Chapter 50
“We meet again, Little Empress,” Kjell says, flipping me a smile, as though our reunion were fortuitous.
My veins fill with ice before searing with fire. Saga said her father rescinded his invitation. Did she lie?
I glance in her direction only to find her and Sigrid gone. A look around reveals that everyone’s gone. I’m alone with Kjell in the clearing, puddled at his feet like some offering.
“I didn’t kill your Jarl,” I pant, rolling onto my knees. I have to palm the ground to keep myself from tipping back over. What the Hel was in that cake?
“Ah, henbane,” Kjell replies.
Did he read my mind, or did I speak my thoughts out loud?
“From your great Gothi’s personal stash. Who knew the wolf priest was so…wild?”
My gaze skips over Kjell’s features, over the ink vine tattooed on his brow that he got in honor of his dead king.
“You’re prettier than I remember.” His teeth swell and shrink between the full curve of his lips.
I moisten my parched throat with a frantic swallow. “You’re alive because of me,” I remind Kjell.
“I know. Which is why I’ll be returning the favor by not murdering you.”
“Then why are you here?” I ask as the sky whitens with another sizzling burst.
“Come.” He reaches for me. “The dragons are growing impatient.”
I slap his hand away. “Nordin is on his way here. If he snatches you again, I can’t guarantee that I’ll be able to succor you this time.”
“Ah, Nordin… He and I have much unfinished business, but it’ll have to wait for another time.” Menace coats his tone.
I surmise he’s thinking of his slain beast and the fate he intends to give its killer.
“Up we go, Little Empress.” Kjell flings my body over his shoulder like a limp reed.
No. No. No. Not again. I rip my stinger from my pocket and press it against his spine. Even though vampyrs are immune to silver, a piece of metal wedged under the skin is bound to hurt. May his garments not be too thick…
I hit the trigger. The needle bounces off Blaka’s tunic like some hapless insect. What the Hel sort of leather does he wear?
True fear swarms me. “Mor! Nordin!”
Kjell’s strides are unhurried, as though he knows no one will pursue him.
I yell my mother’s name again. Nordin’s. Saga’s. Sigrid’s. Nika’s.
“Save your breath. They’re not coming.”
“They’re coming,” I growl.
“No, they’re not.”
“What do you know that I don’t?” I snap.
“Your cousin is currently out of commission.” I think he means Saga until he adds, “But don’t fret, I didn’t kill him. Only poked a few holes in him and trimmed his locks. And not at the roots, mind you. Ulf didn’t allow it.”
My stinger slips from my clammy palm. Though the world around me spins dizzyingly fast, my weapon falls in slow motion. Like an ember sparking against the grass. Like one of those fireflies Saga attempted to catch.
“Mor! Nordin!” I’m transported back to the night Havrik stole me. And then further back, to the Wilds during Myrknótt, when yet another man hauled me over his shoulder.
I’d give anything to be back on Nordin’s shoulder. To see my wolf cleave open the darkness to reach me.
“Why are you taking me?” I croak as Kjell picks up his pace, smudging my view of the land. “My curse didn’t kill your king. Tyron Gustafson did.”
Kjell either doesn’t hear me or doesn’t care to answer my question, for he stays silent. Or perhaps he does answer something, but I fail to hear it over the whoosh of wind and the thunderous drum of my pulse.
I shiver, tremble, my hair billowing as straight as a wolf’s tail over my head. Too soon, grass and gravel turn into pale rock dusted with snow, and the early spring air loses its balminess. I surmise our destination when Kjell pivots and takes the sentinels’ trail toward the jagged cliffs.
Though my throat is raw, I heave Nordin’s and Mor’s names out without cease, pouring my fury into the night, praying someone will hear me and intervene. I think I hear my name. May it not be a figment of my imagination—or a byproduct of the henbane.
Kjell draws to a brusque halt. And then he’s sliding me down his body. As the world rights itself, I spy a person racing toward us, wild black hair snapping in the harsh gusts that forever buffet the crowns of our mountains.
“Mor?” I whimper as Kjell whistles.
She reaches out a hand. “Hold on, darling!” Her fingers shine crimson. Is that blood? Is it hers? “I’m coming,” she pants. “Almost there.”
Kjell shoves me, and the ground vanishes from underneath my feet. And then he, too, jumps.
“ZASKJA!” The air trembles with Mor’s scream.
The wind tunnels through my hair, flogging my upturned face. Of all the ways I imagined dying, it wasn’t—
Bang.
—like this. The air is ripped from my lungs as my back smacks into something both hard and soft. The ocean’s surface?
Already?
When I don’t sink, I start to twist around but freeze because my mother has just jumped off the cliffs. “Mor! No!”
I try to sit, but the wind pushes too hard against me, pinning me to…to…
A single huge, iridescent eye appears in my field of vision.
“Good catch, Averynth.” Kjell shackles my ankle and hauls me across the beast’s outstretched wing.
I snap out of my dragon-induced daze. My henbane-induced one as well, given how the edges of the world have crisped up. “My mother! Catch her and I won’t fight you!”
Kjell’s pink lips quirk.
“You’ll have my full cooperation. I swear it. Just don’t let her fall into the ocean.”
“She’s a shifter. She’ll be—”
“Please. I saved you, Kjell Blaka. You owe me.”
He sighs. “Fine.” He twists around and yells his brother’s name just as another mammoth beast levels off with the onyx steed. “Well, look at that. Vae caught her.”
I twist my head so fast that my neck creaks. When I spot Mor sitting in front of another black-skinned, scarlet-eyed vampyr, I ball my fingers and press them against my teeth. And then I bite down on my trembling knuckles to stifle the cry finally disbanding from my lungs.
“Back to Hasam?r!” Vaelen booms as my mother twists around and hisses words that kink up a side of the rider’s mouth.
He leans over and whispers something into Mor’s peaked ear that makes her go deathly still and fasten her stricken stare to me. Her head bobs in a slow nod. What is she saying yes to? Accompanying me on this final journey across Midgard?
As we rise above the snowy peaks and soar over the Wilds, I mouth, “I love you.”
Her lips shift over the same words while her throat shapes swallow after swallow.
“Swear to let her live,” I tell Kjell.
“Eira Stormsson’s fate isn’t up to me.”
In the glowing depth of Mor’s stare, I see our beautiful past unfold, then catch a glimpse of the bright future we almost had.
“Who is it up to? Your brother? Did he crown himself king?”
The vampyr at my back snorts. “I doubt Taeric would appreciate his best friend stealing his crown.”
Except Taeric’s no longer here to appreciate anything, so Kjell’s reply makes no sense.
We travel miles in a silence only disturbed by the leathery churn of wings and the long draws of breath. I’m flying on a dragon. It seems so unreal that part of me wonders if I’m not already in Asgard.
“You never answered my question,” I say, as the land beneath us tapers into a strip no wider than the neck of an hourglass. I’m reminded of Rafbo and Nordin. Of the story of how Isrike came to be.
“Which question was that, Little Empress?”
“Why did you take me? Why not Tyron?” When Kjell doesn’t reply, I twist my head. “Why?”
His scarlet irises feel hot on my face, as though tinted by fire instead of blood. “Because you, Aheeva of House Thorn, are the one Taeric desires.”
My heart holds still before ramping up and lashing my ribs at such a breakneck tempo, I think I might swoon off Averynth’s broad back and collapse into the frothing sea.
Desires. Not desired.
Taeric Skarnir lives.