I couldn’t afford to make that mistake again.
We rounded the top of the path, the hot spring coming into view. I watched eyes widen as they took in the sight of the statues of the Gods in intimate positions, their reactions so like what I’d probably expressed the first time I’d seen them.
We were retracing our steps, making our way back to the boundary. I wished I could say it was like taking a walk down memory lane—a stroll through the evolution of our relationship. Instead, it felt like it had been another lifetime with the new tension thrumming through us.
I didn’t know what to make of it, or what to do about it.
“The dead will supervise as you bathe, to give you some privacy,” Holt said, sweeping a hand to point out the army of the corpses who had lined the edges of the landing. They blocked the pathway back to where the horses and the Wild Hunt waited below, forming a line as if they needed that connection to relay information.
“You can wait and we’ll bathe when they’re done,” Caldris said, taking my hand and guiding me back toward the mountain path as Holt settled onto a rock at the edge, facing away from the hot spring itself.
“Not unless you’d like my riders to see her in the nude,” Holt called, not bothering to turn around as he delivered the message. “We cannot afford to delay just so the two of you can have a fun romp in the spring. She either bathes with the women or she bathes with the men, there is no other option.”
“Have I told you how much I despise you lately?” I asked, narrowing my eyes into a glare that felt like it dripped venom. Even if he couldn’t see it, I wanted nothing more than to solidify that glare until phantom talons clawed down his back.
He twitched, rolling his shoulders as he spun to look at me with a shocked expression. I swallowed, keeping my face neutral in an attempt to disguise my guilt.
Had that…？
Nope. We were not going there.
“She has a point,” Caldris grunted, bending down to kiss my forehead. He made his way toward the path that curved down to the forest floor below, looking back over at us. “If anything happens to her, you’ll find your head on a spike when I’m finished with you.”
“Please refrain. Regrowing a head is quite time-consuming,” Holt called back, his tone dry. Caldris glared one last time before he disappeared around the corner, and I felt his annoyance course down the bond. He didn’t want to leave me; he worried about leaving me. But we all knew it was important we got to Alfheimr as quickly as possible, especially if we were trying to avoid Mab’s notice and slip into Catancia first.
“How are we supposed to take our clothes off?” one of the women asked, glaring into Holt’s back as she clanked the chains of her iron shackles together to prove her point.
He raised a hand, waving it through the air in a quick flick. The chains connecting the shackles vanished. “You have precisely one minute to get your clothes off. The chains will reappear when that time comes. I suggest you hurry,” he said when he didn’t hear anyone moving. I bolted into action, shrugging off my cloak as the other Fae Marked did the same. Imelda and Fallon weren’t shackled, but they stripped off their clothes quickly all the same, joining in the fray to get into the warmth of the water. Adelphia and the others moved more leisurely, and I got the sense they didn’t rush for anyone or anything.
Nobody wanted to be standing bare ass naked in the freezing cold. The moment I stripped off my tunic and the cold air touched my breasts, I wanted to shriek. My nipples would fall off before long. I shoved my pants down and stripped off my boots and socks, stepping down into the water as the others finished stripping.
I’d long since passed the point of caring that my body was on display for people who hated me. After I’d allowed a roomful of men and women to watch Caelum fuck me while we washed away the blood of a cave beast, being nude in front of a handful of women seemed insignificant.
Some of the other women stepped in behind me, their glares settling on my face but easing as the pleasure of the warm water touched their skin and sluiced over them, sinking into them and warming the insides that often felt as if they would never know warmth again.
We’d been fortunate enough that the snow was minimal; it wasn’t deep on the ground, and when it did actively snow, it was a light flurry instead of a blizzard. But those too would come, and we were risking the onset extreme weather with every moment we delayed.
The shackles reappeared. I sank as low into the water as I could, turning my back to the other Fae Marked as I reached up onto the stone ledge to grasp one of the cloths the dead had laid out for us to use to wash. I didn’t allow myself to think about what my life had come to—corpses setting out my bathing linens. There wasn’t any soap, but the warm water would do the trick to some extent.
My fingers wrapped around the cloth, dipping it into the water to get it wet as I raised it to touch my face. I saw Fallon and Imelda moving toward me from the corner of my eye, and I had the briefest moment of gratitude that they would make me feel less alone in a spring full of strangers.
Two hands touched each of my shoulders, pressing down firmly. There was no time to scream. No time to make a sound before I plunged beneath the surface. Water filled my lungs as I tried anyway. The strangled sound was distorted as the water surrounded me. I thrashed, swinging my arms as one of the people who’d touched me swept my legs out from under me.
I plunged deeper, so low their feet came down atop my back to hold me beneath the surface. I flailed, grabbing onto the ankles of one of those close enough. The water tinted pink as I dug my nails into their bare skin, clawing through their flesh in my struggle to survive.
Still they didn’t let me up, keeping me pinned to the stone and waiting for my death. With the blood rushing into my head, the water burning in my lungs, and my breath stolen from me, my head spun.
I tried to grasp Caldris’s power of winter, tried to find a way to freeze some of the water, but nothing came to me. Nothing responded to my dire need in my panic.
I couldn’t focus, couldn’t feel the cold when I was on fire.
Reaching out with the other part of my bond, I sank into it and wrapped that golden string of fate around my hand. Tugging it toward me, I allowed my panic to flow through me and reach out toward Caldris. I just hoped he was close enough, but I knew I didn’t have time.
I’d lost too much air already, and clinging to the very last bit in my lungs would only do so much good.
I tugged on our bond again, following it to the army of the dead waiting on the other side. They felt strange, like empty vessels without a soul. Wrong on a level I couldn’t explain. I hated touching them, hated feeling their stain upon me.
But I grabbed one, wrapping it in the golden thread of our bond that connected us, visualizing myself yanking it into the water.
Above the surface, someone screamed, the sound muted by the water making my lungs burn. Consciousness slipped away, but I held onto that bond, focusing on it and refusing to release it.
I would bury them all.
My eyes drifted closed, cutting off reality as it all went black.
30
ESTRELLA
There was no twinkle of starlight around me. Only the depths of an inky gloom the likes of which I’d never known. There was no trickle of sunlight, no light of a campfire. I sat up, spinning to look behind me as my hands scraped over the smooth surface beneath me. Even that had no substance, as if crafted from the clouds in the sky, and yet I never fell through to plummet back to the ground below me.