Chapter 19
My fist is still rising when Nordin’s door sweeps open.
I startle; Nordin doesn’t. Since he’s shirtless, I take it that my pulse or scent tore him from his bedsheets.
“Did I wake you?” I ask, trailing my gaze over his bare torso, then lower, over the pair of low-slung, bed-rumpled trousers that appear spun from the softest yarn.
He leans against the doorframe and folds his arms, making his biceps bulge. His eyes are so smudged that I wonder if he slept a wink this past week.
“It’s been seven days, Zas.”
I bristle, not expecting those to be his first words after the way we parted. “Um…right back at you.”
His eyebrows drop. “Eira said you didn’t want to see anyone, and it was best if I kept my distance.”
My stomach snarls. Why did my mother think it best? Does she suspect I have feelings for him? Does she suspect he has feelings for me? Does he?
“Are you still interested in finishing our conversation?” I finally ask, opting not to waste time playing the blame game.
“Interested?” His tone and expression are so scathing, they scoop up my insecurities and hurl them into my face with the same brutality as the dawn wind. “I’ve been thinking of nothing else. Which has been a boon during tedious Council meetings, but otherwise absolute torment.”
It takes my mind a full minute to comprehend that he is interested, and my jaw even longer to pick itself off the snow.
He beckons me inside with a nod, then hinges sideways so I can fit past him.
I thought my pulse beat fast when I stole through the quiet streets of our village, face tipped toward the ground and obscured by my hood like some thief.
However, it’s nothing like it thunders when I step into his balmy home.
By the time the door snicks shut, my breathing has grown as tattered as my gloves, before Saga introduced them to her needle.
The muted clang of metal makes me peer over my shoulder at the barrel lock Nordin has just fitted into place. “Would you prefer I keep the door unbolted?”
“I trust you.”
He expels a breath that smooths out the crenellated terrain of his chest. I allow myself to look at it. Really look at it. At the whole of him.
Gods, the man is beautiful. A godly being wrought from grit, toil, and magic. My fingers itch to touch him, to explore the shape of his bones and the pliancy of his sinews, to stretch over all his edges and dips, to discover whether his skin is hot and taut everywhere.
When I finally pull my attention off his torso, I find his ocean eyes watching, his nostrils flaring, picking up on the effect he has on me. Do I have the same effect on him? Besides his blown-out pupils, his posture remains closed off, and his expression forbidding.
Your father knows. He wants to separate us. What I say instead is, “I hear your father’s trying to push Nika on you?”
“I don’t want to talk about Nika. I want to talk about us.”
Us. My heart grips the word and runs wild with it. “I don’t want to talk about her either, but I need to know if she’ll ever come back up.”
“Never.”
“Not even if there doesn’t end up being an us?”
His pupils collapse on themselves. “Not even then.”
“And a mate? A true mate? What happens if you—”
“Let’s talk over a game of Rafbo,” he suggests.
“You want to play Rafbo right now?”
“If you have time?”
It’s more the mental wherewithal I’m short on at the moment. “Are we playing to win?”
“Since when do I march onto battlefields without the intent to conquer?” The way his stare plunders mine makes me think he isn’t alluding to the board game.
“What I meant was…” I lick my lips, my pulse walloping my ribs like tiny fists. “Do you have time for a full game?”
“I haven’t seen you in a week, Zas. I will take any minute you’re willing to give me.”
That provokes my harried pulse some more, whipping the beats out of alignment and sending them scattering into my extremities.
“All right then. Let’s play.” I don’t even care how thready my voice sounds.
His neck straightens and so does the line of his shoulders, as though uncertainty had been weighing him down.
As he strides toward the corner bookcase, he asks, “Do you want something to drink?”
I’m tempted to ask for a shot of aquavit to calm my nerves, but the thought of drinking so early in the day turns my stomach. “No, thank you,” I end up saying, ridding myself of my coat.
“Which God are you in the mood to embody today? Fenrir, Freyja, or Odin?” His shoulders bulge as he strains to reach the highest shelf.
“Freyja.” I settle at his dining nook, on one of the benches that’s fit for three grown males. “Predictable, I’m aware. Who will you play?”
“Hmm.” He carries the board over, then sets it on the table. “Fenrir.”
“For a change,” I say with a wry smile.
“We are such creatures of habit, you and I.”
We are. Unlike Saga, who embodies unpredictability and spontaneity. I sometimes wish I could be more like her, more of a wild child than a girl locked in her head and ways.
