Chapter 40
Now they were on the other side of the world tree, the shadows lengthened as night began to fall unexpectedly. They found a shelter cut into the base of the cliff, low and dry, the roof of bare stone close enough that Tor, Arne, and Fenris had to stoop down to come in.
They built a small fire from the dead wood they had found scattered amongst the jagged rocks on their journey down. Layla portioned out the last of the dried meat and the hard bread, and they ate slowly, making it last. Nobody talked much.
Fenris sat with his back to the cold rock, where he could watch the whole shelter and the gray slot of the entrance at once.
He tried to stop his attention from drifting back to Linnea across the fire.
She seemed a little less empty since she talked with her brother, but she hadn't so much as looked at Fenris.
She sat wrapped in her blanket like it was a cloak with her runes spread in her lap. She looked into the flames and back at the wooden discs before turning over another.
His wolf had been pacing in him for hours. You need to fix it.
He didn't know how. He got up anyway, crossed behind the others, and lowered himself down at her shoulder, close enough that his knee nearly touched her hip.
"Linnea."
She did not look up from her runes. "It is fine, Fenris. I'm not angry, just tired. We are nearly there. I just need some space to think."
He had heard her shout at him, swear at him, laugh until she couldn't breathe, and say filthy things into his neck in the dark. He had never once heard this voice like he was a stranger, polite and final, a door shut gently in his face.
The wolf in him pulled back, baring its teeth.
That is not her, it said, low and unhappy. Where did she go?
He stayed where he was and didn't push her.
After a moment, he laid his palm flat on the cold stone of the floor between them, in the place where her hand would meet it if she wanted.
It was the smallest offer of peace he had.
All the way down the dead roads, they had walked with their fingers laced together.
Now, she looked at his hand on the stone and didn't put hers on top of it.
Fenris let it sit there a breath longer before he got up and walked out of the shelter and into the cold open country of the dead. He stopped at the cliff's edge, and the mist rolled up out of the darkness below to wrap around his legs.
You lost her. It wasn't the wolf's sad voice in his head, but his own.
He thought he had held the truth back to keep Linnea safe. He never once told her what she was to him, so she would never feel cornered or that another male was trying to take her choices from her. He had been nothing but a coward.
Somewhere in the middle of all that careful holding-back for fear of losing her, Linnea had slipped through his fingers.
He always thought nothing could be more painful than Sunniva's fear and rejection of him. This was worse than that and all the years of being crushed by his bindings in the darkness.
"You look like a man about to walk into the fog and not come back."
Ciara stood a few feet away, still as a hunter who has already decided to wait, her dark hair beaded with the mist. He hadn't heard her come up behind him. The Wolf Slayer moved quietly when she wanted to.
"I'm not going anywhere," he said.
"Good. Tor would have to come after you, and he's wrecked." She came and stood beside him, looking out at the same nothing. "I'm going to say something to you now because nobody else will, and you're going to shut up and let me."
His shoulders curved, readying for the blow. "I am?"
"Yeah, if you don't want me to yeet you off this cliff," Ciara said without a trace of humor.
"Today was shit for all of us in different ways.
Layla and I got the good version. We got to hold our dead and laugh, but now we feel like our insides have been shredded to hell because we got reminded of how great my parents were.
Tor and Linnea got Skari, and she also got their mother, who walked out on two children and never looked back.
The two people who hated Linnea the most were there to remind her of all the ways she is unlovable and why.
While that was being done to her, she saw you cross a hall with your perfect mate, whom you loved enough to be buried for.
From where she was standing, that was the return of the great love you had lost, and she's the defective runt of a pack who can't shift and who will never get to have that with you.
It is a lot for any girl to deal with in one day. "
"Her parents are fucking fools, and Sunniva was never my mate," Fenris replied, folding his arms. "Why would she think that?"
Ciara turned her head and looked at him. "Are… Are you fucking serious?"
"Yes, I'm serious! Sunniva was my wife. I loved her the way you love someone you choose, with the human part of yourself.
My wolf never once claimed her. It tolerated her for my sake and then hated her when she learned what I was and rejected us.
That's why I agreed to be bound and let Havi look after my children instead of me.
" He looked down at his scarred hands. "Linnea is my mate.
She has been since before I knew her name. "
"What?" Ciara said flatly. "Did you ever bother to fucking tell her any of that?"
"No?"
"No." She breathed out through her nose.
"You absolute idiot. I should push you off this cliff right now on principle.
You let her walk this whole deathtrap thinking she's someone convenient you settled for, and then today she watched you reunite with the love of your life, and you never once told her the truth! "
"I meant to tell her when it was safe," Fenris replied stubbornly.
"It's never going to be safe! You're in the ass end of Niflheim, about to try and walk through a door nobody has come back through."
"I told Tor and Arne. I was going to tell Linnea after we got Loki."
Ciara's eyes shone, and her fangs dropped. "Tor and Arne knew?"
"They swore to stay out of it."
"You all deserve to be fed to Níehoggr. I'm going to kick their asses when we get home for this fucking shit.
" Ciara huffed, short and unimpressed. "Here's what you are going to do.
For a start, do not dump it on Linnea tonight.
She is raw to the bone. You hit her with 'don't be sad, you are my mate' when she can't tell up from down, she'll decide you only said it to make her feel better, and she won't believe a word of it for the rest of her life.
Give her the night to cool off. Let her find the bottom of what she's feeling on her own.
When she's ready, you tell her, and you better fucking grovel, Fenris Lokisson.
I mean grovel on your knees like your life depends on it because it fucking does. Do you understand me?"
Fenris looked down into the face of the Wolf Slayer and knew she meant every word of it. "Yes, my lady, I understand, but I don't need to be threatened. Groveling is the least I would do to get Linnea not to hate me right now."
"I'm happy to hear it. She's a good one, Fenris," Ciara said, gentler now. "Don't lose her because she needs you as much as you need her. Don't forget that."
"I won't."
"I'm still going to kick all your asses for this when we are out of this fucking nightmare." She patted his arm once and left him to it.
Fenris stayed outside, thinking of all Ciara had said, and every one of Linnea's reactions that day made a sudden and horrible sense.
At the serpent's bowl, her hand had gone still on the cold rim, the grief pouring off her thick enough to taste, and he had known she was one breath from sacrificing a piece of herself she couldn't spare. He hadn't been willing to watch her give it away to a creature that didn't deserve it.
She had sacrificed enough, so he had stopped her without thinking about how she could misread it.
Fenris wondered what she would say if he told her that he had given Níehoggr the good years with Sunniva. The early ones, before the fear, when he was surrounded by his children and wrapped in her love.
Standing at that bowl, he understood he didn't need them. They no longer hurt, nor did they warm him. The warmth now came from somewhere new. He had fed a dead man's treasure to a serpent and felt nothing as it left him.
Fenris hadn't understood until Linnea was snarling at him that he might have given up the last of Sunniva to buy a crossing for a woman who had already decided she didn't want him.
The wolf rose in him, and for once it was not pacing or keening. It brushed against him, trying to comfort him.
We make her listen. We need to fight for her our way.
"Yes," Fenris growled low in agreement. He had tried to play this whole mess safely so he wouldn't scare her away and had fucked it up anyway.
He was done being careful.
He would get Linnea alone when he could, and he would lay every true thing he had at her feet. If she still chose to walk away after that, she could do it to his face.
Tonight, he would be patient and let her cool off.
Tomorrow, he wasn't going to let her walk away from him again without a fight.