Chapter 6
Idown a stein of glogg, then a second, willing the alcohol to hit my veins and soften the incessant whir inside my skull.
I’ll think about it.
Nordin’s parting words run on a loop inside my head, causing me to reach for the pitcher and refresh my cup.
“Easy there.” Saga steals the pitcher from my fingers, trying to catch my eye, but I keep said eye—eyes—averted.
“It’s Júl,” I mutter into my cup.
“I’m aware, but maybe pace yourself, or you won’t make it to midnight.”
I don’t care to make it to midnight. I only want to numb my jealousy and sleep until Myrknótt. I want the White Hunt to come and go without any celebrations.
“Fine,” Saga says. “Don’t listen to me, but know that if you can’t walk straight, I’m going to drag you by your hood through the snow all the way home.”
I take another swill of my spicy, hot beverage. “Sounds vivifying.”
A snort comes from my right—Tyron. Why must the male be forever present? Is he hoping that Saga and his best friend Leif pairing off will make me more susceptible to his charm? Speaking of Leif…
The massive, brown-skinned male arrives and drapes an arm around Saga’s shoulders. “I don’t envy your brother.”
“Why?” Tyron asks. “Nika’s a looker.”
I hate that he’s right. I hate that Nika Krosson is beautiful. And a shifter. A high-ranking one to boot. Fuck, I really hate Nika Krosson.
“Because she’s Havrik’s mate, you idiot,” Leif points out.
“Not anymore.” Saga lets her head loll against her boyfriend’s shoulder.
Where I grew by one inch last year, my friend shot up by four. My lack of shifter genes is starting to show. Especially since everyone in the pack is now aware that I bleed thanks to a visit to the steam hut after an unfortunate miscalculation of my cycle.
“What are the odds Nordin won’t go through with it?” Tyron asks.
“I don’t see how he could avoid it,” Saga murmurs, her gaze drifting over the crowd toward her father, who’s deep in conversation with the Gothi, undoubtedly on the subject of Nordin’s nuptials. “Or why he would.”
A dagger to the heart would’ve hurt less than Saga showing enthusiasm for the match.
I take another swig of glogg. An extra-large one.
“Unless his true mate reveals herself in the next twelve days, I suppose.” Saga sighs.
Which is highly unlikely, considering mating bonds usually reveal themselves on nights of full moons—in other words, on Myrknótt. If Nordin accepts the Fjords’ offer of marriage, then he won’t attend the White Hunt, thus diminishing his already slim chances of finding a true mate.
I suddenly want him to go, because going would mean that he doesn’t choose Nika.
Going would also mean that he doesn’t choose me.
Shit. My journals!
My next sip goes down the wrong pipe, and I splutter. Tyron smacks me between the shoulder blades with such force that I list forward and spill mulled wine down the front of my dress and across my fur cloak, which I’ve yet to remove.
Wiping what I can with my palm, I turn on the wolf and growl, “What the Hel, Ty?”
“I thought you were choking.”
“On hot wine?” I bite out.
He raises his palms. “I was trying to do a nice thing. I don’t see how that merits a tongue-lashing.”
I cough twice more, then clear my throat. “You just hit me unnecessarily hard.”
“You’re a wolf,” he says, as though my constitution is to blame and not his power. He traces my peaked ear with his gaze. “Still can’t shift?”
I feel Saga’s eyes on me. She learned what I was the day I learned what I was. Even though Ulf preferred I didn’t tell his daughter, I couldn’t picture myself keeping a secret of this magnitude from her.
“Still can’t shift,” I grumble.
Even though I’m still scrubbing my dress, I don’t miss the protracted stare that the males exchange.
“A real shame I had the bright idea to stick my hands in the firepit when I was a pup.” That was the excuse Ulf and Mor had settled on for why I still hadn’t undergone my coming of stripe ceremony.
Because the dragon-fire hadn’t just scorched my skin… It had caught on my hair. What’s more, at the roots—the place where shifter power thrived. And though I’d been exposed to every full moon since, none had ever restored my magic.
This, of course, baffled many since my hair had grown back, so why not my power?
The pack had somehow swallowed the explanation. Well, most. Some, mostly the older generation, couldn’t understand why my scalp had healed but not my hands.
“Here.” Tyron proffers a damp cloth in front of my face. I stare at it for so long that he begins to waggle it. “For your dress.”
“Thank you.” I take it from him, slightly stunned that he went out of his way to help me.
Tyron isn’t horrible, but he’s also not the most affable wolf in the pack. As I pat the wine off my clothes, he carves a hand through his brown hair. His braids are in dire need of being picked apart and washed, given the number of brambles stuck within them.
Although the pack takes care of each other, especially when mothers pass away, twenty-two-year-old Tyron has outgrown the older females’ fussing.
I almost suggest helping him out, but hair is sacred to wolves.
Not to mention that tending to it is more intimate than stroking the peaked shells of another’s ears.
“What do you think would happen to your brother if he goes against Ulf’s wishes?” Leif asks Saga.
“If it had been any other Vale, my answer would’ve been that he’d be disgraced and asked to leave the pack, but Far’s own flesh and blood… I don’t think Nordin would incur any consequences, besides dismaying our parents, that is.”
