What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1)(61)

“Yes, Little One. Love. Did you believe I was aiming to earn your friendship with my hand on your ass and my cock nestled between your thighs?” he asked, grinding forward as if he could prove his point.

“Friends can fuck, Caelum. I would have thought you’d be completely aware of that, given all your sexual adventures,” I hissed, turning my head away from his. He was too close, his face lingering so near to mine that I thought he just might be able to hear the thoughts swirling in my head.

“There’s that jealousy again,” he teased, a growl of satisfaction rumbling through his chest. “Do friends get jealous of past lovers? Because I cannot promise I wouldn’t disembowel any man who has been inside you.”

“Well, fortunately there’s no need for that,” I said, a scowl taking over my face. “He’s already nothing more than snow.”

Caelum stilled, all the amusement falling off his face as he tipped his head to the side and stared down at me. “He tried to harm you after you were marked?”

“He was one of the Mist Guard they sent to hunt me down and run me through. A good way to prove his loyalty, I suppose.”

“He chose his duty over you,” Caelum said, leaning his face forward until he nuzzled into the sensitive skin at the hollow of my neck. His breath was warm as it wafted over my mark, the intimacy of it feeling familiar. “He was a fucking idiot.”

“Duty always comes first,” I said, echoing the words that had been beaten into me from a young age. Duty before family. Duty before love. Duty before everything.

Mine had been to bear the next Lord of Mistfell. I couldn’t help but wonder what duty Caelum had been saddled with. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have sworn he was the perfect candidate for the Royal Army.

“Love should always come first. We’ve gotten lost as a whole if we’ve forgotten that. There was a time when people would have burned the world down for those they loved,” he said. My stomach rumbled beneath him, drawing a grin to his face as it interrupted the moment.

To have someone love me so completely that they not only chose me, but would have defied everyone and everything to have me—it seemed so impossible in our world. Brann had sacrificed everything to protect me, but even that had felt like there was an ulterior motive. As if there was something I didn’t know, that I couldn’t know, hanging between us that drove him to protect me.

Because if the most important thing to him was making sure the Fae didn’t capture me, why wouldn’t he have allowed the Mist Guard to kill me in the first place? It was the only guarantee.

“Come on,” Caelum said, removing his weight from me and holding out a hand to help me to my feet. “I’ll teach you how to set a couple of traps. We’ll wait for a little while and hopefully catch something before we need to get moving for the day.”

“Are we still trying to get to the Mountains of Rochpar?” I asked, thinking of the grueling travel through the coldest months. There was no chance we would make it before true winter came, and while I couldn’t deny that putting as much distance between us and the fallen Veil as possible would be to our advantage, freezing to death wasn’t appealing in the slightest either.

“Eventually,” he said, hoisting me up into the tunnel we’d entered through. He followed at my back as we made our way out, finding the weather much more agreeable in the early morning light. The wind had died down, the snow had stopped, and most of it had melted off the ground already. “But with the weather being unpredictable, I think we need to find an alternative to wait out the cold season. There are rumors of a Resistance to the Fae and the Mist Guard in the Hollow Mountains. We’re going to keep moving in the hopes of stumbling across them.”

“How will we find them?” I asked, the idea of a resistance to the Fae seeming out of my wildest dreams. More people like us, more ability to survive if there was a place to ride out the winter successfully.

“You don’t,” he said, jumping down from the tunnel and reaching up to grasp me around the waist and lower me to the leaf-covered ground. “They find you.”





My heel had been tormented enough, the skin that had split long ago and blistered around the original wound, parting to give way to a deeper wound that was much worse than I’d thought it could get. I flinched with my steps, feeling it tear further with every pace.

Caelum lifted his head slightly as he studied me, danger churning in his gaze. “You’re hurt,” he said, leveling a look at me that I thought might have made grown men wither. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“There’s nothing to be done for it. I can’t walk without boots,” I said, shrugging off the pain in my ankles. One was worse than the other, the slick feeling of blood on my skin driving me to the point of madness.

Well-fitted footwear was of great importance when walking for endless hours every day.

“Your boots are hurting you?” he asked, his brow furrowing. Just a glance at his clothing spoke to the high quality items he’d been accustomed to before the Veil had shattered. The needlework on his tunic and trousers alone probably cost more than I would see in a year as a harvester.

“Yes. They don’t fit me right, so the leather rubs at my ankles and bunches up my socks and cuts into me,” I explained, watching his jaw clench.