Chapter 39
As night drapes over the land, Saga’s front door flies open. I jerk my stare off the knotted wool rug I’ve been treading since Saga and Ulf left.
My nostrils flare at the sight of my visitor.
Yes, mine.
Nordin isn’t here to see his sister. His eyes shine with such unbridled fury that I put some distance between us, sidling toward the wall.
“Do you realize what you’ve just done?” The frame of his body blurs from how violently he shakes.
I tilt my chin and firm my stare. “Yes, what’s best for the pack.” And for you… “Community trumps individualism, right?”
Instead of tamed stubble, Nordin now sports a scruffy beard that makes him look years older and alarmingly wilder. “Skarnir will never leave now. Not once Blaka confirms we’re harboring a valkyrie.”
I roll my eyes. “He already knew about me. Vaelen sent Tyron to collect me. Besides, his release was contingent on the partition of the Wilds. I sat with your father and the Council when they drew up the treaty. I take it—from your visit—that Taeric has ratified it?”
Oh, how Nordin’s eyes blaze.
“How about, instead of pretending to care about my fate, you admit what’s truly troubling you?”
A beard may mask his jaw, but not the wrath edging it. “And what exactly would that be, Zaskja?” He makes my name sound like a slight.
I narrow my eyes. “That I screwed up your war plans.”
He snorts. It’s loud and ugly, especially since it’s at my expense.
“If you think I’m more concerned about my battle strategy than about your safety, then you’re deluding yourself.” He flattens one hand on the wall beside my head, too close for comfort. “But I suppose it fits your monster narrative of me better, right?”
My lips pinch. “Again, I did what was best for the pack. Wards will go up, so you needn’t worry about Kjell coming after you.”
He scoffs. “…after me?” Another scoff. “For fuck’s sake, I don’t care if that bloodsucker were to hunt me. I’d welcome it.”
“So you could drown him again?”
“Oh, I’d do far worse than that.” Nordin practically hums with the urge to dismantle.
To think I used to believe him gentle. One glance at my hands reminds me that he never was. He was an animal first, a man second.
I give my head a slight shake to clear it.
“The vampyrs might still want me dead, but once the five Alphas have marked the new piece of land as their own, Odin’s Sons won’t be able to reach me.
Not to mention, now that shifters own most of the northern woods, you no longer have to charge into battle and risk your life and the lives of others. ”
“Except we need the whole thing, not some stunted strip.”
My head rears back. “It’s not stunted. I looked at the map. It’s half! Unless Taeric—”
“Half isn’t enough.”
“Are you hearing yourself, Nordin?” I exclaim. “When did you start letting greed steer you?”
He regards me a long, slow while, almost as though he’s counting my freckles and memorizing the moss-green shade of my eyes, but he knows me by heart. Which means it isn’t my features holding him, but something that runs deeper than my skin.
I lick my lips, causing his eyes to drop there. With a huff, I say, “Stop crowding me.”
Instead of backing up, he rolls his shoulders inward and leans infinitesimally closer. The divide between us grows muggy, electric like the air before a storm. “I don’t want the entire North out of greed, love.”
“Don’t call me love,” I snap, before modulating my tone to ask, “If it’s not greed that drives you, Nordin, then what does?”
I’m met with silence, one that festers between us, growing into something solid and barbed, a wall of thorns.
“Nordin?”
His silence endures. His scrutiny too.
“Even if every wolf from every pack joined your war effort, how’s a ground force supposed to defeat one that flies?” My intent is to snap him out of his odd trance, not to remind him that waging a war against dragons is madness.
He pushes off the wall, lips kinking into a callous smile. “I’d tell you, but I’d be worried the information would find its way to my enemies, seeing as you’re so inclined to roll over and let them take what they want from us.”
Before I can stop myself, I’m launching myself at him, my palms flying to his chest. I shove him. Although it sends a jolt into my still-tender wrist, the pain feels worthwhile when I manage to make him stumble back a step.
“Fuck you, Nordin Stormsson,” I snarl, cradling my wrist in my other hand to steady it. “I didn’t deserve that!”
The vein at the base of his neck distends. “That male won’t go away until he has you, Zas.”
By has, Nordin unmistakably means kills. “Afraid you can only win your war as long as Taeric’s cursed?”
“You know me, Zas…” A frigid smirk tugs at his lips. “I thrive on easy wins. After all, nothing quite strokes the ego like crushing a diminished foe.”
I do know Nordin. I know that when he engages in a fight, he doesn’t take the measure of his adversary’s strength, too blinded by his instinct to protect. It helps that he’s packed not only with brawn and magic, but also with combat skill.
He tucks his chin, redistributing the shadows dimming his face until only his eyes carry light. “You asked what was driving me… What is always driving me, Zas?”
