Chapter 40
“Hello, Flower.”
The pen drops from my fingers and splashes my sheet of vellum.
“Miss me?” Havrik leans against my doorframe, poking at his teeth with a toothpick.
I cut my gaze to my bow, which hangs by the front door. Without moving his gaze off me, he unhooks it and pitches it into the indigo beyond. I stand so abruptly that I knock my knees into the underside of the table.
He pushes away from the doorjamb and ambles down the two front steps. I rush to the firepit, grab the long spoon we use to stir our linens in the washbasin, and hold it over the flames until the wood crackles.
I swing the spoon in his direction. “Get out of my house! You’re not welcome here.”
Havrik keeps moseying forward.
“Stay away from me, Varganson!”
“Or what? You’ll whack me with your stick?” He snorts as he keeps ambling forward. “Is that any way to treat the man about to elevate you from runt to queen?”
“I’ll never be your queen.”
The fire ribbons up the handle. Right before it can lick my fingers and cause additional damage, I toss it at his head. He ducks. My projectile catches on the pelt still covering our wall.
“Now, that wasn’t so smart, was it? What will your mother come home to?
I suppose it doesn’t matter since, seeing how close the two of you are, she’ll probably want to move in with us now.
Well, for the time you and I will be sharing a home, which won’t be that long if Skarnir helps me seize the pass. ”
I try to parse his rambling, but my survival instinct is muffling my comprehension. Without averting my eyes from Havrik, I back up toward the clothesline from which my dress hangs.
“No need for that old rag, Flower. I’ll have a whole new wardrobe sewn for you as soon as the dressmaker takes your measurements.”
As the smoke thickens, I cough. I feel the wool for my weapon. Cool metal bites into my shaking fingers just as an arm bands around my middle and spoons me back. I tear the dress off the clothesline.
“Fine. The dress can come with us,” Havrik says, as he stuffs something inside my mouth and flattens his palm to seal it in.
It tastes like an old sock, and I gag. Bile surges into my mouth, but the pressure isn’t strong enough to eject the foreign object, not with his palm sealing it in.
My stomach seizes and spasms again. Another wave of vomit rushes up and stains the fabric until it’s so viscous and sour, tears burn my lash line.
Nostrils flaring, I shake my head. When that doesn’t rid me of his hand, I consider tossing my dress—stinger be damned—to grab his hand and thrust it away, but survival instinct kicks in and makes me hug the ball of damp wool.
My only chance to escape Havrik in one piece is to wound him with silver, for if he shapeshifts…
“What the fuck are you doing, Arek?” my captor grits out, hauling me toward the door.
Of course, the Ravine Jarl didn’t come alone.
“Her pit house going up in smoke will attract attention,” the black-haired shifter points out, refilling his bucket before overturning it, snuffing out the relics of my unintentional house fire.
As Havrik walks me past him, he says, “Clever.”
Pride makes his shifter flunky puff out his chest and throw me a smile that’s all serrated teeth.
My heart stops, and not because I’m being kidnapped by a bunch of crazies, but because, on the table, right beside Arek, lies my latest journal entry.
I start shaking my head like a madwoman again, but Havrik only presses tighter, driving the vomit-soaked wad deeper. Tears of disgust and frustration leak from my eyes, blurring the sight of the enormous white wolf standing guard in front of my house.
For a fragmented second, I believe it might be Nordin, but he isn’t here.
I grunt and kick, but that only tightens Havrik’s hold. “Best be quiet, Flower, or I’ll have to knock you out, and unlike Karn, I don’t like knocking my females around. Makes for an unhealthy relationship.”
Because abduction is healthy, you fucking psychopath?
A strand of leather is wrapped around my head. It’s bound so tight, it cuts into the corners of my mouth. Another wraps around my chest. At least, it secures my balled dress to my person.
Before my next breath, Havrik heaps me atop the waiting wolf, flings a fur throw atop me, then trusses my hidden form in more rope, clinching me to the beast’s back.
I will kill him and his errand dogs. Poke them all over with my silver thorns, then find a blade to lob off their charmed hair, for they don’t deserve Fenrir’s power.
As they take off into the streets of my quiet village, I steel my spine to keep my head from jouncing and peer through the tiny opening at the deserted road, willing someone to hear the thud of paws and open their door.
Please, please, please, Vales, wake up. Fenrir—or Freyja—help!
I don’t implore Nordin, for that would be hypocritical. Still, I wonder what he’ll do when he learns of my kidnapping.
