He sat on the ground in the same place I’d left him, his clothing unruffled as if he’d never laid down and let himself sleep. If he’d been human, I suspected I would have found circles beneath his eyes or some sign of his exhaustion from his sleepless night keeping watch. I didn’t know how the skeletons or corpses worked. Did they continue to follow his orders when he slept, or did they stop doing his bidding the moment he closed his eyes and drifted into the other realm?
“And you think your mother can keep me safe?” I asked. I didn’t want to say the thought that danced in my head. I didn’t want to sound bitter, but she hadn’t even protected her own child. She’d allowed him to be stolen from his crib when he was nothing but a baby. If what he’d told me as Caelum was still true, he’d continued to live with his father and stepmother, never really knowing his birth mother. So how would the Queen of Winter protect me? Why would she protect me? I was nothing to her, especially if her own son mattered so little.
“She won’t make the same mistake she made in the past, and she understands better than anyone how valuable a mate is. Mab refused to allow her to be with hers, violating the Accord by keeping him bound to her through the ties of a political marriage. When they defied that and came together for one night to create me, she imprisoned my father in the caves of Tar Mesa until she killed him,” he explained, settling an open palm against my lower back. I couldn’t bear to look at him, to think of the life he must have lived under the care of the woman who’d killed his father. “She’d long since found possessing the heir of her rivals to be a much more convincing motivator, so she didn’t need him anymore because she had me. My mother won’t allow me to suffer her fate , knowing my mate is in Mab’s clutches.”
I nodded as if I could even begin to understand the kind of torture it would be to know that my enemy had someone I cared for. Mab wasn’t my enemy yet, but it sounded like she would be if she knew I existed.
I glanced over to the other Fae Marked where they began to awaken, watching as their wide eyes looked toward the edges of the city. On the other side of the street, one of the side roads plunged into a cavern. All life seemed to disappear into the hole that opened into the earth, as if something massive had emerged from the depths of despair. “That was where Calfalls buried the dead, back when the city was thriving,” Caldris explained, brushing my hair over my shoulder. His worked through the knotted ends, pulling tangles free with a gentleness that made a chill sweep over me.
“That’s where they were buried when you raised the dead and brought Calfalls to its knees,” I said, making a mental note to wander closer if I ever got the chance to move at will. I was filled with the sudden need to understand how deep the pit went, how far into the earth the dead had been buried and just what kind of force it must have taken for so many to rise.
The faint image of a woman emerged from that same street, her form nothing but a wisp in the wind as her dress billowed in shades of white and gray. The trees were visible through her form, far more transparent than the riders of the Wild Hunt had been. I turned toward Caelum, grasping his forearm with my ragged nails. “Is that a spirit?” I asked, swallowing as I tried to resist the urge to press further back into his body and the comfort I knew I would find there.
“The Wild Hunt is coming,” he said, nodding his head as if that explained anything. “Unruly spirits are drawn to the Leader of the Hunt, following him across the land until they find their own version of peace.” He tilted his head back toward the crater in the ground, where more spectral forms of men and women, children, rose from the pit. They floated, their feet never touching the ground beneath them, though they moved in the same way they would have alive. The woman approached us first, standing at the intersection of the streets and pausing there. Her eyes landed on ours for a brief moment, shocks of black against her ghostly pallor. There was a hole in her chest, a dark chasm that had to have been a fatal wound.
Unlike her, some of the other spectral forms were whole, their ghostly bodies intact from less traumatic deaths, but the ones who had died violently bore the signs of that on their spirits.
“I thought death was supposed to wipe the slate? Give us a fresh start?” I asked, thinking of the promises the High Priest had made. I wanted the oblivion that came with it, the ceasing of all the suffering I’d endured in this life.
“It does, once we find our way to the Void. Until then, we wander with the memories of who we once were. It is why a quick passage across the River Styx is a kindness, Little One. Nothing good can come from having time to stew in our own regret,” Caldris answered.
The female spirit finally turned her stare away from us, looking back over her shoulder toward the chasm as the first rider of the Wild Hunt appeared over the crest of the cliff. The same male who had nearly seen me that night in the woods, and the same one who had fought against Caelum on the cliff after my brother had been stabbed by another one of the riders.
He held his head high as his skeletal horse rounded onto the street, hooves clattering against the stones. A group of others followed, their numbers fanning out behind him and the spirits that paved the way. The leader’s eyes landed on Caldris as he lifted me to my feet, standing tall as the other Fae Marked huddled together. In spite of the fear on their faces, there wasn’t even a flicker of power flashing through them. The Viniculum on their necks never came to life. It had no need to protect them against what any normal human would think of as danger. The Wild Hunt would never be a hazard to the Marked—not when their entire purpose was to find them and bring them to Alfheimr.
Caldris stepped up beside me, exchanging a long look with the leader of the Wild Hunt. When the rest of the spectral forms crested the hill from the empty graves, there were nearly twenty of them, all standing in a similar pattern to what I would have seen from a flock of geese flying away for the winter.
The leader’s horse took the first step. His bony hoof rang against the stone, the clap echoing up the road. I would never forget the eerie sight from my memory, how the blue markings on his face stood out, even at a distance. They all had them, those same icy blue lines.
As the horses’ steps brought the riders closer, some animals dragging carts behind them, the hounds of the Wild Hunt jumped from the steep bank one by one to follow the riders. There were a dozen of them, all ghastly appearing with venomous shadows dripping from their jowls. Fangs as thick as my wrist gleamed in the light of the rising sun, protruding from the places where their skin had rotted off their faces.
I swallowed as I imagined what it must have been like to be their prey and to be able to see those fangs tear through skin and flesh until the moment of death finally came.
A group of three white wolves followed behind them, their ears tipped in crimson. Caldris’s lips tipped up into a smile at the corners, reminding me painfully of the playful man I’d known. The three beasts broke free from the group, racing past the riders of the Wild Hunt. With the sight of their bared teeth and snarling faces to terrify me, I dug my nails into Caldris’s sleeve.
“Caelum,” I muttered, realizing the beasts didn’t intend to stop. They seemed to grow with every leap that brought them closer, until they stood taller than my waist.