Chapter 21
Unless another vampyr is riding the black-bellied beast, Taeric Skarnir is well and truly alive. And well and truly here.
His dragon draws to a sudden halt in the piece of sky above me. He is so large that even though a mile of air separates us, his body manages to blot out the stars.
My mind screams, “Run,” but my soles remain bolted to the frosted earth, and my stare, to the beast, whose neck is dipping…dipping. When the creature’s iridescent orbs glide across the land and fix on me, my exhale rushes out of me, whitening the dark air.
The onyx’s pupils slit as it twists its head to the side, releasing a chuff of silver smoke and an odd keening sound that startles my fingers wide.
Glass shatters as my lantern hits the ground. The fire trapped within keeps burning in the metal base, gilding the swirling hem of my fur cloak.
The rider inclines his head. Though coils of black fabric shroud the lower half of his face and a hood casts the rest of him in shadow, his eyes blaze through the darkness—one blood-red, the other moon-white.
I finally snap out of my daze and begin to back up when a huge, furred mass comes barreling toward me, transforming at the very last instant into a man.
A tremendously angry one.
If Nordin had been a dragon shifter instead of a wolf, smoke wouldn’t just plume from his mouth; it would blacken the ground I stood on to ash. He snares my waist and pulls me flush against his chest, then backs me into my little cave.
The dragon releases another strident wail that makes my skin crawl.
“It can’t scent me through the wards, can it?” I murmur.
“Not down in the valley. Don’t move.” And then he’s pivoting and stalking out of the cavern. “My father’s waiting for you at the pass, Skarnir! Best not to dally,” Nordin hollers, between labored drafts of air. “Patience isn’t his strong suit.”
“Won’t you and your…friend join us?” The vampyr’s pitch is as dulcet as his steed’s was shrill, yet it’s equally chilling.
It scrapes up my spine like a blood-coated talon, all at once hardening and agitating my blood.
“My cousin hasn’t gone through her first shift,” Nordin replies without missing a beat. “So I’m afraid she cannot exit the valley. You know what sticklers we are about the safety of our pups.”
Nervy howls fracture the night.
“If you want Kjell back, you’d best hurry before my father turns tail.”
“I trust my general to keep him entertained while I tarry.”
Silence as viscid as blood sloshes between the men.
“Why don’t you bring her back out, so I can introduce myself?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because you and your dragon have spooked her.”
“Allow me to unspook her then.” Louder, Skarnir says, “Averynth’s fire cannot penetrate the wards, Pup. And neither can I.”
The shivers rolling up my spine stop short, transforming into a shot of irritation. Pup? Did the stranger really just call me Pup?
“Not that either of us has any interest in hurting you. Isn’t that right, Averynth?”
I picture the male patting his steed, and my teeth grit some more.
“Once you’re done negotiating an arrangement with my father, circle back here, and I’ll make introductions.”
“I may be young, Nordin, but that doesn’t make me a fool.”
Nordin’s shoulders bunch beneath the dark leathers he didn’t cloak with his usual bear hide. He must’ve fled his home—or wherever it is that he was—in a mad dash upon hearing of the Hasam?ris’s ingress.
“Fine.” The tendons in his neck are so strained they move beneath his skin like tree branches as he beckons me forward. “Zas, come and meet the King of the East.” He holds out his hand.
I power my knees and emerge from the hollow, my gloved fingers slotting through his bare ones.
It’s only after he draws our hands low and my body close that I realize how incongruous our proximity might appear to Odin’s Son.
But then I realize that Nordin has to hold me close, not because he fears I might get snatched or to prove to Taeric that I belong to him, but to camouflage my scent.
Every last ounce of dread drains from me as I burrow even closer to him. When I crane my neck, it’s with complete aplomb that I meet Taeric’s mismatched stare.
I don’t cower as he swallows the shape of me whole, seemingly memorizing every angle of my face, every flaxen strand, every freckle. “A cousin from which branch of your family, Nordin?”
Nordin’s fingers tighten around mine. “She’s Eira’s daughter.”
“Of course. How could I miss the resemblance?”
I imagine Taeric is being sarcastic since I look nothing like my adoptive mother.
“Well, it was a pleasure to make your acquaintance, daughter of…Eira.” His marked pause causes Nordin’s jaw to clench.
I tilt my chin defiantly higher and call out, “Pleasure was all yours.”
Nordin strangles my hand so hard that my fingers begin to prickle. Is he angry with me for riling up the young king? Does he worry my provocation will lead Taeric back to me?
