Chapter 28
My skin burns like my stomach, which has been turning itself inside out for hours. Perhaps days.
I’ve lost all notion of time, but know I’ve been lying in bed for a while because I heard Saga ask Mor what sort of illness could wipe out a valkyrie for so long.
I think I heard Mor reply, “Iron poisoning,” though it’s likely just the fever playing tricks on me.
Nothing makes sense in my head at the moment.
My bones feel full of frost, my veins full of fire. There’s a dull throb at my temples, and my lids are gritty, as though I’d rubbed them with fine sand.
When I wake next, the sky is tiled with clouds, and I’m lying on a bed of snow. Mor must’ve been trying to bring my fever down.
It worked.
I think.
My muscles tremble as I push myself up to sit. The world spins. I wait. Close my eyes. Pull in a deep draft of cool air.
“Nordin?” I croak, scenting him on the wind.
Fur brushes against my cheeks as a wolf circles me.
“You came back,” I croak.
“Of course I came back,” he murmurs.
I throw my arms around his lupine neck. “I’ve missed you so much. Please don’t leave again.”
“Never again.”
“Wait.” My pulse trips as I pull away and blink at him. “I can hear you! I can hear you, yet you’re in fur. Are we—are we mates?”
“Yes, love.” He brushes my cheeks with his muzzle.
He must also ribbon his tongue over my skin because it feels like he’s raining kisses on my cheeks.
“Thank you, Fenrir. Thank you,” I rasp.
“Let’s go home,” he says, turning and crouching low so I can climb onto his back.
I want to ask him, Which home? Do we share one now?
I settle astride him, sinking my hands into his shaggy fur and squeezing my thighs. He leaps, and although I squint to see where we’re headed, a blizzard rages around us, whitening the land.
I flatten my upper body along his spine and prop my cheek on his bobbing nape. His claws click—first on ice, then on stone. When he slows, I straighten and peer around me. We’ve risen above the clouds and are approaching the pass.
“We’re leaving the valley?” I ask, just as a shadow darkens the narrow divide between the mountains.
I crane my neck, gasping when obsidian scales fill my vision. There’s a dragon hovering over us. And not any dragon—an onyx!
I list off Nordin and smack down so hard that I whimper. Legs appear beside me. I take hold of them and use them to pull myself up, then burrow into my mate’s broad body.
“Do with her what you want, Skarnir. She’s yours.”
I freeze, because the voice… It isn’t Nordin’s.
I crane my neck and meet my uncle’s stare, dark and treacherous like black ice. I bounce back and shout for Nordin.
Ulf shushes me. I start to run back toward the valley when a wall of fire plummets in front of me. I halt, eyes wild, but not wilder than the iridescent irises of Taeric’s dragon.
“Where do you think you’re running off to, Pup?” Taeric’s red eye spangles like a fresh slick of blood while his white one glows like the opals I so love.
“Nordin?” I screech as the dragon opens his great maw and streams more flames down over me.
I scream and slap my skin. My lids sting with heat. I open my mouth to draw breath, but I can’t…
The smoke…
I wheeze, then cry.
“Eira, what do I do?” I hear Nordin ask.
Mor’s here? Oh, Gods, how her heart must ache to find me once again engulfed in flames. Will I rise from the ashes like I did when I was younger, or is this to be my final moments in Midgard?
Water splashes my face. Its slap is so brisk and chilled that it springs my lids wide. I blink at Nordin’s gaunt face, then at Mor’s gaunter one. Her eyes are bloodshot; his are rimmed purple.
And then I blink around me. I’m no longer on the pass. Was I ever on the pass?
I take in the room piece by piece—the beam bearing Fenrir’s carved form, the scuffed table in the corner, the book-lined shelves hugging the wall, the hearth of crackling dragon-fire.
Shivers race along my skin at the sight of those flames. I carry my hands to my face. My waxy scars haven’t blistered and blackened. Still, I shove my sleeves up, sighing with relief when I find my forearms devoid of welts.
Rough fingers bracket my cheeks. “Zas?” Nordin’s pitch is featherlight as though he senses that speaking any louder will spook me. “You’re safe.”
My arms collapse back onto the drenched sheets, one of them smacking someone’s lap—my mother’s.
As she weaves her fingers through my locks, lifting them off my burning nape, she says, “The fever gave you nightmares, darling.”
“How long”—my voice claws up the tender lining of my throat and scratches the air—“was I out?”
“Six days. You were in and out of consciousness for—” Her voice catches. “For six days.”
“How do you feel?” Nordin asks.
The harsh gleam of his irises so resembles Ulf’s in my nightmare that I don’t immediately reply.
“Alive,” I finally say.
“What’s the last thing you remember?” my mother asks.
Burning my letter to Nordin in our firepit. The one I didn’t want her to find.
“I had supper with Saga at the longhouse.” My voice is so hoarse that it feels as though Taeric’s dragon truly streamed fire down my throat.
Nordin’s gaze flicks to Mor’s.
“Was anyone—” Nordin rolls his neck, popping bones. “Was anyone else there?”
“It was suppertime, so many were there.”
“Did anyone give you anything to drink?” Mor’s fraught tone carries the word I heard her utter to the forefront of my mind.
“You think someone poisoned me with iron?” My whisper knocks Nordin’s hands off my cheeks.
