Chapter 52
SEREH
She followed Erann’s pace, astonished at his speed.
When she’d woken after her exposure, he’d barely been able to get about without his crutches.
Now, he limped but loped along almost as fast as Arrow.
She also felt much recovered and was eager to follow him and learn the truth, but even so, fatigue dragged at her feet.
Sereh stumbled and fell elbow deep in snow that was no longer soft and fluffy but wet and sludgy.
She thumped the ground, sending a spray of slush into her face, grimacing at the bite of cold on her wind-reddened face.
Arrow ran to her side. The wolf-dog had been walking in the middle ground between her and Erann.
Sereh had the sneaking suspicion Arrow was as enamoured of Erann as she was.
‘By the Gods,’ she growled, gasping for breath.
Sereh ran her hands through Arrow’s fur.
It was at the in-between stage of changing from her Long Night to her Long Day coat, and as she stroked, handfuls of fur came free.
Sereh released them into the gentle breeze, allowing the familiar movement to soothe her as she recovered.
Erann was many steps in front but stopped when he realised she wasn’t with him, then started walking back towards her. She heard the wet crunch of his boots, their snowshoes discarded, although Erann had managed to lose one in the avalanche anyway.
‘Are you well, Sereh?’ His voice rang with concern. She watched his progress, again marvelling at how quickly he was healing. The limp remained pronounced, but he was managing to walk unaided.
She held her hand up and shook her head to show he didn’t need to come and help her as she stumbled back to her feet. She resumed her steps, Arrow at her side. Erann watched for a moment – she sensed his scrutiny – but then continued on his way.
The day was glorious, the golden sun beating down on the melting landscape.
At long last, she felt herself start to believe the Long Night had ended and the crops might stand a chance of first being harvested and being re-sown before the Long Night returned.
Beneath her feet, the trickle of flowing water could be faintly heard.
In the distance, glimpses between the huge mountains enclosing Vatna Jokull revealed a murky green-and-brown sludge where the snow was melting on the summer grazing meadows and slumbering crop fields.
They stuck to a path across the centre of Vatna Jokull, having hurried to get away from the devastation of the avalanche.
Sereh felt sure they were retracing their steps from the first few days of their journey together, though only Gods knew why Erann would want to come back here.
He hadn’t revealed their destination to her, but wherever they were going, it wasn’t towards the Library or towards the cave where she’d sheltered the first night, which had been their initial destination before the avalanche.
Her feet grew heavier and heavier. She was tired and hungry and could feel her frustration growing.
She was following Erann because he’d saved her life.
Surely that granted him a second chance.
And, if she was entirely honest with herself, because she wanted to trust him.
When he’d said he loved her on the day she’d left him, she’d been too angry for it to register.
Since then, she’d thought of little else. It made sense. It made her feel right.
She hadn’t told him that.
She wasn’t inclined to let him know now, either. Not at the moment. As much as she felt for him, she wasn’t sure she trusted him right now. She knew he’d lied to her – by omission, if nothing else – and he had yet to apologise.
There were so many holes in his story. Where Emma was.
How he’d known where to find her. How he’d been able to recover from a terrible broken leg in barely nine days.
He claimed their destination would answer her questions, but she couldn’t see how.
She could admit to herself that she desperately wanted to be convinced, however.
She wanted to believe her growing feelings for him were justified – it couldn’t just be because he was the single most attractive man she’d ever laid eyes on. She wasn’t that shallow. Was she? Neither could it be because he was the only person who could help her.
Finding him after all these rotations apart, only to lose him… It was unthinkable, but she would do it if he proved untrustworthy. Like Rankil.
Those days after she’d walked out and left, she realised, had been some of the loneliest of her entire life, even taking into account finding Estrith and her family dead in their steading.
The only time she’d ever felt more lost was in the days after her parents died.
Her fury at them abandoning her, when she needed them, had never left her.
It had only dulled to a muted ache once she realised that they’d not been the cause of her being sent to Rankil’s steading.
No, he’d manipulated events to ensure that happened.
She should have kept her home. She shouldn’t have been compelled to become his servant.
Living at Rankil’s, being forced to abandon child after child on the glacier, had hardened her heart to the needs of others.
She’d thought only of herself and her anger at her parents and at Estrith for being dead.
But finding Erann again, it had opened something in her.
Not just the ache of desire, but an ache in her heart that only Erann could soothe.
To feel the blossoming of hope, friendship and love – only to have it all snatched away, especially by her own bloody-mindedness – was more than she could take.
She’d nearly drowned in her grief. It was how she’d wandered off the edge of the glacier and fallen down a deep crevasse.
She’d landed bruised, torn and unable to move from the ledge for fear she’d fall even further.
She’d almost welcomed the helplessness of lying, trapped and freezing slowly to death.
She’d known what it was to abandon all hope and to accept death as inevitable.
She’d been dimly aware of Arrow crashing down next to her. Sereh had tried to tell her it was all right. Arrow hadn’t listened and had abandoned her.
Some time later, Sereh had felt her return.
She’d squinted up to the fragment of sky visible and seen what she’d thought was one huge green eye staring back at her.
For a second she’d believed Arrow’s white fur had turned golden, but then she’d felt Arrow’s hot breath on her face and seen she was still snowy white – just dirtier than usual.
When Sereh came to again, it was to hear Erann shouting down at her.
Joy, pure joy at hearing his voice, had forced air back into her lungs, pushed warmth into her fingers.
She’d floated back to the cave on that joy.
But once she was safe and awake again, the happiness she’d felt gave way to uncertainty until it distilled once more into frustration over all the things she wasn’t being told.
And now she was being made to trudge through ankle-deep snow slurry that was seeping through her boots, on her way to Gods knew where.