A chuckle darker than the moonless air erupts from the rider. “I’ll make sure to remedy that when I visit next, Pup.” With another echoing laugh, he finally steers his dragon away.
“What were you doing up here all by yourself?” The edge in Nordin’s tone hews my attention off Taeric.
“I was mining.”
The corners of his eyes twitch. “Mining?”
“Yes. For opals.” I tug him into the cave.
Despite the demise of my lantern, the wall’s pockmarked iridescence is so startling that Nordin should have no trouble spotting the veins of color peeking out of cracks in the host rock.
I let go of his hand and crouch to retrieve my chisel, mallet, and the three chunks I’ve cleaved from the rock. “When I come up here with Saga, she uses her claws.”
“You were mining,” he repeats, which makes me raise a brow.
It doesn’t sound like a question. More like he’s in shock.
As I straighten, I ask, “Did you think I’d raced up the mountain to get a better view of our visitors?”
He jams his fingers into his hair, tugging at the roots, and closes his eyes. “I didn’t—I didn’t know what to think when I tore through the village looking for you.”
I slip my tools into one of my cloak’s deep pockets and the lumps of rock in the other, then I reach up and clasp the cliffs of his jaw between my palms, his days-old scruff whispering across the leather.
“I’m sorry to have worried you.” There’s so little give to his neck that I have to flex my biceps to tow his head lower. “I’m safe. Look at me. I’m safe.”
His lids open, and his stare slams into me with such might that my grip falters. I rock back onto my heels, bumping into the wall at my back.
“He knows, Zas! You’re the furthest thing from safe. He knows.”
“The only thing he knows is that I can’t shift.”
Nordin palms the wall above my head and rolls his shoulders forward, curling in around me. “You can’t leave this valley. Not until Taeric Skarnir dies. Promise me you’ll stay put?”
I purse my lips. Even though his command comes from a place of love, I wish he’d mellow his tone. “I’ve already promised Mor I wouldn’t,” I grumble. “You don’t have to bark.”
“I’m sorry,” he rasps. “I’m just…”
“Worried?” I finish for him.
He drops his forehead to mine. “Worried pales to how out-of-my-fucking-mind frantic I was.”
“Does Taeric’s curse truly endure? He didn’t seem all that ill.” Only blind in one eye. Unless his iris lost its pigment for another reason?
“His curse endures,” Nordin murmurs.
I want to ask about his conversation with his father after he learned about my journal entry from Mor, but I don’t want to taint this place with Havrik Varganson’s loathed name. “I barely saw you this week. I missed you.”
“I know. Vanoo roped me into delivering the dragon bones to the Glaciers and setting them in the walls of their new dwellings to strengthen them. And then I went to pay Havrik a visit. I needed him to understand that you would never be his.” A muscle ticks in his cheek.
“You have no bloody idea how I longed to tell him that you were already taken.”
Gratitude and affection guide my palms up his pumping chest. The pattern of his breathing lengthens as though he were holding each inhale before exhaling it. When I reach his shoulders, his breathing hitches further.
“Zas, you need to…” He grimaces like he’s in pain. “You need to stop—”
“Fucking finally. Far’s been calling you for ages, Nord.”
I have never seen Nordin move so fast. Never. One second he’s standing before me, the next his back clouts the opposite wall as though his sister had propelled him there with magic.
“What did I walk in on?” Saga narrows her glowing stare on me.
My body is such a mess of adrenaline and desire that I rub my throat to iron out my pulse. “Your brother was trying to strangle me,” I blurt out.
May I sound believable.
May the beads of cold sweat gliding down my spine overpower the scent that being near Nordin has undoubtedly coaxed from my pores.
I glance across the opal cave, find Nordin has calmed and is now watching me beneath one strongly arched brow. “He thought I ran up here to hitch a ride on a dragon.” I give my throat another exaggerated rub. “He has some serious trust issues.”
Saga snorts, a smile floating over her mouth. “Tell me about it.” She plants a hand on her hip. “Apologize, Nord.”
One of his lids spasms. “Sorry for putting my hands on you, but do try to stop toying with my sanity.”
How much of that last part was for his sister’s benefit, and how much for mine?
“Far wants you to explain to Vaelen why we’re detaining his brother,” she explains, spurring him to push himself off the cave wall. “Have fun.” Saga’s sprightly tone makes me smirk and Nordin grunt.
As he strides back to the entrance, stooping to keep the top of his head from brushing the ceiling, he glances over his shoulder at me. “Take Zas back to the valley and tell Eira that you found her.”
