It was not only the God of the Dead who surrounded me, but an army crafted from corpses and spectral forms. Of beasts and hounds that the legends could never have painted an accurate portrait of.
Holt rode at our side, his white-eyed stare focused on the ground in front of him as he searched the top of the hill. “You won’t hurt him,” Caldris murmured, making me jolt in his arms.
“Who?” I asked, relaxing my hands slightly as I realized he must have meant his horse.
“Azra,” Caldris answered, reaching forward to pat the horse on the side of the neck. “You won’t bother him if you grab his mane.”
“You have far too much hair to be so casual about hair pulling. Has no one pulled your hair?” I asked, turning back to look at the shoulder-length mane that surrounded his face. It shouldn’t have been possible for it to be somehow masculine and only serve to add to the roughness of his beauty.
“No one has dared,” he said with a chuckle, the rumble sliding up my back and sinking inside of me. His voice was deep as he tipped his head down, angling his mouth toward my ear. “Though you’re welcome to try.”
As we finally crested the top of the hill, Caldris steered Azra back in the direction of the tunnels. “We need to detour first,” Holt said, his gaze straying in the opposite direction.
“No. We need to get across the boundary as quickly as possible,” Caldris argued, tightening his hands on the reins.
“As much as I would like to join you on that endeavor, my sentry reported a group of Fae Marked hiding out in the village of Black Water. A regiment of the Mist Guard was too close for him to try to get them out on his own,” Holt said, turning his skeletal steed away from the tunnels.
Another horse moved up to the other side of us, halting as I turned to glare at the male on its back, who’d run my brother through. Caldris sighed. “What do you want, Aramis?”
“The little menace has proven she needs to be shackled more than the others,” he growled, glancing over his shoulder as he and Caldris kicked their horses into a quick walk to follow Holt. “You may be inclined to give her preferential treatment, and Holt may allow it because of who you are to him, but that doesn’t mean she won’t make the rest of us nervous. Even now, sitting in the carts and surrounded by the Wild Hunt, the other Fae Marked speak of their hatred for her. Of how she sold out her own people just to be comfortable. She should be shackled and riding in the carts with the rest of them.”
Caldris growled, and when I turned to look at his face, his lips turned down with a snarl. His arms tightened around me, squeezing into my sides to the point of discomfort. “Go ahead and try it.”
“Fucking mated pairs. I swear to the Gods, you lot are the stuff of nightmares. It’s not like I’m suggesting she take one of us for a ride—”
“This would be the part where you should shut up!” Holt called back without even glancing toward his companion.
“You should listen to him,” Caldris said, his voice lower than usual. Something other tinted it, as if the power of death itself could bleed into his voice. His eyes flashed with blue, a silent warning amplifying his words.
It faded as quickly as it had come, as if there wasn’t the power necessary to back up whatever rage loomed inside of him.
“Sometimes I think it’s fortunate for us all that the Fates kept you from her for so long,” Aramis said, shaking his head. “Anything that could rival Mab’s power with that cursed crown atop her head shouldn’t be possible.”
“Are you determined to be stabbed again? I’m sure Estrella would be so eager to oblige that I wouldn’t even need to bother myself,” Caldris said as I twisted forward. I tried not to chuckle, shoving deep inside that part of me that found humor in his dry wit. “Or was there a point to you pissing me off?”
“She needs to be shackled, Caldris,” Aramis said. He reached into the pack slung over the horse’s rump, pulling out a pair of shackles. Everything inside of me withered at the mere sight of them, recalling the way it had felt like my soul had been sucked out of me through the connection.
“My magic is too potent. They damn near took her down,” Caldris said, shaking his head.
“These aren’t iron, just regular bronze,” Aramis said, holding out the shackles. Caldris sighed, reaching out to accept them from the other male. I felt him nod at my back as Aramis kicked his horse into a trot to follow where Holt walked ahead of him.
“Tell me again how I am anything but your prisoner,” I said, wincing as the cool metal touched my wrists. True to Aramis’s word, there was no burning sensation or heat that radiated from within the bronze. Caldris leaned forward as he draped the reins across Azra’s neck, nuzzling into the curtain of my hair. His mouth trailed over the delicate skin of my neck, drawing goosebumps to the surface. “The only time I want you chains is when it’s to my bed, with you writhing and willing,” he murmured, pressing the weight of the first shackle over my left wrist. He snapped it shut, my arm sagging slightly beneath the weight.
He trailed his fingertips over the back of my hand, pressing it down and into Azra’s mane just in front of my lap. His fingers laced through mine then into the horse’s hair and making me feel pinned and surrounded.
He didn’t give a single care for the Wild Hunt and Fae Marked who followed us, our audience not bothering him in the slightest as he made my imprisonment into something intimate. “Do you have any idea how many times I’ll make you come for me?” he murmured, slipping his free hand down my arm to touch the wrist that was still free. His touch brought all my desire for him to light, forcing something that belonged in the shadows to emerge for all to see. He raised my free hand, placing it beside the other as he wrapped the other shackle around and snapped it closed. Twisting the lock on each wrist, he made sure to settle my hands with their heavy weights in my lap as he pulled me to sit back against him.
I hadn’t realized how far I’d leaned forward, trying to evade his too-familiar warmth at my spine.
The shackles clanked together as I shifted to look out over the open land in front of us. Mountains loomed in the distance to the Southeast, but spread out before us was a vast and empty plain, beyond the trees draped over the pathway from the once busy and prosperous city.
Azra’s hooves clomped against something solid beneath the thin sheen of snow covering the ground. The steps of Holt’s and Aramis’s horses up ahead revealed what looked like the remains of cobblestones, jagged and uneven from centuries of neglect.
Despite the curiosity that threatened to consume me, I refrained from asking what this place had been in its prime. I wanted nothing more than to hold the answers to the past, to pick the brain of my ancient mate so I could know everything that had come before me.
The things that he must have seen—experienced—were beyond my imagination.
Azra halted suddenly, freezing in place as the rest of the Wild Hunt walked past us. “What is it?” Caldris asked, leaning forward to pat the horse on the neck. His body went taut at my spine, every muscle tightening as he responded to the horse’s sudden nervousness.
Fenrir growled at my side, the sound a low rumble. He nudged my foot with his nose, meeting my eyes with his red stare that seemed to say a thousand words. “Something is wrong,” I mumbled, glancing toward where the Wild Hunt continued on with the Fae Marked loaded into carts. They glared back at us, their eyes full of condemnation as I tried to listen beyond the sound of the wheels over the cobblestones and the squeaking of the bolts with every bump. Caldris canted his head to the side, doing the same thing as he watched ahead of us.