“Then perhaps you shouldn’t play with toys you don’t understand,” the leader of the Wild Hunt said behind me. “Dainsleif was forged by the dwarves and cursed to demand the payment of a life anytime it is wielded in battle. When drawn, it requires a life debt from you.”
I shrugged. “That’s perfectly fine with me. I’ve no intention of letting the male who murdered my brother walk away.”
The leader quirked a brow, turning his curious stare toward where Caldris watched from beside him. “This mate of yours suits you. She’s vicious.”
“Isn’t she?” Caldris agreed, running his hands over what would have been the muzzle of the horse’s bony face. I didn’t dare to think about the implications of the God of the Dead finding that appealing, or of the fact that I apparently suited him in such a way.
I turned my full attention back to the rider who needed to die, watching as he rolled his eyes. “You are no help,” he said, glaring at the leader. “How am I supposed to fight her when Caldris will skin me alive if I hurt her?”
“You’re not,” the leader said, lifting a hand to examine his nails as if he didn’t have a care in the world. “But I think I’ll enjoy watching her play with you anyway.”
“I don’t plan to play with him,” I argued, lunging for his middle. He narrowly avoided the thrust that would have caught him in the belly, twisting to avoid it with the kind of skill that took centuries to hone. “Just kill him.”
“You stabbed me three times, you fucking little menace! I’d say we’re even,” he protested, dodging back when I swung for him again. The blade warmed my hand, the magic within it throbbing through my arm. It wanted blood.
It wanted a debt to be paid.
“For fuck’s sake, Aramis. Just let the woman stab you already. Dainsleif will demand a life, regardless of who pays it. It might as well be yours,” the leader of the Wild Hunt said, crossing his arms over his chest. He slowly leaned his weight back into his skeletal horse, crossing his feet at the ankles as the steed curled its neck to nudge his shoulder affectionately.
“But dying is so inconvenient,” the rider, Aramis, said. I didn’t stop to consider those words before I took the opening he’d given me, thrusting the blade into his chest. He faltered back for a moment, staring down at the dark blade the same way Brann had when the rider had killed him. He dropped slowly to his knees as I pulled it free, watching as black blood spilled free and coated the ground at his feet. It poured in a smooth flow, without any of the rhythmic pumping I’d expected. He glared at me one last time before he fell to his face in the dirt, that inky black stain spreading beneath his body.
The leader of the Wild Hunt stepped beside me, taking the blade from my hand and sheathing it. “Now we wait for him to rise again.”
“For him to rise? I just killed him,” I said, glancing toward Caldris. He might have the ability to raise the dead, but from what I’d seen they weren’t themselves anymore, only the bodies of who had once lived.
The leader made his way back to his horse, pulling a pack down from the back before he turned to me once more. “You cannot kill that which is already dead.”
7
ESTRELLA
One of the other members of the Hunt rolled Aramis to his back, but otherwise they left their comrade lying in the dirt. Caldris’s words about wanting to ensure all the dead received the proper funeral rites hung over me, a confirmation of everything the leader had said.
He wasn’t dead, and my blood debt seemed impossible to ever really pay.
“Holt, this is my mate, Estrella,” Caldris said, pushing off his place next to the horse and moving toward me. He tucked a lock of my hair behind my ear, the amusement on his face making me clench my jaw in frustration. “Estrella, Holt is the closest thing I have to a friend.”
Not a friend, but the closest thing. If that didn’t tell me the kind of man my cursed mate was, then I wasn’t sure what would. “Then why did he fight you on the cliff?” I asked, crossing my arms over my chest.
Caldris grinned, turning back toward his friend. “He didn’t know who I was at first. Even the Wild Hunt can’t see through the glamour of a God, and by the time he put it together, we had to keep up the pretense for your sake. Until you flung your stubborn ass off the fucking cliff anyway.”
“Such a shame I didn’t die doing it,” I snapped. I leaned away from him as much as I dared, risking tipping over to put distance between us without actually showing how much his closeness bothered me.
“Only you would wish for death rather than allow yourself to be loved, my star,” Caldris said, his lips tipping with a hint of mockery that didn’t reach his eyes, making light of something that shouldn’t have been funny at all.
Holt chuckled, giving Caldris a look that communicated something silently between the two of them. I didn’t doubt they knew each other well, but Holt’s glance also didn’t need translating.
Good luck with this one.
“Is that all of them?” Holt asked, nodding over his shoulder to where the Fae Marked waited within Caldris’s circle of the dead.
“For now. There are more in the tunnels I told you about,” Caldris said, the shock of his confession tearing a ragged gasp from me. I turned a wide-eyed stare his way, wondering how he’d been able to communicate with the Wild Hunt when he rarely left my side.
The memory of finding him missing that night in the woods struck me, the brutal twist to his features when I’d stumbled upon him in the trees.
“You didn’t,” I whispered, voice thready with horror. Holt gave Caldris space, moving away from us as the other riders dismounted their horses. “Please tell me you didn’t.”
“They belong with their mates, my star. They’ll be safer once they’re united with the Fae who will do anything to protect them,” he said, lifting his chin as he stared down his nose at me.
“They trusted you,” I hissed, shaking my head in disbelief as my throat burned. “They gave us shelter when we needed it.”
He scoffed, his lips twisting with cruel malice and derision. “No. They trusted you. They gave you shelter. I was just another body to use as a soldier, and if you had allowed it, Melian would have run me through herself. I will always appreciate that they gave us a place where you could rest safely for a while, but I do not owe them loyalty they would not show me.”
“I should have let her kill you the moment she warned me,” I snarled, twisting away. I gave him my back, unable to look him in the eye. To betray the Resistance when he could have simply left them in peace was an act I wouldn’t forgive. “There are entire families living there. Children who need their parents. What if one of the Marked is a mother? A father? What happens then?” I asked, feeling the moment he stepped up behind me. His presence was soothing, even when he’d been the one to cause me distress in the first place.
I hated to draw comfort from the very monster who needed to be slain.
“We will not separate families if we can help it. The Marked need to come to Alfheimr, but children and spouses will be allowed to come with them. We’ve taken a great number of the Fae Marked across the boundary since the fall of the Veil,” Holt called out. He lifted a pair of shackles from his horse. “But we’ve not yet run into that situation, as all those we’ve encountered thus far have been on the run and already had to leave their children behind, if they had any. Many of the women found that their own husbands wished to kill them, and many Marked men found their wives took the children and ran.”