when we are together, and we will need everything we have to fight Mab in any meaningful way. If I die, you die, and all hope is lost, min asteren. Having me there may be a temporary bandage for a gaping wound that will not heal on its own. Having us there together may at least give us the ability to cauterize it.”

“But now you have the power of the Winter Court, and you’re no longer under Mab’s thrall. Maybe you could buy them some time until I can return,” she argued, hating the thought that people were dying because of our actions. That my coming to Tartarus to help her had been disastrous for so many.

“What do you think she’ll do when she realizes that she can no longer kill me at a moment’s notice, min asteren? She will do whatever it takes to eliminate any threat I might pose. I hate it, too, trust that, but the lives lost now will be a fraction of those that are lost if she kills me before we have a real chance together,” I said, hating the way she deflated. It was the reality, and we both knew our best chances of winning this war were by playing the long game and not allowing Mab’s tantrum to influence our decisions.

“Okay, min oscura.” She sighed, nodding and leaning her head forward until it touched my chest. She knew as well as I did that sometimes there would be sacrifices to be made in war. We wouldn’t be able to save everyone from the wrath of the Queen of Air and Darkness, but Estrella had never been forced to live through the reality of war before. She’d never had to be the one making choices, all the while knowing that it was other people who would likely pay the consequences for them.

There was a reason those who had power, and respected that power for what it was, didn’t want to keep it forever. There was a reason Kings and Queens who lived forever would one day pass on their rule to their heirs—a reason the Primordials had retreated from our world and given it to their children.

Nobody should bear the weight of that responsibility forever.

Estrella collected herself slowly, turning to continue on the path to the river. She walked at my side with her mother just behind us, the three wolves of the Cwn Annwn surrounding us and keeping us safe from any creature who might think us an easy snack in this treacherous place.

Together, we were formidable. Together, we would be enough.

FORTY-EIGHT

ESTRELLA

The Morrigan quickened their pace as the sight of enormous, winding, and sprawling trees grew in the distance. We’d been walking for hours, making our way toward the next trial that would pull me beneath the surface to face a challenge that seemed to have no purpose.

“What will be expected of her here?” Caldris asked, and I turned my head to look up at him. His jaw was set tightly, squared and tense as he studied the three women who exchanged a look.

“That we cannot say,” Macha said, pursing her lips that matched the red of her eyes. They glinted in the firelight, almost as if they were coated with the sheen of fresh blood. “The trials themselves change with each attempt. The Primordials and the Fates alter them as they see fit depending on the challenger.”

“That sounds like the perfect way for corruption to be the ultimate deciding factor on who survives these trials,” I muttered, hating the bitterness I felt for it. I didn’t want to feel like I survived becauseof favoritism, but I also couldn’t fight the feeling that perhaps my trials were on the opposite end of the spectrum.

Maybe I was the one who was being set up for death, the one who wasn’t meant to survive this place. But I’d come too far, been through too much to accept the notion that the Fates had decided to just kill me off so stupidly, so without fucking purpose.

To die in this place was to be forgotten, to simply cease to exist and I refused to accept that.

If my time came, I would die in a blaze of glory and do everything in my power to take my enemies down with me. That meant I needed to escape the pit of Tartarus.

That meant I needed to survive whatever they put forth for me.

“What power does the Lethe contain?” I asked, knowing that was at least a question they could answer. I may not be able to know what awaited me in the river as we approached, the red sand beneath my feet quickly giving way to a sprawling and luscious grass. Moss coated the trunks of the trees as we strolled through them, curving our path to accommodate the plants that reached for the sky where it disappeared into nothingness. Light shone through the canopy their leaves provided, reflecting off the surface of the too-still water.

“It is known as the river of oblivion,” Badb answered, bending down at the water’s edge. She touched a single finger to the surface, and I watched in abject fascination as clouds of white drifted off from her fingers. They swirled through the water, the movements serpentine as it drifted away from her. She pulled her finger back, holding it above the surface and allowing us to watch as those tendrils rose and slithered along her skin until they faded back into her body like she absorbed them. “It will make you forget everything you know. Everything you are.”

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