Chapter 43
Revna
The Tapestry spent hours instructing S?ren and me on how to weave the arch. The threads of our friends, our enemies, and all the others who had passed in the days since Aloisa’s death came together in my hands, humming with the lullaby while I strung them together.
And behind me, S?ren tied the knots and cut the threads. We moved in tandem, every motion as fluid as when we fought side by side. When I finally stepped back to breathe deeply and examine our work, I could barely believe my eyes.
Somehow, we’d woven a brilliant arch of gold. A tall stretch of the Tapestry extended above it, forming a small wall. And on the wall were three images: a crown, a wolf skull, and the Soulcleaver.
S?ren had been the one to suggest it. “Like your scars,” he’d said. “So that all who pass on remember what happened here today.”
No spirits remained, waiting for us. And yet, I knew they were all part of the Tapestry now. The souls made up the arch, and the arch was another facet of the Tapestry itself—the being who had given us our power and who showed us the past. All the souls combined into one essence.
The next time we stumbled across a stuck soul thread, S?ren could untie it and I could weave it into the beauty of the archway.
Threaded through the woven sword above us were two strands of red. Callum’s and Arraya’s souls. There permanently, I hoped. With Arraya gone, there was no one left to trick those who came after me and S?ren. My heart settled with the knowledge.
We’d done it. We’d freed the Fjordlands of their worst tyrant.
But my hands shook with exhaustion, and memories of Frode cascaded through my mind like a waterfall. S?ren wrapped his arms around my waist, standing behind me to study the arch. “I’m tired,” I whispered.
The reality had begun to settle in. Frode is gone. I am more than human. S?ren and I are bound to the Tapestry for…eternity.
When I blinked, my position had shifted. S?ren carried me, one arm beneath my knees and the other cradling my shoulders. The Tapestry had disappeared, my magic quiet once more. I laid my head against his chest and closed my eyes. “Then let’s go home, sweetheart,” he said softly.
Sleep dragged me under, and I did not fight.
I woke in an unfamiliar bed, wooden beams crisscrossing over my head.
Frowning, I surveyed the space. The sounds of a crowd moving around downstairs echoed slightly, a murmur of noise in the silence. Moonlight streamed in through the window. My belongings—or what remained of them—were gathered neatly on a chair. Armor, swords, boots, cloak.
This must be the upper bedroom in the loft of the Sharpened Axe. I wondered who was running the tavern now that Halvar—and Jac—was gone. Was it still a hub for the Nilurae?
But the biggest surprise of my surroundings was a welcome one: the warm figure curled up next to me, his height and broadness nearly enough to push me off the side of the small bed.
S?ren held me tight, keeping me from falling. My head was pillowed on his bare chest, and I tilted my face to look up at him. His eyes were closed, the tension he usually held in his jaw absent.
When I shifted in his hold, he was instantly alert, gray irises gazing down at me. “Oh,” he said, his voice gravelly. “You’re awake.”
I wrapped my arms around his waist and squeezed. Buried my face in his chest and breathed him in. “It wasn’t just a dream. Thank the gods.”
I felt him chuckle and clutched him tighter. “I think we are the gods now.”
“Are we?” Tension seeped back into me. “I don’t like that.”
S?ren rubbed a soothing hand over my back and hummed contemplatively. “It probably depends on what we believe a god is. We’re still ourselves, still people. We’ll just…live longer now. I think.”
I pulled back to look at him, raising an eyebrow. “You think?”
For a long moment, he stared at me, a muscle working in his jaw. Then, with a sigh, he sat up. “I have something to show you.”
I made room for him to move past me and clamber off the bed. I pulled my knees into my chest and wrapped my arms around them, watching him carefully. His bare back was as enticing as always, but something about him was different. I couldn’t quite place it.
He strode to the armchair, where he’d placed his shirt and my clothes in a carefully folded pile. The Hellbringer mask and our weapons rested atop the fabric. He pulled one of my daggers from its sheath, holding it casually.
I forced my shoulders to relax. Forced my mind to picture something other than my hands holding that hilt while his blood poured over them and I desperately tried to stanch it.
His touch on my shoulder brought me back to myself. My breathing had sped up, but his weight sinking the mattress down next to me was reassurance enough to open my eyes.
S?ren studied me. “Is it the knife?”
Shame crawled up my skin. I averted my eyes, but nodded. I was incapable of hiding any part of myself from him. I didn’t even want to hide anymore. But I couldn’t help but wonder what he was thinking. After all…
“It was my fault you died.”
My voice cracked on the last word, and I held my breath.
“It wasn’t,” he said, shifting to pull the tie off the end of my braid.
He began to undo the twists, running his hands through my hair.
Despite my best attempts to fall into panic, his touch soothed me.
“It was Arraya’s fault. She took your knife.
She made the final blow. There was nothing you could have done. ”
“I—” Panic crawled through my chest, cold as the icy plains of the northern wastes. “I should have been able to kill her.”
S?ren’s nails scratched gently against my scalp.
I tried not to think about how long it had been since I’d bathed.
But he didn’t complain. “There was no winning that fight, Revna. You did your best. I did, too. I’m only sorry you had to witness that.
” He pressed a kiss to my temple. “Even if a single decision would have changed the outcome, there’s nothing we can do about it now.
I’m just happy to have you here, with me.
