Chapter 17
Lyra
I did not know how many bell tolls had passed, nor did I care much. My arm was slung over Roark’s bare chest, tracing the place over his heart, one leg coiled around his beneath the furs and quilts. Naked, sated, sweaty, and blissful.
I never wanted to move.
As though reading my thoughts, Roark brushed his fingers over my cheek. We will need to face them eventually.
I nuzzled into the soft down of the pillow. “Tomorrow.”
A breathless chuckle followed, but Roark said nothing, merely dragged his fingers up and down my spine, watching the cold gray of dawn slice through the small crack in the shades.
“They’re fading.” I held his palm in front of my face, inspecting the strange, inked runes from the sealing.
They will, he explained. But they are always there and can be summoned if needed. They’re unique to us.
“Why do they appear?”
My brother once told me they are written from the hopes of our fallen ancestors. A story they hope our souls will craft while we live.
I studied the runes. Marks of power and strength, of long lives and honor, they were runes of battle and love. I pressed a kiss to the center of his palm and let it fall to the place over my heart.
“What will they do to us, Roark?” My words were soft, the slightest tremble evident, and I hated the vulnerability. If Roark had fears or reservations regarding the rashness of the soul sealing, he did not show it.
With one knuckle, Roark tilted up my chin. He used the same hand to speak against my skin. By law you are not only a melder, Lyra. You are Draven. To harm you, or me even, goes against everything the clan believes about their craft.
House Bien belonged to Dravenmoor, body, heart, and soul.
The tip of my finger ran along the stubbled edge of his jaw. “You ought to know, Kael will be furious with us for not waiting for him. He had grand plans of terrifying anyone who desired to make me a wife.”
I will beg Darkwin’s forgiveness when he is free. His thumb tugged on my bottom lip. And he will be free.
I held his stare for a long moment before tilting my chin and kissing him, slow and deep. Roark trapped my face in his palms, adjusting to angle my mouth in the position he wanted. His tongue parted my lips and brushed over mine.
Blood rushed from my head to my lower belly. Gods, I could never tire of the taste of this man.
My husband.
I grinned against his mouth and gripped the roots of his hair. What a strange thought. When Roark entered House Jakobson in Skalfirth, he was a beautiful terror, dark and dangerous. I feared him, loathed him, wanted him, and on that night, I despised myself for all of it.
How strange it was to recall every moment the sharp, jagged pieces of unfounded hatred peeled away. Those must’ve been the moments a long-buried bond had slowly restored. Moments when I could see the Sentry as a man with a formidable heart.
Roark was a villain to some, cruel, cold, and vicious. To me, he was gentle, possessive, and my home.
Why are you laughing?
I was lost in his taste and touch and nearly missed his words along my back.
I pulled away, grinning, and raked my fingers through his hair. “I just keep calling you husband in my head and it is fast becoming my favorite word.”
Roark’s eyes heated. He dragged me over the top of him and kissed me deeper, harder.
I never wanted to leave the bedchamber. But the longer he held me, the more I believed that, perhaps together, we could face all the darkness that was coming for us.
—
The doors to the great hall were intricately carved with runes and symbols of the gods.
In each corner were the ravens of Dravenmoor.
One head looked up toward the rafters, as if seeking guidance from Salur.
The other, more skull-like and deadened, peered down, watching humanity below, a reminder of our own mortality.
It took a bit of cleverness from Roark’s mouth and tongue to convince me to step outside the bedchamber, but when the sun was high in the sky, it was impossible to ignore reality.
We needed to face the clan.
Then, somehow, we needed to find a way to be free of their watch to continue our hunt for the Wanderer’s bones and Kael.
Already too much time had passed. Fadey and Ingir would be desperate to find me, and if not me, they would hunt the bones ahead of us.
Ingir was queen, the voice of Stonegate besides Prince Thane.
She could casually allow the false Captain Baldur to search for me, all while claiming I was the treasonous melder.
The need to keep a step ahead of their plans grew more frantic by the day.
The small group of Dravens who’d witnessed our soul sealing were another factor in leaving the chamber. Gunter pounded on the door earlier, insisting Virki was already prowling about looking for Emi.
She went nowhere without Brynn and Auki, but it had the úlfur council demanding to greet the melder and see what sort of threat I brought to the clan.
“It’s an obvious ruse to get you out in the open,” Gunter insisted. “Virki is skilled with that silver tongue of his, always has been. He’ll try to spin your life as a threat, but with the sealing, it will be naturally assumed that your loyalty is with your mate and your clan. It will be well.”
My insides were coiled in harsh knots, and even surrounded by Emi, the twins, and a feral-looking Gunter, I tasted bile in the back of my throat.
“By the by,” Auki muttered, rubbing the still-wrapped wound on his leg from the arrow. “We know who sent the archers against Lyra.”
Roark nearly stumbled he stopped so swiftly. His eyes burned. Who?
“Brynn might say no man desires her, but she was able to get a few watchers talking over sharp mead this morning.”
Brynn tossed her braid off her shoulder, chin lifted. “I never said men did not desire me; they are simply not the men I also desire.”
What did you learn? Roark gestured angrily.
When I repeated the question, Auki cleared his throat and barreled on. “Turns out it was Councilman Asmund. You remember him, yes? Lost his son in the raids.”
Roark’s jaw pulsed.
“He’s quiet,” Gunter offered with a touch of vitriol in his tone. “Peaceful. Usually a voice of reason on the council. But seasons of hate and grief at the loss of his son clearly have made him a wolf lying in wait.”
With a tight fist at one side, Roark spoke with his other hand in swift gestures—a sign he was shouting. His head is mine.
