Adelphia stepped away from the log, coming up beside me as she reached into the bag strapped across her shoulder. She pulled the skull free, the gleaming off-white of the bone catching the light from the sun filtering down through the canopy of trees and reflecting off the snow.
I reached down, allowing my mate to hold my hips steady. “Jonab,” I said, feeling Caldris’s body go still at the mention of the God of Changing Seasons. He’d been killed during the First Fae War between the Seelie and Unseelie Courts, when Mab fought against her brother Rheaghan.
Caldris looked down at the woman standing beside the horse, holding the reins in one hand so that he could take the skull from me. He stared at it as if he’d never seen a skull before; as if it was as foreign to the God of the Dead as it might have been to the Goddess of Light.
“It has been passed down through generations of my family for centuries,” Adelphia said, turning her stare to me so suddenly that my breath caught. Something lingered in that stare that I hadn’t seen before, something ancient and knowing. “Every year, without fail, we’ve used it on the night of Samhain to draw the Fae souls who may have been trapped inside human vessels when the witches erected the Veil. When the child was stolen from the tunnels, a group of our ancestors set out to find her, seeking to protect her through the lifetimes until her final life when the Veil would fall.”
“When the Veil would fall?” I asked, turning my stare to Imelda who watched as realization dawned on her face. I’d known it was destined to fall; it had only been meant to be temporary. Imelda had said as much, but even still…
“I did not possess enough of the magic of my ancestors to tear it down myself. The magic of my mother has been lost to time, but with all of us combined, we were able to weaken it. We were able to pour what remained of our magic into you, Estrella. You and your mate did the rest,” she said with a sad smile, leaving the skull in our possession as I stared down at it.
“I touched the Veil,” I whispered, the words coming from the deepest recesses of my mind. That day had been pure chaos; it had plunged the world into the darkness.
In the moments before the Veil fell, I’d had one half of my soul partway to the Void, and the other had reached out to the Veil itself, stroking the magic for the briefest of moments. Caldris had been on the other side, the impossibility of blue eyes shining back at me as I’d let my eyes drift closed and welcomed my true death.
“You’re a witch?” I asked, turning my confused stare to Adelphia. She’d disappeared, the rest of her group fading along with her as if they blended into the trees themselves.
“She’s not a witch,” Imelda said, stepping forward to take Jonab’s skull from Caldris. She tucked it into her own pack, cradling it gently as if it was sacred to her. “She’s the child of a witch and a human. They all are.”
“Where are the rest of the Lunar Witches, Imelda?” I asked, studying her as she sank her teeth into her dark bottom lip.
“They left. Looking for you,” Imelda admitted with a sad smile. “I remained to guard Fallon through her lives and to seek her out each time she was born. We thought she would be safe within the tunnels, but you were out in the open, exposed to whatever may come for you. They never returned from their search.”
I tried not to let the knowledge that my life had been responsible for the loss of so many sink deep inside me. It hadn’t been my choice to leave the Resistance.
At least I didn’t think it had.
We rode on through the main streets of the village. The homes were empty as we passed, and it was obvious that whatever had happened to my mother, she wasn’t living in the shack we’d called home. My heart sank as we rode past.
“Is that your home?” Caldris asked, and something in his voice was tight. He knew logically that I’d come from nothing, but that meant something very different in the abstract than seeing it for himself.
“It is,” I said, pointing a finger to the window I’d snuck out of on far too many nights. “Brann always threatened to bar the window shut, but he couldn’t afford the iron.” A bitter laugh came up from my throat, knowing he’d probably avoided the iron because of my heritage.
Because of what he’d known about me, never sharing it.
“Your mother can come with us,” he said, and he nodded to Aramis. “Search the house. Kindly.”
“She’s not there,” I said, and I could feel it in my bones. This house hadn’t been occupied since Brann and I left, and why would it have been? She wouldn’t have been able to get herself here in her chair. “She uses a wheeled chair to get around. Her legs aren’t strong enough to support her for long, not since she had me.”
“Humans were not meant to bear Fae children,” Caldris said, and the statement made me turn a curious stare toward Fallon. I’d seen who I had to presume were her parents, and they’d been fine at a glance. “Are you certain you don’t want to go in? To take one last look?”
I shook my head. The last thing I wanted was to be reminded of the family I would probably never see again. I’d probably never know what had become of my mother, and my brother was already gone.
There was nothing left in that house but the pain of memories better left in the past, and it wouldn’t give me the answers I sought about my mother. Even if it did by some miracle, what good would it do me? She never would have left that house of her own free will.
We rode on as Aramis emerged from the dwelling, wordlessly confirming what I’d already known. My mother was gone. We passed the gallows, passed the village proper and Mistfell Manor. All bore the signs of war; all the homes were shuttered and appeared empty, as if the entire town had simply disappeared without a trace.
The air changed as we approached the empty gardens where I’d spent the majority of my life toiling, caring for the plants held within it and burdened with the task of feeding the Kingdom and the Court in Ineburn City. The scent of magic filled the air, and the thick, salty fluid of the sea was suffocating as we approached.
In all the times I’d met the ocean before, never had I felt like I would drown in it before I even touched the water. “Stay here,” Caldris instructed, lowering himself from Azra. He unsheathed his sword, striding forward as the army of the dead surrounded us. The Fae Marked remained in the carts, slumping low and practically lying down to avoid being seen. The girl from the day before still hadn’t awoken, and I looked down at her sleeping face as Fallon sat with her.
The Wild Hunt and Imelda followed after Caldris, stepping toward the boundary at the edge of the gardens. The wolves and hounds remained with us, forming a protective circle around the army of the dead as we hid in the streets of the village and beneath the copse of trees that hung over the buildings lining the road.
Fallon glanced at me as I dismounted Azra. Metal clashed through the fading light in the distance, the sky darkening above our heads far too quickly to be natural. I peered around the edge of the buildings, watching as a force of the Mist Guard emerged from the barracks to fight one last stand and keep us from crossing over the boundary.
There were so many of them—far more than I’d ever realized. They had to be reinforcements sent by the King in Ineburn City, and they wielded iron blades and traps against the Wild Hunt as Fallon and I watched on helplessly.