My heart stopped beating.
One second passed. Then another. I waited for the steady thrum to fill me all over again, waited for my body to feel like it could function once more as I glanced down in horror at his hand where it touched me. The silence around us seemed too loud without the echoing of my heart pumping blood through my veins.
I strained against the strangled breath I fought to release, my eyes flying wide in panic. Even through the haze of terror, my palm against his chest remained still. There was no beating of his heart in his chest, either; nothing to show that he was even alive as his face twisted with the grimace that must match my own.
He pushed his hand against my breast once again, the beat of my heart resuming as if it had never stopped. My chest expanded, the breath I hadn’t realized he’d robbed me of filling my lungs. His heart throbbed in a rhythmic chorus with mine, matching the exact cadence of mine’s song. “We are two halves of one soul. The heart that beats inside your chest is mine and mine alone.”
“Don’t ever do that again.” My lungs heaved as I tore myself back from his embrace, putting much-needed distance between us. I nearly fell to my ass with the force of removing myself from the connection that strengthened with every moment I spent with him in his true form. He raised his gaze to mine, letting his hand drop to his side as he peered at me through his lashes with his eyes glimmering dangerously.
“Do what?” he asked, his head tilting to the side as something feral stole over his features. He reminded me of a predator watching its prey in the moments before it strikes. “Remind you that we are irrevocably bound, no matter what feeble lies you tell yourself? The Fates have chosen us for one another. Even with our bond incomplete, it is stronger than most.”
He raised his hand, his palm facing mine. My hand rose as if commanded, pressing against an invisible barrier between us that reminded me so much of the day I’d touched the Veil and felt a presence on the other side for a fleeting moment. A single golden thread of fate appeared, glittering in the fading light as I watched my fingers move back and forth. The strand wrapped around my middle finger and extended across the gap between us to wrap around his.
“Even you cannot escape your fate, my star,” he said, pressing his hand forward until the thread wound its way around our joined hands. “If you die, I will follow.”
“I have died twelve times, and yet you’re still here to torture me,” I said, pulling back as he entwined our fingers.
“We had not met then. Our bond hadn’t strengthened. You weren’t in your final life, min asteren. All of those things contribute to whether a Fae will follow his mate into the afterlife. Bond completed or not, we’re connected now,” he answered, watching as the thread disappeared from view. I tore my hand away, finally, freeing myself as I stumbled backward. I turned to face the rubble covered road that would take me back to the other Fae Marked.
“How can the bond strengthen when I can’t even stand to look at you?” I asked, glancing briefly at him over my shoulder. The remnants of the man I’d thought I loved nearly cleaved my heart in two, but the male staring back at me was so much more than he’d ever been. Taller, broader, more menacing and dangerous, and somehow breathtakingly beautiful, in spite of the harsh set of his ethereal features.
“The first rule of existing in the world of the Fae: you should never turn your back on a predator,” he said, stepping up behind me. He didn’t touch me for just a moment, his presence lingering at my spine. I kept still, refusing to turn to look at him and give him the weight of my gaze. Not with the way my eyes burned with tears, or the way my grief clung to my every limb.
I hadn’t known Melian for long, and I hadn’t always liked her, with her abrasive personality, but she’d become someone I cared for and respected in that time. Knowing that she’d joined the numbers of the dead—she was past my reach alongside my brother—the grief I hadn’t allowed myself to feel when my life had been in danger threatened to swallow me whole.
His arm pressed into the backs of my knees, sweeping me off my feet and making me weightless for a brief moment as Caldris lifted me into his embrace. He cradled me into his chest, tossing me into the air ever-so-slightly so that I shifted my body in his grip and wrap my arms around his neck in a panic.
“Put me down!” I protested, clinging to him in fear that he might do so in a less-than-caring manner. We both knew that if the roles had been reversed, I’d have been the first to drop him upon the ground and hope he hit his head on a rock.
“I find I am very uninterested in that option,” he mused, striding forward with long steps over the uneven terrain and the cracks in the stones as if they was inconsequential to him, even when I knew I’d be more likely to fall upon my face.
“Where are you taking me?” I asked, turning a panicked gaze over his shoulder. The Fae Marked were in the opposite direction, and I couldn’t imagine he wanted to put too much distance between us and them.
What if they escaped?
“To the falls to clean you up as best we can,” he answered, stepping up onto a particularly jagged rock. The edges of my fingers brushed against the hilt of his sword, longing to draw it and press it to his throat. To take my freedom in violence and blood, the same way he would own me. “That would be unwise, min asteren. We both know you won’t kill me.”
I couldn’t be sure if the word choice was intentional or purely coincidental. Won’t, not can’t. One day, I was determined to prove him wrong.
“Perhaps it isn’t your life I mean to take,” I said as he rolled his neck. My fingers dislodged from their grip around the back, drifting down to grasp the fabric of his tunic tightly.
His frame went solid, the muscles of his chest tightening beneath my fingers, as he flinched away from the words I spoke. I didn’t meet his eyes, staring at the side of his neck and unwilling to allow him to see the fear my words caused me. I’d been content to go to the Void once, content to end my life even while suspecting that it may be my final life after the ritual in the woods on Samhain.
But knowing for certain I’d face the judgment of The Father and The Mother, with them knowing my last act was one of cowardice, was an entirely different death to die. Before, I’d tried to choose death over a life as a prisoner. Now, I felt as if I’d use death to escape my fear of the unknown and the twisted, gnarled thing Caldris had planted inside of me, the bond between us that threatened everything I thought I’d known about myself.
If this was what The Fates had chosen for me, would The Father and The Mother be angry with me for rejecting it? Would they cast me into Tartarus and sentence me to eternal damnation?
Was Tartarus even real, or just another construct to keep us obedient to the Gods we worshiped in Temple?
The roaring of the falls grew louder as we approached in silence. The tension of his body never eased, never returned to the calm I’d come to expect from him even in the face of my anger. The tears burning my eyes finally fell as the trap of this cursed bond closed around me.
It was only when he’d stopped beside the pool at the base of the falls that he set me down, lowering me gently to the rock. I clung to his shirt, rubbing my cheeks against it as I tried to hide the evidence of my crying. He had to feel the wet stain upon his clothing, but he said not a word and allowed me to try to find some semblance of my dignity.