Chapter 24 #2
Air whooshed from him, and he couldn’t resist the instinctual urge to curl in on himself. I batted away his halfhearted attempt at a parry, slipped through his defenses, and my blade crashed against his armor once more.
“Two for the queen!”
Before I had time to even pull my blade away, sharp pain lanced down my leg. I stumbled backward with a hiss, felt my Lurae reach out as if to pull the blood back in. Confident I was far enough from Arne to be safe momentarily, I glanced at my thigh.
The wound was long but shallow. It would be a pain in the ass to bandage with how close it came to my hip, but I could finish the fight. Straightening, I looked to Arne, who now held a small dagger in his nondominant hand—covered in my blood.
He grinned. “One for the soldier.”
The discontented murmurs of the crowd permeated the quiet place I’d retreated to in my mind. Raunstrup’s face was troubled, and she looked to me with a question in her eyes. I nodded and she confirmed, “One for the soldier.”
In the back of the crowd, a voice hollered, “One for the cheater!”
Cries of disgruntled affirmation followed. I was stunned. The soldiers were…on my side? I hadn’t realized such a thing was even possible.
Arne began to circle me again, and I matched him step for step. I knew S?ren was in the crowd somewhere, watching, but I refused to search for him. Not when I needed all my concentration for this moment.
I wanted to smack my past self. Why did you promise Freja you wouldn’t maim or kill him?
“As a reminder,” Raunstrup called, “no party may attempt to seriously injure the other.”
Arne chuckled darkly. I scowled. Fine—if he wanted to play rough, who was I to deny him?
I lunged.
Weeks of training with the Hellbringer followed by weeks of drowning the call of my Lurae by sparring for hours on end made me strong; made me fast. Most important, they made me lethal.
The first clash of our blades caused him to stumble slightly. The second strike, immediately after, made his eyes widen. My feet swept into the dance of battle and knew instantly: this was no equal partner.
Arne parried every strike. Because I allowed him to. We fought, and through it all my Lurae hummed beneath my skin but remained where it was, content as a cat curled by a fire. I leveled blow after blow after blow, each one just restrained enough to keep from truly injuring or even killing him.
When the first bead of sweat rolled down his forehead, I moved for the takedown. My next strike pushed him into another half stumble. My boot was there, waiting—he tripped, rolling as he fell to make sure he didn’t gut himself on his sword in the process. Shame.
I swept my blade across his and he lost his grip. The weapon tumbled into the grass. The momentary panic slowed him for half a second; the perfect amount of time to plant my foot on his chest and shove him down with all the force I could muster.
His head thudded against the grass. I pointed the tip of my blade at his throat, just shy of touching skin. “Yield,” I demanded.
Fingers scrabbled at my boot, attempted to shove me away. I was immovable.
“I said yield.”
“Tap me with your fucking sword and end it!” he snarled.
I laughed in his face. “No. Yield to your queen.”
“You are not my queen.”
I leaned down, allowing my sword to follow the movement and press gently against his Adam’s apple. He swallowed, finally daring to show nervousness, and the motion put a nick in his skin. My threads, pulsing from the cut in my thigh, reached for his.
I pulled them back.
“If I am not your queen,” I whispered, softly enough that no one else could overhear, “then you do not belong here.”
His eyes widened. “You would—”
“Exile you, yes.” I studied him. Gods, it was delightful to see him fear me. About damn time. “Freja is the only reason you are still alive right now. Did you know that? You owe her your life.”
In a last desperate bid for escape, he stretched up and hit me, slamming his knuckles into the cut he’d made. Over and over he scrabbled, hoping to find the threshold of my pain tolerance.
My Lurae, so carefully contained all evening, screamed.
The threads lit between us, mine branching out to light every vein in his body.
I wanted nothing more than to pull, to force his limbs in unnatural directions, to snap him like a twig.
He deserves it, the magic seemed to scream. Kill him, kill him, kill him!
I pushed my blade into his throat with even more pressure than before, forced my voice to remain steady despite his abuse, and called, “Yield.”
Arne muttered it so quietly I almost didn’t hear. “I yield.”
I sheathed Aloisa, stepping off him. The crowd around us was silent and still, no one daring to utter a sound. The sun had sunk closer to the distant horizon, tingeing the sky blood red. Arne pushed to his feet.
