Chapter 21
Chapter
Twenty-One
When a kraken tells you to run, it’s already too late.
–An Incomplete Guide to Kraken Survival
Sebastian devoured my mouth, a starved man who’d discovered a banquet. I ravished him right back. We were husband and wife, now bonded, always and forever, whatever may come.
There in the cave, our cave, with the dome light flashing in time to our racing heartbeats, he tossed me onto the bed and gave me his body.
I gave him mine. And oh, the things he did to mine.
Pleasures I had never known. When I screamed his name, my voice echoed through the cave.
It could have echoed across the dome, but I wouldn’t have cared.
Let the whole underwater kingdom hear. Torrent after torrent of ecstasy crashed into me.
When I collapsed atop him hours later, I vibrated with sublime satisfaction.
Ragged breaths sawed between my lips. A fine sheen of sweat covered me. And to my immense delight, he fared no better.
“You exhausted me, woman.” His words sounded as if they’d been dragged over sandpaper. He kept his arms banded around me, ensuring I remained draped over him.
My smile spread so wide it hurt. I crossed my arms over his chest and rested my chin in the center. “Don’t worry, my precious. You might not have a dancer’s stamina, but you make up for it in other ways.”
He barked out a laugh, and I couldn’t help but giggle. That amusement tapered to quiet curiosity, and he frowned. “What is this…cozy feeling?” His volume grew softer. “Why are my eyelids so heavy? Muscles melting…”
I watched, amazed, as the man who claimed he couldn’t sleep drifted off, his lids sliding down. And staying down. As his head lolled to the side and his breathing evened out.
My smile only widened. Utterly content, I traced my fingers over his face. The face of my husband and firebrand. We had one day and one more night before the convergence. Absolutely enough time to save his heart, and mine, and crush Jokull.
That, at least, was the fairy tale I hoped for. But I had a niggle…
I was missing something.
I tried, oh, I tried, to catalogue every detail he’d shared about his mother’s experience with the rune. About runes in general. About the convergence. But Sebastian was just so warm, and my own eyelids had become a little too heavy.
Exhausted myself, I offered no resistance. I let myself sink deep, deep into dark, peaceful waters.
One Day Until Convergence
I awakened still cuddled up to Sebastian, clutched protectively in his arms. An internal light immediately switched on. No gradual remembrance of everything since slipping into oblivion, but sudden awareness.
We were married. I was his queen. We had agreed to search for a way to destroy Jokull without giving Sebastian’s heart to the rune.
And there must be a way. There just must. Because my niggle hadn’t gone away.
Tender and aching and so glad for it, I scanned our surroundings. Oh. His bedroom. No, our bedroom. I remembered us sleepily returning to the palace last night.
Head filling with fairytales, I smiled. He could have deposited me here and gone back to his war and his maps, but he hadn’t. He’d stayed. Because he hated the thought of either of us waking alone. I sensed his residual longing, as if an invisible rope now tethered us together.
Whoa. I knew what he felt. Not just longing to be with me, but an insatiable craving for me. Goose bumps spread over my skin. I even knew what weighed on him. The worry threaded through his hope. How a part of him feared he hadn’t set me up for success but failure.
But he was wrong. I would never be better off without him. And oh my stars, the cave’s azure glow had followed us here. More shocking, the runes on the ceiling and walls were no longer a mystery.
Sebastian had said they would open to me, and open they had, weaving into the matrix of the world. Not as a replacement, but a counterbalance. Where he’d once stood defense alone against the tide, now we guarded this thriving realm together.
Those runes thrummed, each whispering a different language that told the same story. A living anchor. Blood-forged. Realm-bound. Strength taken for weakness, weakness exchanged for strength. A burden for one, breath for the other. Survival entwined.
The meaning presented itself: the dome did not protect him; he sustained it. We protected it. Endlessly. Relentlessly. Its weaknesses became ours. Our strength we shared with it. Together, we kept our people safe.
Well, well, well. I had indeed bonded to the dome.
A smile bloomed, a fierce determination unfurling inside my chest. He protected the people, ja. But he no longer carried that burden alone. I would stand beside him adding my strength.
My purpose. My mission.
I petted his chest. The convergence took place tomorrow, and a sea clock now ticked down in the back of my mind. Above us, the court had gathered for the second night of the rites without us. Tonight they would gather for the third, and when it turned, the rune would wake.
