“The Veils of Flesh and Bone,” Caldris echoed, placing a hand on the small of my back. Imelda took Fallon’s hand, guiding the more hesitant woman toward the plank.
“But who’s flesh and bone was it?” I asked, trying not to think of the implications beyond such magic.
“My mother’s husband’s,” Caldris answered as he ground his teeth in thought. “He gave his life to the Lunar Witches so they could form the Veil. That’s all we know, and my mother has never spoken a word of what she might know about the purpose.”
“Does she know anything?” I asked, wondering if he would even know her well enough to guess.
“I doubt it. Mab tortured her for more information. If she’d known anything, she’d have told her, I think he purposefully kept it from her so she couldn’t reveal whatever it was that he knew,” he said, watching as Imelda guided Fallon down the gangplank.
The dock waited for them, and I watched as they stepped onto the structure with shaky feet. We followed, the slope of the crossing tripping me up as I tried to function past the overwhelming dread in my body.
Something was wrong. Something in me was missing.
That hollow part of me lit aflame, flickering through the void as he guided me onto the boards of the dock.
Imelda’s words about not knowing what to expect when we touched the magic of Faerie for the first time rang in my ears while I watched as Fallon paused at the edge of the dock. Imelda stepped down onto the soil of Alfheimr, her body going rigid as she sighed in what looked like relief, reunited with her home and the source of her power.
Two moons nestled in a sky full of stars above our heads, radiating light down onto the land before us. “Take me back,” I said suddenly, the words spilling from the depths of my soul.
“What?” Caldris asked, looking down at me in shock.
“I can’t go to Alfheimr. I can’t,” I said. I couldn’t explain the feeling inside of me, the absolute revulsion that I would be here, when I wasn’t meant to be here yet. Holt wheeled my mother down the gangplank behind us, the pier creaking under the weight of her chair and the horses who stepped onto the dock behind her.
“You have to. We cannot go back to Nothrek,” Caldris said, watching as Imelda struggled to pull Fallon down from the dock. She was frozen in fear, her face pale and a mirror of my own.
“Fallon feels it too,” I said, nodding my head toward her. “We aren’t supposed to be here.”
“Whichever one of you is Mab’s daughter, this is just as much your home as it is mine. This is exactly where you belong. Not in the human realm with people who would kill you if they knew what you were. You are Fae,” he said, using his hand on the small of my back to guide me further toward the land of Faerie.
“No! Caelum please!” I begged, turning back to the ship. I’d fight my way through him if I had to—anything to avoid that sinking numbness that grew inside me with every step I took closer.
“We don’t have a choice, min asteren,” he said, grasping me around the waist. He lifted me onto his shoulder, tossing me over it like a sack of potatoes as he strode for Alfheimr.
With his free arm, he wrapped it around Fallon and lifted as she struggled against Imelda’s grip. Her eyes met mine from behind his back, her gray eyes wide and terrified. I reached behind Caldris’s back, taking her hand in mine and squeezing.
Caldris stepped down off the docks, our bodies suspended in the air as he carried us. The entrance of Alfheimr loomed, buzzing with the odd vibration of magic. I heard rather than saw the massive golden gates swing open as he approached, the creaking of the hinges making something inside of me split.
The part of me that belonged to Caldris and the part of me that needed to escape. Split down the middle as if lightning had struck, a terrifying chasm in the center, where there was just nothing.
He lowered Fallon to her feet once we were inside the gates of Alfheimr, her boots touching the soil for only a moment before she collapsed with a silent scream. “Fallon!” I shrieked, struggling on Caldris’s shoulder. He set me to my feet as he turned to her, his brow furrowed in pure confusion and attempting to understand exactly what had happened.
Imelda had hinted at it in the moments when Caldris wasn’t within earshot, that we would never know what might happen when an immortal soul touched the land of Faerie for the first time after centuries of human existence.
My knees caved under me. The breath expelled from my lungs.
They writhed inside my body, moving around as if everything inside of me was unmade. I fell to my hands and knees on the soil and grasped the heady earth in my hands as I clawed at it.
I couldn’t breathe.
Couldn’t begin to fathom what was happening to my body. I’d thought the pain of being Fae Marked was painful, but it was nothing compared to the complete and utter burning inside of me now. It could never compare to suffering as my intestines unraveled and rearranged, my bones breaking and reknitting to build a new form.
My fingers felt so cold they might fall off, contrasting with the agony of each of them breaking. “Estrella!” Caldris’s roar came to me as if it was on the other side of a window. Muffled, separated.
As if he couldn’t reach me. He turned me to my back, settling me gently on the snow as his face filled my view. He hovered in and out of sight, my vision going white with the blinding pain consuming me. He dropped a finger to touch my ear, the light caress scalding against my skin.
I turned my head to face Fallon, seeing her hair darker than normal. Her ears were pointed and tipped slightly in the same way all the Fae had. A fiery path extended across my neck, lighting it on fire as Caldris flinched back. He touched a hand to his own neck and chest, as if he felt the way the fire coiled and curled around my unmarked shoulder. My fingers burned and I looked down to find them gleaming blacker, as if dipped in the night sky itself with the scattering of stars shimmering against my darkened skin.
Caldris tore the collar of my shirt, staring at the place where I burned from the inside out. “Fuck,” he cursed, releasing the blouse as quickly as he’d grabbed it.
“Fallon,” Imelda whispered in a hush voice. She covered her mouth with her hand as I forced myself to sit up through the pain, looking over at where her hair turned to the blackest night. Her neck twined with the perfect image of a black Fae Mark, disappearing into the fabric of her dress.
She looked like herself, the same girl I’d met in the tunnels when we began our journey to Mistfell, but somehow…more. With her pointed ears, black hair, and shining hazel eyes, there was nothing that stood out to signal what she might be.
Except for the color of the Shadow Court inked upon her skin.
“What is she?” I asked, looking at her and trying to decide as the pain in my soul eased off. It seemed impossible to think of her being anything else, any creature from the depths of the Shadow Court and written into nightmares.
“She’s my daughter,” a woman’s smoky voice said. I looked around, finding not a soul looking back at me, aside from those who’d made the journey with us. It all changed so quickly, a wave of shadow and the scattering of blight upon the sky as she appeared from the inky darkness she commanded.