It had merely changed. Something slithered through the grass beneath the skiff of snow, a baby snake wrapping itself around my pointer finger as I stretched out a hand.
“Through death comes life,” I said, the words feeling torn from my soul as I turned a stunned expression up to Caldris. He flinched back from the sight of the snake wrapped around my finger, swallowing as he studied me.
“Estrella,” he said, and the concern in his voice made me lay a tentative hand back to the grass where the blight had been. The snake vanished with a curl of my hand, the yellow and green of its scales disappearing and leaving us behind in a world washed in white.
“What the fuck was that?” Holt asked, staring at Caldris. The two men exchanged a silent secret as my mate took my hand and pulled me to my feet. He ran his hand over mine, searching for any sign of the snake or the blight I’d touched.
“Where’s the snake, min asteren?” he asked, studying my hand. He shoved the sleeves of my tunic up, searching along my arms.
“It wasn’t time for it to be born yet,” I said, knowing instinctively. The image I’d had, the snake curling around me, had been a flash of its future life. A moment of what would come after the soul rested in the Void.
A reincarnation revealed.
Holt turned his stare to me, crossing his arms over his chest. “Yeah, because that’s not fucking creepy or anything.”
21
ESTRELLA
The city walls of Tradesholme loomed, looking far different as we approached the front gates. There was something macabre about the way they appeared out of the trees, but I couldn’t quite get a feel for what caused that shudder to roll through me. Adelphia had scoped out the city itself, advising that, while there was a small force of the Mist Guard waiting, it didn’t appear to be large enough that the Wild Hunt couldn’t handle them.
It was small enough that they’d need to have a death wish to fight at all. Even so, as we crossed over the land in front of the gates, I had to swallow back my nausea.
I was not made for war. I was made for peace and a cuddly blanket in a comfortable chair in a library with a book in my hand. And I was so tired of the fucking cold.
“You stay by my side. No matter what happens,” Caldris said, his voice ringing through me with a sharp command. He behaved as if I had any intention of separating from the one person in the world who would do anything to keep me safe.
“I don’t have a death wish,” I reminded him, wincing when I felt his amusement through the bond between us. “Okay, I don’t have a death wish at the moment.”
He laughed, the sound rich and filling my soul with a moment of warmth in the face of the coming tension and a possible battle. The memory of the blight’s blood staining the snow hung over me, threatening to consume me. I’d never been drawn to something that wasn’t alive before, or had any inclination to move toward it.
To touch it.
But I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt the snake that had appeared to me had been a vision of the blight’s future life. Of what was waiting for it after the Void.
Caldris had been mostly silent on the issue as we moved forward and closed the distance between us and Tradesholme, but I felt his confusion and his fear. Fear that I’d put there, and it horrified me to think the legendary God of the Dead was afraid of what I might be or what I might become.
What the fuck was I if I wasn’t human?
I glanced over at Adelphia, recalling the words she’d spoken to me on the night we’d met. There was beauty in knowing who I was, and in embracing that in spite of the potential consequences.
But what was I supposed to do when I didn’t have the slightest fucking clue?
We neared the gates, the clank of armor sounding as the guards protecting the city stepped forward. Leveling their spears to face our traveling group, I looked past them to the real horrors swinging from the city walls.
No matter what I was, I was not this kind of monster.
Tears pooled in my eyes, taking in the sight of bodies dangling from the perimeter walls. A warning to any who dared to enter. Duncan’s face was ashen, his body swollen in death, but at least he’d only suffered a single strike to the heart that had ended him in a permanent way.
What they’d done to Jensen was a different beast entirely, and I felt the way Caldris stiffened at my spine. Almost nothing remained of the other man, his flesh torn from his bones. Nothing human had caused that kind of suffering, not when the Mist Guard was far more interested in cutting out hearts and calling it a day.
“He was already dead, min asteren. I swear that to you,” Caldris said. Cool air rushed over the back of my neck, surrounding me with the chill of the male I was mated to. The male I was fairly certain I would accept as mine, even if only to offer him peace from the turmoil of his relationship with his abusive stepmother.
“You did this?” I asked, wringing my hands together in my lap. I avoided touching him, my thoughts roaring in my head. He’d said he hadn’t killed Jensen, and I’d believed him. I most definitely believed him now, knowing that he couldn’t lie.
“The power I unleashed to kill the Mist Guard who attacked us did this,” he confirmed, sighing heavily. “But I waited until after Jensen had already been stabbed through the heart to reveal myself.”
“Did he see you? Before his heart stopped?” I asked, a shudder of horror rolling through me.
He’d called my name.
Jensen had been an asshole, but he’d tried to warn me. He’d tried to do the right thing in a situation that was complete shit. Even knowing he wouldn’t be around to benefit from me knowing the truth, because his death already loomed. He’d tried to warn me.
My throat clenched, the threat of tears burning and my eyes stinging with the realization. I’d hated Jensen; I had far from mourned his death.
Fuck.
“Are those tears for him, Little One?” Caldris asked, his voice dropping lower. Even if he hadn’t killed the man, I knew he would in this moment had he lived. He’d already wanted to in the past, and knowing I would have any kind of emotion for him would only worsen that.
“Not in the way you’re thinking,” I said, touching his hand to settle his rage. The last thing I wanted as we made our way through a city full of people was for him to go into a bloodlust over something that no longer mattered. “I just…I wouldn’t have thought he’d try to warn me. I would have imagined him wanting to leave me to the fate I chose, feeling self-satisfied when he died because he knew something I didn’t. When did I get so cynical?”
“You’ve probably always been cynical,” he said, his voice settling slightly as he fought off the hint of bloodlust, realizing that the turmoil he’d felt in me actually had almost nothing to do with the other man and everything to do with myself as a person, and the changes I hadn’t wanted to see. “The life you’ve lived would demand that. Those who have been taught to expect the worst tend to do just that. Jensen gave you no reason to expect otherwise from him. Not with his behavior in the short time you knew him.”
“He was a creep,” I agreed, trying to reconcile that with the man who had tried to save me from my own choices. I should have known better than to believe he was entirely evil. Real people existed in shades of gray.