Chapter twenty-three
Eisa
I awoke hours later, the setting sun pouring through the tiny attic window and lighting the room in shades of orange and gold.
Arik still slept, one arm around me and the other folded across his broad chest like an interred warrior, his tattoos brushing across his shoulders in a magnificent caress.
I hadn’t asked enough about the tattoos, and I marveled at their intricacy as I traced the lines and curves with the pad of my finger.
The symbol that repeated most often was a kind of compass, each spoke ending with a semicircle and bisected by three lines. The pattern was on both shoulders and across both sides of his chest, surrounded by bands of black ink.
“I hate not being able to read your thoughts,” Arik murmured sleepily as he caught my wandering hand in his and placed a kiss on the inside of my wrist.
“I’m wondering about your tattoos.” I shivered as he pressed a second kiss to my palm. “How do you get them to stay?”
“Hmm?” Arik kissed each of my fingertips. “What do you mean?”
“Drage healing. Shouldn’t the skin heal as soon as you mark it?”
“It does.” Arik’s lips twitched as he nipped my thumb between his teeth. “We use a tiny amount of iron in the ink. Just enough to resist healing, but not enough to weaken our bond with our dragons.”
I wore only my borrowed linen serk, as Arik had grumbled about the wool of the overdress being too itchy for any man to sleep next to.
Goosebumps pebbled my skin as he trailed a line of kisses up my bare arm.
My breath hitched as he made it to the sensitive skin of my inner elbow. “You’re distracting me.”
He gave me a flat look. “Obviously, Kjaere.”
I laughed, pressing kisses across his chest in an effort to turn the tide of battle in my favor. “Did you draw all of these?”
“Revna mostly.” I scowled, and Arik chuckled. “You have nothing to be jealous of, Kjaere.”
I frowned and felt Idunn push at the mental wall—still nothing but darkness. She had spent all night curled against the dark chasm in our mind where Baldur was missing, as if her presence could guide him back somehow.
Arik smoothed the crease between my brows with his thumb. “I don’t need to read your thoughts when they’re written all over your face.”
I rolled my eyes, trailing my lips over one of the compasses on his chest. “What does this mean?”
“It’s the ?gishjalmr. The Helm of Awe.” He stretched, and the broad expanse of his chest stirred something warm and languid in me. “It’s in the Book of Chaos. Baldur told me it symbolizes strength and victory over one’s enemies.”
“Why four times?” I asked, noting the tone in his voice that told me Baldur was just as silent for him as he was for me.
“One for each of the people who threaten those I love. My father, my brother, Einar…” He trailed off.
“And the last?”
Arik sighed deeply, his eyes cast on the wooden beams of the ceiling. “I wasn’t completely honest with you, Kjaere. About the girl my brother killed.”
I remained silent, my fingers tracing the staves in each compass. I had known there was more to the story about this girl, and part of me was afraid of what he would tell me. That he had loved her more than he could ever love me?
Without Baldur’s reassuring nudge against my mind, I felt strangely unanchored in this relationship. Did everyone who wasn’t drage feel this way—never knowing what their partner truly thought or felt? I wasn’t sure I could do it.
Arik’s jaw was tight as I looked up at him.
“When I left for Ironholm, I wrote to her, but I wasn’t faithful.
I knew we could never be together. I bedded an older Chaosborn woman—I told you about her—to try to forget.
When Baldur bonded me, he made it clear that he was interested only in whoever would bond his mate. So I stopped writing.”
Arik shut his eyes, as if he couldn’t look at me while he told this tale. “When I returned to the Stormhold for the first time after becoming drage, she was with child. Edvard’s child.”
My stomach hollowed out as he continued.
“He had forced himself on her—raped her. Repeatedly. Brutalized her body in ways I couldn’t begin to describe to you, Kjaere.
Edvard denied it, of course, and she was too terrified of my father’s wrath to name him as her attacker.
But I couldn’t let it go. Couldn’t let Edvard go unpunished. ”
“I shouldn’t have told my fucking father.
” Arik shook his head, his eyes bleak. “I should have gotten her out in secret. Should have stolen her away or offered to wed her or something—anything—to keep her safe. As soon as I told my father, he had her locked away—for her safety, he claimed—and sent me back to Ironholm.”
“You told me she died.” I swallowed, not sure what comfort to offer.
“In childbirth. The babe too. And I wasn’t even fucking there when it happened.” His eyes finally met mine, cold and steely and miserable. “So the last ?gishjalmr is for me. To remind me that it was my fault she died. My inaction. My misplaced trust.”
I rose to my knees and took Arik’s face between my hands. Looking down at his strong features, I marveled a little that this man was mine.
Ours, Idunn corrected sharply.
Ours, I agreed. I pressed a kiss to his jaw, brushing away the tear that gathered at the corner of one eye.
