I raised my eyes, finally meeting his blue stare. The dirt seemed to cling to the Fae Marks on my palm and fingers, as if it could hide who and what I was.
“Faerie,” I answered, not knowing what else to call it. The magic that coursed through the dirt was natural, derived from the Primordials who’d crafted the world themselves.
Was it the Primordials who did not want me here, if that was the case? Or was it purely the result of their magic?
“You say that like it spoke to you,” he said, his brow furrowing.
I was sure he’d heard the whispers that danced in his head; and given that I, myself, questioned if they were real, I could just imagine how difficult it must be to hear them through the bond. Like a secret whispered through people, how much of what we sensed from one another was diluted or altered?
“It wasn’t words so much as a feeling,” I confirmed, because the word I’d put to it was my own. The only word to match the feeling it gave me. How could I possibly thrive in this place where I was a prisoner in a land that didn’t want me?
“What’s happening to me?“ I asked instead, tears pooling in my eyes. My nose stung with the threat of them, as if they could burn a path up my throat and scorch the world. The realization of all that had happened, all that I’d lost, overcame me.
I’d known being with Caldris meant sacrificing my freedom, but I hadn’t been expecting to be held within a literal cage.
There was sacrificing my freedom for love, and then there was having it stolen for no reason. This was the latter, and I wanted to do whatever it took to get back to the sacrifice.
“I don’t know,” my mate admitted. He didn’t shrug his shoulders. The movement would have been far too casual for the seriousness of our conversation, but the lack of commitment was there, nonetheless. “We’ll figure it out when we can. For now, we’re better off not having the answers. Mab can’t demand information we do not have.”
I nodded, trying not to let my curiosity get the best of me.
Some secrets are better left in the dark.
I could hear my father’s voice as clear as if it had been yesterday, the mantra of the ferryman a gentle hum in my soul. I didn’t understand why, and I’d have been lying if I wasn’t curious to see him again, to demand the answers I was due. It was a stark contrast to the girl who had always been content to stay oblivious, who felt the truth in that statement.
Where had that gotten me? What good had my willful ignorance done for me in the end?
I was done being kept in the dark about the things that concerned me. My birth was one mystery I was determined to solve the riddle of. Why was I protected? What was I that I had to be smuggled out of Faerie as an infant with Mab’s daughter?
Caldris smirked, rolling his eyes slightly as he stared at me across the void between us. Even if it was only a few paces, it felt like a chasm determined to keep us apart. To separate what Mab knew would be too powerful for her if we could only come together in the truest sense of the mate bond.
“You aren’t going to leave this one alone, are you?” he asked, shaking his head as if I was impossible. It was done with genuine amusement alongside his frustration, as if this was just further evidence of all the reasons he loved me.
I smiled back at him, silently shaking my head.
“I thought as much,” he said with a sigh.
Warmth pulsed down the bond, striking me straight in the chest. His feelings on the matter were clear, as if I couldn’t read them on his face. We’d always been able to communicate somehow, even without words, prior to the bond linking our minds together as one.
I twiddled my thumbs, dropping my gaze from him as I debated whether I wanted the answers to the question I would ask. Part of his mind was protected, the memory of exactly what they’d done to him fuzzy, as if he’d hidden it behind a veil so that I couldn’t access the fine details of his pain. Only the swift, unyielding agony he’d experienced came through, as if whatever wall he’d erected in his memory wasn’t enough to block it out and keep it from me.
He shifted his neck, the thin line of white that he hadn’t yet healed seeming to gleam in the dim light coming from the sconces on the wall.
“What did they do to you after they took me?”
He hesitated, his body freezing as he gave up on trying to roll the tense muscles that accompanied his injury. “You shouldn’t ask that question,” he said simply, his voice dropping deep with warning.
I pushed at the wall he’d created in his mind, probing along the edge of it with gentle fingers that couldn’t seem to get through. I didn’t dare to push too hard, not knowing what damage I might cause by being forceful.
“And yet I am anyway,” I said with a subtle smile. “I need to know what they did to you so that I know how much to make them suffer when I’m given the opportunity.”
He grinned in response, his love for my violence showing even in the darkness that surrounded us and the fate that seemed impossible for us to escape. “This hardly seems like an appropriate place for foreplay, my star,” he murmured gently, the slight teasing lilt to his voice confirming that whatever they’d done, he would survive it.
“I think the atmosphere is perfect. Everyone wants to fuck surrounded by rats,” I said, shaking my head from side to side. “No matter how hard you try, this is not a question I will let go. Tell me what they did.”
“Leave it alone, Estrella,” he snapped, his teeth clacking together with the force of his frustration.
“No,” I answered simply, pushing against the wall firmly enough that he turned his head to the side with a snarl.
“Would you just let me protect you from how ugly this world is?” he asked.
“To what end? You think Mab doesn’t intend to do the very same to me once she figures out what I am? She’ll torture me; and hiding me from the pain that awaits isn’t going to do either of us any good,” I said, rolling my eyes to the stone ceiling that hovered too close.
It wasn’t high, but it somehow felt even more claustrophobic than the tunnels the resistance favored had been. I supposed that was the point, and the closest comparison I could make was the kennels the Mist Guard kept their hounds in. It felt more like a prison than I’d ever experienced, and that said something when my entire life had been one.
“Stop it,” he said, shrugging me off and pushing back through our link.
“Tell. Me,” I ordered, my voice dropping low with the command. I felt it rumble in my chest before the words escaped, the bass of it seeming too deep to be natural.
Caldris froze. His eyes flew wide open as his lips parted, but he quickly clamped them shut. I tilted my head and watched his physical struggle play out, as if he’d been compelled to admit the truth to me.
“Tell me what they did,” I said, allowing my voice to resonate in that deep place. It was the same home to the darkness that lurked within me, to the void of nothing just waiting to consume me.
“Little One,” he said, his voice dropping into a deep groan as he reached up to his throat and wrapped a hand around it. His eyes narrowed as he realized I was already aware of what I’d done.
I’d already figured it out, even if I didn’t understand how it was possible.
“Tell. Me.” My voice was barely a whisper, hardly even a breath.