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June 5 - June 5, 2025
“Estrella Barlowe will die here. The moment you pass through these gates, you can do so knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that your life has come to an end. There is not a single path in which the Fates let you leave here without knowing the touch of death.”
“Better to die free than live on your knees,”
“You, girl. Your soul. Your very being and your inner strength. Anyone can have magic, but not everyone is worthy of keeping it.”
“No place is truly good or evil, Tempest. Places as much as people exist on a continuum. For the right person, Tartarus can provide just as much as it can take.” “If I can prove myself worthy. If I’m not, it takes the ultimate price,” I said, grabbing her hand despite the harsh reality of my words. “Perhaps that, too, is a gift. If you are unsuccessful, your mate will die. This way, you may join him in the Void and find peace with The Mother in Folkvangr. The peace of oblivion is not a gift to take lightly when so many would do nearly anything for it. You would never have to know why the
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I was no use to her dead or imprisoned. I was no use to her dead or imprisoned. I needed a fucking plan, and I needed it fast.
She truly believed herself to be the victim of her story, as if her violence was warranted because her husband had been mated to another and had an affair because of it. She saw the affair as a betrayal. If we’d been human, I might have even agreed with her. But now that I had a more full understanding of the mate bond and how all-consuming it could be, I fully appreciated the way the Fae cast all relationships aside the moment a bond snapped into place. Nothing could compare to the love of fated mates.
“I’m not really positive I have my wits about me on a good day, let alone after sleeping in a cave with the threat of death looming over me,”
“But I cannot force a soul to follow me into the afterlife. If they wish to remain and tend to any unsettled business they may have, that is their choice. But they should bear in mind that moving on becomes more difficult the more time that passes, and the things that made them who they were will slowly fade until they’re mindless wanderers.”
“The Cwn Annwn are part of this place. They are born with helfyre in their veins,”
Strange to think that my own ignorance had enabled me to not feel the bond pulling taut between us, when all I wanted was to feel it strengthen now. I wanted what had been stolen from us.
“No one can know anything for certain when it comes to you. No one like you has ever existed before,”
“Because you, dear Tempest, were first born in the Cradle of Creation,” she said, stealing the wind from my lungs.
“It is a shame you never had the opportunity to acknowledge that you are attracted to women as well as men,” Macha said, running her fingers over the swell of a woman’s ass as we passed where she was locked in an embrace with a man and another woman knelt before her. One of her legs was hoisted over the other woman’s shoulder, her face buried between her thighs. I swallowed back that pulse of heat, turning my stare away and wondering if Caldris could feel my need even outside of Tartarus. I’d felt nothing of him through the bond since entering Tartarus, but I couldn’t be certain if that muting
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“Because the last being Fenrir allowed to ride him was his original owner,” Badb answered, holding my gaze as Fenrir paused his steps. I found my fingers running through his fur, seeking comfort from the friend that went deeper than words. “The last being Fenrir allowed to ride him was the very thing that existed before death. He was the embodiment of nothingness. A distinct lack of life. He is where death comes from. He is the Void.”
“Khaos.” The golden-eyed man who claimed to be my father in the Void when I drew too much power from him was Khaos. The father of everything and nothing. Shit.
“You cannot hear him because Tartarus’s wards silence all magic other than its own, even the mate bond. You and I are both part of this place.” Fenrir confirmed the path of my thoughts, offering a little reassurance as I tried to understand what the Hel was happening in my own head.
The wards had stripped away my magic, rendering me effectively human against an immortal creature and harbinger of death. He could slide into my mind and communicate with me because I was suddenly completely defenseless for the first time since the Veil fell. I was used to my body being vulnerable, but my mind had always been my safe space.
His other children. Rheaghan. My now dead brother. Mab. My cunt of a sister. I was going to be sick.
“Then I’m a Goddess? Like Mab and Rheaghan, or something in between God and Fae?” I asked, truly not understanding my place. There were gifts I possessed that Mab claimed were only available to the Primordials, things that I couldn’t deny seemed to set me apart from the Gods I’d watched fighting on the sands outside Tar Mesa. The threads. “You are more than a Goddess…”
“Your father gave something to you to set you apart from his other offspring.”
“The magic you possess is his gift to you. A piece of himself that he has not given to any other,”
“Knowledge is power and not all here would see you stumble in the dark,”
“Everyone has their own motives, and you would be a fool to forget that. Everyone will use you to their own advantage, especially here. You are the tides, constantly shifting. We would all guide you in a direction that serves us. We were merely the ones fortunate enough to be tasked with it.” Badb continued, her face twisting into a smirk. “In helping you, we help ourselves and our own destinies, Child of Fate,” she said. The harsh reminder settled into my gut, stern and stark. There were no friends here, only allies who would turn the moment it benefited them.
“There is nothing to complete. I come from Khaos, and you are the Princess of it. Our bond just is.”
Daughter of a Primordial or not. Princess of Khaos or not. The wards had taken all of that and Caldris’s magic from me as well, leaving me as defenseless as a newborn fawn in this place filled with monsters.
I raced toward the creature holding him captive. Not my fucking murder puppy.
