Laying my palm flat against the side of his forearm, I watched in fascination as the serpent slithered off his skin and onto mine, solidifying and growing until the white creature had the density of a real snake, winding itself around my arm and nestling into the layers of my cloak for warmth.
“I’ve never heard of such a thing,” he said, swallowing as he tore his eyes off the snake, glancing over my shoulder. I turned to watch as Holt approached. He stared at the snake crafted from snow and ice as I lowered myself to the ground, watching as it dispersed back into the snow and ceased to exist entirely. “Can you do it with anything other than the dead and the winter? Are there any other threads that have made themselves available to you other than the powers that come from the Viniculum?” he asked, his brow furrowing.
“I hadn’t thought to look for them,” I admitted, because he’d told me to ignore the part of me that was too dangerous to explore. The part of me that was impossible to control and unleashed something like a monster.
“Try it now. I’ll pull you back if you wander too far into the darkness, min asteren,” Caelum said softly, reaching out to take my hand in his once more. I squeezed him back, nodding as I let my eyes close for a moment, shutting him out and the presence of Holt watching at my side, eerily silent.
He knew more than he wanted to admit, I suspected.
I opened my eyes, turning my gaze to the moon and stars in the sky—the twinkling of lights that ruined the complete darkness. Raising my hands, I waited for the golden threads to make themselves known to me.
They dropped from the moon, hanging from the stars and stretching toward me like the loose threads of a dress, straining to reach the ground. I grasped them in my hands, twining them around my fingers and my palms until I held a ball of them in loose fingers.
I closed my eyes, tightening those fingers into a fist and squeezing. When I opened my eyes, I watched as the light of the moon dimmed, disappearing beyond the clouds that suddenly formed. Darkness descended upon the clearing, leaving us in a void of all natural light. Only the fire at our sides illuminated the shock on Caldris’s face as his eyes met mine.
He stepped forward, tipping my face down and studying me curiously. “Your eyes, Little One,” he said, running a thumb beneath them.
“What’s wrong with them?” I asked, flinching back as Holt stepped up beside me. He, too, stared down into my face, his shock giving way to something that resembled horror.
“They look as if you’ve trapped the night sky within them. Like you hold the universe within you,” Caldris said, dropping his hand away. “What is she?”
His attention shifted to Holt, the friend who was even older than he, who had seen the rise and fall of Gods and men alike.
“I think we both know who can control the darkness and who has an affinity for snakes,” Holt said, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Mab doesn’t see golden threads,” Caldris protested, raising my hands. “She doesn’t touch them with her hands.” Even though he couldn’t see the way I’d wrapped the shimmering golden lines around my fingers, he held them as if they were sacred.
As if my hands were something to be revered, not feared.
“Perhaps Mab is more skilled and doesn’t need to use her hands in such a way. Would you know if she touched them with her mind? Estrella is a novice, and this is what she is capable of. Think of what centuries of knowledge and practice could do for a female like Mab,” he said, dropping his head low as he took a step back. “All the answers are right in front of you. You just do not want to admit the truth to yourself.”
“I refuse to accept that,” Caldris said, shaking his head and shrugging off his friend.
“Exactly!” Holt said, raising his arms in anger. “You cannot expect to see the truth if you have blinded yourself to it! Your mate is the reincarnation of Princess Maev. Do us all a favor and acknowledge it so you can prepare for what’s coming.”
“Until I know for certain that she is Maev, I cannot and will not accept that. If I do, then I must take her to Mab at once. Let us live in ambiguity for as long as we can, Huntsman. Or would you like to dance with your own truth so soon?” Caldris asked, tilting his gaze toward where Imelda had gone. I didn’t understand what truth he spoke of, but the weight of Holt’s admission was far more important than whatever secrets Holt was keeping.
If my name was Maev, then why did that feel so wrong?
37
CALDRIS
She left my side in the middle of the night. Her nighttime wanderings had become more and more common, the restlessness that consumed her driving her to the fire where she could stare at the stars in the heavens above. The riders of the Wild Hunt had always given her a wide berth, but after watching what she’d done to Octavian, I could just imagine how they would avoid being near her.
They’d treat her like something to be feared, when she’d only done what I already could. Mostly, anyway. The dead I raised had never been sentient. They’d never once spoken, in all my centuries of animating them to do my bidding. They’d never moved of their own free will, asking questions as if they had a mind.
She hadn’t brought him back to life, not with the fact that he was again nothing more than a pile of bones, but he hadn’t really been dead, either. He’d existed in the in-between, as if Estrella had reached out and grasped one of the souls wandering the spiritual plane.
I sat up, reaching over to grab my boots and tug them onto my feet. She hadn’t bothered to tie the flaps of the tent shut, leaving them to billow in the wind. She knew how pointless it would be, because I always followed shortly after her.
Where she went, I belonged—in this life or the next.
I stepped out of the tent, making my way toward the place where she lay on the blanket we’d occupied for a few short moments the night before. A deep, cloying sadness had clung to her in the aftermath of Octavian’s death, as if she couldn’t quite let go of Holt’s haunting accusations. He’d put a name to the very thing she already believed herself to be, giving her the name she might have had if she’d never been taken to Nothrek.
I refused to believe it. There was so much goodness in my mate, so much kindness and drive for what was just and fair. She couldn’t possibly be the child of the tyrannical queen who ruled through pain and suffering.
“Caldris,” Imelda said, stepping up in front of me. She halted my progress, stopping me from reaching my mate and the intense waves of grief that pulsed off of her.
“What is it?” I asked, crossing my arms over my chest. I couldn’t feel the cold winter air on the bare skin of my torso, but the intent expression on Imelda’s face made me uncomfortable. If she was ready to tell me that my mate was the daughter of Mab, I would lose control over the rage trapped within me.
“I need you to make me a promise,” she said, hesitating as she looked back toward the fire.
“I don’t make promises to anyone but her,” I said, nodding my head to my mate. Her arms were raised toward the sky, her hands and fingers dancing as if she was playing with the very threads that hung from the constellations above her head.
“Promise me you’ll protect her. Keep her safe; not only from harm but from those who would seek to use her for her power,” she said, and I raised an eyebrow at her when she paused. She had to have known that such a promise was a given. I would do anything to protect Estrella, at the cost of the very world itself. “But if you fail to do that, if Estrella is lost to the darkness, promise me you’ll help me end it.”