What Lurks Between the Fates (Of Flesh & Bone, #3)(13)

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.

“They cut off my hands,” he said, the words torn from him as he sputtered. “And then as I bled, they stabbed me through each of my arms and my throat with iron so that I was pinned to the ground and had to tear myself free.”

I swallowed hard. The haunting image of his memory surged free from his walls and struck me straight in the chest. The pain that hit me was beyond imagining, tearing me in two in a way I’d only ever experienced when I’d been remade when I touched Alfheimr.

The image of him pulling on his arm until the blades cut through him and his flesh hung off his body in ribbons would never be erased from my mind. I swallowed, holding my head in my hands as I watched him yank the knife from his throat, struggling to get to his feet. He couldn’t do it, his body too weighed down by the iron weapons that had been used to immobilize him. He fought his way to his hands and knees, his bones protruding from his wounds as blood poured out of the hole in his throat that refused to heal.

He slipped in his own blood as he crawled across the snow, staining the ground red as he went.

“I would have dragged my broken body across the snow until I reached you,” Caldris said, forcing me to remove the hands from my face and meet his stare. Both empathy and fury lurked in his eyes, somehow a mix of softness and rage coming through our bond. I couldn’t even blame him.

What I’d done was a violation, and even after realizing what was happening, I’d continued on, anyway.

I clamped my mouth shut, swallowing the apology that tried to make its way up my throat. If the roles had been reversed, he wouldn’t have apologized for doing it to me.

But neither of us had expected for me to have that kind of power over him, and I didn’t know where that left us. What could I be that would be more powerful than a God?

The son of two Gods. The grandchild of the Primordials. He was one of the only second-generation Gods in existence, purely because he was so powerful that none could possibly compare.

“We need to set boundaries,” he said, swallowing as he realized how unfair that was.

“Funny that when I use it against you, it is time for boundaries, but when you do it, it’s for my own good,” I said, raising an eyebrow and trying to highlight his ridiculous double standards.