My mouth dropped open, ready to confess all my secrets at the first word from him.
I clamped it shut in defiance. “You will not do that ever again,” I snapped, forcing the same tone to my voice.
Caldris’s eyes flashed in a moment of darkness, black bleeding through the bright blue of his stare. We didn’t know what I was; we didn’t know if whatever it was would ever stand as his equal or if I would remain lesser next to his status as a God.
His lips tipped into a smirk, confirming my suspicions that he would enjoy every second of the battle if I proved to be a worthy opponent in every way. Just as he enjoyed me when I threatened to bleed him, he would never desire a mate who always did as she was told.
“All right, my star. Then tell me what I want to know. I can feel it rattling around inside your head, but I want to hear you say the words,” he said, dropping his hands to his side. They clenched into fists, his frustration pulsating down the bond. He wanted to touch me, wanted to reach me, but the hall that separated us and the iron bars prevented it.
I raised my chin, severing our eye contact to look around the cell that would probably be my new home. Water ran down the stone in the hallway just outside, and iron bars surrounded me on all sides of the small square I occupied. Chains dangled from the ceiling in the hallway outside, and torture instruments hung from the walls. I swallowed.
“Some secrets are better left in the dark,” I whispered, raising my eyes to his dark stare once more.
“Show me,” he murmured, the command less forceful than the last. Instead of feeling like it would tear submission from me, it tickled the edges of my consciousness, playing the threads of our bond like a violin.
I closed my eyes, drawing in a deep breath as I drew the memory of what I’d seen, of the teeth and golden eyes, to the forefront of my mind. My father’s words struck me in the chest, haunting me from the form of someone who was not him. Someone who could not and would never be him.
No father of mine would have rowed away from me, leaving me lying on the top of the river. He’d have pulled me up and put me in the boat with him, finally reunited with me after death had separated us for years.
And my father did not possess the glowing golden eyes that sank into my soul and tormented me.
“The ferryman,” Caldris murmured softly, his gaze snagging mine as the memory ended.
I jolted back to my body, pulled from the immersive experience of witnessing it with Caldris for the first time.
“Why would the ferryman use the same phrases as my father?” I asked, swallowing as my mate’s stare turned confused.
“Your father said, ‘some secrets are better left in the dark’?” he asked, pushing to his feet.
He lifted a hand to his face as he paced around the cell. He limped lightly, as if his body was still repairing itself from whatever harm had been done to him before he’d found his way to me.
His hand brushed against the front of his throat, drawing my attention to the remnants of a white scar. I swallowed, knowing his face and his body by heart. That scar had not been there before we’d arrived on the shores of Alfheimr.
Rage simmered in my blood, forcing me to my feet so that I could pace around my own cell. He would bear the scar of that iron for the rest of his days. I glanced down at my forearm, at the unblemished skin that had glowed with golden light. I’d somehow known for a fact that the shadow whip had been dipped in iron, that it was the very tool Mab had used to scar Caldris’s back.
Yet my skin was free from scars.
I swallowed, looking back at my mate, who couldn’t seem to take his eyes off the unblemished parts of me. It wasn’t jealousy or bitterness that flowed to me through the bond, but curiosity and comfort.
Whatever I was didn’t matter to him. All that mattered was that it seemed I would be even harder to kill.
“He did,” I agreed finally. “It was a frequent saying of his when I grew too curious. When I’d wander toward the Veil as a girl or get into some kind of trouble meant only for boys.” I rolled my eyes. The phrase was meant to warn me away from exploring things I shouldn’t have any knowledge of, and somehow that mentality had carried through my life.
Even now, I felt guilt over my desire to know what blood flowed through my veins. Logically, I knew that the secret was better left untouched so that it couldn’t be used against me.
“His nickname for me was Little Bird,” I said, watching as Caldris froze, turning his head to face me suddenly.
“Interesting,” he said, nodding. I knew that Caldris and the ferryman knew one another, that they’d often worked in tandem to deliver souls to the Void.
“Is my father the ferryman somehow? I don’t understand how any of this is possible,” I asked, running my hand over the unblemished arm. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I didn’t belong in this place, that its very nature was wrong for me.
I came alive in the darkness, but something about the Court of Shadows made my skin crawl.
“The ferryman isn’t any one person. They are a collective entity composed of souls chosen by the Fates to be the keepers of the Void. The collective is meant to erase human experience and create an unbiased guardian with only the best interest of Fate in mind, creating something new. Their interference in not allowing you to be devoured by the lost spirit goes against everything they’re meant to be,” Caldris said.
“A lost spirit? Is that what that thing was?” I asked with a swallow. “With the teeth?”
“Yes. Every moment they spend lost in the River Styx without passing into the Void strips away more and more of what makes them human or Fae. They become hollow entities with no persona, desperate to devour the flesh that could make them whole again,” he explained.
“And what does that have to do with my father? The Fates chose him to become part of the ferryman?”
“He must have already had that connection to the Fates prior to your childhood, otherwise he would not have known that phrase,” Caldris said, his gaze falling to the flowing water spreading across the stone floor. It was just a trickle, a tiny stream at the center of the hall between us, but it was clear this was the part of a great and terrible court that lay forgotten and dismissed.
All who entered here were lost, much like those lost to Styx.
A snake slithered up the stream, navigating around the discarded torture instruments and stains from centuries of blood. He paused at the bars to my cell, rising onto his tail to look at me as he cocked his head to the side. Bending down, I squatted in front of him and held out a hand.
His delicate tongue snaked out, brushing against the skin of my fingers before he allowed himself to slither between the bars and curl up in my palm. I rose to stand, brushing the fingers of my free hand over the back of his head as his yellow eyes stared at me.
“It just had to be fucking snakes,” Caldris said, his face twisted in disgust.
Pursing my lips, I furrowed my brow at him but kept my eye trained on the helpless snake in front of me. “They’re just misunderstood, aren’t you?” I asked, smiling as he leaned into the pressure from my finger scratching the back of his… neck?
Did snakes have necks?
What was my life? I shook my head, watching as he slithered his way up over the back of my hand and up my arm. He continued over my shoulder, curling around my neck and tickling my skin as he made his way to the top of my head, using my braid to put himself there. He curled up in a circle on top of it, seeming quite cozy as Caldris stared at me.