Chapter 13
Thirteen
Astrid
Astrid watched the glowing lights that had erupted out of their blood glimmer right in front of her face.
She couldn’t hazard a guess at what they were, but they were certainly pretty.
Although the red ball illuminated Bjorn’s face in a rather terrifying manner that she shouldn’t have noticed.
He’d been a good man. He’d protected her.
Kept her safe. He was not the monster that red light painted him to be.
And then the blue light surged toward the other, twining in tighter and tighter circles until they were combined into a lovely purple light. Deep amethyst, the color of royalty.
It truly was a beautiful thing to behold, even if she had no idea what it meant. But as she stared, she realized that Bjorn’s dark green face had turned a rather interesting shade of greenish gray. He looked like he was going to throw up before he muttered, “No.”
No?
What did he mean by that?
She released his hand, feeling the slickness of their blood sliding across each other as she did so.
She needed to wrap her hand. The blood was surprisingly already slowing, but she didn’t want to take a chance at infection.
Especially considering it was clearly a spell that she’d read off the raptor claw.
Silly girl. She shouldn’t touch things in a witch’s hut without knowing what they were. Now she had likely cursed the both of them.
Oh, no. Was she going to lose her hand? Was that what terrified him?
The lights still glowed in front of them, so it was hard for her to see his expression as he turned away from her. The brightness turned the entire room into a rather comical hue of purple. Every blanket, every rug, every piece of furniture.
“No, what?” she asked, her stern tone hopefully snapping him out of whatever strange mood he was now in.
“No, this was not meant to happen,” he snarled. A clawed hand slashed through the colored lights, revealing the anger on his expression that chilled her to the bone.
She really had done something irreparable, hadn’t she? That was the only reason he’d be looking at her like that. With rage simmering underneath the surface, so powerful that she was certain he would kill her now.
“What did I do?” she whispered.
“That is...” He huffed out an angry breath, and she couldn’t stop focusing on his tusks.
She’d seen trolls with much larger ones, but they were still deadly weapons.
There was a time in the arena when she’d watched one of his kind rip through a man’s belly with his tusks.
The sharp tips had parted the soft flesh there all too easily.
And then there were his claws, of course.
Dagger tips that she would prefer he use if he was going to kill her.
Shaking, she took a step back from him. “I don’t know what is going on, but I need you to take two steps back.”
Astrid had used that tone with men many times.
Humans were quick to anger as well. All it took was an order like that, snapping them a bit out of whatever had angered them, and the men usually would do one of two things.
They would fly at her in anger, in which she would use her power to control them, or they would do as she told them to do and then seem a little confused about why they had.
Bjorn was the latter. He took two massive steps back, making sure to keep his eyes on her as he did so.
“Blood witches...” He exhaled again, the sound nearly like the snort an animal would make. “We bring our children to them to see their magic. That was what the lights were.”
“The red was yours,” she said. “And the blue was mine.”
Hers. She had never thought to see her magic outside of her body, and now she wished she could see it again. She hadn’t gotten a good look at it before they had merged.
Blue like the sea, she remembered. Blue like the sky on the clearest of days and it had been stunning.
How did she get it back? Could she converse with it?
Could she ask the magic questions? How to strengthen it would be her first, of course.
There had to be a way to encourage power like that to grow naturally without having to cajole it out of her body.
Perhaps they could work together, rather than be so separate from one another.
He shook his head as though trying to clear it of dark thoughts. “Listen to me. We also bring our chosen partners to a blood witch. She measures the weight of our magic, looks at them together, melds the powers before we are... mated.”
She blinked at him.
“Mated?” she repeated. Perhaps she hadn’t heard him correctly. “That sounds rather animalistic.”
He looked at her with so much despair in his expression that she realized where she had gone wrong in saying that. Of course it sounded animalistic. His people had been created by using pieces of animals to make them who they were.
“Our powers combined together. It has meaning for my people. It binds two people together because it means they are...” Again, he shook his head. “It doesn’t matter now. We are bound.”
“Bound?”
“Bound,” he said again. “Do you not understand what I mean by that?”
Some part of her maybe did. That was the screaming voice in her head arguing that she needed to get control over this situation, and fast, or her entire life trajectory was going to change. But she didn’t know how to say that to him without looking weak.
Groping for the back of the sofa, she held on to it so he wouldn’t notice how shaky her knees were. “Please explain it to me, Bjorn. I would like to make sure that I understand what you’re saying correctly.”
He seemed to struggle a bit with how to say the words before clearing his throat and replying, “It is similar to a marriage for my people. But more binding than that because our magic will seek out the other. We should be able to use each other’s powers, sharing our magic until it changes the fundamental basis of what we can and cannot do.
It is more than just a marriage. It is a melding of souls. ”
Fuck.
Fuck, no, she didn’t want that. Astrid had been very glad that he had saved her life. That much was certain. She owed him for taking care of her in the labyrinth, but she didn’t want to pay for that with her soul.
She had to sit down. Perched on the back of the sofa, she curled her arms around herself and shook her head. “I don’t even know what magic you have. And I don’t want to be bound to you, no offense.”
He shook his head. “That is understandable.”
“It’s nothing to do with who you are or what you stand for, Bjorn. You seem like a good man—”
“I am not,” he interrupted. “You should not be bound to a creature like me. My life has not made me a good man, nor do I expect you to wish to remain locked together with me when you did not choose this. It is an unfortunate circumstance that we will need to remedy as soon as possible.”
She swallowed hard. Bound to a troll. That wasn’t something she thought she’d ever have to endure. “So it is... reversible?”
That was good. That made things perhaps a little less scary. She wasn’t locked into her relationship with him or into the knowledge that at some point, she was going to be so tied up in him that her magic wasn’t even hers anymore.
