What Lurks Between the Fates (Of Flesh & Bone, #3)(7)
“Caelum,” I murmured, fighting back the choked sob that wanted to emerge at the sight of him.
He was alive, even if he was not well. The circles under his eyes were deeper than I thought possible, his skin lackluster, as if he were ill.
The hand at my stomach was covered in dried blood, and his tunic and armor were adorned with holes all the way up his arms.
“I’m here now, my star.”
“What did they do to you?” I asked, wincing when the whip cracked again. Caldris’s body jolted when it collided with his back, but he didn’t allow the strike to push me forward or bring me harm.
He didn’t answer, only taking his eyes off mine when the whipping stopped. He reached above my head, risking the burn of iron to unshackle me and helping me get my footing when my body sagged.
“You know I don’t take kindly to anyone ruining my fun, Caldris,” Mab’s deep, empty voice said. The tone of her words echoed through the cavernous room as Caldris reached up to loose my second hand. I wavered in his grasp, struggling to find my footing after being hung over the pit for the countless hours I’d spent unconscious.
As soon as I was steady on my feet, Caldris reached up to the clasp at the top of his neck, shucking off his leather and armor without a word. The armor fell first, hanging off his body until it clacked dramatically against the stone of the floor.
“You would give me your own flesh to protect hers?” Mab asked as I spun in front of my mate. Putting the iron spike at my back and leaning into his body, I stilled his hand as it went to the buttons fastening the leather he wore atop his tunic. “It is always such a shame to ruin the skin that so many would appreciate if given the chance.”
“No,” I protested, shaking my head as he tried to shake off my grip.
“This is nothing compared to the misery I would endure if it meant you would never know pain again, min asteren,” he murmured, guiding my hand away and slowly unfastening the buttons.
I glanced at where Mab stood, staring at her nails and toying with the shadows extending from her hands. Her eyes connected with mine, a tiny smirk gracing her blood-red lips as if she knew as well as I did that watching my mate endure my fate was worse than if I suffered it myself.
I closed my eyes, imagining that bedroom window held tight against the cold lurking outside. Reaching up with trembling fingers and preparing myself for the unique sense of wholeness that came with being connected to Caldris, I flipped the clasp open. A gust of wind blew them open, surging into my lungs and burning me from the inside out with the warmth of the hearth in winter.
Caldris’s eyes glowed with a frosty blue, a surge of gold tinting the edges of his irises for a moment before the light faded from them and I wondered if I’d imagined the entire thing. So caught in the wave of feelings coursing through me, I brushed the unfastened leather off his shoulders until it fell to the floor and pulled his tunic free from his trousers, shimmying it up his body until I could pull it free from his head and drop it to the floor while I looked around his form and met Mab’s dark stare.
I raised a tentative hand to grasp the iron shackles above our heads. Lifting one of his hands to them, I ignored the searing of both our flesh as I clanked it closed around his wrist. I repeated it with the other wrist, touching my ruined skin to his cheek gently as he bowed his forehead toward mine, his eyes fluttering closed as he let out a shuddering breath.
“Until chaos reigns,” I whispered.
He flung his eyes open the moment he sensed my intention coursing down the bond, no longer hidden in the deepest recesses of my mind. “My star,” he said, shaking his head as he struggled against the shackles holding him prisoner.
I sensed Mab’s whip of shadows preparing, gathering at her side as she allowed one of her minions to sprinkle it with iron dust, as clearly as if it had been an extension of me. I smiled sadly for my mate, knowing he would have given anything to prevent me from taking his pain.
He’d suffered long enough. He’d been tortured for longer than I remembered existing, feeling me and never having me while this was his reality.
The whip cracked as I stepped around his tense form. His body shifted as he tried to prevent me from moving into the path of harm. Mab’s court cheered as the whip cracked through the air, eagerly waiting for the agony that would follow when the shadows struck against Caldris’s skin.
I turned my face to the side as I blocked it with one arm, thrusting the other up above my head to catch the blow. The whip wrapped around my forearm, searing into my skin and imbedding itself there as it sank through my flesh. I pulled my face away from the hand that had sheltered me, watching my flesh melt as the iron burned me. My bones throbbed, but I turned my glare to Mab and forced myself to wrap the shadows around my hand.
It burned its way through me, but I grabbed it with a firm grip, anyway. Melding it into my body, accepting it as part of me until we forced it out from the valley it created in my skin. Mab narrowed her eyes as I wrapped my fingers around her whip, then glanced at the court who had suddenly gone silent.
I screamed through the pain, raising my arm up even higher and then forcing it down toward the floor. The whip slammed against the floor, cracking the stone in a distinctive path toward Mab. It moved as if in slow motion, echoing the movement of the whip as Mab’s weapon came back toward her.
The whip left her hand, pulled from her grasp with the force of my fury. The very tail end of it sliced her cheek in an upward swing before it dissolved into nothing. It vanished in a slow arc toward me; the very thing that seared my skin disappeared without a master to empower it. My skin hung in ruined tatters, gaping and open where the shadows had once filled it.