“I would burn this world and the next to the ground before I ever lived a day without my mate in it,”
“Let Khaos come and imprison me, then. I’d like to have a word with him,”
would do anything for my mate,” I said as Fenrir started walking in the direction of the river. “After a lifetime of being lied to, I’d also do just about anything for the truth, and I have a feeling Khaos is the only one who can give it to me,”
I was done believing in the value of secrets.
condemned my mate for saying he would sacrifice the world to save me if it came to it, but I was no better. I was willing to sacrifice my own brother to make it to him in time, and that wasn’t a choice that I would have made lightly not so long ago. Now it wasn’t a choice at all.
He was the only person who could condemn me to such a fate, and simultaneously the only one who could save me. He hadn’t bothered. The man who’d come to me when my magic became too much for me and took the excess away so that I could survive felt like a distant memory, like it was disconnected from what I knew now. This version of Khaos did not seem to care if I suffered during the trials, and it left me with a bitter taste on my tongue.
“The Trials of the Five Rivers were designed to determine a person’s worthiness of the magical gifts that would be bestowed upon them if they were to reach the Cradle of Creation,”
“Each of the rivers represents a strong human emotion. Something that could turn even the most innocent of humans into a tyrant if left unchecked. The trials are a safeguard of sorts to keep humans or Fae who lack the ability to overcome those emotions from reaching the Cradle,” he
“The trials weren’t always necessary. They didn’t exist in the same way and the Primordials were more trusting of those who came to them looking to bargain. The dwarves stole the Cursed Gem from the Cradle in the dead of night, and the Primordials created the Trials of the Five Rivers to make sure they would never again contribute to the rise of a tyrant like Mab.”
“None have survived the trials,” Fenrir said, that deep voice confirming everything Brann wasn’t bold enough to say. Well then. “I guess there’s a first time for everything,” I said, swallowing back the rising trepidation of what was to come.
“While none have survived the trials as a whole, some have survived one or two. But the trials are about more than just surviving,” Macha explained, flipping her hair over her shoulder. “Many survive a trial only to return home because they weren’t able to procure a gift for the Primordials. You must perform in a way that is befitting of someone worthy of power in order to be granted the gift. You have to prove that you are stronger than the emotion that makes you human.”
“I’ll have nothing left to live for,” I warned, glaring up at her. I didn’t bother to get to my feet, having made my point already as I cradled my injured hand to my chest. “So you better fucking believe I will take you down with me. She is the only bargaining chip you have to control me now, so you had better hope she doesn’t die.”
Him or Caldris. Because if I died here, my mate would follow soon after. It wasn’t a choice at
My mate collected people, collected the souls of those who earned kindness and had been denied it by those who would force them into submission. The Lliadhe saw something of themselves in Estrella. They saw a woman the world had been determined to make small, standing up to her oppressors even if it meant carrying the weight of her punishments.
“Sleep, God of the Dead. For when you wake, we ride.”
Medusa ran her finger over the snake’s head, watching as the creature’s eyes closed happily. She turned her stare back to mine, those freckled green eyes boring into mine as she spoke. “I would give you anything, my daughter.”
“You are more than the power that you possess,”
“The stone was made for me?” I asked, choosing to focus on that one detail. “Yes. Your father wanted you to have some of his magic at your disposal so that he could teach you the ways of the Primordials as you grew. It was his greatest wish to be able to share that with one of his children and raise you to be his protégé.”
“We failed to anticipate what my influence on the stone would do to someone who did not share my blood,” she said. “By the time she’d come to power, the Primordials had all taken a blood vow that they were done interfering in the ways of the Fae. They had long since retreated to the Cradle of Creation, leaving the living to decide their own fate.” Macha scoffed. “Leaving the Fates to decide their fates, you mean.”
“You are our daughter,” she said, turning to face me. Those snakes on her head stretched toward me, and I couldn’t resist the urge to reach up with a single hand so that they could wrap around my finger and hug it. “And Mab is also his daughter, is she not?” I asked. “It’s not the same,” she said, shaking her head. “Everyone knows he has no love for his other children. They were created purely out of a need to populate the realm at a time when there weren’t many living souls, when he was still bleeding from the betrayal of his first wife. But you were conceived in love, Estrella. Our intention
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“He loved you enough to give you up,” Medusa said, her voice sad. “As did I.”
“Our Child of Fate has finally returned home. You will not interfere in her purpose in this place, Caldris. Swearing to that will be the only way I permit you to pass into Tartarus so that you may offer her comfort in her trials here,” the Primordial said, and I shoved down my resentment over the warning. I never wanted to get in the way of Estrella’s destiny or her purpose. “I will not interfere in anything she herself desires to do during her time here. I will swear to that,” I said, considering how she might feel if she knew that her destiny was so tightly wound with the Primordials.
They could argue that my life had made me stronger, but that was bullshit. I’d made me stronger. I’d survived what was done to me and come out the other side in spite of the hardships of my life, not because of them. Suffering to gain strength was a ridiculous excuse crafted by abusers and the privileged.
Only those who hadn’t suffered could underestimate what the greatest pains were.
