As if the way she could feel me wasn’t torment enough when we were forcibly separated.
Given my centuries spent under Mab’s control and imprisonment, I didn’t need to be able to hear her words to know what she would use as a threat to get what she wanted. She would torture. She would allow my mate to be raped. She would do whatever it took to break Estrella’s spirit so that she could take control of her.
I understood her game; the only thing I couldn’t be certain of was the strategy behind it. She could play the short game, taking what she wanted and discarding Estrella when she had it.
Or she could play the long one, slowly manipulating my inexperienced, young mate, who didn’t know any better than to fall for the games of the Fae. It was hardly Estrella’s fault she only had two decades of life to arm her against a creature who had ruled for centuries.
Any threat Estrella could pose, Mab had probably already faced. She’d lived and learned and fought and surrendered.
She’d won the battles Estrella had yet to fight.
I growled, the sound vibrating against the iron as Monos took a step toward my cell. “You must calm yourself. The guards will come,” she murmured softly, doing her best to appease the monster.
My lips pulled back into a snarl, revealing my teeth that I would have used to shred through her flesh in that moment if she’d had it. It didn’t matter that I’d fought to try to spare her from the fate that awaited her. Not when my mate was in danger.
I shoved my weight into the iron bars once more, fury overwhelming me when the dungeon door opened. Three guards stepped into the space, standing in front of the bars and exchanging nervous glances among themselves. One more stepped into the dungeon, a syringe clutched in his hands. I was no stranger to the contents of it. The potion had been crafted by the witches Mab employed and contained flecks of iron, weakening a Fae from the inside.
It was the only way for Mab to control me, even when she wasn’t nearby. The only way her guards could keep me complacent when she wasn’t around to enforce her orders.
Estrella screamed, the shrill sound of her shriek making the hairs rise on my arms. The moment they opened the gate to my cell and all four guards stepped into it, I lunged. My claws went for their skin, for any part of their body I could reach as they grabbed me to restrain me. I couldn’t access my magic, not with the iron surrounding me, but neither could they. So we grappled in a physical fight, tearing flesh from limbs. I dragged my black nails through the fleshy part of one of their eyes, not even bothering to pause to see who I’d maimed. They shoved me into the iron bars, and the skin along my back burned through my clothing as the one with the syringe got close enough to jab his needle into the side of my neck.
I gasped as heat flooded my body. Burning me from the inside out, searing me alive and making it so that my legs crumpled beneath me almost immediately.
It was a small dose, a precarious balance since too many iron flecks within the injection could kill a Fae, shred his heart in a way that was irreversible.
This didn’t offer me the peace of that oblivion, nor burden me with the regret for taking Estrella with me into death thanks to our blood vow. It sent me plummeting to the floor in a useless heap. My mate struggled upstairs, her fight out of reach and my body rendered entirely useless.
My eyes drifted closed as I fought to keep them open for just a few more moments. Just a few precious seconds in the hopes that my mate would survive. I lingered in that space between life and death that ran parallel to the moments between being awake and falling asleep. Estrella’s fight ended abruptly upstairs. Her body going slack with the end of her struggles and the death of her opponent tickled at my senses.
His figure hovered on the edge of my vision, waiting for me to take him to the ferryman so that he could pass into the afterlife. I wouldn’t be there to help him, wouldn’t place coins on his eyes even if I could. His spectral form carried his head in his hands, his face confused as it stared down at me from where he clutched it tightly.
What a shitty way to wander the world for eternity. He deserved nothing less.
I smiled when I felt her victory consume her, my lips tipping up in a sleepy grin with the satisfied beast that rose up within her.
My delirium rose as the place between life and death called my name, summoning me to the other side. “Ophir is dead. Long live the Queen,” I mumbled, fading into the delirium of sleep
***
My head throbbed, a tandem beat echoing in my ears. As if living underwater, I existed between the planes of all I’d known.
I’d been to the edges of this place so many times that I recognized the feel of it, the emptiness that surrounded me calling to the part of me that had too long existed outside of the realm that waited to welcome me home.
Snow drifted through the air, the white of it stark against the night sky. A murky river lingered below me, the water supporting my weight as I pushed myself up onto my knees. My body felt fresh, like none of the hazards of my life nor the injuries I’d sustained could touch me here in this place of peace.
I lifted a hand to look at it. The fresh, unmottled skin stared back at me. My Fae Mark glimmered in the dim light of the stars shining above, the only thing to surround me as I pushed to my feet and stared around.
Had the guards injected me with too much iron? Was that why I couldn’t feel Estrella through our bond?
I touched a hand to my chest, soothing the ache that accompanied the thought. To be severed from her was a fate worse than death itself, but we’d bound our lives together.
Without me…
She should have followed.
“Estrella?” I called, looking through the Void surrounding me. There was no one to be found, no mate to return my call as she drifted into the afterlife.
“She cannot hear you,” a male voice said, forcing me to spin on my heel. He stood behind me, his body perfectly still as he watched me. Shock overcame me; it wasn’t often that anyone snuck up on me with the Fae senses I’d honed over years of practice.
“Who are you? Why have you brought me here?” I asked, because the confirmation that Estrella was not with me meant I was not dead after all. No living being had any place being in the Void between realms. My presence here was a horrific abomination in itself.
“Keep her alive. No matter the cost,” the male said. There was no trace of emotion to accompany the order, only the stark reality of the task I’d been given.
“She is my mate. Of course, I will keep her alive.” I scoffed, my eye twitching as I considered the fact that maybe, just maybe, he meant someone other than Estrella. Could he mean Fallon?
The coincidences were too large to be ignored, with Estrella having been dragged before the ferryman in her slumber. Yet I still clung to the hope that whatever destiny the Moroi had woven, Estrella would exist just outside of them. That she’d be free to live a life not entangled in the fate of the world as we knew it, finding a path to happiness regardless of the impossibility of our depressing world.
“Your own arrogance will be your downfall,” the male retorted, tipping his head to the side. “I will never understand why the Fates chose you for her.”
“I’ve bound my life to hers. I’ve done everything I can to make sure she lives, because I cannot imagine my life without her. What more can I do?” I asked. Whatever the answer was, I would do it. Whatever the sacrifice, I would give it.