“All in due time,” Gunter insisted. “Don’t go in that room and slaughter everyone. Let them see Lyra, let them know of your bond, then they will have no ability to argue your vengeance.”
The way Roark’s face deepened in a flush, he was clearly perturbed by the stay of slaughter, but after a long moment he nodded.
Brynn stroked the top of òlmr’s wide head but looked back at me. “Ready?”
“I doubt I ever will be.” I tightened my grip on Roark’s hand.
With a short nod, he signaled the twins to open the heavy doors.
The hall was crowded. Folk bustled around the long table in the center. Some worked filling ewers with wine and water. Others laughed and plucked flatbreads and aged cheeses off plates before they hurried on.
Dravens flowed through the royal house like it was its own sort of marketplace. Dark Watch warriors tipped back drinking horns before meeting their patrol posts, hair braided off their faces, fur cloaks over the double-headed ravens stitched on their tunics.
Women tended to the young ones who were led through the hall. Some gathered baskets of eggs, loaves of rustic bread, and stacks of linens and wool for the market down the slope.
This was different from the more stoic hall of Stonegate, where Ingir and her ladies avoided Damir and his lovers. Folk in the Draven hall laughed more; they shouted without care for propriety. It felt a great deal like organized chaos, and I was glad for it.
With everyone focused on their own lives, no one looked to us at the doors. No one took note of the way the melder had entered, her hand clasped tightly with the prince’s. They did not notice the fading bands on our fingers.
Until Auki somehow stumbled over Gunter’s foot and the door clattered against one wall.
I froze.
All eyes seemed to snap in our direction. All voices hushed. I wanted to fall into the cracks of the floorboards.
Roark stepped in front of me. The way his shoulders were strong and back, the way his face was locked in stoic condescension, I could see the prince he’d been born.
Despite knowing folk would not understand his words, Roark spoke all the same. Where is the queen?
“The prince asks to see his mother,” Emi said.
For a time no one spoke, merely stared. Something heavy and firm brushed against my leg. I shuddered when the great head of the fara wolf came to stand beside me, Auki and Brynn at my other shoulder.
Gunter remained at Roark’s shoulder, stiff and nearly daring his clan to speak against the sight of us.
At long last, a man rose from the bench of the long table. His beard was wiry and peppered the same as old Thorian’s from back home. He pointed toward a back room. “The queen speaks with the úlfur.”
Roark did not wait another moment before pulling me across the hall.
Shards of my heart chipped and cracked away when folk turned their scrutiny to their plates and one woman was so startled at our swift approach, she picked up a tiny girl who shared her features and shielded the child as though we might reach out and steal the babe away.
Before we reached the doors, a man, perhaps a few full seasons my elder, stepped in front of the latch. He spun a knife in one hand. “Standing against the clan, Blackvale?”
Gunter returned a narrow look. “Stand aside, Haukur. Virki isn’t here for you to kiss his ass.”
The man’s lip curled, but he kicked his eyes toward Brynn. “You too, Oakbriar?”
Before Brynn could respond, Gunter shoved Haukur’s shoulder. “Step back. Your prince wishes to speak to the queen.”
Haukur looked to Roark. Disdain was there beneath the shade of pale green in his eyes. “My prince lost his privileges long ago. Besides, I don’t think there’ll be much speaking to be had.”
The man chuckled at his joke over Roark’s stolen voice, but it lasted mere moments. His eyes darkened when Roark stepped nearer, and draped over Haukur’s shoulders were the faintest hints of darkness. A cloak of shadows.
By the two hells, Roark was doing something with his craft. Skul Drek was doing something.
Haukur didn’t move, didn’t blink. His body shuddered and his teeth clenched. A hushed “Stop” broke from his lips.
Roark merely crowded the man even more.
The tips of my fingers prickled, like drawing too near a flame. Gold surrounded the blade of the knife in Haukur’s hand. Broken threads of craft gleamed in my sight. As though I stood half in the mirror and half not, as though Roark’s craft called to mine.
Was this the power of a sealed bond? When he summoned more of the darkness of Skul Drek, I wondered if I could drift between the hazy shadows much the same.
I went to Haukur’s other side. My palm covered the one he used to grip the hilt of his blade. The man shuddered and winced but managed to look down at me.
“I am glad so many folk use bones in their blades,” I said, low and rough.
Haukur whimpered when he watched me hold his curled fingers to the hilt. I would need to open his flesh to meld the bone of the knife to his hand, but the way he watched in horror, perhaps he could see the shine of my craft as well as me.
I spoke with a sweet sort of viciousness, never releasing his fingers.
“Your prince seems to be showing you that he speaks well enough. I urge you to keep out of our way. I think I speak for us both when I say that we tire of sods like you who try to stop us. Now, do you wish the prince to keep speaking to you?”
Haukur shook his head swiftly.
“Would you like me to meld this blade to your hand, never to be removed lest you cut it off?”
Again he shook his head.
“Then let us pass.”
Another hand curled around the back of my neck, spinning me around. Roark’s lips were close to mine. I did not know he’d pulled back, too lost in my own furious exhaustion at those who continually cut at Roark’s sacrifice.
My husband grinned with such a twisted gleam I could nearly make out the reddish copper of Skul Drek in the gold. I think you made your point.
I faced Haukur. The man had slid down the wall to a crouch, the knife thrown on the ground.
I curled my fingers around Roark’s tunic. “If one more person speaks of you like you are some traitor, I think I will meld the bones in their necks as one.”
The way Roark looked at me, I wasn’t certain we would be making it to the queen. I thought he might whisk me from the hall at any moment and take up what we started last night again.
“Well that was frightening and entertaining.” Gunter clapped Roark on the shoulder. “But let us get this meet over with. It’s time to finally put this damn war against the melder to rest.”