Chapter 22
Chapter
Twenty-Two
He will keep every word of his promise. That should frighten you.
–An Incomplete Guide to Kraken Survival
Sebastian stopped me at the door of our chamber. He didn’t touch me at all; simply filled the doorway, hands in his pockets, fury and fear crackling in his eyes.
“Don’t do this, Bronwyn.”
I winced. He’d used my name rather than a nickname. “I must.” I fastened the last clasp of the traveling cloak Soley had laid out for me. My fingers shook, but I forced them to still. “Bastian—”
“Would you like a list of reasons I’d like you to stay?
” he interjected, cutting me off. His voice remained perfectly level, every emotion locked behind the iron discipline of a king.
“You will be underwater, outside my dome, beyond my immediate reach. Seated at a table with the thing that ate my father, pieces of my mother, my finger and yours. And when he springs the trap hidden inside his oath, you’ll be hurt.
” His jaw flexed. “I’ll be here, where I’ll feel every second of your pain. ”
The bond carried all the things he hadn’t said. Not just fear, I realized, but terror. Old and bottomless, born when he’d stood helpless in his mother’s blood.
My darling Bastian. I crossed to him and flattened a palm over his heart, over the rune.
“Harpa is the best warrior in Krakenstrond. Those are your words. I’m not too shabby myself, I’ve learned.
We’ll be okay. And before you protest, don’t.
This is my home too,” I told him, quiet but firm.
“Its king is willing to die for it, and so is its queen. Not that I will die,” I rushed to add when his expression promised a truly spectacular argument.
“I want Jokull destroyed without having to sacrifice the man I love.” The words slipped free, but I meant them. I loved this man.
His eyes widened. “You love me?”
“So, so much.” I rose onto my toes and kissed him, and for one breath he kissed me back so hard I would feel him for days. Then he pulled away, breathing like a drowning man surfacing.
“Why didn’t I fall in love with a doormat?” he growled, and I chuckled. “I have never once been able to make you do anything.”
“Ja. That’s true.” I stroked his jaw. “And it’s one of my finer qualities, if I do say so myself.”
He didn’t laugh, but he did press his brow to mine. “I love you, Brona. You have a kind heart. You’re brave, and funny, and you aren’t afraid to challenge me. You are my everything.”
I felt his love. His and mine, flowing between us, twining, becoming ours. Overcome, I wrapped my arms around him, holding him tight. My determination drilled deeper. I would do whatever proved necessary to keep him alive and us together.
We stood like that for several seconds. He flattened his palm over the brand, mirroring my action. “Signal me if anything goes sideways. If Jokull even breathes in your direction wrong. Tap thrice, and I’ll come.”
I nodded, throat aching.
“Oath or no oath. Dome or no dome,” he said. “If I think, even for a moment, things have gone badly, I will tear the ocean in half to get you.”
“I know,” I whispered. And I did.
Then I walked away to meet Harpa and face the big bad.
The half-drowned manor sat on a mountain of black rock a hundred miles from anywhere, in a dome of its own. A dome we’d slipped past, as if it were nothing but mist. Every window above the waterline blazed with golden light. He’d lit it like a wedding.
“You have no reason to worry,” Harpa said, sitting across from me in the small boat as we sailed under a darkening sky, through thick fog. “I’m eighty-seven percent sure I can get us out.”
I swallowed a groan. “I’m not worried.” One way or another, we would be leaving tonight. “Have you been where we’re going before?” I asked.
Her eyes flicked to me. “I lived there for many years with my husband.”
“So Jokull chose your former residence for this dinner.” Beyond cruel. The primordial had hidden a weapon within a weapon.
She turned back to the window. “It is a very fine house. Jokull has always had excellent taste.”
Our captain docked the boat. A dock that led straight to the front door, where Jokull waited.
I had seen him wreathed in mers and slaughter, a predator surrounded by fire, and I would’ve sworn that was the worst version of him.
I would have been wrong. Cleaned up, in dark silks, with his hair bound back and his hands empty and open, he was almost handsome.
He looked like the perfect host.
My dragon roared at first sight, yanking at a chain I longed to let slip from my fingers.
Count the steps. Head up. I was the Pirouette Princess. I had performed for ten thousand strangers with a stress fracture in my left foot and smiled through every bow. I could survive one dinner.
“The Raving Pearl.” Jokull’s smile was slow as we approached, but it never reached the ash-and-gold of his eyes. “You wore green the last time we were together. I’ve only thought about it for six hundred years.”
