Chapter 18
Chapter
Eighteen
Every secret a kraken gives you is a hook. You just can’t see the line yet.
–An Incomplete Guide to Kraken Survival
Iresumed my rounds until spotting Lady Harpa. She wore a gown that appeared assembled rather than sewn. Storm-gray velvet on one side, bone-white silk on the other, the sleeves mismatched, her jewelry a discordant collection of heirlooms from different lives. Her hair was half-pinned, half-wild.
I went straight to her, smiling. “Lady Harpa. I’m overjoyed to see you again.” I didn’t moderate my volume. Let everyone know I’d already met his family.
Determination crackled in her wild eyes. “Come, my dear lady of the house.” She drained her champagne, extended her arm and dropped the glass, expecting someone to catch it before it shattered on the floor.
A guard did just that as she hooked her arm through mine and urged me forward.
“You seem to have forgotten the mission. Let me remind you,” she said as she drew me away. “Imagine Jokull there—” she pointed to a balcony overlooking the entire chamber “—peering upon his subjects, crafting his breakfast, lunch and dinner menus featuring all those in this room.”
In an instant, tension wrapped around me like a coat.
“There is Lady Katla.” She waved to a woman heavy with child. “Her husband will attend the final ceremony. If the rune fails, she’ll lose her husband and the father of her baby.”
“Consider me reminded,” I croaked. “I know the stakes are real.”
“Do you?” She threaded us through a throng, lifting a bracelet here, unhooking a necklace there. “You do not even know the price Sebastian must pay.”
Inside me, dread and suspicion locked horns. “You are correct. I do not. He has promised to explain it to me.”
“Good.” She gave herself another five-finger discount, pocketing someone’s ruby and diamond brooch, and whispering to me, “They bragged only this morning they are more observant than me. Not so observant now, are you, Lady Helgason,” she called.
As multiple groups looked our way, she picked up our conversation as if it had never lagged. “Just know, it doesn’t matter how strong you are. You do not have a future with him.”
My spine snapped ramrod straight. “I assure you, Lady Harpa. Anyone who threatens Sebastian or this kingdom will receive the same treatment I gave the mers.”
She blinked at me as if confused. “I think you misunderstood me, dragon girl. I never considered you weak. I know you are strong. You are a weakness. There is a difference.”
Her meaning crystallized. I’d combined the two ideas, thinking Sebastian would not see me as firebrand material unless I proved my prowess on the battlefield because he could not tolerate the thought of losing me if I fell.
Instead, she pointed the blame to his heart. Recognizing me as his and stealing him from his destiny.
That made me wonder. Was the rune’s cost… me? Must he give his heart to the rune rather than his consort?
My chest clenched. If that were the case, he had to choose between his people and me, and I would lose every time. And rightly so.
I pulled my arm from hers even as my world tilted. “If you’ll excuse me.”
Maybe she responded. Maybe she didn’t. I strode from the ballroom, speaking to no one else. Through the palace hallways I went and of course, that was when I spotted Gunnar again. He was never less than five feet behind me.
I locked myself in the royal suite, but not Sebastian’s room. My own. The one with the door. A door I shut and sealed, pushing the dresser in front of it. Protocol said only he could open this door. No one ever told me I couldn’t barricade it.
I needed to think, and I couldn’t do that with his royal majesty nearby. But of course, as I paced through the room, trying so hard to cobble together a different, logical price tag, Sebastian, being Sebastian, opened the door enough to reach past it and push the furniture aside.
He entered the bedroom casually, his hands in his jacket pockets. “It isn’t polite to leave a party without saying goodbye to the host.”
“Well, that isn’t something Mr. Thorson taught in class.” I didn’t bother ending my brisk back and forth, and he didn’t attempt to stop me.
He strode to the bed and eased onto the edge of the mattress. “Shall we share our secrets now?”
I bit the inside of my cheek. “We shall, and you will start. Tell me the price you must pay to activate the convergence rune.”