I watched him retreat to the crowd. A small group of former soldiers took him in, some shooting glares at me as they did. But they were few in number. The vast majority left without looking back, eager to get home to their spouses and children.
They didn’t consider me an equal. Not yet. But I was shocked at how well Volkan’s suggestion had worked.
A hand brushed my shoulder. “You need to clean and bandage that cut,” S?ren said. “Before it gets worse.”
I sighed, looking down at it. Weariness plagued me. Defeating my spiteful ex-lover and putting him in his place had been satisfying, but…
I missed Arne. The one who’d been my friend and confidant for so long, who’d kept a careful and even balance between my and Freja’s fiery personalities.
“I’ll take care of it,” I told him softly. “I’m fine. It’s not deep.”
“Maybe not, but it will most certainly have a bruise beneath it in the morning.” Was I imagining the scowl I heard in his voice?
A glance up confirmed I wasn’t, and I stifled an affectionate smile.
But then his expression grew deadly and we locked eyes.
“I wanted to kill him. I should have killed him, Freja’s wishes be damned. ”
I pressed the side of my face into his chest. He stilled, and both my Lurae and my ear pressed against his rib cage confirmed his speeding pulse. “I’m glad you didn’t. Because one day, when he’s truly earned it, I’ll kill him myself.”
S?ren burst into surprised laughter, and the sound echoed through him. I grinned. Once, I’d struggled to decipher even an ounce of humor from the fearsome Hellbringer. And now, he laughed in my arms.
He curled an arm around me, then hesitated. “Come on. Let me take care of you.”
I was too tired to argue. When he moved his arm from me, I reached out and grabbed his wrist, holding it in place to keep his arm around my shoulders. My temple was still pressed into the fabric of his shirt, and I inhaled the smell of pine and snow that followed him everywhere.
Gods. I missed this. The familiarity of his warmth, of his body pressed to mine, was already calming me. Was I drunk on the victory of putting Arne in his place?
Maybe you’re just happy for the first time in months, I realized. And when I was happy, the person I wanted to be with was…S?ren. He was the only one whose eyes I could meet without thinking of all my mistakes and all the pain I had caused.
We came to his door and he opened it, guiding me over to an armchair similar to the one in my own room. “Sit,” he ordered.
I obeyed, and the stretch of my muscles sent fire up my thigh. “Maybe you were right,” I admitted with a chuckle. “Bandaging this isn’t a bad idea.”
He looked over his shoulder to raise an eyebrow at me from where he rummaged through a hutch. The lamps glowed softly, stretching into the shadows to reveal a familiar helmet and armor stored there.
S?ren followed my line of sight. “I keep it locked.”
“I’d be concerned if you didn’t.”
He stood and approached, hands filled with a roll of fabric bandages and a small pot. I eyed it suspiciously. “It’s just a salve. Volkan left and went into the city earlier; otherwise, I’d make him patch you up.”
Volkan in the city? I tucked the knowledge away, planning to ask the prince about it later.
I watched S?ren kneel before me. The sight filled me like a heady drug.
When I reached out and brushed the hair back from his forehead, I wasn’t sure what I was doing.
But his eyes closed, and his throat bobbed in a swallow, and for the first time in days, weeks, months, I had the kind of power I really wanted.
I pulled my hand back and exhaled shakily. “I’m going to have to take my pants off for this, aren’t I?”
I hoped the note of wry humor in my voice came through, but based on the way his lashes fluttered open to reveal his pupils, still huge and dark as his gaze scraped over me like the rough pads of his fingertips—hesitating in all the places I wanted, wanted, wanted—I guessed he had barely heard me.
S?ren’s voice was rough when he whispered, “Yes. You will.”
I reached for him and he grabbed my hands, tugging me forward and up. I bent to unbuckle the light training armor I wore, one greave after the other, before pulling off the thin metal covering my thighs. And all the while, S?ren stared.
I didn’t try to stop him. Not when I wanted him to look—wanted the reminder of how I affected him. My pulse pounded, and I unceremoniously pushed down the pants I wore.
He didn’t move until I sat back down on the edge of the armchair and hissed as the wound stretched. The sound pulled him back to the moment, and he cleared his throat as he moved to examine it.
“It’s not deep, but there’s quite a bit of blood.