I swallow as Arek leaps and lands so brutally that my forehead bangs into his rib cage. Thank Gods for the heavy fur coat that buffers the blow.
Arek stops at the edge of Meadowpoint and paws at the ground. The other two wolves draw so close that their bodies press me into my mount’s rib cage.
I try to peer past the fur to spot the reason they stopped. I catch sight of legs. Given how my abductors are no longer bolting forward, I dare hope it’s a Vale.
For a long moment, no one moves, then a whispered “All clear” rises from the stifling night, and the wolves shoot forward.
My jaw clenches, splitting more of my skin open on my leather bit, because I know that voice: Tyron. I commit his betrayal to memory for when I break free and storm back into the valley.
When the air blackens and dampens, so does my hope. I hone my hatred for Tyron and the other three by picturing their inert, bleeding bodies.
And then I try to recall word for word what Mor will read when she returns from hunting. Here’s to hoping that my absence, combined with the charred tapestry, keeps her from paying my journal any mind.
To think she’d hesitated to go hunting because she didn’t want to leave me alone on my second night home. To think I’d pushed her to go, promising that I wasn’t going anywhere. More than that, promising that I was going to stay up until she came back.
When would that be?
In an hour? Two? What if she ran till dawn?
Only the young stayed out that late, I reassure myself.
She’d be home earlier. Early enough to get to me before Fenrir only knew what Havrik would do to me?
I strategize on when to deploy my stinger, deciding to use it once I’m alone with him. Unless Havrik doesn’t part with his lapdogs? Could I reload my stinger and shoot all three before they noticed the weapon and confiscated it?
My nightshift is so soiled and my breath so rank, odds are Havrik will have me change before anything. Hopefully, without an audience.
If only I’d bolted my door tonight, or better yet, stayed over at Saga’s.
If only I’d traded Kjell’s whereabouts for a lump of silver to forge a new dagger.
If only Nordin hadn’t forced me to leave my last one behind in the Wilds.
The blame game riles me up, dumping adrenaline into my veins. I welcome it. By the time the air turns navy, I’m wrathful enough to take on all three wolves without a weapon and believe I could win.
I count the seconds until my ride comes to a stop—four hundred and two. The blanket is ripped away, and brisk air pelts my fevered skin. A heartbeat later, the leather bands loosen and I slide to the ground.
As my bare feet sink into squishy grass, I observe the only pack land I’ve never visited. Though the moonless sky is dark, I divine the valley’s shape—narrow but long, and set so deep it must sit beneath sea level.
Where spring has raked over our valley, winter clings to the Ravines’ territory like a second skin. White lines the thatched roof of the house in front of me, which is so large I presume it must be a pack meeting place.
Havrik suddenly cuts off my line of sight, grinning like the degenerate that he is. “Well, that was easy. Almost too easy.”
He finally loosens the band around my head. The instant it falls away, I spit out the wadded fabric, then moisten my sour mouth with saliva and spit again.
“Arek, flask,” the Jarl commands.
A horn appears. I can tell it’s not water the instant Havrik spins the metal screw cap and props the vessel in front of my face. The fumes are so pungent that my eyes burn. He lifts it to my mouth and waits until I part my lips before tipping it.
I take a swig, swish, then spit.
“Swallow the next sip, Flower. I want you relaxed.” His eyes light up with innuendo that makes me seal my mouth.
Like Hel am I getting sloshed and relaxed for this asshole. The clear liquor trips off my chin and trickles down my front, wetting my linen shift. I pull my wool dress more snugly against my chest, glad for more than the weapon tucked in its pocket.
“I need the privy,” I croak.
“Got one inside my house. Our house.”
I slide my teeth, then begin to count down from sixty to keep myself from attacking Havrik right there and then.
“Right this way.” He snakes his arm around my waist.
My body revolts, and I hiss, “Don’t touch me.”
“You best get used to it, because I’ll be touching you”—his hand crawls to my ass and gives it a firm squeeze—“everywhere until my deal with the vamps is acknowledged.”
“What deal?”
“One of your councilmen mentioned Skarnir had taken a fancy to you. Such a profitable little flower you are… Let’s marry first, so you become my lawful property.”
Don’t react. Don’t react. Don’t react.
“Arek, watch the tunnels! Her mother’s bound to come through for her. Lop off some of her fur. At the root.”
The temperature in my body fluctuates from raging inferno to freezing tempest. “You touch a hair on her body, and I won’t speak the vows!”