But then he hesitated, and all the anxiety bubbled up again. Why was he hesitating? Why wasn’t he talking to her?
Finally he said, “It may be. But it will require us to change course.”
“Change course?”
“Your sister has been the object of your desires. You wish to see her more than anything. It was why you risked your life and ended up in the labyrinth. But if we wish to undo this, then we cannot see your sister first.”
He had to be wrong. She needed to get to Rose. “I’m afraid that won’t be possible. Rose is being held captive by your people. They made it very clear in their note that they were not going to keep her for long before they disposed of her.”
He shook his head. The dim light in this hut played across the edges of his horns, revealing ripples that she hadn’t been able to see in the darkness of the labyrinth.
“My people will not hurt her. They may have lied to get your attention on them, but she is as safe in Trollveggen as she would be anywhere else.”
“She was kidnapped out of her ‘safe’ bed, brought to that labyrinth, and gifted to men who did god knows what to her,” Astrid snarled. “She was never safe, so those are not words that reassure me.”
She still remembered waking up that night and seeing that her sister’s bed was empty.
She’d run throughout the entire building that housed the acolytes.
That building was supposed to be impenetrable.
No one was allowed to get in or out without the knowledge of the king himself.
So she had thought that it would be impossible for anyone to grab Rose right out from under her nose.
Nerves made her hands shake again. She’d only just gotten them to stop doing that, and now they were back to it. She tucked them into her lap harder than before, and took a deep, steadying breath. “I need to see that Rose is all right.”
“We don’t have that kind of time.” He gestured between the two of them with a clawed hand.
“What just happened between the two of us is binding, like I said. There is very little time to undo it if it was a mistake. Blood witches don’t make mistakes like that.
Therefore, it is unusual to have to unravel the ties that just happened. ”
“Then why was it so easy to do?” She almost shouted the words before clearing her throat.
She should never have raised her voice like that. Astrid knew how to keep control of herself. She knew how to be better than this.
He looked at her with pity in his gaze. “Most people cannot perform the spell unless they are blood witches themselves. But those with magic that could be one of our own priestesses, like you, certainly possess the ability to cast the spell. You read the words on the claw.”
She had read them out loud. Astrid wasn’t even certain why she had done so. After all, she knew that magic was dangerous. Something in her heart had whispered that it was meant to be read aloud, and so she had. The words had flowed off her tongue as if she’d said them a thousand times.
She hadn’t known what they meant. She hadn’t known what it would do if she read them aloud.
Her stomach twisted, and she swore she was going to vomit. But they hadn’t eaten anything in a very long time, and she knew that if she threw up, all that would come out of her was thin, meager bile.
So she clamped her mouth shut, turned her face to the side, and tried to get herself under control.
A sharp whistle filled the hut. She flinched, and Bjorn cursed as he rushed back to the stove and pulled the tea kettle off the top.
The steam wheezed out a dying breath, and then there was just the two of them alone with the sound of their ragged, angry breaths.
She heard him pour water into two cups that were likely dirty, and then the soft sound of metal clinking as he added pinches of tea into metal tea balls.
What was she supposed to say? That she was going to give up on her sister’s well-being just because she’d made a mistake? It wasn’t going to happen. She’d sacrifice herself if that was what it took, but she was getting her sister back.
But then he handed her the handmade mug and sat down on the sofa to her right, while she was still leaning against the back of it. Back to back, they both sipped their tea while staring off into the distance, mulling over their predicament.
She swallowed far too much of the boiling water, feeling it burn on its way down to her stomach. “How do you know so much about this?”
Some part of her hoped it was all rumor. Then she could point out that this was a fool’s mission, and he knew nothing. The logical thing would be for them to go wherever Rose was and find an expert.
“I was raised by people like you,” he murmured.
“My mother is a smoke breather. She inhales the future through smoke and breathes it out like a dragon while telling prophecies. People like her only have children rarely, but when they do, they are raised among all those with gifts their children might not have.”
Her heart squeezed in her chest. Such a childhood must have been hard for him. “Why do you not share her gifts?”
“The goddess only blesses women with such things. I was born to protect people like you. That is the only reason my mother kept me.” His hand clenched around the mug so hard she heard the ceramic creak.
“But my father was born to do the same, and he renounced those ways. I was brought to Trollveggen more than I was trained to protect my mother and her sisters of power. My brutality comes from him.”
Her hand twitched. She wanted to offer him comfort, and her offending fingers desperately wished to settle on his bunched shoulders and ease some of the tension there. But she did not. Instead she said, “It seems you were trained well. You kept me safe.”
Bjorn glanced up at her, his mouth slightly open in shock and his brows raised. It looked like he wanted to say something to her, and she wondered what those words could be. Would he thank her for her kindness? Would he argue?
Instead, the thoughts cleared from his expressive features, and he replied, “The priestesses in my world see beyond what you or I can see. The future is theirs to wield as a weapon, and as such, they are the only ones who can sever the bond between us.”
“Are they in the same place as my Rose?”
“No. They do not choose to remain in Trollveggen with the others. They hear too many thoughts. The mountain is crowded with those who would ask their opinion, drain their magics, and they are...” He waved around the hut. “Solitary creatures.”
“Then where are they?”
“Beyond the mountain,” he replied. “Where I grew from boy to man.”
Beyond the mountain? She’d never thought of going that far. He’d talked about it, of course, but she hadn’t ever thought that this journey would bring her there.
“What happens if we don’t?” she asked.
“Then we are bound for life. Perhaps you will find another, but I...” A muscle on his jaw jumped. “I will endure without you.”
So there really wasn’t a choice. They had to take this detour, or they would be tangled together forever.