His fingers twitch and curl as they drop.
“I didn’t imagine you speaking that word, did I?”
My mother and Nordin exchange a brief but eloquent glance.
“I found you lying in a puddle of vomit, convulsing.” The angles of her face have never appeared so whittled, honed to strike down whoever harmed me. “I may not be an expert on poisons or valkyries, but that wasn’t a reaction to rotted carrion. So I repeat, did anyone hand you a drink?”
My heart slows to a painful thud because, yes, someone did hand me a drink, but if I tell them who, all Hel will break loose, and it won’t be Havrik that Nordin challenges.
I can’t do that to my family.
Not until I’m certain it was Ulf, and even then… Gods, even then, what the Hel am I supposed to do?
“Who?” Nordin snaps, his breath punching the tip of my nose.
“I poured my own drink,” I lie. “Saga was with me during the whole meal. Maybe she saw something?”
“She didn’t,” Mor replies through tight teeth.
I’ve stopped shivering, my anger burning so hot that I now want to peel every layer of fabric off my skin.
As I sit there, wedged between Mor and Nordin, it dawns on me that if my uncle did try to harm me with iron, then the letter he penned was just for show. Then the words he spoke about wanting his son’s happiness and aiding us to achieve it were nothing but a performance.
I glare at my front door, torn between confronting him immediately and feigning oblivion. I pick the latter. I’ll play stupid and forgetful to ease him into a false sense of security. When he’s least expecting it, I’ll strike, not with fists or blades but with words.
“How was your hunt?” I ask Nordin.
Another look passes between him and my mother.
“I heard shifters complain that the Sons of Odin have drained the forest,” I press, when neither says anything. “No one got hurt, right?”
Nordin’s lips squeeze into such a fine line that they vanish amid his week-old beard. “It’s only an intimidation technique. Nothing more.”
“How long can we go without meat?”
“Long,” he says, as my mother stands and walks over to the washbasin. “We have stores of meat, and plenty of fish in our lake. And if that isn’t enough, our neighbors have more of the latter in their fjords.”
“Why don’t we just give Kjell back?” I ask, preferring not to owe Nika’s clan—the only pack with direct access to the ocean, thanks to the fjords that till their valley.
“Because he attacked us,” Nordin growls. “Therefore, he doesn’t deserve freedom.”
Even though my brain feels a tad fuzzy, I don’t miss how he doesn’t quite hold my stare as he says it. Evidently, there’s more to his reluctance to free the prisoner than who struck first. If I were to wager a guess, it would be that I’m to blame for Kjell’s lasting captivity.
Is that why Ulf tried to get rid of me? To end the contention between his people and Taeric’s without going against his son’s wishes?
Unless it isn’t my uncle…
“How’s Tyron?” I ask, to stop dwelling on who wants me dead, for it’s doing nothing for my spirit.
“Far sent him to live with the Fjords until the bite heals.”
“You need not worry yourself with all this. You need only to rest, Zaskja.” Mor fishes strips of fabric out of the basin and begins to scrub them vigorously against the washboard.
It makes me long for a good scrubbing of my own, even though she must’ve cleaned me, since I don’t smell like sour stomach refuse.
“Nordin, can you go tell Saga and your parents that Zaskja’s awake? They were all so worried.”
I school my eyebrows to keep them from touching at the news that my aunt and uncle were worried.
“And then go to bed,” she adds.
“I’m fine, Eira.”
“Go,” she repeats. “I won’t leave Zaskja’s side.”
When he still doesn’t move, I start to reach for his hand before remembering that mine aren’t gloved. Burrowing my fingers in my wrinkled bedsheets, I use an excuse that is sure to get him to leave. “Out. I need a bath.”
A flicker of heat grazes his features. It wasn’t my intent. Nevertheless, I enjoy the reaction.
“No offense, Nord, but you could use one too,” Mor says.
“Are you saying I smell, Eira?”
Although tension is carved as deeply into her face as the Wolf God’s image into the beam, a genuine smile bends her mouth. “I won’t let her out of my sight until you come back.”
His corded throat bobs as he finally stands. The pull this male has on me is so strong that I feel my heart lifting in tandem with his body.
He suddenly bends over and sweeps a kiss over my parted lips.
In front of my mother.
The intimacy of the gesture suspends my breath. It’s only when he shuts the door that I evacuate the air trapped in my lungs and dart a glance Mor’s way. I expect disgust to contort her features. Find none. Then again, her gaze is riveted to the bucket of sudsy water. She mustn’t have caught—
“You’ll have to be careful for the two of you.”
“Wh-what?”
Her hazel eyes find mine across the obscurity. “About demonstrating your feelings. Nordin has clearly shed all caution, and my brother will keep your secret, but the Council is made up of crotchety rule-abiders.”
I gather my knees into my chest. “I thought you didn’t approve.”
She sighs. “Only because I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“You think Nordin would hurt me?”
“Not on purpose, but he’s a shifter who could still find a mate.”
“He said he’d reject her.”
Mor’s lips pinch. I know what she’s thinking. What she keeps herself from saying.
“Remember when I asked you for total honesty, Zaskja?”
All thoughts of losing Nordin to his true mate flee my mind.
“Is there a reason you left out the fact that Nika Krosson sat with you and Saga at supper?”