Chapter 14
Revna
“That’s not a wager. That’s blackmail.”
S?ren laughed, the sound so genuine I scowled.
“You have a fundamental misunderstanding of what blackmail is,” he said between chuckles.
“This just raises the stakes. Makes it more entertaining. True blackmail would be putting your sword into my hands, pointing the blade at your chest, and demanding I tell you something true.”
In the pointed silence, I resisted the urge to elbow him in the stomach. It would be so easy from this position. A pointed jab would be perfect payback for the smirk in his voice as he reminisced on our early time together in the wastes, when I’d done exactly what he referenced.
He’d suggested that every time I sensed a heartbeat successfully, I could ask him a question—one he’d have to answer truthfully.
I’d been fully on board with that idea. I had plenty of things I wanted to ask about: What had really happened to his missing sister?
Why had he told the queen about our relationship?
“It will go the other way, too,” S?ren had continued, a hint of something indistinguishable in his voice. Nerves, maybe? Anticipation? “If you give it your best shot and are unsuccessful, then I get to ask you anything. And you have to give me a truthful answer.”
Hence, my accusation of blackmail.
“And if I refuse?” I shot back. I was grateful I couldn’t see his face.
Remembering how annoying he was became far more difficult when I was confronted with our height difference, with the way his hair sometimes swept across his forehead if he was too concentrated, with the pine and smoke smell of him. “What then?”
“Then we do the exercise anyway, and you don’t get to ask me any of the things you’re wondering.”
I was wary. He had the upper hand—my Lurae was wild, often uncontrollable. And there were things I didn’t want to tell him.
But when I considered every curious thought I’d had over the past week since seeing him again…
“Fine.”
“Excellent. I earn a question when you become too frustrated to continue practicing that round. Shall we begin?”
I glanced at the empty path ahead of us, the shadowed copses of trees on either side. “What if there’s no wildlife around?”
“Then you can try sensing my heartbeat, or the horse’s. But don’t forget, I can sense the living things in the vicinity, too. There are rabbits everywhere.”
The reminder startled me. For all the time we’d spent together and all the stories of his battle prowess, I had no idea how his Lurae worked.
Sense a heartbeat, and you can ask him.
Less than two minutes later, I was wishing for a training dummy. Stabbing something was becoming awfully appealing. “Fuck.”
“Harder than you thought?” I heard the smile in his voice when he spoke.
“Yes,” I grumbled. The thin thread connecting me to the horse had vanished since I felt it last, her heartbeat now a silent mystery to me.
When I had started to lose patience, I’d considered lying to him.
But despite it all, the thought of sullying our tell me something true ritual with my bitterness felt wrong.
And focusing for too long on the task was making my head throb. I needed a break. “Ask a question.”
I waited, grinding my teeth, for him to ask something invasive. Maybe a question about my past. How many people had you slept with before me? Or one that stoked the flames of his betrayal. How did it feel when you watched the life leave your brother’s eyes?
He’d even earned the right to a truthful answer to the worst question of them all. Do you still care for me?
But instead, he simply asked, “What does your Lurae feel like to you?”
My expression twisted. “My Lurae?”
“Yes. Do you feel a physical sensation when you use magic? Does it speak to you? That’s not uncommon, actually, though there’s no true evidence that a Lurae is sentient.”
“It’s…” I hesitated. For all the chaos of gaining magic so late in life, no one had ever asked me for any specifics about how it felt to me.
Everyone simply watched me kill people and then thought of me as a monster.
I chewed on my answer for a moment. “It manifests in a few different ways. I do think it speaks to me, sometimes. And I see threads connecting me to people. Their blood.”
“Interesting.” His reply wasn’t pandering, but genuinely curious, like the scholar in him was rising to the surface. “I see threads, too. I can’t manipulate them, only sever them.”
I frowned. “Is that uncommon?”
“Not necessarily. There are very few descriptions of how individuals experience their Lurae. It’s a topic I’d love to do more research on at some point.”
We lapsed into silence. I debated not telling him about the lullaby but mentally shook myself.
If I expected him to answer me honestly then it was the least I could do.
Telling the truth about the song wasn’t enough to make it more dangerous.
“Do you remember the song I sang when you took me to the hot spring for the first time?”
