A payment for her magic, rather than an ingredient. She sucked her finger into her mouth as she continued grinding the herbs. “She’ll live. She’d heal faster if I had turmeric,” she answered, and I looked around the woods surrounding us. The odds of finding the plants that grew the tunnel-shaped flowers would be nonexistent with the cold surrounding us. Even the bigger, stronger plants were preparing for the winter. The roots would survive to see the next year, but the plant itself would have withered and died already.
I stood anyway, prepared to go in search of the plant. If anyone had any chance of recognizing it in the woods, it would be me. Imelda placed a hand on my arm, pulling me back down as she shook her head. “It would be a waste of time,” she said sadly, dipping her fingers into the poultice and carefully applying it to the fresh wounds on the girl’s back.
Her back twitched, a whimper escaping her as I moved toward her head. I sat next to her, making sure she had soft cloth under her cheek and running tender fingers through her hair. Trying to offer her a touch of kindness in the moments of pain when Imelda did what needed to be done.
“She’ll need another dress,” I said to Caldris as he watched from beside the cart. I didn’t know that we had any spare clothes we could give her. Holt shrugged out of his cloak at the corner of my eye, draping the fur-lined warmth of it over his forearm. His chest was entirely bare without it, his pale gray skin gleaming in the sunlight that trickled through his corporeal form.
“It will have to do for now. We’ll find her something when we reach Mistfell,” he said, stepping forward and laying the cloak across the railing on the edge of the cart. Fallon picked it up, draping it over the girl’s legs to offer her both warmth and privacy from prying eyes.
Imelda didn’t glance up from her task, her attention fixed solely on the girl and her wounds, but the Huntsman watched her intently, observing her motions and the calm set to her features with something that felt like admiration. Imelda’s fingers paused, lingering just off the girl’s skin as if she could feel his attention fixed on her face.
She turned her eyes up to look at him, never shifting her face toward him as their gazes connected. Something passed between them, a brief moment of understanding when Imelda’s chest filled with air and she never released it. I felt like an intruder on a moment that should have been private as my eyes darted back and forth between them.
Finally, Imelda turned her attention back to the girl’s wounds, the flush staining her cheeks the only sign that anything had happened. Holt clenched his jaw, turning and storming off to help with the assembly of the tents.
“What was that?” I asked, staring at the side of her face.
“Nothing. That was nothing at all,” she said, her voice a low murmur. I wasn’t certain if she was trying to convince herself or me, but it was clear there was more to the story than Fallon and I knew.
I ran my fingers through the girl’s hair, wishing I could do more than offer her comfort as she slept, and that she would have a familiar face to wake up to, instead of the fear that would come from being surrounded by strangers and the Wild Hunt.
“Look at you pretending you care about what happens to her,” Jensen said, the sneer tipping the unruined side of his mouth up. He bared his teeth as I watched, that monster trapped within me coiling and tensing her body.
I slid away from the girl’s head as I stood, lowering myself down from the cart. “He isn’t worth your energy,” Imelda said, never taking her eyes off the girl’s back as she worked.
I stalked forward, my gaze snagged on Jensen and the gleaming golden thread that pulsed through the center of his filmy, ghostly figure. His sneer hardened into a glare as I approached, the condescending expression on his face only fueling my determination.
“What are you going to do? Glare at me? I’m already dead, you dumb bitch,” he taunted, a laugh making his chest shake.
I stepped forward, stopping when I was only a breath from him and the energy of his soul kissed my skin. Raising a single hand, I grasped him by the front of the throat. His entire frame jolted when my touch landed and I squeezed against what would have been the muscles of his neck if he’d been alive. He wheezed, his chest rattling when I pinched my fingers together. My right hand reached into the transparent mass of his chest, grasping the golden threads that ran from his head to his feet.
Catching them with my fingers, I yanked them free from his ethereal body. “Estrella,” he gasped, staring down at me as I felt the coldness within me rush forth. The darkness within me filled my eyes, taking me back to the place where the monster had control.
She controlled my movements as I released his throat, pinching the top of a thread where it pulled taut away from his body. I held an end in each hand, pulling them in opposite directions until I felt the exact moment the threads snapped, cleaving his soul in two as the ruined threads fell to the ground. The golden light from them faded to gray as they fell, landing upon the snow.
A look of shock filled Jensen’s face as he looked down at his feet. They melted away, fading from view, caught in the wind that blew though the clearing in the woods. Bit by bit, the wind took what remained of his essence and scattered it across the ground.
His ruined face faded from view last, leaving me to stare at Caldris where he stood on the other side of what was now an empty space between us. He looked down at the gray threads on the ground, stepping forward as he lifted one touched the fine length of it. “Threads,” he said, and I realized that he could see them. He could see the gray, destroyed threads that had been Jensen’s tether to this world. “Where is he? Where did you send him?”
“He’s no longer here. Isn’t that all that matters?” I asked, staring back at the mate who looked at me as if I was both a monster and a savior in a single breath. As if he himself couldn’t tell the difference between the two.
In truth, neither could I.
42
ESTRELLA
The forest surrounding us became familiar, the same paths I’d walked regularly in the lifetime I’d spent in this village. All the years, I’d wandered in the woods at night, drawn to the Veil I wasn’t supposed to stray too close to; They’d all led me to Caldris, and to the moment we met in the barn that night, even without me knowing fate had wrapped its golden threads around us centuries before.
Caldris looked around warily. I imagined him trying to see the forest through my eyes and to think of how they must have felt to a young girl who was stifled by the village and the Lord determined to force her into a mold that didn’t fit.
I would never be the Lady of the Manor. I would never again be docile and complicit in my own suffering; not when I’d once chosen death over that fate already.
When the end of my time came, I would walk willingly into the Void to await the judgment of The Father and The Mother. Holding my head high in the knowledge that, come whatever may, my choices had led me to this path.
Caldris’s arms tightened around me as we rode with the Wild Hunt and the procession of his dead army at our backs. I stretched out an arm to point at a clearing to the side of us. The snow fluffed against the ground as I reached out with my senses to tickle those golden threads that floated off of it. Adelphia stepped out of the procession, moving to lay a hand on the log where we’d all sat that day that seemed so far away. “This is where we celebrated Samhain,” I said, turning to look at Caldris over my shoulder.