“Very well.” He unfastened his jacket. “I never intended to tell you, because I never intended for us to become so close. But here we are. The rune demands… me. The heart of me. To release its power, it will become my heart. There will be no undoing it. As long as I live, I will feel nothing but its power.”
Confirmation landed beneath my ribs like a wrecking ball. There it was, stated plainly. No half-truths. No misdirections. Just the unadulterated truth. If I kept fighting for said heart, I risked the fate of his kingdom.
I stopped, head dropping. “You told me it won’t drain you, as it did your mother. But there’s still a chance, isn’t there?”
“If ever I’m catastrophically injured, there’s a possibility.”
My eyes stung. “This’s why you keep warning me away?”
“It is. And that was my second secret.” He unbuttoned his cuffs and rolled up his shirt sleeves. “Now it’s your turn. Lady’s choice.”
Nein. “We aren’t done talking about the rune. There must be a way to activate it without pushing out what you feel for me.” And he did feel something.
Sebastian stared at me, unmoved. “That was a statement. A wrong statement, but not a secret.”
Hands fisted, I relaunched my pacing. He wanted a secret? Sure, no problem. “I once set the royal library on fire. Not on purpose, but I was young, and I sneezed, releasing a stream of flame. Two historical scrolls burned, and no one but you knows I was responsible.”
His reaction didn’t come for several seconds, but when it did, it brought me to an abrupt halt. He chuckled, tickling my ears. “Admit it, you were the most adorable little dragon to ever grace those palace halls.”
I ground my molars. He could be serious every moment of every day except right here and now for this one? “I do. I admit it. I was adorable. And that’s two secrets from me.”
He ran his tongue over his teeth. “I haven’t slept through the night in decades. I can’t. The dome hums. The kingdom pulls. Jon taunts. The primordial’s return. My duty.”
I teetered between sympathy, anger and understanding. My shoulders drooped. “I intended to win you,” I admitted.
He gave me the saddest smile. “You already have, Brona. I didn’t lie to Jon.
I’ve wanted you from the first moment I saw you, and the thoughts in my head quieted.
I’ve crossed unexpected lines to get you.
To prevent the manticore from attending the vote, I had to release him from a blood debt he very much deserved to pay. ”
More confirmation, and this one stung just as badly as the first. “You did that, and you knew you couldn’t keep me. Knew I couldn’t keep you. And you withheld that from me. You let me think we could be something.”
“I did.” Leaning forward, he caught me by the hips and tugged me backward onto his lap, where he held me captive. “I crave time with you. I don’t want to fight my desire anymore. We may not have a future, but we have right now.”
“That’s not good enough.” I cupped his cheeks, peering at him as I unveiled my fourth secret. “You are my firebrand, Sebastian.”
Satisfaction pulsed from him. Satisfaction and more sadness. “I am yours.” He slid his hands to my throat and glided his thumbs along my jaw. “And you are mine.”
Air hitched in my lungs. There it was, his final secret.
Tremors shook me. “When did you know?”
“At the vote,” he said, though he owed me no more answers. “You looked at me as if I’m the reason you breathe. I’m sure I looked at you the same.” He gently brushed fallen strands of hair behind my ear. “Awaiting your arrival was agony.”
I swallowed a whimper and pressed my brow to his. Now, my final secret. “I will never accept a temporary arrangement. I want everything. Marriage. Family. Forever.”
His grip flexed on me. “I will give you everything I can, but none of that. I can’t, Brona.” The agony he’d spoken of seeped into his voice. “I can’t leave my people to Jokull. And that is what will happen if the rune is not transferred to me.”
Ja. I knew that. And it didn’t change my stance. “I will sleep in my room tonight. You should go.”
Tension invaded his body, but he nodded and peeled his fingers from me, one by one. “I understand.”
My heart ached as he stood. As he stalked to the exit. As he paused with his back to me. As he vanished inside his room. But he left the door between our chambers open behind him.
I, however, crossed the room and closed it myself. The soft snick haunted me all night long.