I wished that we could all be united in our quest to right the wrongs of the world, to find a way to ally us all in our common goals. As someone who had only recently come to terms with all this, it didn’t seem likely that it would happen. My heart hadn’t been filled with as much hatred, not with the way I’d despised the Lord of my village and the people who’d enabled him to remain in power.
“There was nothing I could have done that would have stopped Caldris from taking the Fae Marked to Alfheimr. Even if I’d revealed his identity the moment I laid eyes on him, it would have been pointless. All it would have achieved was death. I chose to hope for peace, and that I could negotiate for the lives of the humans who did not need to die needlessly. I chose to save what lives I could, in the face of a terrible choice resting upon my shoulders,” she explained.
I nodded, understanding taking over my features. I didn’t want to understand that choice, or that sometimes the greater good meant doing things that we would have once thought were unimaginable. But I related far too much to interrogate her until she was forced to relent that she’d made the wrong decision.
I didn’t think she had.
If Imelda had revealed his identity, I would have learned the truth of who he was before he ever touched me. I wouldn’t have known the intimacy of having him moving inside me, and I would have been far less likely to give in to that aspect of our relationship. It was easy to accept him inside me when I did hate him, because he’d already been there, and he’d already had that part of me.
The sun shone off Caelum’s head as he stepped out into the light. The gleaming silver of his hair was the color of iced-over snow, of the icicles as they hung from the eves of homes in Mistfell during winter.
I followed behind him, letting him turn around to guide me down to the ground from the tunnel entrance. In spite of knowing I could handle it, I enjoyed the feeling of his helping hands on mine. He set me down a few feet away from the entrance, lowering me down his body smoothly while I smiled up at him. Not so long ago, I would have fought him for the way he seemed determined to take care of me. It was ridiculous to think of doing that now, knowing that his care came from a place of love. That it wasn’t a statement of his belief that I was incapable of doing things for myself.
It was just him. Loving me. “I love you, min asteren,” he said, confirming the thoughts that he must have seen written on my face.
“And I love you, Caelum,” I said, and that part of me who had hated to admit such things because they felt like a weakness finally withered and died. She shriveled up inside of me, abandoning me to the knowing that I could do this. That I could trust someone with my heart and know that it would be safe.
“Imelda? What is it?” a woman asked, and I turned to find Fallon leaning over Imelda where she’d hunched over with her hands on her knees. The black fabric of her dress was bunched in her fists, her mismatched eyes glazed in a way that I wouldn’t have thought was possible.
Caldris followed my gaze, taking a step toward her even as we both cursed the interruption to what must have been an incredible moment for him. To have me acknowledge my feelings so openly, I didn’t think I’d ever done that.
Imelda looked up from the ground, that eerie stare meeting mine in a shock that sent pain rippling through me. She stood straight, marching toward me and pushing past Caldris to grab my hand in hers. She lifted it, staring at the side of my palm as I tugged away from her. “What are you doing?” I asked, pulling harder. Her grip remained like a vice, clinging to me as she stared down at my bare skin.
“Imelda, don’t—” Caldris said, but she ignored the warning in his tone.
She muttered something beneath her breath, an incantation in the Old Tongue as I tried to translate the words quickly enough to process them. La solis ne lunat.
By the light of the moon.
“What are you doing? That hurts!” I repeated, yanking my hand away as a searing pain lit my skin. I turned my eyes to Caldris, finding him staring down at my hand with something akin to horror on his face.
But I couldn’t see past the blinding pain, past what was worse than any of the moments when iron had touched my skin. Imelda twisted my hand in her grip, showing me the place where my skin burned and fell to the snow at my feet in ashes. “Revealing your truth,” she said, her eyes sad as a crescent moon appeared on my hand.
Fallon stepped up beside us as if she were in a daze, placing her hand next to mine and staring down at the marks on our skin. At the identical moons that marked us as protected by the lunar clan of witches.
I sucked in a breath, snatching my hand away from them both to cradle it to my chest. The smell of burning flesh tickled my nose, easing when Caldris took my hand in his and brushed a cool winter breeze along my skin.
Ending the suffering. Ending the magical branding that was permanently etched on my body.
“How could you not have known this before?” Caldris asked Imelda. “How did you not see it?”
“The mountain cut me off from the moonlight, and the warding I’ve placed on the tunnels makes it difficult to see through magic that mimics my own, since it covers everything. As soon as we stepped outside, I could see where lunar magic clung to her skin. Where is your guardian, Estrella?” Imelda asked, making me turn a stunned stare up to Caldris.
“I don’t have one,” I said, shaking my head. "I don’t—” My denial cut off, leaving me with nothing but the twisted sense of horror that I would never be able to erase.
All the secrets he’d kept. All the things he’d known and hid from me—all his vague nonsensical statements. The things he swore he would tell me, but had never had the chance.
Brann.
“Where is he?!” Imelda demanded, and I couldn’t decide if she wished she could cause his death or if she wanted him for some other purpose.
“He’s dead,” I croaked, turning my stare up to my mate. “The Wild Hunt killed him when he tried to kill me.” I held Caelum’s stare. I’d never admitted that part to him outright, but I doubted he didn’t know it already from conversations with the riders of the Wild Hunt.
What Brann had tried to do was no secret, but the way Caelum’s gaze hardened and a cold wind swept through the woods, I knew he hadn’t been aware.
“What does this mean? I can’t be the other child. That’s…impossible,” I said, turning back to Imelda and trying to ignore the raging fury pulsing off of Caelum.
“It means that one of you is the child of Mab, and the other is something else. Who was he to you? Who did you believe him to be?” Imelda asked, and the genuine concern in her eyes made me believe that she had been close to my brother once.
“My brother,” I said, heaving out a sigh. “He told me he was my brother, but he wasn’t, was he?” Trying to wrap my head around the new truth, I cradled my hand closer to my chest, blinking back the tears that came with not knowing what I was. Had he been keeping me from Alfheimr so desperately because he’d known I was the daughter of Mab? Or because I was some other kind of monster from the depths of Faerie?
“He told me I could never go to Alfheimr,” I said, stepping forward into Caelum’s embrace. He wrapped his arms around me, pulling me closer to his chest. “He knew something, but I never pushed to know the truth. He said there was nothing waiting for me in Alfheimr but darkness and torment.”