Chapter 25 #2
He pushed up to his feet, rotating his shoulders, stretching his neck, needing to shake off the tension riding his back. “It shames me to know that half my lineage is connected to them, but having their blood in my veins is what has permitted me to understand their draw to power—their need for it.”
He peered down at his palms, frostfire flaring to life, forking between his fingers like lightning, crackling, only now it was laced with shadows swirling in the seams of light. “It…calls to me.”
The tent felt colder, and the candlelit lanterns flickered as if fighting the chill that had permeated the pavilion. An eerie hush pressed against my ears, and dread slid down my spine like slime. “What does?”
“Whatever we stirred in Dokkvíor…” he uttered, his voice like steel, icing my bones.
“Calls to you how, Jack?” I said more carefully, sensing the shift in energy in the room even more, that same static that filled the air before a powerful storm.
But he wouldn’t turn around to look at me, his gaze locked on the ribbons of frostfire and shadow swirling faster and thicker around his hands.
Distant whispers swirled in my ears, words spoken in a tongue I didn’t understand.
They grew louder, stronger, and I knew in my gut that Jack was hearing them, too.
Without thought, I raised to my feet and reached for his hands, wrapping my fingers around his, not caring that his magic could potentially hurt me.
The instant I touched his skin, a sharp zing of ice and fire ran up my arms and down my spine. It jolted me, but it didn’t hurt, not terribly at least. I held on tightly to his hands until the frostfire and shadows dispersed and only wisps remained, then nothing.
Jack’s gaze finally snapped to mine, eyes blinking as if he’d awoken from a dream. “What happened?” he asked, pulling his hands from mine, flexing his long fingers as if he could still feel the magic pulsing through his veins.
“The Helvaktír…they’re the ones calling to you, aren’t they?”
He cocked his head.
“I heard the whispers, Jack. Right now, and in the forest. When that wraith held you by the throat.”
“You heard it?”
I nodded. “I heard them, but I didn’t understand what they said.”
“None of the others… They didn’t hear anything when I mentioned the voices.” He looked at me curiously. “But you…” Jack inched closer to me, his fingers reaching for the strand of silver hair at my temple.
I pulled away, arms crossing over my chest, instinctively shielding the wound that was no longer there. Something about all this was starting to make terrifying sense, and I wasn’t sure I was ready to admit it. Speaking it out loud would make it too real.
“Sylvi, what’s going on?”
I hesitated for a few short breaths, wishing I could forget the whispers, forget the fact that I knew something was happening to my body, something I couldn’t quite explain, though there was an explanation, one I had been trying to avoid for fear of what it could mean—for me, my family, all Skadgard.
The repercussions of that truth were inconceivable.
If everything Jack had alluded to back when we’d been in his room, about royals not being the only ones ever blessed with magic…
Gods. This was so fucking crazy, but how could I continue to ignore the signs.
Ignore the healing wound, the graying hair, my heightened senses, the unrelenting, almost preternatural pull toward Jack.
Especially after everything he’d just said regarding the weakening of the shields and the rising of whatever lay buried deep in the ruins of Dokkvíor.
But also, there was no way I could ignore the thing that happened to me out on that lake.
I sucked in a deep breath and slowly spun to face him. “When I stood in front of that Nyrvendir, the one that seemed to be their leader, it was like…I don’t know. It was like he was in my mind, and I was in his. He wasn’t just challenging me, Jack. At least, not as a death hound…”
Jack’s brows pinched, and he crossed his arms. “What do you mean?”
“What you said about the shifter-fae, that they were real, that they once wielded magic… What if…what if the Nyrvendir weren’t always death hounds, what if they were once fae? Wolf-shifter-fae corrupted by the magic of the Shadow Court?”
“Weren’t you the one who told me I was speaking nonsense when I told you what I found in the archives about the shifter-fae?”
“I know what I said,” I snapped, pacing in a small circle. “But it—he—spoke to me.”
“What did he say?”
My eyes found his, and for a few heartbeats, I couldn’t speak. Because I’d not recognized the word the wolf had spoken to me, but I’d felt the rage behind it.
“Syl?”
“Svikari.”
His back went rigid, and his throat worked, a vein ticking at his temple. “Betrayer…” he said gravely, translating the word from the old tongue. “Did it—he—say anything else?”
Tightness spread across my shoulder blades as I recalled the words, spoken in our current tongue, the creature’s voice a rumbling echo of a growl mixed with the distinct rasp of a grown fae male. “You wear the skin of kin, pup, yet your blood reeks of treachery.”
The words still rang through me, the way wind howls through the hollow of an ancient forest…cold, biting, fierce.
Jack’s expression darkened, the muscles on his shoulders bunching as he tensed, but then he reached out, gently tucking a lock of hair behind my ear.
A pause stretched between us, heavy with so many unspoken words.
But I couldn’t keep silent anymore. “What if you’re right, Jack? What if I am somehow related to the shifter-fae? What if there’s something wrong with me?”
“Why would you say that, elskan mín? How can you possibly think something is wrong with you?”
My hands shook. “Because clearly something is going on with my body. What if the reason these things are happening to me is because I am connected to the darkness in that forest? This all started happening after the poisoning. How else can you explain the fact that I can now hear the wraiths and hounds? Maybe I’m cursed.
That thing called me a betrayer… What else could it mean? ”
Jack took my hands in his, his touch warm and comforting, such a contradiction from when I’d touched him earlier, when he’d been nothing but electric ice.
“I’m not going to pretend to have all the answers, but when we get back to the palace, I promise you, we’re going to get answers…
whatever it takes. We’ll dig into the archives.
We’ll find every scrap of lost history. Not just about what’s happening to you, but everything relating to what’s really buried in those ruins. ”
Letting go of my hands, his gaze drifted to the back of the tent.
“This is also why, despite my aversion to this wedding, I must play by my mother’s rules.
It’s the only way I will be able to get close enough to the king to figure out what he’s planning.
Because if my mother and her uncle are in fact looking to strike a takeover on the continent, then they need to be stopped before they spur the next great war. ”
I rubbed at the spot right above my heart, as if massaging the area might alleviate the heaviness that had settled there.
Every time he brought up that godsdamned marriage, something inside me prickled like thorns on a midnight rose, venomous and deadly.
It was like that princess was taking away something that had always been mine, though I knew he wasn’t.
And I wanted to rage against it—against her.
Gods. My fingertips tingled, as if claws wanted to sprout from my nail beds.
I had no idea how I was going to be able to face her and not want to tear her apart.
This wasn’t normal. This possessiveness was borderline irrational—was irrational.
Yet… “Isn’t there another way to stop them that doesn’t involve you marrying into that court? ”
Jack rubbed a hand down his face, scratching at the stubble kissing his jaw.
“Look, we sure as Hel aren’t going to solve this problem tonight.
Why don’t we get some sleep. The camp is secure; I reinforced the wards myself.
We can talk in the morning. Then, after we light the pyre, we ride hard for Thrymgard.
We’re still far away from any wedding taking place.
My mother is going to want to throw some extravagant ball, which will give me time to figure all this shit out. ”
He turned from me, leaving nothing else to say about the matter.