“Of course.” Was I imagining it, or was his voice suddenly rougher than before?
“That song is in my head.” I rubbed a thumb over the leather of the saddle horn. Saying it out loud sounded bizarre. “Well, not in my head. It’s a real sound. But no one else can hear it. And when it gets too loud, I know my Lurae is going to snap.”
He hummed softly. “Let’s start the next round then.”
I was startled. That was it? But, too afraid to push him, I obliged.
By the time I sensed my next heartbeat, S?ren had asked me two more questions. How and when I met Freja—Halvar had introduced us when we were both eleven—and when my Lurae had manifested for the first time.
“Immediately after the Trials. When my father stepped up to try and kill me.”
“Are you sure?” he pressed. “There was never any inkling of magic in you before that moment?”
Irritation sparked. “Seriously? You still think I was hiding my Lurae this entire time?”
“No, nothing like that. I’ve just wondered if it was truly as sudden as we were led to believe or if there were signs it was going to happen.” I felt him shrug. “Knowing might help me in my research. But it isn’t a big deal. Try again to hear a heartbeat.”
I closed my eyes, intending to do just that. But my mind wouldn’t settle. Something nagged at me. The idea that my Lurae might have been present before that moment when I killed my father was absurd.
Wasn’t it?
I sucked in a breath, my eyes flying open.
“When you sent me to spy on my family…” I began slowly.
“Frode snuck up on me in my hiding place. I broke his nose. Blood was everywhere. Later when I was talking with him, I thought I heard the lullaby. When I asked Frode about it, he told me that part of the forest was rumored to be haunted, so I brushed it off. Do you think that was my Lurae?”
He hummed. “It’s entirely possible. Hard to be sure, though. Let me know if you think of any other instances.”
An insidious thought wormed its way in alongside the lullaby beginning its careful path through my mind. Did you have a Lurae all along and you were too naive to know it? Are you chasing down a prophecy just to learn it doesn’t mean anything at all?
The idea was like a knife to the gut, but I shoved it aside. There were only a couple of hours left before we would camp for the night, and I’d be damned before I arrived without having asked him a single question.
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and settled back slightly in the saddle—
My back connected with S?ren’s chest.
Faster than an arrow flying through the air, I straightened my posture, putting as much distance as possible between us once more. My heartbeat thundered.
When S?ren’s lips brushed the shell of my ear, his breath hot against my face, I shivered. “You can lean on me,” he said softly. “I don’t mind.”
I mind, I wanted to scream. Or at least, I wanted to mind.
Logic dictated that I should be disgusted by his nearness, but even as I tried to convince myself that denying him was the best course of action, my thighs gave a pitiful throb.
My shoulders were aching, too—weeks of sitting hunched over my father’s desk, studying recorded legislation late into the night the clear perpetrator.
And, in a move that defied all sense, my body longed for him.
I remembered exactly what it felt like to rest against S?ren’s broad chest. How his warmth would seep into me no matter how frigid the temperatures became. I could imagine in vivid detail exactly how his chin would rest on the top of my head.
A moment of rest, I told myself. Nothing more. Only what is absolutely necessary.
Slowly, slowly, I adjusted my weight once more until I was leaning back against him. I was careful to put no more of my weight on him than was essential. He adjusted his hands on the reins to better support me on either side.
I hadn’t been wrong about his chin resting lightly on the top of my head.
He took a deep breath, like he was going to say something. I felt it through my bones when he let the air leave him without a word.
Instead of pushing him to speak, like I might have done a few weeks ago, I chewed my lip, closed my eyes, and settled my mind once more.
After my second attempt, S?ren had suggested thinking of the lullaby if it didn’t come to me directly. I began to imagine the sound of the notes, the cadence of Mother’s voice when she’d sung it to me as a child. S?ren’s chest was warm, keeping me from drifting afloat in a sea of nothingness.
There was a firm, strong anchor at my back, grounding me.
My Lurae’s song began, joining in with the part I was getting to. But when my heartbeat spiked with excitement, it vanished once more.
I pursed my lips. I hadn’t wanted to hum the song aloud, not in front of S?ren. I was trying to guard myself. He didn’t deserve to bear witness to this intimate part of me, of my magic. Especially not while I was still discovering it myself.