To the home of the Resistance.
All was quiet as we approached it, like the calm before the storm. But it wasn’t terror of the cave beasts that struck fear into my chest this time, or fearing that they might be waiting around the corner to strike.
It was the humans who waited within.
“Probably not,” I sighed, stopping to stare down into the hole that would take me to the base. That would take me to the baths where Caelum had fucked me for all those people to see, where he and I had slept in our little shared room, and I’d been entirely oblivious about the predator in my bed.
“The members of the Resistance are already in their rooms for the night so that we can all use the kitchen and bathing chamber in peace before we have to deal with the turmoil that will come tomorrow,” Caldris said, nudging me forward. “You don’t need to worry about an altercation just yet.”
I nodded, dropping my body into the hole. I landed on the balls of my feet, crouching down to place a hand on the stone. Caldris followed behind me, leading me through the winding tunnel until we emerged into the cavern that was usually bustling with life.
Like the shadow of a memory, I saw a flash of Imelda leaning over the table, her white eye gleaming against her dark skin and the glowing white crescent moon on her forehead shining in the dim lighting.
I turned to the side, catching a flash of movement—a head of dark hair and golden skin disappearing into one of the tunnels. I furrowed my brow, turning toward the tunnel and looking down the void.
There was nothing to be found.
But I’d have sworn…
I shook it off as Caldris snagged my chin, looking down at me in concern. My mind lay in tattered strips, as if I couldn’t differentiate reality from memory. From the torment of the family I’d left behind, come to haunt me until my dying days. “Did you see that?” I asked, turning a shocked stare up to my mate.
He shook his head softly, his brow tensing with concern. As if he could feel the shadows of madness scratching at the edges of my mind, he guided me toward the kitchen. “Food will help,” he said, but even he had to know he wasn’t convincing anyone with those words.
Food couldn’t help the inability to tell the past from the present, or the threat of the future hovering just out of reach, as if I could grasp if I would just reach out.
I wouldn’t.
23
ESTRELLA
As it turned out, food couldn’t help the games my sanity seemed to want to play, but it didn’t hurt, either. With my belly finally full and hunger sated with fresh stew and bread, I allowed Caldris to lead me up and out of the tunnels, to the hot spring above the surface where he’d first touched me, and where I had no doubt he intended to do it again.
I didn’t have the energy to try to convince myself I didn’t want that. Something feral within me wanted to bathe in his scent until I had the comfort of knowing if I had to face the hatred of the people I’d wanted to join, I would do it with him all over me. With his presence to support me through the confrontation.
Was I…really hoping to have the smell of sex with him on me?
I swallowed. I didn’t know what that urge was and where it had come from, but it was decidedly not human. “What was that thought?” Caldris asked as we approached the upper level of the tunnels. He held a torch in his hand, depositing it into the holder near the entrance. Outside, steam drifted off the hot spring, engulfing the area in a warmth that nowhere else had this time of year.
“It was nothing,” I said, turning my flushed stare away from him. My cheeks felt overheated with something like shame consuming me. I shouldn’t be so embarrassed by the things I wanted and the desires this male created in me, not while knowing there was no reason for such shame. He was the epitome of every sin the people who had raised me to believe was wrong. He was also the reason I would never have to exist in a world where virtue was valued over kindness. I couldn’t, not ever again.
“Little liar,” he murmured, his voice soft as he stepped up behind me. I stood beside the hot spring, staring into the cloudy waters that were warmed by the heat trapped within the mountain. “I can feel your humiliation now. There’s no reason for you to be embarrassed about anything when you’re with me.”
He unclasped my cloak from around my shoulders, guiding the fabric away and tossing it to the side so that it fell in a heap on the ground. The linen he’d brought to dry us off went along with it, and I resisted the urge to turn to meet his stare. I couldn’t look him in the eye when I admitted it to him, even knowing he would probably enjoy the knowledge of my possessiveness.
“I was grateful that I will be able to face the masses tomorrow smelling like you,” I answered, for once almost resenting the fact that the hot spring would wash me clean.
“Hmm, is that because you want the women to know I’m yours in a way they never could have expected?” he asked, his voice a hum at my back. It sank into my skin, vibrating through me as I tried to decide exactly what it was that drove my irrational desire.
I was still as jealous as I’d been before, but not in the same way. I wasn’t concerned that he would have a tryst with any of them, and was confident in the knowledge that he truly was mine and would continue to be for the rest of our mortal lives. I just didn’t want other people to covet what was mine, I realized with a shock. It seemed ridiculous, to be so secure in our relationship and what it meant between us, but unable to let go of that sense of ownership.
Whatever I was becoming, I couldn’t decide if I loved it or hated it.
He stripped off my tunic, my bare skin pebbling with goosebumps. “I don’t know,” I admitted, pursing my lips as I tried to decide what it was about all of it that set me so on edge.
“Then we’ll just have to make sure you smell like me come morning,” he said. The moment his hand touched my bare skin and his lips coasted over my neck, I realized one very clear thing.
It didn’t fucking matter.
Sleep never came. In spite of the way Caldris had made love to me in the hot spring, and the way he’d done it all over again when we came back to the room, I couldn’t get my mind to quiet. My restlessness drove me off the bedroll we shared in our private little haven, wishing against all hope and possibility that we could stay in the center of the Resistance for an eternity. When I stayed here, there was none of the conflict that existed outside of these walls, as if it was its own private world, removed from the pressures we would face when we crossed the boundary.
A shelter in a world determined to start another war.
I stepped outside of our bedroom, dragging my hand over the stone as I made my way through the tunnels. None of the Wild Hunt moved to stop me, not bothering to interfere with my descent farther into the mountain itself.
I grabbed a torch off the wall when I came to the part of the tunnels that wasn’t used in the nighttime hours, using it to guide me to the library that had become my refuge. I’d resented it at first, feeling like it was a punishment designed to lock me away and put me in a place where I didn’t want to exist.
But it had become a haven, and I was thankful for the respite the books had provided. I only wished more women were taught to read, so that more of them could get lost in the stories that had saved me from real life far too often.