Chapter 51
Shock keeps my lips wedged so tight that my lungs starve for air. It’s only when a rocky outcropping appears, spilling over a ring of clouds that resembles suspended snow, that I ease my lips apart.
It strikes me that I’m not cold, even though the ambient temperature should knock my teeth together and cover the exposed skin on my chest in gooseflesh. I don’t need to question the vampyr at my back as to why I haven’t turned into an ice-pop. It’s obvious. I’m sitting on a live furnace.
“Whose head did Tyron bring back then?” I finally ask.
“Jasrin’s.”
“Who’s Jasrin?”
“Was. A total bore.”
When Kjell adds nothing more, I do. “Did you unalive him because he was dull?”
Kjell snorts. “Rest assured, he wasn’t unalived because of his dreary personality.”
A gust of frosty air whips my hair back. May it flog Kjell in his wretched face. “Did Tyron know?”
“Of course. As did your uncle. The whole thing was actually his idea. A true family man, wouldn’t you say?” Kjell’s tone is thick with derision.
Fury shoots through me as I twist around. “You fucking beheaded a man because my fucking uncle needed a fucking head to fucking entrap me?”
He prods his fangs with the tip of his tongue. “You once asked me what my kink was—pretty girls with dirty mouths.”
I growl, “I should’ve let you soak in that lake eons longer.”
He chuckles, which draws Mor’s anxious stare back to us.
“Joking aside,” my abductor says, “I’m grateful that you didn’t.”
“So grateful that you just had to fu—” I stop the curse word from trespassing now that I know he gets off on it. “You just had to abduct me?”
His chest lifts with a small sigh. “Taeric doesn’t deserve his curse.”
“I didn’t curse him!”
“Your ancestors did.”
“Why should I die for something they did?”
“Why should he die for something they did?”
I clamp my mouth shut anew, since there’s clearly no reasoning with Kjell Blaka. Here’s to hoping his king won’t be as obtuse.
Gods…the man is alive.
Fire and frost chase each other up my spine, which I’ve been holding so straight that an ache has developed between my shoulder blades.
I don’t even have magic, I want to tell Kjell, but since I’m not wearing gloves, he must’ve noticed my rune-free hands. Does he believe—like Nordin does—that magic subsisted in my blood?
The instant I think of my wolf, my heart becomes a dark, dank place. A place suppurating with sorrow yet electrified by the need to find my way back to him, no matter the cost to the world and to myself.
As we approach the narrow cliffs that stretch down the continent, I plot and plan ways to delay dying, and not to escape but to rid the world of the Vampyr King.
I need a weapon made of gold. One that isn’t fastened to my mother’s nail beds when she’s in fur. I can’t risk the vampyrs harming her with silver or dragon-fire.
A chattering arises. One that comes from below…from everywhere.
Smaller dragons with pale bellies flock around us, chuffing and throat-clicking like hatchlings whose parents have just returned from a hunt.
I duck when one swoops right over us, its hot breath rushing over my forehead.
Kjell clucks. “Kaelgor, you nosy rascal, if you knock my passenger off, I’ll let you deal with the consequences.”
I suck down air, suck down my panic. Especially after Kjell gives the snooping animal a slight shove. Kaelgor sinks to our side over Averynth’s wing and keeps pace with us, his iridescent eyeballs pinned to me.
Twice, the diminutive dragon roves closer. Twice, Kjell pushes him away with a soft, “Back, you troublemaker.”
My heart twinges, but not with dread. They’re monsters, Zas, I chide myself. Monsters, like their masters. Do not be fooled.
I’m still working on convincing myself of this when Kjell murmurs into my ear, “Dragons are the noblest, most sentient creatures in our world.”
A wash of dread skitters across my shoulders. “Can you read my thoughts?”
“Yes, Little Empress.” His voice rings with a menace that makes my fingers clutch the top of my thighs. “All of them.”
Then I’m doomed to die tonight.
I close my lids, unwilling to accept this fate but not knowing how to fight against it.
I want to curl up against Mor like I did when I was a child, and she could still shield me from the world.
I want to rest my cheek against her chest and let the steadfast beats of her heart suppress the abounding noise.
Would it be cruel of me to ask to die in her arms?
“Welcome to Hasam?r, a land that so many dream of treading but so few can reach.” The arm Kjell kept around my waist during the entire flight tightens as Averynth pitches low.
A cloaked figure stands with many more at his back. Although I only saw Taeric Skarnir once, I’d recognize his mismatched stare anywhere.
I’m so concentrated on the male intent on killing me that I don’t register that we’ve landed until my mother’s voice sharpens. She calls my name in between snarls directed at Vaelen not to touch her.
Even though I’m loath to look away from the Vampyr King, I do. I see her hop onto the dragon’s bent foreleg before jumping onto the white rock and streaking toward Averynth’s bent legs.
Gods, she’s fearless.
She holds out her hand that’s still tinted with blood. I pull myself free from Kjell and scramble down. She cups my cheeks, her bloodshot eyes racing over me as though seeking out injuries.
“Why are your hands covered in blood?” I ask.
Her throat jostles. “Tyron shot me with an arrow.”
I curl my arms around her and pull her into a hug. “It’s all my fault,” I croak.