Most of it’s dried now. And I’m sure it hurts more than it should considering—” S?ren bit off the end of his sentence, and I watched with fascination as a muscle in his jaw flexed.
“Are you sure I can’t kill him? It would, unfortunately, be painless. And quick.”
“I’m sure,” I murmured.
He looked up at my face and blinked, startled by whatever he saw there. Were my feelings so obvious? He’d always been able to read me like a book, so I supposed they were.
When he returned to the task at hand, he smeared a thick handful of the salve over my wound. I jumped at the sensation. It was frigid, and after a moment, it stung. “What the hell is that?”
“I told you, a salve. It’s going to speed the healing process.”
“Well it hurts.”
I caught the edge of his smirk. “I’ve never seen you balk at pain before.”
He was right. Begrudgingly, I settled back into the chair and waited for the sensation to subside. S?ren wiped his hands on a towel, then wrapped his arms around his bent knees and watched the slow process of bruises blossoming beneath my flesh.
“I still remember watching you hit the wall in your room as hard as you could,” he mused. “It was the same night after I saw you for the first time. Made me wonder what could possibly have happened at that short dinner to make you feel so much.”
“Were you in my room?”
He huffed a laugh. “No. There’s just enough of a ledge outside your window that someone with a lot of patience could balance there and see inside.”
I sighed. “Not the best first impression, then.”
“Not a bad one,” he countered softly. “I watched you and thought, ‘She knows exactly what it means to hurt like I do.’ ”
The words hovered in the air before us until they sank in, sending a shuddering breath through me. And it was a bad idea, a terrible idea, but I didn’t stop myself from placing my palms on either side of his face and pulling his lips to mine.
S?ren’s mouth was warm and familiar. He surged up to meet me, hands wrapping around my waist. The kiss was raw, desperate, wild—when his tongue brushed against my lower lip I shivered and he groaned.
My legs spread and he fit perfectly between them, our faces almost level with him kneeling. Our first kiss had been like this: with me sitting on his lap, I’d been just barely taller. I loved it as much now as I had then.
Teeth scraped my lip as he pulled me closer, so tight against him that every inch of our bodies touched. The pace grew faster, headier. My Lurae quieted to a whisper, my mind empty of everything but S?ren, S?ren, S?ren—
The Hellbringer.
I forced my eyes open and looked past him, to where the mask watched us from the closet.
“Wait,” I gasped, my desire souring into something rotten, a rock in the pit of my stomach.
He pulled back instantly, breathing heavy. “Are you…”
S?ren didn’t finish the question. I couldn’t force my eyes to meet his. “What are we doing?” I whispered, panic setting in. “I shouldn’t have— Why did I—”
I stood, and almost collapsed. Swearing loudly, I managed to catch my balance enough to sit back down and glare at him. “Why is my entire leg numb?”
“Salve.” He waved the question away. “Can you stand up? I need to put the bandage on.”
He was…acting like nothing had happened. Warily, I stood, balancing all my weight on my left leg. S?ren carefully wound the fabric over my thigh. The closeness made me stiffen. But his hands never wandered, and he remained focused on his task.
When he finally tucked in the end, he looked up at me. I swallowed at the sight. A supplicant kneeling in prayer before his goddess.
“What do you need?” he asked softly.
I kept myself from crumpling. Still, my anguish must have shown on my face. “I don’t know.”
The truth was too heavy, so an excuse would have to do. There was no way to be honest. No way to say, I need my brother back. I need to be with you like I need to breathe. I need, I need, I need. And I don’t know how to reconcile it all.
An answer finally came to me. “I need…to not be alone.”
His eyes lit up, and I wondered whether I should feel guilty. He wanted more than this. Being together was the worst idea—especially when I still had a kingdom to pull together and he was under the influence of his queen.
Maybe, I thought as he tugged me toward the bed, holding back the blankets while I clambered in, we’re together in another life. If not this one, surely the next.
When he settled behind me, wrapping an arm around my waist, I wanted to cry.
My eyes remained dry, though. Once, I would have pushed him away, snarled at him.
I knew I should do those things. But instead, I counted myself lucky to have even this small comfort: S?ren’s warmth, his heartbeat in tandem with mine.
“Good night, Revna,” he whispered into the dark.
I settled, deciding that worrying would not help me tonight. “Good night, S?ren.”