“Becoming Alpha.”
He smiles again, but it isn’t barbed like earlier.
It’s packed with pity as though I got the answer wrong.
“Once we have the Wilds, we’ll have a border with Ljosam?r.
” In a voice as soft as the raindrops that resumed falling when Saga left, he adds, “No one can keep you safe like the Empresses can, not even me.”
My heart grows soft that he’d still endeavor to shield me after everything.
I take in his expression, lingering on the hollowness of his cheeks and the deep purple smudges rimming his eyes. He looks as though he hasn’t slept or eaten since our fight.
My annoyance wanes, supplanted by more unease. I don’t want his sympathy, because it muddles the waters between us. Yes, I eventually want them to run clear, but not so soon, for too swift a pardon would bastardize my pain and open the door for repeat betrayal.
“If I told you I had another way out of Isam?r, would you still insist on going to war?” I ask.
His eyebrows gather. “What is this other way out?”
“I can’t tell you, but Mor thinks—” I snap my lips closed, realizing my blunder before he even pivots on his heel and heads to the door.
I race after him and grab his arm. “Don’t confront her, and don’t you dare dissuade her.”
“Why in Isrike do you jump to the conclusion that I’m on my way to start a fight with my beloved aunt?” The way his timbre crackles tells me that he was on his way to do just that.
“Because you look and sound about as levelheaded as a she-wolf in heat.”
One of his eyebrows ventures a little higher on his forehead at the comparison. “Relax. I’m only interested in hearing how she plans to smuggle you past the dragons.” He speaks the words so stringently that I sense listening isn’t his sole intent.
“By boat,” I blurt out, wanting to spare my mother a confrontation with Nordin. “Saga thinks it’s a shit idea, but Mor seems convinced that dragons won’t be able to scent me in the middle of the ocean.”
“I agree with Saga. It’s a shit idea.”
It’s a feat to keep my eyes level. “Surprise, surprise.”
His muscles flex beneath my fingers, reminding me to let go now that he’s no longer streaking away. He trails the fall of my fingers, which I haven’t covered in gloves since our fight. Whenever I start to miss him, the welts on my skin serve to remind me why I shouldn’t.
“Believe it or not, I’ve given this thought in the last two weeks,” he says. “The only way out is through.”
“I’ll stay put.”
“Zas, we both know that if Skarnir doesn’t die in the next decade, you won’t be staying put.”
“It depends.”
Color blooms fast and sharp along his cheekbones. “On?”
“On many things.”
Is that hope warming his complexion? “Like?”
“For one, on whether the pack stops treating me like a pariah.”
“Give me names.”
I blink. “No.”
His mouth flattens.
“For two,” I say, so that he stops compiling a list of people in need of a hair trim, “it depends on whether I find a purpose here.”
“You forge weapons and magnificent jewelry.” His stare lands on my choker and caresses it. “If that’s not a purpose, then I don’t know what is.”
I lower my gaze to my waxy skin, urging it to quell my reaction to him. “Making pretty baubles isn’t a purpose. As for weapons, the pack has Koppar.”
His chin dips, along with his stare that presses against my face with such intensity that I feel cornered even though I’m standing in the middle of Saga’s home, nowhere near a wall. “Don’t diminish your worth.”
I want to tell him to stop being kind…to stop confusing my heart. Except it risks emboldening him, so I say, “Imagine all I could’ve done with valkyrie magic.”
With those casually delivered words, I successfully snuff out his hope of a reconciliation. Or so I assume…
He tilts his head. “Look at all you’ve achieved without it.”
“That still didn’t give you the right to take it from me.”
He steps closer, crowding me again—with his body, with his scent, with his all-consuming presence. “I know you can’t stand to look at me right now…”
I swallow, wishing it were true.
“…but understand that I will never stop fighting to keep you alive, nor will I stop asking for your forgiveness.”
At least he doesn’t speak of earning back my love. He must realize that even though pretty flowers will sometimes bloom amid weeds, nothing beautiful and pure could ever pierce through the rubble of our past.
A gust of humid air swirls through the pit house.
“Zaskja Stormsson, what have you done?” my mother exclaims.
“I bought myself peace with our people and the vampyrs, Mor.”
“Kjell will tell Skarnir who you are.” She approaches, eyeing Nordin, whose gaze has yet to stray from me.
“The wards will keep her safe,” Nordin finally says, shifting his attention to his aunt. “As long as she stays within them…”
My stomach writhes with an uneasy feeling. Saga might’ve made sure Ulf rescinded his invitation to Kjell to penetrate our wards, but what if he welcomes in another vampyr?
After all, my uncle tried to kill me once, and without true consequence. What would stop him from trying again?