As if to prove it, the waters beyond the dome stirred. I sensed them, too, but it only doubled my determination. Find a way. Protect him at all costs.
“This is how I wish to wake every day for the rest of my life,” he rumbled. “You on top of me, your fire in my head.”
The lines of his face had softened, his hair mussed from sleep. No tension hardened his jaw as he gazed up at me. I’d never seen him like this, so content and relaxed, but I was immediately addicted.
Without dislodging me from my perch, he reached for the nightstand and held up a gold coin hanging from a chain.
“This is for you. A coin—and I realize now, it seems as though I’m paying you for services rendered.
Oh, wow. I did not think this through.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “It’s supposed to be a gift.”
I snatched it as fast as immortally possible and clutched it to my chest. “Mine?”
He caught my excitement, as if it were contagious, and relaxed. “Only yours.” He gently retrieved the jewelry from my death-grip and wound the chain around my neck, securing the clasp at my nape.
Hot hands, cold metal. Pure happiness. He’d remembered my collection.
“After I became king, I swiped this coin from a merchant who’d stolen it from my father. I kept it to remind myself that mistakes can be fixed, if I’m willing to fix them.”
“I’ll treasure it always,” I said, stroking the coin. A vow I meant with the whole of my being.
Features soft, he stroked the shell of my ear. His gaze dropped to my chest, and a wicked smile spread. “Let me show you something.”
One second he was stretching beneath me, the next he stood behind me, a full-length mirror in front of us.
What a pair we made. The towering, muscular kraken, all shadow and ferocity, and the tiny ballerina, all moonlight and hidden fire.
White waves of my hair tumbled over my arms. Lips puffy and pink from his kisses, the rest of me soft and pliant and—blue?
A faint blue outline of Sebastian’s handprint now decorated my chest, tiny runes hidden within the lines. The second mark.
He gripped my hip with one hand and used the other to trace over the lines of the brand, primal satisfaction etched in his face. “I wanted to share with you my favorite sight,” he said, and bent and kissed my throat, right where my pulse hammered. “You. Like this. With me.”
I raised my hands overhead and combed my fingers backward, into his silken hair. “I would like it very much if you would do that thing with your—” I stiffened as knowledge downloaded straight into my brain. “Shifters have breached palace grounds.”
“Já.” His hand flexed on my hip. “Per my instructions, shifters are making camp in a hidden grotto to prepare for the convergence ceremony. I’m due for a meeting with Jon and his leaders to accept the rune stone.” He growled against my shoulder before kissing it too. “Join me when you’re ready.”
“I will,” I said, grateful for the time to recover from the delights of last night. This would be my first showing as kraken queen, and I wanted to be in top form.
He released me and strode into his closet, emerging minutes later wearing a plain black T-shirt and leathers. His step faltered when he found me exactly where he’d left me, naked and soft.
His growl came again. “I was never going to have the strength to resist you.”
Chuckling, I caught him by the shoulders as he passed me on his way to the door. I kissed him, quick and claiming. “I won’t be long.”
Before he could sling his arms around me, I darted into the closet.
Humming under my breath and dancing with every step, I showered and changed into a pale blue gown with ebony threads sewn to resemble tentacles and sheer golden panels falling from my shoulders like wings.
After strapping on a pair of shoes, I raced from the chamber. I sensed Sebastian’s location. And his emotions. He wasn’t happy.
Gunnar waited in the hall. He bowed low, as he’d never done before, saying, “My queen.”
I grinned even as I picked up the pace. “I love hearing that. But I’m not stopping to chat. This queen is in a hurry.” I had a solution to find.
Following the tether to a part of the palace I’d never ventured, I sailed down a quiet corridor not far from the throne room and the king’s study, past a stretch with multiple offices and conference rooms encased in glass walls. This must be where the business of the realm took place.
And there was Sebastian, inside one of the conference rooms, and my blood sang.
He sat at the head of a long, rectangular table, crafted from the polished wood of an ancient shipwreck. Harpa perched herself at the other end, regal in a way I’d not witnessed before. Along each side waited two shifters. Jon, with three men I’d never met.
The shifters were shouting while Sebastian and Harpa remained unbothered.
Heads turned as I entered with Gunnar behind me. Sudden quiet fell, the incoherent rants ending. Something about… the risk?
