What Lurks Between the Fates (Of Flesh & Bone, #3)(87)

I glared at her as Caldris led me away, seeming to warn me to fight that battle another day. Blood dripped off me as I walked, staining the dirt and stone beneath us as we made our way back to my rooms.

Mine. The Minotaur’s. It hardly mattered now.

“He called me sweet blood. Said it had been a long time since he’d tasted one,” I said, my words a whisper between us. I didn’t dare speak louder, dreading the thought of one of Mab’s spies hearing our interaction. Caldris stilled, glancing back at the Minotaur head upon the ground as if it could offer more explanation. “What does that mean?”

“I don’t know,” Caldris said, but as his stare landed upon mine, I knew we were both thinking of what had happened when he’d taken my blood. We hadn’t dared to allow it again, worrying about the repercussions of such a thing.

His reaction had surprised him, and I had to imagine it was more intense than a normal Fae male consuming the blood of his mate for the first time.

The Minotaur had wanted more, too.

I stared down at the blood on my hands, raising them in the light cast by the twin moons through the window at my side in the hallways. The blood shimmered with the faintest golden light as I moved my hands back and forth. I doubted anyone would notice, doubted it was obvious enough for anyone to see unless they looked for it, but I glanced back at the Labyrinth nervously, anyway.

“Mab can’t know,” Caldris whispered.

I nodded. He wrapped me in his arms, and we hurried to my room and the bath Nila would draw for me.

We needed to wash the evidence away, rid me of any sign that my blood was different. If drinking it did something, if there was something to be gained from it, she would use it to become more powerful.

And I would die before I allowed that to happen.

“Caldris,” I started, wincing back from the glare he aimed at me as we came to a stop outside the door to my chambers.

“Say it, and I will bend you over and fuck you until you forget how to speak, min asteren. Don’t even think it,” he growled, his voice a warning. I had a feeling the fucking would only be the beginning of my punishment if I dared to disobey him. “Don’t ever think to ask that of me.”

I swallowed, nodding.

Even though I knew he was wrong.





28


Estrella


I felt like a walking corpse later that day, like my body was far too heavy to function. Pulling on Caldris’s magic had never taken that much from me before, so I suspected it had more to do with the physical exertion of fighting a creature twice my size than anything. But my magic had begun to stir in my veins once again—the faintest whisper of it awakening after the trauma of the Labyrinth.

Malachi led me down to the throne room. The hall was oddly empty as we stepped in. Mab stood with two other people, and only one of them I recognized. Fallon hung her head forward, worrying the bridge of her nose between her fingers.

The male who stood across from her couldn’t seem to take his eyes off her, studying her intently in a way that made the hair raise upon my arms. His deep auburn hair hung around his shoulders in waves, his brown eyes cold and unyielding as he shifted his gaze to me.

I forced my chin high, even though I wanted to collapse into a puddle on the throne room floor, only stopping when I stood opposite Mab, with Fallon to one side and the stranger to the other.

“You summoned me?” I asked, my insolence showing in my refusal to bow.

Mab didn’t pause, unbothered by my lack of formality. I knew there would come a day when she tired of our games, but I hadn’t reached the point where I ceased to be entertaining yet.

Soon enough.

“I tire of having two incompetent children beneath my roof. You cannot seem to summon the magic that we both know you possess, magic that would make you useful. Maeve cannot seem to summon any magic at all. Both are unacceptable to me,” Mab said, running her tongue over her teeth in dissatisfaction.

“Her name is Fallon,” I corrected, staring down the woman who seemed to refuse to accept that her daughter was not the child she’d birthed. That she’d had centuries and lives for her soul to grow into her own person, not just possessing the traits her mother wanted to instill in her. “But I fail to see what you would like either of us to do. Magic cannot be forced. If it does not come when summoned, then perhaps we are not fit to control it.”

Mab sneered as she huffed a laugh. “I might have believed that to be true if I hadn’t heard rumors of all the things you’ve done. If I hadn’t seen them in your memories and for myself, Little Mouse.” Her voice was low and soft, a quiet reprimand for my assertion that was as close to a lie as any Faerie could come. We both knew that while unwieldy, my power responded when it needed to protect someone I loved.

I ignored the challenge in her dark stare. “I think I have proven myself to be more than a mouse,” I said, smiling sweetly. I could still feel the stain of the Minotaur’s blood upon my skin. Could still feel the way he had nearly choked the life out of me.

Yet as promised, only one of us had left that Labyrinth alive, and it hadn’t been him.

“Occasionally, the mouse’s bite carries a deadly disease. But it is still just a mouse, at the end of the day,” Mab said, making me clench my jaw at the insult. It drove me further into that well, into the determination to have a hand in her demise when the time came.