She focused on Erann’s back and scowled as he nimbly cut over the snow, like he hadn’t been sleeping in a cave for over a week.
Like he didn’t have a healing broken leg.
Meanwhile, the only thing cutting through the mind-numbing tiredness was her determination.
Determination and hope. She wanted him to prove he deserved her trust. Then she could allow herself to love him, mind, body and soul.
She was trying to contain that hope. She feared it was misplaced and she needed to know she had the resolve to walk away if it proved to be ill-founded.
Suddenly, her exhaustion got the better of her.
‘Surely it can’t be much further, Erann. I need to rest.’
She sounded petulant, even to her own ears. She expected Erann to be exasperated. Instead, he looked at her with contrition on his beautiful face – it made her furious with herself.
‘Sorry, Sereh. I promise it’s over the next ridge of ice.’
Sereh realised they’d been steadily climbing.
No wonder her legs were aching, and sweat pooled down her neck.
She bent her resolve to make it up the ridge.
She squinted upwards and was pleased to note Erann had stopped.
She stamped to his side and looked at him questioningly. Erann smiled triumphantly.
She looked around them. There was nothing there.
Just the edges of Vatna Jokull and mountains and endless snowy landscape there always was.
They had returned to where they’d first walked onto Vatna Jokull when rushing from his family’s steading.
This was what it had all come down to. This was Erann’s explanation for everything they’d been through together. A big nothing.
He stood there, his hands raised above his head, a smile on his face.
‘Is this it?’ She gestured, furious with herself for having been dragged here, almost back to the beginning of their journey, and further away from the Library than when they’d set out that morning.
She turned away from his hopeful face, her pulse hammering, all the frustration, grief and hurt she’d felt these past seven days wrapping itself tightly around her heart. She had no choice. She couldn’t stay. A relationship couldn’t be built on this… nothing.
He was never going to tell her the truth.
She needed to leave.
Then she felt herself being grabbed, gently but firmly.
She could feel strong, gentle arms around her as Erann held her, pulling her tightly to where he’d been standing.
She briefly wondered what he was doing, and then his lips brushed hers, tender at first, deepening slowly, until it was all-consuming.
She’d imagined this kiss before. More times than she cared to admit.
But none of those imagined kisses had prepared her for the way the world around them seemed to melt away, for the burning heat of where their mouths met, for the way his arms tightened slightly like he was afraid she might pull away.
But she never wanted there to be any distance between them again.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him with the force of her frustration, betrayal and love.
She never wanted the kiss to end. The sun and the wind stood still, until nothing else existed but this moment. When they finally pulled apart, he kept her close so her head rested on his shoulder. He held her there, his hand caressing her cheek, as they slowly regained their breath.
‘Do you see it?’ he whispered, but she kept her eyes closed, luxuriating in the smell of him, the feel of him and his closeness. The truth no longer mattered. She couldn’t leave him. She loved him. She needed him. He needed her. Nothing else mattered. She was ready to tell him.
‘Do you see it, Sereh?’
Sereh opened her eyes to look up at him, but her gaze slid away.
She gasped. She closed her eyes again and blinked them open.
She and Erann stood in a pool of shimmering purple light that stretched on and on, tiny blue sparks dancing from its surface to float higher and higher.
‘What is this?’ she breathed, reaching out with her left hand, to run her fingers through it, smiling at the sensation rippling along her arm. It felt like a jolt of something. Like when Erann touched her. But she knew.
This was what Erann had wanted her to see. The grin broadened on her wind-roughened cheeks.
This was not the answer she’d been hoping for. This was bigger. There was something else on their land, something she’d never seen before. Until now.
She ran her hands through the light, watching the sparks run from her fingers. Giggling joyfully while Erann laughed, his body relaxed at her side, all tension drained away.
Her thoughts returned to Erann, at her side. He’d seen all this. Why hadn’t he told her? Admittedly, she wouldn’t have believed him, but why hadn’t he tried? And then her gaze slid to something else, something else that would, undoubtedly, account for every other strange event of late.
The creature shimmered beneath the blinding light from the sun, more golden even than the most ancient of family treasures.
Its eyes were huge, larger than the biggest horse or cow she’d ever seen.
And there were two of them, slowly appraising her, the purple of the light touching her, reflecting back to her, so she saw herself in the huge eye, an eye she’d seen once before.
Something she thought had been dreamed. A figment of her tortured mind.
She gasped again. She felt Erann’s body rumble with laughter, and his grip tightened on her hand as hers did on his.
‘Sereh, meet Skaldi. Skaldi, meet Sereh.’
She looked at those huge eyes, at the giant body behind that head, at the lightly unfurled wings, at Arrow, sitting beside the huge creature, tongue lolling, no sign of fear emanating from her loyal wolf-dog.
‘Hello,’ she stuttered, eyes wide with shock. ‘Hello,’ she coughed, not letting go of Erann, for fear she might fall.
The huge creature bowed his head towards her, and she turned to Erann, his eyes as bright as the creature’s. His smile was as broad as Arrow’s, and she suddenly understood so much.
‘He says hello, Sereh.’
‘What?’ she gasped, grateful Erann held her hand. The dragon could speak? Why then, couldn’t she hear him? And more importantly, how long had he been living alongside them? Why had she never seen the dragon before?
‘Hello,’ she gasped, the single word unsteady. ‘Hello, Skaldi,’ she spoke more confidently, only for her forehead to furrow and her gaze to rivet on Erann.
‘Tell me everything,’ she demanded fiercely. Erann nodded, but smiled even wider.
‘You won’t believe me,’ he murmured. ‘You really won’t.’ And now he laughed, the sound joyful, delighted, and she couldn’t help but join him.