“You have thought about a great many things, Jokull,” Harpa said, sweeping past him. I stayed close to her heels. “Most of them badly.”
His laughter followed us in.
The hall was magnificent. Candles by the hundred. A table set for three in the dining room with cutlery of blackened silver, plates of fish in citrus, roasted fruits, warm bread—a dragon’s meal and a kraken’s meal, side by side, because of course he had looked into what I liked.
And there, dead center on a pedestal of salt-white stone, sat the rune. I knew it. I’d never seen it, but I knew it, because it hummed to me, beckoning.
My breath stopped. It was smaller than I’d imagined. A palm-sized disc of something that wasn’t quite stone, black and wet-looking, and across its face symbols crawled, rearranging as I watched, refusing to hold still long enough to be understood.
I let my eyes unfocus the way I did when a corps of dancers was moving too fast to track and I needed the shape instead of the steps. The symbols slowed, but the meaning remained just beyond my grasp.
“Excellent,” Jokull said, and I realized with a lurch that he had been watching me, not the stone. “I wondered if you would hear its song.”
I schooled my features. Too late. Ja, I heard the song.
“His mother heard it too.” He pulled out my chair himself, courteous as any gentleman. “Sit, little lizard. We have so much to discuss.”
“Can you not hear the hum?” I asked, removing my cloak and easing down, forcing my attention off the rune. For now.
“I cannot,” he answered, surprising me. “Only those the rune wishes to live in can hear it.”
Ooooh. So, in theory, I’d gotten it right. If we found no other path to walk, I could take Sebastian’s place. But there was a wrench I hadn’t considered until now. What if the rune needed his permission, as it needed mine?
I’d just have to be stubborn enough to hold out.
But there was still a chance we’d find another way. Tonight.
Dinner passed in stages. Uncomfortable silence kicked us off. Uncomfortable only for me. I tried to initiate conversation, but Jokull and Harpa appeared perfectly at ease, sipping soup, each in their own little world.
When I’d had as much of that as I could stand, I spoke louder, practically—definitely—shouting. “Why would you agree to give us the very toolset to be used for your doom?”
Both looked at me and frowned with varying degrees of disapproval.
Now that I had their attention, I lowered my tone. “What’s the true purpose for this dinner?” Other than tormenting Sebastian. And us.
Harpa rifled through the cupcakes on a dessert tray. “Could you not afford strawberries this late in the season, Jokull?”
Of course, he answered her first. “Give the blueberries a chance. Their tart sweetness might surprise you.”
“Oh!” she exclaimed, ignoring him. “Peach.” She lifted her chosen treat.
Jokull watched her a moment longer before smiling at me. “I believe you have the wrong impression of my abilities. You think I can be harmed or overpowered. Let me prove otherwise.” He looked to Harpa. “My lady, you have my permission to kill me in any way of your choosing without consequence—”
She struck him with a shadow-tentacle across the throat, right from her seat, never pausing while nibbling on her cupcake. His head slid from his body, hit the table, then plopped on the floor. He smiled the whole way down.
“I never intended on asking permission,” she announced.
I lurched back as blood sprayed in a straight arc. Shock and horror fed off each other when his head dissolved on the floor.
Only for a new one to grow from his open wound.
He resumed eating without missing a beat. At least his food wasn’t swimming in the crimson spray. “I have burned to ash, been sawed in half, had every organ removed, and endless other deaths you cannot even fathom. Nothing took.”
Harpa selected a second (blood-free) cupcake. “I simply love when someone gets their just desserts. Don’t you, princess?”
Jokull chuckled. “Nice play on words, little pearl.” Then he focused on me.
“I’m sure Sebastian explained how he’s working to acquire the power to slay the unslayable.
I don’t believe it, of course, but the legend has given the kraken king hope all these centuries.
I admit, I’m a bit excited to dash them. ”
And the hits kept coming. I’d known Jokull couldn’t be killed any other way but the path my husband had chosen. Sebastian had told me. But the truth of it hadn’t registered until this dinner, when a severed head lay at my feet.
The niggle I’d entertained finally revealed itself, taking center stage as a curtain peeled back. I could rack my brain all I wanted, read a thousand books, and interview ten thousand runestone experts, and I would not discover another path.
Sebastian had done all of that. The convergence stone must be utilized.
But I couldn’t sacrifice Sebastian’s heart. I just couldn’t. If pressed, he would have to surrender mine.