That’s all I feel now—gratitude that I made it back to you. ”
I hesitated. “And how did you make it back to me, exactly?”
He laughed. “Fuck if I know. But I think it has something to do with what I wanted to show you.”
I turned but stared at him and not the knife he held. Until he extended his arm and used the blade to carve a deep gouge in his own flesh.
“S?ren! What the fuck!” I shot to my feet, searching the room for a clean cloth to use as a bandage. The lullaby was dim and quiet, but it started up at the sight of his blood. We needed to stanch the bleeding before I went to find Volkan—
I stopped short. S?ren flexed his arm, the skin whole once more, flesh unmarred. A bit of blood stained his skin, but even my Lurae had quieted, realizing there was nothing wrong.
“This is what I meant,” he said, “when I told you we are…more than human now.”
“Your body did not do that when you had a knife embedded in your stomach,” I grumbled, tossing the shirt I was holding aside. “Did the Tapestry do that to you?”
“I think so. And if my hunch is correct, then while you’ve been sleeping, you were changed, too.”
I snatched the blade from him. Without preamble, I pulled the tip across my own flesh. Blood blossomed on my forearm. But before it even began to drip, the skin knitted back together and smoothed once more. Like the wound hadn’t even happened.
I glanced in the mirror hanging on the wall and brushed my fingertips over my cheeks and forehead. When I felt the ridges of puckered flesh still there from my scars, I settled a bit. “All this while I took a nap?”
He smiled sheepishly. “You’ve been sleeping for almost forty-eight straight hours.”
“Have you been here the whole time?”
S?ren ran a hand through his hair and looked away. “No. I’m sorry. I wanted to—but someone needed to bury Mira. And rebury Frode. Along with everyone else who died in the battle. There was always someone here watching over you—Volkan, Jac, Astrid, and I all took turns.”
My chest ached. Sorrow was etched deeply on S?ren’s face. The battle was won, but we had all lost, too. I took his face in my hands, careful not to nick him with the blade I still held. “Don’t be sorry. Mira deserved a proper burial from her brother.”
His eyes welled with tears, and he blinked them away. “Thank you. For understanding.”
I returned the knife carefully to its sheath before going back to the bed and pushing S?ren onto his back.
His eyebrows shot up, but I simply crawled atop him and lay down, resting my full weight against him.
For a while, we were quiet. Only when he had fully relaxed, his pulse calm once more, did I venture, “We’re immortal. ”
“Maybe. Unless that thing kills us.”
I hadn’t even realized the Soulcleaver was lying with the rest of the weapons. The sound of S?ren’s heartbeat beneath me steadied my nerves. “We have to be different than Callum. We can’t let this get to our heads.”
“Part of why Aloisa insisted that her powers be transferred to two people instead of just one was to combat the loneliness she felt,” S?ren said.
“She spent so much time wishing for company. The Tapestry chose us because it both believed we would be worthy of the power and responsibility, and because of how likely it was that we would fall in love.”
I smiled into his chest. For all my anger at the Tapestry, I suppose I couldn’t complain about it doing one thing right. “Really?”
“Really.”
“So what do we do now?” I asked. “Search for the lost souls that need to be sent on into the Tapestry?”
He sighed, wrapped his arms tighter around me. “I think that’s what Aloisa did. She stayed in the wastes for most of the last two hundred years or so, though. She had been hunting down Arraya but couldn’t bring herself to kill her own sister.”
I snorted. “I wouldn’t know what that’s like.”
“We could live here still, if you wanted.” S?ren’s fingers traced a pattern along my skin. “We could travel, like we talked about. Find souls along the way and help where we can.”
“Living in the castle, even a newly constructed one, with all of the memories…” I hesitated. “It would be too much. And I worry about what happens now that all of Bhorglid knows we’re…different.”
“Maybe we go to Faste and spend some time with Volkan for a bit. Jac is planning to go with him.” I heard the smile in his voice, and tension fled from me.
“I like that idea. Though we might not be able to stay for long. If the tension between them is this palpable now, I’m not sure I want to be around when it breaks.”
S?ren laughed. “I wondered if I was the only one who noticed. I’m glad they’ll have each other for company out there. Volkan won’t ascend to the throne for a long time. And the current king and queen have no interest in changing their discriminatory laws.”
“Volkan and Jac will find a way,” I said. S?ren traced a pattern on my back and I shivered. Our bare skin pressed together had become more than a simple comfort now. “We’ll just have to see, I suppose.”
He hummed contentedly. “It definitely feels like our future is more uncertain than ever, but…I can’t help but be thrilled to know we’ll be together for all of it.
” Then he grew serious. “I want to write down all the history we’ve learned from the Tapestry.
And everything that’s happened with us. Even when we’re gone one day, the people of the Fjordlands deserve access to the truth.
Not spotty records passed down from person to person indiscriminately. A real, written knowledge of it all.”
“Yes.” It felt so right I had to hold myself back from leaping up and pulling him out of bed to find paper and ink right then.
Passing souls on was a responsibility; recording this history was a purpose.
One we chose for ourselves. Halvar’s parting advice felt far too perfect now that S?ren had spoken the idea aloud. “I’d love nothing more.”
Warmth suffused me. I rolled off him and stood, extending a hand. “I’m long overdue for a bath. Care to join me?”
His eyes filled with heat. “Your wish is my command, Princess.”