I felt the moment his attention snapped back to me as he spoke to Holt, pointedly ignoring the heated brand of his stare. We were speaking only just enough to get through the day and would likely go to sleep in silence when our tent was ready.
Sitting on his face was the last thing on my mind when I could barely stand to look at him without feeling guilt over my potential lineage and what that would mean for our bond.
Fallon smiled roguishly at the riders of the Wild Hunt, leaning her weight into the elbow closest to me and giving a playful finger wave.
“A few nights without a male companion would not kill you, you know,” Imelda said, but her voice shook with amusement.
“You’re silent when you sleep. It is absolutely exhausting,” Fallon said.
“Would you like me to snore?” Imelda asked, leaning forward to stare down at her charge with a smile curving her full lips.
“Are you really complaining about something being exhausting when you’re meant to be sleeping?” I asked, regarding the hazel-eyed woman at my side with a confused stare.
“I like to fall asleep naturally after I’ve exhausted myself physically, not lie down and stare at the ceiling. It’s dreadfully boring,” Fallon said.
“Hence looking for a bed partner for the night…” I said, my voice trailing off.
“There are other ways to tire ourselves out, but I think we would all admit that a skilled bed partner is the most fun,” she said with a laugh. She turned her hazel stare to one of the riders, quirking up a brow. He scurried off quickly, leaving Fallon to drop back dramatically. “No one wants to touch me when there’s a chance I could be the daughter of that miserable queen.”
“You’ll live,” Imelda said, her laughter making her chest shake. “I’ll sing you to sleep.”
“Please don’t,” Fallon protested, her wince showing just what she thought of Imelda’s singing. “I’d rather you regale me with tales of what you intend to do to the Huntsman when you stop being so stubborn.”
“He’s dead, Fallon,” Imelda said, rolling her eyes. “I am not being stubborn. I just require the men I fuck to have a pulse.”
“A likely excuse,” Fallon argued, waving a hand toward the sky. “Where’s the fun in limitation?”
“Which Huntsman are you not fucking?” I asked, my gaze bouncing back and forth between the two women.
“All of them,” Imelda said.
“She is going to fuck Holt. It’s only a matter of time,” Fallon said, pushing herself to sit up. She looked over at where the male in question stood with Caldris.
“I’m not going to fuck him. Even if he weren’t transparent, the man is insufferable,” Imelda protested.
“You should see the way they argue,” Fallon said, sinking her teeth into her bottom lip for a moment. “If you don’t plan to fuck him, then I suppose you won’t mind if I take him for a ride tonight?” Fallon pushed to her feet, turning to face Imelda as she backed toward the fire. Holt waited just on the other side of the flames, his eerie white eyes observing our interaction with far too much interest to be natural.
There was no denying the way they blazed with white hot fury when they settled on Imelda’s face, and she clenched her jaw as she turned her attention away from both him and Fallon. “Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Fallon scoffed with satisfaction.
“Do you ever shut up?” Imelda asked, pushing to her feet.
“Only if you pet me and tell me I’m pretty,” Fallon returned, blowing the witch a kiss as she stood in front of Fallon.
“That’s not going to happen.”
“Okay, then take me for a walk. I want to see the woods. The trees are so strange,” Fallon said, turning her eyes to the edge of the clearing. “I never imagined they’d be so big.”
“You’ve never seen trees?” I asked, standing up as the two women stepped away from the blanket.
“I wasn’t allowed to leave the tunnels. For my protection, of course,” Fallon said, shaking her head sadly as she stepped toward the woods.
“The first time we stepped out of the tunnels was the first time she felt the sun on her skin since I brought her to the Resistance as an infant,” Imelda said sadly. “I tried not to call too much attention to it, but it feels like it should have been an important moment. I worry I did her a disservice.”
“I wouldn’t have wanted people to watch me at that moment either. I think you did the right thing, for what little it's worth,” I said.
“It’s worth more than you think. You may not believe you know one another, but you do. The soul remembers, even when the mind does not.”
29
ESTRELLA
We rode through the day, and by the time we made our way to the wall of the Gods and the hot spring that awaited on the side of the mountain, my exhaustion was growing to a level I’d never known. I couldn’t even begin to believe the way the night before had tired me out so I was falling asleep atop Azra through the day.
Caldris continued to push me, giving me moments of privacy and urging me to try to summon his magic to my command. There wasn’t much energy left for me to give, but I did the best I could. Sensing the renewed urgency that came from him, I did as he asked. I pushed, summoning and stretching that muscle that he was determined for me to train.
Neither of us spoke again of what would be waiting for me when I stepped foot in Alfheimr, of what I might become. It hung between us, renewing the distance in our relationship in a way that hadn’t been there since the first days after I discovered the truth of his identity.
It seemed fitting, in a horribly karmic way, that I would finally accept Caldris as my mate only for something to tear us apart. In this case, the knowledge that I seemed likely to be the daughter of his abuser. I couldn’t imagine what it must have been like, what he must have thought, to know the very woman he hated more than anything was the mother of the mate he’d so desperately waited for. I didn’t know everything Mab had subjected him to. I couldn’t, when he was always so hesitant to speak of her. I recognized the signs of abuse, the determination to keep his suffering buried, because I felt the same hesitance when talking about Byron.
The wolves whimpered as we dismounted our horses, sitting back on their haunches with sad looks on their wicked face. They were like the scariest dogs I’d ever seen, yet as sweet as the fluffiest of puppies. When they weren’t devouring Caldris’s enemies, anyway.
“We’ll be back soon,” I murmured, patting Fenris as I walked past. I leaned down to touch my lips to the top of his head, immediately regretting the way his fur clung to my face. He chortled as if he thought I deserved it for leaving him behind.
Rude.
We passed the wall of the Gods, walking the path carved into the side of the mountain. Holt led the charge and we left most of the Wild Hunt below with the horses. The dead Caldris had summoned to guard us kept the Fae Marked from throwing themselves off the mountain side to escape through death. That would have been my inclination, at least, but it didn’t seem as if many of them even considered the possibility.
No matter what they would have done for their freedom, I couldn’t judge them for it. Not when it hadn’t been so long since I would have done the same. The thought of jumping off a cliff immediately brought Brann to the front of my mind—filling me with a sense of wonder. We were close to the place where I’d lost him, nearing that very cliff where Aramis had thrown him over the edge and left him for dead. I wished I’d demanded answers from him while I’d had him at my side. I knew regret, and what it was to have answers at my fingertips but be so afraid of them, I lost them to time and death itself.