“It seems having a mate is not the only secret you’ve been keeping, my darling Caldris,” Mab said, ignoring me entirely as she stepped forward. “She’ll make such a fun new pet for me to play with.” She paused at my side, glaring down at me as I lifted my eyes to hers. Caldris’s chains rattled as he struggled, while Mab’s men let him loose from the chains.
“The last person who tried to own me now lies dead,” I warned, forcing myself not to look away from her as she tipped her head to the side and smiled at me.
“Is that a threat?” she asked, a slight giggle slipping free from her lips. “It has been so many years since someone dared to threaten me, I’d almost forgotten what it feels like. I believe I’ve missed it.”
“You could have all the threats you wanted if you released the children you’ve collected and allowed them to return to their families. Only a coward would use them to maintain power,” I said.
Caldris sighed. “Min asteren—”
“Better a coward than dead,” Mab said, shrugging her shoulders as she turned to look at Malachi, severing the eye contact I hadn’t been willing to be the first to break. “Take them to the dungeon until I’ve decided what to do with my new curiosity.”
She turned away, leaving us to the men who looked at me as if they weren’t certain they wanted to risk touching me. Caldris struggled in his chains, trying to get free from the shackles so that he could get to me.
His fury was tangible in the air, and because of the bond, I knew it was rage for me.
I’d revealed too much, played my hand too soon, but I would never regret getting between him and the pain coming for him. Not when I suspected it was the first time anyone had ever done something like that. Beneath his fury, I felt his confusion. Even a God wanted to be loved so thoroughly that someone would sacrifice themselves to protect him.
The hilt of a sword crashed against my temple, forcing me to stagger on my feet and stumble to the side. Malachi caught me, steadying me as he raised his sword once more.
Caldris roared. “There’s no fucking need for—”
Another blow knocked me fully into his grip, and my body went lax.
Then everything faded to black.
2
The feeling of water sluicing over my skin drew me from the depths of slumber. I opened my eyes suddenly, staring out at the dark, reflective surface beneath me. All around me, faint lights twinkled in the darkness like the night sky, stretching on and on for what seemed like an eternity. There were no mountains, no trees, no signs of life—merely an endless void.
My arm lay against the water beneath me, supporting me above the surface as I stared down through the murky, flowing surface. I lifted a hand, studying my fingers before I pressed it against the water once more. It slid beneath the surface, and the water streamed over my hand, flowing as quickly as the waters of a rapid river. Shifting, changing, moving. I couldn’t see the bottom of the strange river beneath my body. Shadows and specters twined together seamlessly, writhing and filling the water.
The macabre, weathered face of a man passed beneath my hand—his skin was pulled taut to his skull, his eyes closed and cheeks hollow. I pressed my face closer to the water to study the way my fingers moved within the fluid. A spectral woman passed by, her eyes closed as if she was in eternal slumber until the moment her torso passed by my hand.
Her eyes flung open. She grasped onto me, and her mouth opened into a scream, revealing razor-sharp teeth. I tugged on my hand, trying to pull it free, but she and the water held me captive.
“Let go!” I screamed, pulling as hard as I could.
Those teeth seemed to rotate in a circle within her mouth, spinning in a vortex that felt like it would suck me into an entirely different world. She slowly dragged herself toward my hand, while I desperately fought to pry her fingers off mine.
“Let it be a lesson for you,” a male voice said as he pressed the paddle end of his oar against her torso.
He pushed her away, and her shriek and wail echoed through the cavernous empty space as she drifted off. I was finally able to yank my hand free. My lungs heaved as I cradled it to my chest, having nearly lost it to my own curiosity.
“Do not play with things you don’t understand, girl.”
“What was that?” I asked, rising to my feet.
The water supported me as I stood; whereas his skiff seemed to float within the liquid that somehow solidified for me. Skulls hung off the sides, the flesh melting from the bones in various stages of decay. The bones of a person’s spine lined the seam of the boat itself, curving around the edge.
“Something that would have done anything for even just a taste of your blood,” he answered vaguely. His face remained hidden by his hood that draped over the front of his head and torso. Whatever existed below it was lost to the darkness within, making me wonder if he was even a man at all or something else entirely.
“Why?” I whispered, and the sound bounced between us.
He chuckled, the sound deep and entirely otherworldly. “You might be oblivious to your true nature, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t creatures out there who see you for exactly what you are, girl,” he said, slipping his oar into the water. He rowed away, turning his skiff away from me as I scrambled after him.
“Wait! Tell me what I am!” I called after him, watching as he moved impossibly fast. I seemed unable to follow. My feet moved, but it was as if I ran in place. “Please!”
“Be careful what you ask for, Little Bird.” He stopped rowing, turning back to me slowly until only the glow of golden eyes came from beneath his hood as his stare met mine. “Some secrets are better left in the dark.”
My world spun, his face disappearing as he turned away, leaving me to collapse in the water. My lungs filled with air, as if they’d been deprived the entire time I was in this place. What absorbed me wasn’t the river.
It was the hard stone floor beneath me in a cell.
I suddenly thrust myself into a sitting position.
Caldris stared at me, his expression as confused as mine.
***
“Estrella?” Caldris asked.
He sat on the opposite side of the iron bars of his cell. A stone passage separated us, hobbled and broken between the two free-standing prisons holding us separate. I felt the iron surrounding me, elevated slightly over the damp passage between us. Something scurried in the back corner of my cell, tempting my eyes away from the mate who stared at me as if he couldn’t believe I existed.
“Thank fucking Gods. Do you have any idea how worried I’ve been?”
“Some secrets are better left in the dark…” I whispered, my voice trailing off as the words fell from my lips. A reiteration of something I knew well; the words slid off my tongue like a well-known, familiar mantra.
“What did you just say?” Caldris asked, maneuvering to his knees. He paused with his hands only a breath from the iron of the bars, his head cocking to the side as he studied me intently.
“Nothing,” I said, shaking my head, determined that it had been only a figment of my imagination; a moment in a dream where I tried to grasp onto something even remotely familiar in a time when everything I’d ever known had been torn from my hands.
“Say. It. Again,” Caldris ordered, his voice dropping lower with the tone of command I recognized. It was the same one he’d used on me that day in the tunnels, when something had compelled me to flee the cave beast and leave him behind.