“I am yours, and you are mine,” I told him, pressing my brow to his. “Your dangers are mine. Your trials and burdens. Let me help you carry this one.” I sat up. “This girl—“
“Sif,” he interrupted, breathing shakily as if releasing a weight. “Her name was Sif.”
I nodded, begging the Hearthmother to make him hear me.
Believe me. “Sif’s death was not your fault.
I know you will never fully accept it. You have decided to carry the weight of guilt because you are a good and noble man.
” I stoked my thumbs over his cheekbones, knowing in my soul that what I said was true.
“But neither she nor the gods can fault you for her death. You were barely more than a boy, Arik.”
He sighed, rolling me to the side and pressing a chaste kiss to my brow. I saw something shutter behind his eyes like a wall slamming down between us. “I was old enough to know better. I know better now. It’s why I don’t want you going back to Stormhold.”
I frowned. “What do you mean? The Book—“
“Fuck the fucking book,” he growled, his eyes flashing with fear. “We’ll find another way to get it.”
I realized with a start that I hadn’t told Arik yet about Idunn’s feeling. That something was wrong with the Book.
I sat up, preparing to argue with him, when a beam of light reflecting off some surface in the attic nearly blinded me. I hissed as I raised a hand to shade my eyes. “What the…”
I crawled across the furs to examine the reflective silver. The attic was too low for either of us to stand, and moving about required shuffling like a crab.
“Eisa, what—“
“The mirror.” It was a tarnished old thing, propped against the wall of the attic, and perhaps half my height.
The frame had once been painted gold or bronze.
Carvings of flowers and vines were chipped away in places, revealing moldy wood beneath.
The surface glinted oddly, as if it was liquid rather than solid glass.
I frowned, examining the frame, and felt the blood drain from my face. “Arik, look.”
He shuffled toward me, instantly on alert.
I pointed, my finger shaking slightly, to the rune carved in the top of the mirror’s frame. The same symbol as the diamond scar on my chest.
“Sigrid’s note,” he murmured, rubbing his hand around the frame until he found the second symbol—a pointed R. He pulled his hand back to reveal a fine layer of sawdust, as if the symbols had been carved into the wood recently.
I traced the frame, finding the M, then the two vertical line symbols, exactly as Sigrid had drawn them.
Arik frowned, pressing his hand to the distorted glass.
I had to muffle my shriek as his hand went straight through the mirror.
“Hearthmother above,” I cried, pulling his arm back. I turned his hand over in both of mine, looking for cuts from the glass. “What are you thinking?”
“Elysia’s tits,” Arik murmured. “Sigrid traveled through the mirror.”
I reeled back, certain that the mistletoe must have damaged Arik’s mind. “No one can travel through a mirror.”
“The volva could.” He placed his hand through the glass once more, then pulled it out again and turned it over.
The skin remained unmarred.
“You said they disappeared two thousand years ago,” I argued, searching valiantly for any other explanation. “And Sigrid doesn’t have any magic! She can’t be a witch!”
“Really?” He deadpanned as he stuck his hand through the glass once more.
“Stop that.” I tugged his arm back again. “We have no idea what’s on the other side of that!”
“Think logically, Eisa.” He gripped my shoulders firmly and gave me a little shake, his eyes fierce and bright as if the ghosts that haunted him had been temporarily chased away.
“Sigrid left suddenly on foot to travel hundreds of miles and left you a note about a mirror. Do you really think this is a coincidence?”
He shuffled back over to his pack and began pulling on his trousers, a feat made more than a little challenging by the low ceiling. He threw my borrowed clothes and too-small slippers at me. “Get dressed.”
I gaped as he shimmied into his leathers, trying to find the right words for all the thoughts going through my mind. Sigrid didn’t have magic. She couldn’t have magic.
But couldn’t she? The voice in my head was not Idunn’s for once, but my own. Sigrid had been a terrible cook, but she was good with healing and poisons. She had an uncanny ability to know how to treat any wound, and unnaturally good hearing for someone her age.
But if she had magic… It just wasn’t possible.
“Eisa.” Arik was fully dressed, the pack slung over his shoulder. He squeezed my shoulders gently, his eyes searching mine. “What’s wrong?”
“My mother died.” I swallowed, feeling a lump rising in my throat. The sting of betrayal. “If Sigrid had magic, why didn’t she save my mother? Why didn’t she save me or Branka or Anders?”
His gaze softened, his hands tightening on my shoulders.
“I know I laid a lot of truths on you, and Baldur is still gone, and everything has gone to shit.” He pressed his lips to mine in a kiss so firm and sudden that it chased away any of the arguments I might have made. “But do you trust me, Kjaere?”
Idunn growled, her answer clear.
I nodded, releasing a breath as I pushed away my doubts and questions. “Always.”
“Good. Then get dressed.”
Two minutes later and hand-in-hand, we crawled through the mirror.