“On the upside, if he’s disgraced, you’d be next in line, Saga,” Tyron points out, withering my earlier empathy. His braids can gather every bur in the valley for all I care.
Saga cuts her gaze toward her father. “Knowing my brother, he’ll take Nika as his mate, because that’s the sort of man he is.”
She’s right. That is the sort of man Nordin is. Upright. A stickler for duty. An irreproachable son.
My gut churns with dread that even my journals won’t keep him from disobeying his parents. Did he thumb through them yet? Or is he running wild to gather his thoughts? I’m hit with an intense yearning to find out.
I pretend to head for the spread of food but instead slot myself between the fur drapes and shoulder open the heavy door. And then I run through the winding village streets, past my house, past two dozen abodes, until I reach the trail that coils toward his home.
By the time I arrive, my lungs and thighs are on fire. On the upside, I’m not cold. I lunge down the stairs and burst through the door.
His cot is bare of my rucksack. Bare of him too.
Wood creaks. My heart pitches into my throat as I foist my gaze upward to find eyes glowing back at me from the shadows. Nordin is seated on his wicker armchair, legs spread wide, one shoulder rolling as he swirls a fire poker through his blazing hearth.
I don’t speak, and not because I can barely breathe, but because I prefer he goes first since he knows why I’m here.
“You need to stop inking your secrets,” he says, a grimace warping his mouth. “Promise me you’ll stop, Zaskja.” His lashes lower, blunting the blue gleam. He can’t even look at me.
My heart hardens like forged steel cooling in the open air. “Stop what, exactly? Journaling, or loving you?”
He shudders, his grimace gripping the skin around his eyes now. “What you feel for me isn’t love. It’s misguided infatuation, a delusion born from the fact that I found you in the Wilds and saved your life.”
His fiery stick is nowhere near my chest, yet it feels like he’s dragging it across my bare skin.
“Is that what it is?” I slap my forehead. “What an idiot I am. Not being able to tell apart affection from idolization.”
His lashes reel up. “That’s not—You’re not—” He wets his lips.
“Just give me back my journals, and you’ll never have to deal with me and my silly, misplaced crush again.”
He sighs, holding the poker still now. “How are you planning on not dealing with me, exactly? Not only are you a Vale, but you’re family.”
“I’m not a Vale, and I’m not family. I’m a valkyrie, remember?”
His lips flatten.
“Give me back my fucking journals. And don’t worry, I won’t paper the longhouse’s walls with all my disgusting secrets. Wouldn’t want to embarrass you. Especially before your impending nuptials to a high-ranking shifter.”
His jaw tics.
“My journals, Nordin.” I hold out my gloved palm, hating how it bounces.
He rolls his lips, then thrusts his chin toward his hearth. “They don’t exist anymore. I burnt them.”
Horror lashes my breastbone, sending a jolt of heat up my throat and into my face.
I pull back my hand, jamming my fingers into a fist. “Why would you do that?”
“Because I cannot afford to have anyone come across them. You are a child, Zaskja.”
Even though I want to weep, I school my lips into a harsh kink. “Delusional. Childish. Misguided. Anything else you’d like to add to the list of things I am? Hysterical, maybe? After all, why would I care that books I spent hours—years—pouring my heart and soul into have been destroyed?”
“I did this as much for you as for myself. What do you think my father—or your mother—would have said if they’d come across them?”
“I wouldn’t have fucking cared what they said or thought, because this isn’t about them. This is about me. No one gets to dictate how I should feel. Not them, and certainly not you.” I turn on my heel, my vision so blurred it takes me several attempts to grip the door handle.
Metal clangs and wood creaks. “Zaskja, wait.”
I’m done waiting.
I throw open his door with a satisfying, “Fuck you, Nordin Stormsson.” And then I trip up the steps and take off.
Twice, I hear the thud of paws. Once, I catch the gleam of eyes.
Of course Nordin would follow me home. He’s probably worried I’m going to try to drown my sorrows in the lake again. Doesn’t he realize that my disappearance would only serve him? After all, he’d never have to be embarrassed about my infatuation.
Unfortunately for him, though, I’ve no desire to waste my life.
By the time I stop running, my tears have turned to icicles on my lashes and frost on my cheeks. I wipe them away in case Mor has returned from the festivities.
She hasn’t.
Relief floods me, for I would’ve hated feeding her some lie to explain my despair.
My heart is so heavy that it pulls my body low with every ragged beat. I slump against the front door, drained from my run and my sobbing. A dull hush folds over me, numbing the parts of me blistered with rage.
I take off my gloves and stare at my ruined fingers, reminding myself that even though they’re ugly, they’re solid and useful. Like my heart will be once it no longer feels flayed and torn.
I will survive this, like I survived the fire and the wilderness when I was a little girl. And, yes, perhaps Nordin had a hand in the latter, but ultimately, I ended up here because it was the fate the Norns wove for me.
I tilt my face toward the round skylight over the hearth and gaze up at the stars visible through the glass. “What now, Norns? Where do I go from here?”
I wait and wait, but no magical answer echoes behind my temples. It’s only once I’m lying in bed, dwelling on how I wish a new portal would swallow me whole, that I realize what I must do… Where I must go.