“And how old were you when Lord Byron started doing this?” he asked, his voice dropping into that timbre where it no longer sounded even remotely human, the depth where the God-like quality of his power crept through his throat and coated the air.
“Seven,” I said with a sigh, watching as he reared his head back in shock. “When I got older, he would make me feed them to him while he—” I paused, unable to find the words for the horrors that had started as soon as I’d come of age.
“While he what?” he asked, his eyes narrowing on my face. His voice wrapped around me, raising goosebumps on my arms as I sensed the danger that would come from my admission.
“While he fucked the Ladies of the Night who came to pleasure him. He would have me sit on the edge of the table in front of him while he sat in the chair and a woman either rode him or sucked him off.”
Caldris shifted me off his lap, depositing me gently onto the bedroll beside him as he stood. There was no care for the cold as he paced around the small enclosure of the tent. “Did he touch you?” he asked, his body tense as he rolled his shoulders. His hands clenched at his sides, but he didn’t give me his eyes for a moment as I hesitated to answer.
The rage rolling off of him made me wish he’d chosen the physical intimacy instead. “Come back to bed,” I said softly, forcing a smile to my face that he couldn’t see with his back turned to me. The thought that he might not want someone who had been so damaged, so violated, rolled through me, a finger of doubt I never wanted to feel.
“Did. He. Touch. You?” he asked, spinning to pin me with his bright blue stare. The wind outside made the fabric of the tent flap viciously as a burst of winter weather tore through the camp. People shouted outside, drawing my attention toward the ties in the canvas.
I swallowed nervously, pulling a blanket up to my shoulders, wanting the cover it could provide. “Not those nights,” I said, evading the truth of what had happened on the ones when we were alone in that Gods-forsaken library.
“Not those nights,” Caldris said, his head tilting to the side as he scoffed bitterly. “But others?”
“He didn’t fuck me if that’s what you’re worried about,” I snapped, scowling up at him.
“Did he violate you? Touch you sexually in ways you didn’t want?” he asked, the question leaving no room for me to evade it. I didn’t want to lie to him; I wanted to give him the same respect I could expect from him, and something in me felt compelled to do just that.
My bottom lip trembled as I prepared for the word that I thought might change everything between us. For the answer that could drive him away once and for all. It should have been what I wanted, the answer that I would state proudly in an effort to gain my freedom. “Yes,” I whispered, the sound cracking between us like a whip echoing through the tent.
His breath came in deep, shuddering gasps that shook his entire body as he rolled his neck from one side to the other again. His jaw clenched as he glared down at me, his blue eyes bleeding to black before he reached down and snatched the plate off the bedroll.
He exploded, throwing it at the side of the tent with a roar that echoed within me. My very being seemed to go still in response to the sound, my soul aching down to my core.
He stormed to the doorway of the tent, ripping the ties loose. The flaps flew open in the wind from the storm surging outside, thick layers of snow falling from the night sky as he disappeared into the storm itself. “Caldris!” I called out, scurrying to follow after him.
The cold bit into my feet as I trudged through the snow outside the tent, emerging into the storm and looking around for any sign of the God of the Dead. “What did you fucking do?!” a male voice shouted at me as Holt appeared from the haze of snow. He stepped up beside me, touching a transparent hand to my shoulder.
“He asked about the man who hurt me,” I said, turning a fear-filled gaze up to the leader of the Wild Hunt.
“Fucking Gods,” he said, reaching down to take my hand in his. Revulsion filled me, the startling wrongness of any touch other than Caldris’s filling me with a surge of nausea. “He’s going to bring the blight back here. They will feel this kind of power, and when they catch sight of it, she’ll send someone to investigate what made him this angry. She has been trying for centuries to get any kind of reaction out of him; do you understand me? She cannot know that you exist. Fix it, Estrella,” he said, pulling me through the camp as members of the Wild Hunt tried to hold down the tents that threatened to blow away in the storm Caldris had brought down on us.
He stood in the center of the plain, ice and wind swirling around him in a vortex. Above him, clouds roiled in the sky as he slowly raised his hands from his sides. “Caldris!” I called, raising a hand to cover my face as snow made my skin sting with the cold.
There was no response, leaving me to believe he was lost to the storm entirely.
I hurried forward, daring to enter the eye as the violent gusts of wind threatened to toss me to the side. I finally stepped up next to him, resting a firm hand on top of his forearm and trying to force it back down to his side. His stare was like tumbling into the darkest of nights when it finally fell on mine. “Stop this,” I said, wincing when he pinned me with a glare.
“He needs to die,” he said, his voice guttural.
“This isn’t the way. Think of all the people you’ll hurt doing it like this,” I said, trying not to even consider the number of people who stood between Caldris and Byron. He would take out them all with a storm like this.
“What should I care about any of them?” he asked, his lips lifting into a snarl. “Did they protect you from the monster who wanted to hurt you? Did they offer you shelter when you were forced to run from the only home you’d ever known? They do not deserve to live.”
“Caelum,” I said sadly, reaching up to cup his cheek. I fought against the violence inside of me, and the desire for revenge I wanted to pretend I was above. “I don’t want this. I want to slit his throat myself. I want to be there to watch the life fade from his eyes the way my father’s did when Byron made me watch. I want him to know it was me who killed him. Don’t take that from me.”
The darkness of his eyes softened as a brutal smile twisted his mouth. His hand raised to cup my cheek, a mirror of the way I touched him as the winds around us slowly eased.
“I wouldn’t dare to deprive the world of your vengeance,” he said, dropping his forehead to mine. “And when he makes his way to Tartarus for his crimes, I’ll have an eternity to make him suffer.”
“You can do whatever you want with him after I’ve killed him,” I said, the lack of interest in my tone showing my exhaustion. Caelum sensed the faltering of my energy, or he realized that I was standing in the snow in only my socks. Lifting me off my feet and leaving me with no choice but to wrap my legs around his hips, he carried me back to our tent and the refuge waiting for us there.
I pressed my face into his shoulder, trying to escape the prying, curious eyes of those watching us.
I was asleep by the time we reached the tent.
10
ESTRELLA
My back was warm from the heat sinking into my skin through the fabric of my tunic. My face felt too hot against the bare skin pressed into it. I pulled away slowly, shifting lower and sinking into the fabric of the bedroll beneath me as I slowly peeled my eyes open. The canvas walls of the tent surrounded me, billowing gently in the wind that was almost nonexistent compared to the howling I recalled from the night before.