“I need to tend to your wound,” he said simply, but something darker laced his words, desire crackling through the air between us as we stared at one another.
Fenrir broke the moment, spinning suddenly to face away from Caldris as he moved. I saw the arrow coming for my chest too late, raising the dagger in my hand too slowly to deflect it. Squeezing my eyes shut so I wouldn’t see the iron-tipped arrow embed itself in my flesh, I waited for the pain.
The pain that never came.
Warmth spread across my back. I opened my eyes slightly to find Caldris pressed into the back of my right side, his fingers wrapped around the wooden shaft of the arrow. It rested only a breath from my heart, so close to finding the target that would end everything.
I glanced up at him as he tossed the arrow to the ground, watching as the two other white wolves advanced on their prey. They surrounded the last remaining member of the Mist Guard while the entire group watched, toying with him.
“Finish it,” I said, not wanting to watch the wolves make a game out of death. Out of the fear of a man who thought he was doing the right thing. And maybe he was, for all I knew. I couldn’t exactly say the Fae had been overly kind to us or done anything to disprove the claims that we would be like pets to them.
Caldris murmured against me, his words twisted and his voice filled with cruelty. “He is fortunate that you survived.” He brushed the hair away from my neck. “Otherwise I’d have kept him alive to play with him over the course of years. Let the cwn annwn have their fun. They are far more merciful than me.”
I closed my eyes to the sound of tearing flesh as they finally ended the life of the last Mist Guard, the squelching sound of blood too much for me. It pulled at the part of me that reveled in it, the twisted piece of me that was drawn to the souls that lingered, waiting to move on.
Fenrir lowered himself to the ground so that Caldris could pull me off his back, looking to the wolf with an amused expression. “Why is it you never offer me a ride?”
Fenrir chuffed, turning his back on Caldris and going to rejoin the other two wolves.
“You’re all bloody,” Caldris said, reaching up to touch my chin. He paused, staring down at the mottled, still healing flesh as his skin knitted itself back together and slowly pushed the iron from his body.
“Sorry, I don’t see a bath anywhere. Do you?” I asked, scoffing as I looked at him. The male was covered in gore from head to toe, but Gods forbid I be, too.
“Did I say I wanted you to wash it off?” he asked, tilting his head to the side as he studied me. “Because that was not my intent, I assure you. I want to fuck you while you’re covered in the blood and death of our enemies who thought they could take you from me.”
I swallowed, the intensity of his dark stare making my throat ache with sudden dryness. “That’s not—”
“Normal? You are my mate. I could spend an eternity buried inside of you and still want more, Little One. There will never come a day when I do not enjoy watching you bring men to their knees and cut their throats when they underestimate you. You would do well to remember that,” he said, raising his hands so that I could see the silver shining within his skin. “The only reason I haven’t taken you is because I cannot touch you without hurting you.”
I swallowed, staring at the injuries he’d sustained for me and uncomfortable with the feelings of gratitude that knowledge left me with. “You shouldn’t have—”
“You are my mate. I will always protect you, min asteren. No matter what the cost,” he murmured, his deep eyes gleaming as he stared down at me. I sank my teeth into my bottom lip, unsure of what to say in the face of the weight of his confession.
Things would be easier if he were just a monster.
9
ESTRELLA
Caelum’s skin was slow to return to normal, his body pushing the iron free over the course of the next few hours as we traveled. We left the corpses behind us, the bodies too damaged by the iron covering them for his power to raise them from the dead.
Only one grave had been dug, for the only Fae Marked male who’d taken an iron-tipped arrow to the heart during the chaos of the battle. The others had been protected after the first assaults rained arrows down on us.
Caelum was careful not to touch my skin as we rode through the snow-covered plains. There was no shelter to be found, nothing to conceal us as we traveled. After the assault we hadn’t been prepared for, the Wild Hunt surrounded the humans, with the hounds sticking close to them. It gave me some measure of comfort to know that if nothing else, they would protect the lives of those they’d rendered incapable of protecting themselves.
Even if the iron powder would have done that anyway.
“You didn’t know about the iron dust,” I said, staring down at the blistered skin of his hands where he held the reins. The sight of them resting so close to my once-again shackled wrists felt so wrong, the two most extreme instances of how my mate could treat me held in one glance. The deepest part of me wondered if the Fae Mark would return to his skin where it had melted away, to paint the new flesh with the symbol of our bond. The absence of the circle on the back of his hand and shadowed tendrils covering his fingers made something inside of me long to touch him. I needed to caress his skin until the ink returned to what I had grown so fond of exploring with tentative fingers by candlelight in the tunnels.
“I didn’t,” he agreed. I felt him shake his head behind me as, carefully avoiding his skin that was still tainted by iron dust, I clutched onto his forearm to steady myself when Azra stepped over uneven ground. My shackles clinked together as I moved, the chains connecting them dangling below my wrists to brush against Azra’s mane. “We knew humans had been given centuries to devise new weapons to use against us, but I never could have imagined something like that. An ambush like that could actually threaten the Fae, if the Mist Guard were to have enough numbers to overpower a group. Not all Fae are as skilled in combat as we are. The Sidhe have had little reason to fight since the last war with the humans.”
“But most of the Fae aren’t here, are they? Aside from that one that we saw in Tradesholde, I’ve not seen any except for you and the Wild Hunt,” I said, pursing my lips. Perhaps that was because of my limited interactions where the Fae hunted for their mates, but it felt far more significant.
“Mab will have been very selective about who she allows to wander into Nothrek. There is great power to be found in controlling the fate of one’s mate. Even the most vocal of her opponents would be inclined to cooperate with her if she were to hold the other half of their soul in her grasp,” Caldris explained, leaning forward until his chin rested against the top of my head.
“She would do that? But I thought you said the Fae considered their mates to be sacred? A bond worth protecting at all costs? Why would the Queen of Air and Darkness go against something like that?” I asked, releasing his forearm as Azra steadied on more even terrain. It took everything within me not to push up the sleeve of his tunic so I could touch the mark under there and reassure the frazzled part of my soul that he was still mine.
That part of me was nothing but a traitorous bitch, and I wanted nothing to do with her.