Caldris seemed to hear her plea even though he was far enough away that no human would have heard it. He unsheathed his sword as he stepped closer to us, ignoring my wide-eyed stare. “Close your eyes, Melian,” he said, dropping a hand to her eyes. He pressed them shut the rest of the way. “May you find peace in the Void until your next life calls you back to us, or may you find peace with The Father in Valhalla.”
“Thought women were The Mother’s dominion?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper.
Caldris smiled at her even though she couldn’t see it. The first genuine smile I’d seen him give to the woman he seemed unable to tolerate. “Humans would think that, but The Father and The Mother are not the sexist constructs that you believe. The Father will welcome a warrior like you with open arms.” Touching his sword to her neck, he smoothly cut a path across it, ending her life quickly without endangering her heart or forcing her to the true death before what might have been her natural time. Her arm fell from her torso, sliding down to rest on the rubble covered ground as Caldris returned his sword to its cross sheath on his back.
I stared down at the woman who had been the leader of the Resistance and had seemed larger than life in a world where women were considered lesser. The sound of bone dragging against stone pulled me from my contemplation, and I watched as the skeleton Caldris had summoned picked up a rock and used it to dig into the earth beside the road.
“Let me perform her human burial rites,” I said, wanting to honor the passing Melian would have wished for if she could have chosen.
Caelum’s eyes were blue as he stared at me, shining like the first winter frost on the lake. “I am bound to give her a proper burial,” he said, and though he looked apologetic for what he had to do, there was little doubt in my mind that he should have conceded to what a person would have chosen for herself.
I knelt in silence as the skeleton dug her grave, watching when Caelum gently lifted her into his arms and lowered her into the hole in the ground. He placed two silver coins on her eyes, the gleaming metal dragging a strangled sob from my throat before he scooped the first handful of dirt back onto her body. He and the skeleton worked in tandem to bury her, until Melian was gone from sight and only the earth remained.
4
ESTRELLA
Caldris turned to me once Melian was gone from sight, his gaze softening as he took in the moisture on my cheeks. “I’m sorry, Little One,” he said, reaching down to grasp my chin between two of his fingers. The coolness of his skin against mine penetrated through the numbness claiming my body, filling me with a cloying sadness that threatened to overwhelm me.
For a few moments, there hadn’t been the fear for my survival or of what would come, if I didn’t get away from the male who wanted to claim me as his mate. There’d only been the strange, lingering desire to once again feel that contentedness I’d felt at the edge of the Veil. With the Void waiting for me and calling my name, I’d known that for even just a little while, there wouldn’t be any more pain.
This world was ugly. It was raw and bitter and filled with far too much death to be worth continuing on. The ghosts of my past and the people I’d loved would haunt me for an eternity if Caldris had it his way, and I didn’t think I was strong enough to survive that.
“I want a funeral pyre, when my time comes,” I said, the words sounding empty as the hollowness of my voice penetrated the small distance between us. I focused my attention on his face and the pain that twisted his features at my harsh declaration. He recognized it for what it was: a rejection of everything that defined him. “No coins on my eyes. I want my soul to wander and wait for passage. I want more time before I come back to you in the next life.”
His eyes drifted closed, his lips twisting to the side as he sank his teeth into the bottom one aggressively. The melancholy that shone in his dark eyes when he opened them once more nearly stole the breath from my lungs. “You want to hurt me, my star? Is that your goal? As if I did not already have to endure centuries without you?”
I stood from the place where I’d knelt in the dirt and watched the skeletons bury Melian, rising to full height as Caldris’s hand fell away. “I only want nothing to do with you,” I said, lifting my chin high as I looked him in the eye. “If that means I must wander aimlessly without a place to call home, then so be it.”
He smiled sadly, lifting his hand and resting it against the Fae Mark on the side of my neck. “You would only be punishing yourself. There will be no next life for you. No more reincarnation to bring you back to me. This is your final life, min asteren. We have already lost so many years,” he said, grabbing my hand from my side. He placed it on his Viniculum, mirroring his positioning as a pulse of warmth flooded my body. Like a closed circle, his energy thrummed through me and back to him, connecting us in a way that felt far more intimate than the nights he’d been inside of me with his glamour between us. “Please, do not waste our last chance at happiness.”
“It is bold of you to assume I could ever be happy with the man who lied to me,” I said, my voice breathy as he touched his forehead to mine. The darkness in his eyes peered into my soul, threatening to steal the thoughts from my very mind. I had no doubt he would use them against me if he could find them.
“I am not a man, min asteren. You’ll have to stop holding me to the standards you would place upon a human,” he said, his thumb caressing the length of my jaw. “The Fae have different urges. If a human were to lose his wife, he would find another eventually. The Fae have only one mate. There is only one being in all of creation who can make us feel complete. Only one who can bring us the joy of children. What do you think a human man would do if he were placed under those circumstances?”
I kept silent, the empty air between us all the answer I needed to give. Human men took what they wanted without thought. They forced us to be subservient to their needs, all while acting as if we were revolving doors.
Replaceable.
“The fact that they would behave badly doesn’t excuse your behavior. It just means that you’re all evil, and I’d clung to the hope that maybe there was one good man in this Gods-forsaken world. Thank you for showing me how wrong I was to hope,” I said, tearing my eyes away from his. The severance of the connection between us made it feel impossible to breathe in the moments that followed immediately after.
“Perhaps then I should have taken you from the companionship of your brother that night in the barn? Cut him down for daring to stand between me and my mate and taken you to my home then and there? I gave you what most never have?: a chance to know me, a chance to love me, before I stripped away everything you thought you knew about yourself.” The hand at the mark on my neck shifted downward, his palm pressing into the edges where it paused just above my heart. “You can pretend to hate me all you want, min asteren, because I know the truth.”
“What truth is that?” I asked, my voice trembling as he dug his fingers into where the neckline of my dress revealed my chest. My breath caught with his bare skin against mine, only the slick coating of mud separating us.
He guided my hand down from his neck, shoving it inside the loose laces on his tunic to touch the bare, golden skin beneath. Resting it over his heart in a direct mirror of his on me, he smirked as he struck his palm against me.