The brand on my chest heated, glowing through my gown. Everyone stared at me with varying degrees of astonishment.
Sebastian raised his chin, stood, and motioned me over.
“I suggest you do not raise your voice in front of my queen, Jon. Truce or no truce, I will gut you.” There was no missing the menace he radiated.
“Bronwyn, my treasure. The shifters have decided to return to the grotto rather than bleed on our table.”
“I appreciate the kindness, gentlemen. I prefer my honeymoon gut free.” I moved to Sebastian’s side.
Jon and his men also stood. He adjusted the retracted spear sheathed at his side, glancing between us. “If you fail—”
“And now you insult our ability after your failure?” the king snapped.
Jon gave a clipped nod before striding from the room, his men right behind him. Gunnar followed him out.
Sebastian looked to me and smiled, his mask flawless, but I’d learned him. Knew him. There was no hiding the meeting’s lingering effects: a low simmer of anger.
He sat and pulled me onto his lap. I pressed my fingers to his palm, speaking without words as taught by our tutor. I choose you above the tide. My way of saying all was well.
He rewarded me with a press of his own.
“What did I miss?” I asked.
“The truth, for one thing.” Lady Harpa rose to her full height. For the first time, she appeared utterly put together, not a single strand of hair out of place.
Rather than a gown, she wore a tunic and battle leathers. Even her eyes were sharp, and the sight threw me. Where was chaos walking?
“There is no other means of killing Jokull,” she snapped. “Accept what is to come and help me reclaim the rune.”
My blood flashed cold. “What happened to the rune?”
Her gaze slid to Sebastian, who had stiffened. “Tell her what happened while you were playing happy family.”
Resolve and fury frothed inside him, flowing into me until my own hands curled. He stood, standing me up with him.
“Sebastian.” I searched his face. Found nothing, which told me everything. “What happened?”
He didn’t answer. He crossed to the glass wall, pressed his palm against it, and the surface darkened, sharpening into an image the same way the cave walls had.
A rocky shelf. Torn tents. Bodies in shifter armor, arranged with a care that made my stomach turn—laid in a circle, feet inward, like the spokes of a wheel.
At the center of the wheel sat an empty stone plinth.
The floor tilted beneath me. “What am I seeing?” I whispered.
“Jon and a hundred of his best men were on their way here with the rune. Jokull intercepted them just before their arrival.” Sebastian’s voice held nothing at all, which was how I knew what it cost him. “He killed all but a handful. That handful were spared in exchange for the rune.”
Horror hollowed my stomach, and I went cold all over. That monster had the rune?
“Or Jon colluded with the primordial all along,” Harpa pointed out.
The details landed and kept landing, each pass carving deeper.
No rune, no weapon. No weapon, no dead primordial.
No dead primordial, and every soul under this dome—Sebastian, Soley, Freyja, the boy from Blodholm, the woman kneeling in the wreckage with her dead in her arms, me—became a potential dish for his table.
Harpa rotated in her seat, looking straight at me. “Jokull has invited us–you and me–to dinner. Our attendance in exchange for the rune. Sebastian is forbidden. Jokull has offered a blood oath that he cannot break, vowing that if we accept, we will leave alive, whole with what we came for.”
“The answer is nei,” Sebastian snapped, something terrible moving behind his eyes. “There will be no discussion. It’s a trap. Obviously.”
Ja. Jokull must believe he could gain something from us, despite the vow. “My answer is ja,” I said, already nodding. “I accept.”
“You are not—”
I met his gaze and refused to look away.
“He’s held that rune before. Gave it to your mother.
Saw what it made her, just as you did.” My voice remained firm.
I would not be backing down. “He might have information we need. So, ja. I’ll attend his dinner.
I’ll accept his blood oath. And I will take every word out of his mouth apart until I find the one that saves you. ”
He shook his head. “I would rather die than send you into his midst. My mother died for that rune. My wife will not. I will get it back.”
“And let you fight your worst nightmare before the real battle begins, when strength matters? Nein. That’s what he wants. You have been exhausting him, ja? Just as we discussed? This is probably payback.”
“I will not change my mind on this, Brona. You stay.”
“Wrong. I go.”
Harpa stood, and for the first time since I’d met her, the Raving Pearl appeared her age. “If you wanted a doormat, Basty, you would have married someone else. We leave in one hour.”