“I told Zas about the curse, Nord. Something which you and Eira”—she gives him a pointed look—“should’ve done from the get-go. Now that she has a clearer picture, she understands not to get close to vamps. Right, Zas?”
“Right.”
Nordin holds my stare for a heartbeat, and then he’s slipping past his sister and into fur. When I walk up to Saga, he’s already long gone.
“For a minute there, I thought you two were hooking up.” Her wrinkled nose drops an icy stone into my stomach.
“We weren’t, but good to know how revolting you find the idea.”
Her eyebrows slant low. “You’re family.”
“Not by blood.”
“Still.” She peruses my features. “Tell me you don’t have a crush on my brother, because that would be…” Worry makes her eyes flick over my face faster. “You don’t, right?”
“I don’t.” It’s not a lie, since what I feel for Nordin is so much more than a crush.
“Thank fuck. I don’t think I could’ve wrapped my mind around that.”
I swallow back my disappointment. “Can you give me a ride to the forge?” If I went home, I’d just pace restlessly. “I found some stones I’d like to polish.”
“Sure thing.” She shifts to fur, then drops low. Once I’ve slung my arms around her neck, she bolts toward the main trail.
The whole way down, I stare over my shoulder at the pass, wondering what is being said.
Are they negotiating the terms of Kjell’s release?
Is Taeric poking at Ulf’s family tree? What if my uncle decides to hand me over to the Hasam?rin King now that his sister has forbidden him to give me to the Ravine Jarl?
I rein in my anxious spiraling before it can bloom into full-blown paranoia. My uncle may want me away from his son, but murdering me to achieve this would be rather extreme.
Instead of polishing opals, I remove my gloves and pick up the metal cylinder I’ve been working on since I returned from the Wilds.
The design came to me in those quiet hours between dreaming and waking when the mind runs freest. I sketched it out, then showed it to Mor and Koppar, whose insights helped me refine my palm-sized, single-handed bow.
“What are you making?” Saga asks, taking a seat on the stool beside mine and spinning with the energy of a child who consumed an entire jar of honey.
“A stinger.”
“A…stinger?”
I walk her through the concept, one that she calls brilliant. I hope Nordin will agree.
As I shape the miniature coils that will activate the clicker, she casually mentions Vanoo’s muscles, asking if I noticed how buff he’s gotten from building houses.
I adjust the desk lantern to brighten my workspace. “The age difference doesn’t bother you?”
“He’s only thirty-two.”
Like Nordin… I’m glad she finds nothing wrong with it. One less thing to worry about when we go public with our rapport next winter.
As I concentrate on my task, Saga asks, “Should I make a move, or do you think it’d be weird? He’s always seen me as Nordin’s little sister.”
Oh, the irony… “Risking is better than regretting, right?”
“You’re so wise for someone so small.”
I heft a brow. “Small?”
“I meant young.” She adds a wink.
One that does nothing to stop my stomach from churning. My twenty-first birthday can’t come soon enough, if only so they all quit treating me like I’m half-grown.
“How goes it with three-and-a-quarter-moons Tyron?”
I pull the coil out of shape. “You were right. After some thinking, I’ve decided he’s not the one for me.”
“Don’t worry.” She takes another whirl on her stool. “You’ll find the one.”
“How many moons do you rate Vanoo?” I ask, to steer the conversation back to her.
Saga fills the forge with her energetic chatter, granting my mind the blessed respite to focus on my work.
When my vision begins to blur, I set aside the delicate coil and pick up an opal.
After scrutinizing it from all sides, I rest it on a piece of putty, then angle my chisel, lift my hammer, and give it a soft thwack. A chunk of limestone flies off.
I reposition the chisel and tap again, and again. Once it is disrobed, I pull the jewel off the putty and hold it up to the lantern. Though it still needs to be sanded and polished, the stone I hold is crosshatched with so many iridescent veins that it seems to glow with a fire of its own.
“Wow, that’s beautiful,” Saga breathes out.
“Do you think it’s true what they say about opals?”
“What do they say about opals?”
“That they’re fossilized dragon’s breath?”
“Nope.” She pops out the word with no hesitation. “It’s just another pretty myth. Just like the game of Rafbo inspiring the shape of Isrike.”
I look at her. “Not everything is a myth.”
“You’re right, but the cave is on shifter territory—a territory forbidden to dragons—so how would their breath have gotten trapped in our stones?”
“Dragons were here before mankind.”
She joggles her head. “Drill one of the veins. If smoke leaks out, then…”
My eardrums fade out her voice, because the forge door is opening.
The hammer slips from my fingers when I catch sight of the visitor and the opal resting in the hollow of her throat.