“If you are not strong enough to free yourself from this bond that cripples you, then I will do it for you, Little Mouse,” Mab said, sneering as Estrella turned her gaze away from her dying mate. The hatred written into the lines of her face promised retribution; it promisedviolence and vengeance and all the things that would plunge Alfheimr into war. I knew without a doubt that if Estrella lost Caldris, I would lose her. Even before she followed after him in mere moments, her soul would fray in ways that would never be fixed. She would destroy the entire world, burn it all to the ground if it meant tearing Mab’s head from her shoulders. Her eyes glowed with golden light, her magic pulsing from within her.
Mab had the intelligence to stagger back half a step, trying to disguise her fear over the monster she’d so foolishly unleashed. Her ownership over Caldris had been the one thing controlling Estrella, had been the one piece that kept her from destruction.
Mab realized her folly as she summoned her daemon to guard her, watching as the creature who could siphon Estrella’s magic took up guard beside the Queen who had summoned him from Hel.
Mab’s soldiers grabbed Caldris by the legs, attempting to drag his limp form out of Estrella’s grip. She held tight with one hand, making them eye her warily as she managed to cling to him. It should have been impossible, the strength she asserted against two men with a single hand to cling to her lost love.
“She’s going to kill us all,” I said, warning Etan of the coming danger. If Caldris was lost to us, Estrella’s rage simmered beneath the surface—ready to explode into the cove with the violence of a thousand storms.
Etan swallowed with a nod, holding my gaze with something far too intimate in his expression. He reached up to cup my cheek, releasing his hold from my chest with that one arm to give me affection in what could very well be our final moments. “No. We’ll have plenty of time to fight yet,” he said, earning a disgruntled chuckle from me. He would have absolutely no control over Estrella. Her hands fisted at her sides, her fingers twining around the frayed edges of the golden thread of their bond. I couldn’t see it, but the phantom magic of it touched my teardrop mark, the feeling pulsing down our bond as she clung to Caldris.
Her brow knit, furrowing to mimic the deep scowl that toyed with her mouth as her nostrils flared. Her head tilted to the side as she watched Mab’s growing concern, that promise of violence becoming a deep, slithering thing that we all felt in the cove alongside us, until it was a tangible creature of its own.
Her face relaxed so suddenly my heart stopped, her hand releasing its iron grip on the thread and splaying across Caldris’s chest for a brief moment as she felt something I couldn’t see. His eyes flungopen, the piercing blue of frost lost to the golden light of fate that mirrored Estrella’s gaze. Mab gasped, and the daemon swung his sword toward the impending threat.
Theimpossiblethreat that came with the realization that Estrella had healed a heart stabbed with iron. That she’d kept her mate from the very clutches of the afterlife.
There would be consequences for robbing the Void of the life it was owed, I knew. I knew and didn’t care, because it meant that Estrella was whole, that those magical eyes shone with relief.
Estrella realized the intended path of the daemon’s blade, as she laid herself over his body, using her own flesh to shield the mate she’d only just saved. I screamed my warning, her name lost to the ringing in my ears as the wind of the daemon’s strike moved the hair on Estrella’s neck.
No.
Etan tightened his grip as I tried to move to her, to get in the way of the death calling her name this time. I couldn’t reach her, couldn’t protect her from what I knew would be fatal.…
Caldris reached up, his arm moving faster than a lightning strike arcing through the sky. He caught the daemon’s blade in his bare hand, stopping it with an explosion of golden light that tore through the cavern and made the tree branches rattle in the woods beside the beach. Sand blew into my face, stinging my eyes as Etan turned me in his grip, shoving my face into his tunic and shielding me as he rounded his body over mine. The sound of something striking the ground was the first to permeate the buzzing haze, like the explosion of light had damaged my ear drums.
I pulled my face out of Etan’s chest, blinking up at him with wide, shocked eyes that I suspected mirrored his. His russet-brown gaze roamed over my face, inspecting me for injury in a way I couldn’t reconcile. His lips moved, but no sound came as I shook my head at him and reached up a hand to touch my ear.