Then again, I did flee the valley. That was a little wild.
I pluck one of the two leather pouches and shake out its contents. As I sort through the metal pieces and begin scattering them on the appropriate squares of the Isrike-shaped landmass, Nordin lowers himself onto the bench across from me.
The wood groans beneath his substantial frame. I suddenly wonder what his weight would feel like draped over me. The instant the thought forms, heat hits my veins.
I twist my loose hair into a long rope to lift it off my burning neck, then twirl it into a bun, securing the ends beneath the coiled mass. When I peek up, I find Nordin’s eyes flaming so darkly that my blush strengthens, mottling more of my face.
“I remember that dress.” Though he sprawls to keep his legs from touching mine, his warmth licks the outer edges of my thighs.
Who would’ve thought the skin on one’s legs, through three layers of fabric, could be so sensitive?
“You do?” I ask innocently, since I picked it out for him. The same way I’d had the neckline dropped for him.
“The last time you wore it, I thought I was going to end up trimming Tyron’s hair within an inch of his scalp.”
A minuscule tremor of pleasure shakes my hand as I reach for the pouch of runestones. “I wore it for you that night.” I pinch five engraved pebbles out, then place them at random, face down, on his dominion’s grid.
The apple in his throat rolls as his heated stare strokes over my chest before journeying up my corded neck and halting on my choker with its shivering teardrop opal.
He leans forward and catches an escaped tendril of hair, which he presses behind my shoulder before outlining the leather strand with a blunt nail.
My throat clenches so hard I forfeit breathing. Who needs air anyway?
“Beautiful,” he murmurs, his callused fingertips fanning across my collarbone before dipping into the hollow that flutters with my pulse.
By the time he retracts his fingers, I’m gasping for breath. He doesn’t smirk at my discomfiture.
He could have, but he doesn’t.
Instead, he allows me time to pull myself together by giving the Rafbo board his full attention.
He parks five engraved pebbles on my grid and twenty on Odin’s.
When there’s no third player, the runestones dictate each move of the forsaken God’s pieces, which makes that contender the hardest to defeat.
By the time Nordin has finished setting up the game, my lungs have only marginally relaxed. But then his legs close around mine, unraveling my fragile poise. He, on the other hand, appears utterly at ease, as though he doesn’t even realize that our legs are touching, but it’s Nordin.
No detail ever escapes that man.
“Do I get the answer to my question about what you’d do if you happened upon your true mate?”
He readjusts his posture, straightening his spine and squaring those immense shoulders of his. His legs don’t move, though. They stay flush with mine.
“If you gave me another chance, I’d only ever be yours.” His vow feels surreal and unrealistic all at once. “Do I get a do-over, Zaskjalill?”
It’s the first time that being called Little River doesn’t make me feel knee-high to a pygmy owl, probably because of the reverent intonation he gives the nickname.
My gaze strays to that pit of dragon-fire that consumed so many precious things of mine. I hate it. Hate how quickly and wholly it can destroy. Sure enough, when I set my gaze back to Nordin’s, it’s destroyed yet another thing—the mood.
Those deep hollows in his cheeks pinch inward, like he’s swallowing another I had no choice. I suppose that his fear-driven reaction is a testament to how much he feels for me.
Would I have preferred another fate for my journals? Yes.
Will I let their destruction influence my decision? Not anymore.
I soften my expression. “Win, and I’ll tell you.”
“Is that how you want to play it?” Though unease lingers in his expression, his tone is as smooth as my buffed opal.
“I’ll remind you that the game was your idea.” I add a smirk that dispels some of his disquiet.
“I suppose drawing out our conversation does have its benefits. I get to spend more time with you.”
A lifetime, hums my wistful soul.
Gods, I’m a goner for this man. Hopefully, he doesn’t realize it, given that the intensity of my feelings frightened him once in the past.
“Why don’t you revisit that once I’ve drawn my answer out until tomorrow? Or for however long it takes you to defeat me?”
A smile develops on his lips and touches his eyes, clearing them of their residual somberness.
“Ladies first.” He swirls the slender hourglass over and sets it beside the board.
As I inspect the placement of the runestones, Nordin’s hand drops onto one of my knees, wrenching not only my gaze off the grid but also my heart from its cavity. I stare at him, mouth agape, and not around any command to stop.
“You may want to move, love.”
I’m becoming fond of this new nickname. “And miss learning where your fingers are headed?”
A corner of his mouth tucks up. “I didn’t mean your legs.”
Shit.