“No. None of this is your fault.” She presses a hard, long kiss to my brow. “It’s ours. All ours. My brother’s. Mine. Nordin’s. We shouldn’t have hidden you from yourself. We should’ve prepared you. We should’ve—”
Before she can toss more onus onto her shoulders, I murmur, “I wish you hadn’t come.”
Her body stiffens.
“I wish you’d stayed behind and lived.”
She leans back. “My darling daughter, you’re my sole reason for living.”
The lump in my throat swells, warping my next words into nothing more than breath. “I don’t want to be the reason for your death.”
Though she smooths her palms down my hair, she doesn’t, for once, spill reassurances that Asgard isn’t to be our next destination.
All she says is, “I love you.”
Her eyes are as bright as the moon painting the barren flat rock a white that resembles snow. But unlike in the North, none dusts these cliffs—only cloaked figures.
I turn to the one approaching us.
The one who had me dragged here.
The one with an eye as opalescent as his dragon’s, and the other as red as the fury broiling my chest.
The great Taeric Skarnir watches me through the slit between his cowl and hood, gloved hands curled around the pommel of a wooden staff. His preferred weapon? Is he already picturing impaling me with it?
“Eira Stormsson, I presume?” Skarnir’s voice rolls through the night like a whorl of vaporous soot.
My mother catches my hand and squeezes our palms together.
“Sorry for the surprise guest, Taeric.” His general sidesteps us, stopping by his dragon’s lowered head to slip his palm down the creature’s equine nose. “She jumped after the girl.”
Skarnir dips his chin, those disconcerting eyes of his drifting over our entwined hands before climbing deliberately back up to our faces. He pauses on Mor’s before fixating on mine anew.
Hoping that my mother’s magic isn’t stifling his view into my psyche, I flood my mind with cruel thoughts and descriptive visualizations of how I’d kill him if I could.
He must catch the goriness slicking my mind, because he shifts his staff to the side. I steel my spine and shoulders, refusing to let my fear trespass and feed the monster before me.
He scrapes his staff over the stone and takes a step forward before taking a second step…after moving his staff. By his third labored step, I understand that the stick he holds isn’t a weapon. Or at least, not only a weapon.
The fearsome Son of Odin is lame!
Surprise briefly drives out the fantasy of transforming the man into a pincushion with imaginary gold needles. But then I rein in my empathy. I refuse to feel bad for the male who brought me here to die.
The cadenced click of Taeric’s advance echoes across the land, barely louder than Mor’s coarse breathing. His figure is lean and not as lofty as he’d appeared astride his dragon. Though admittedly, once he’s finally within reach, I do have to tip my head to meet his stare.
I unabashedly study the black thorny vines weaving up his right cheek and cutting through his unseeing eye before vanishing under his hood. Another tendril creeps up the left side of his face, festooning its bony ridges.
The work of my ancestors fills me with an odd mix of longing and shame, and causes the blisters on my hands to throb.
“Ready to undo my curse”—Taeric’s voice trickles between my shoulder blades like an icy drip—“Pup?”
The nickname he uses clears my breastbone of all shame. “Hand over a gold blade, and I’ll undo your curse immediately, Your Highness.”
The corners of his mouth must quirk, for his cheekbones slant.
“Though I can see how an offer to kill me might seem tempting, there’ll be no dying.
” He nods to the hand I hold balled at my side.
“I only want you to recall your ancestors’ spell.
Once I’m free, so are you and your mother.
I’ll even have my charming general fly you both home. ”
“Charming?” Kjell hoots from somewhere behind me.
I’d nearly forgotten he stood so near. But with that memory comes another—hundreds around us, silent and still, beast and man alike, all cloaked in black. I feel their scarlet and opalescent stares pressing into my skin.
“What perplexes you so, Pup?” Taeric’s voice is thick like velvet, the sort that smothers.
“Zaskja,” I growl, even though what he calls me should really be the least of my concerns. “As for what perplexes me…” I lick my lips a great many times.
Taeric trails each sweep, showing a surprising deal of restraint and patience.
“I thought your plan was to kill me. I’m merely grappling with the fact that I might not end up dead tonight, which kind of throws off my whole evening.” My stress-induced retort infuses his eyes with an amused luster.
He’s probably thinking I’m a fool for believing myself safe in a land of blood-drinkers and fire-breathers.
But I’m done being a fool. “I’ll first need to dispel the glamour that was applied to my hands before I was dispatched to the North.”
My mother’s fingers twitch in mine. May her expression not betray my lie.
I tip my chin up defiantly. “It’ll take time.”
Taeric’s stare flattens, palpably displeased by this setback. “How much time?”
“Deadlines make me nervous, so let’s not commit to a date at this stage, all right?” I spout this out with incredible aplomb before adding, as conversationally as possible, “How much time do you have left?”
His lids spasm. Both of them. I’m hoping it means not much.
Averynth swings his enormous, frightful head toward his master, who reaches out to stroke him with the hand not fused to his walking stick. “You have until the next full moon, Miss Thorn.”
Does that mean he only has three and some weeks left to live, or that I do? Either way, the gift of time roots my fragile optimism deeper.
“Kjell, find our new guests lodging,” he commands before turning and retreating into the night, leaning heavily on his cane.
I cannot decide what stuns me more—his frailty, or the fact that I’ll live to see another dawn.
Although it won’t break over my homeland, or warm the face of the man I love, it’ll rise all the same and blaze just as ardently as my fervor to endure and return to the ice beyond.