My fingers came away wet, and I brought them forward to stare down at the blood that trickled down the sides of my neck from whatever damage I’d sustained. The feeling of my body healing itself was one I would never grow used to, the flesh moving within my ears as my body fought to repair the damage caused by Caldris’s outburst.
I spun as hearing returned slowly, trickling in through the silence. Caldris had covered Estrella with his body, shielding her from any further harm as he laid her out on top of the sand. She stared upat him in shock, unable to figure out what she’d done to her mate. What she’d made him into by giving him her blood. He did not smile as he inspected her for injury, his face strangely unfeeling as he got to his feet over her. The daemon was nowhere to be found, as if he’d simply vanished into thin air while Etan surrounded me. Estrella scrambled to her feet as the guards charged Caldris, attempting to contain the threat to the Queen they were all forced to serve.
Caldris reached out a hand, his shadows no longer dark. Instead of black tendrils, they glowed with Estrella’s golden light as he sent them sweeping toward those who advanced upon them. They wrapped themselves around the guards’ throats, squeezing as the other royals stepped back away from the fray. Etan tightened his grip, lifting me off my feet as he too backed away from the spectacle.
“No!” I screamed, thrashing my legs to fight against his grip. I wouldn’t leave them to fight this alone, would at the very least bear witness to what my mother did to two of the people I loved more than anything. Estrella was part of me, a part I would never be able to tear from my soul. The crescent moon on my hand that marked us as one and the same seemed to pulse as she glanced up, meeting my stare with a soft smile that spoke of exactly what she knew would happen here. She already knew that she would never walk away from this cove, that there was no possibility in this world that Mab allowed both of them to remain free.
Her face was resigned as she mouthed to me, and I would have sworn I heard her sad voice break through the chaos. “Go,” she said, ignoring my head shake to look at Etan and study the way he held me. She pursed her lips, nodding to him with a slight motion that he seemed to recognize as her expectation to protect me.
She would haunt him in the afterlife if he didn’t.
Estrella’s attention shifted to Mab as she raised a single hand. Her face tipped to the side as Mab held Estrella’s stare, watching as the Queen’s gaze fell to the already healed wound on Estrella’s wrist. The blood that stained her skin shimmered with gold, with the distinct sign of the Primordials that Estrella had fought to keep secret in the face of Mab’s suspicion. What she proposed was impossible, and yet…
There was no denying what Estrella was capable of.
Caldris finished with the guards, turning his attention to the Queen who had enslaved him as a weapon for all those years. Who had allowed her people to violate him in the greatest way, robbing him of autonomy over his own person.
Mab squeezed her hand as Etan backed me away slowly, attempting to avoid drawing attention to us and our retreat. Caldris grimaced but continued on through the pain, pushing through her control on him even as his chest stilled and stopped heaving with breath. Estrella struggled in turn, her face pinching with agony that I knew existed only in her heart. Their bond was incomplete, his pain only a shadow of what it would be had they been able to accept it. Caldris dropped to his knees, clutching his chest as his eyes flashed back and forth between blue and gold.
“Stop!” Estrella begged, squeezing her eyes closed. She was trapped, desperate to save her mate, and I knew what she would do to save him, knew the sacrifice she would make. I couldn’t fault her for it, knowing I would have done nothing less to saveher. “Name your price.”
“My star,” Caldris wheezed, reaching toward her with his free hand. He would rather see both of them dead than see her enslaved to Mab as so many others had been, than see his one love turned into a brutal weapon and know the guilt she wouldn’t be able to escape for an eternity.
My mother grinned, clearly pleased with the turn of events. This may not have been what she’d intended when she set forth with this task, but she was positively gleeful about it nonetheless. Meanwhile, my heart felt like it was being torn in two, knowing that there wasnothingI could do to help her without any magic or control over it. My helplessness was a prison all its own, leaving me shaking with the feeling that I might come out of my skin. That something within me wanted toburn.
Mab tossed her head back and laughed, the sound filling the cavern. “We both know there is only one thing I want from you, Little Mouse,” she said, stepping closer slowly. She only stopped when she stood before Estrella, pressing the tip of the blade into the skin above her heart.
“Estrella, NO!” Caldris screamed, the agony of that yell making the hair on my arms rise.
