Chapter 23
Chapter
Twenty-Three
The kraken does not break his word. He breaks you and keeps the pieces.
–An Incomplete Guide to Kraken Survival
Six Hours Until Convergence
That shell of the man I loved was just a taste of the runestone’s deadness? Was this what it would be like for him? With him?
Sebastian had lived through a tragic childhood. Became king too soon. Bore heavy burdens that would have sunk any other man. He deserved a future full of joy and laughter. That was what I’d wanted for him from the beginning.
He could not go out this way.
“Well?” Harpa said, holding her tray of cupcakes. “Are you going to stand here lamenting what’s happened, or go fix it?”
Argh. Royal kraken were worse than royal dragons by miles. But still I hurried after my husband, following him into his office.
He sat at the desk and opened a book as if I wasn’t present.
Stomach churning, I set the runestone to his left and perched in front of him. “Hey,” I said gently, tracing my fingertips over his cheek.
He leaned back in his chair, peering at me as if I had no business being here.
I shook with horror and shock. No warning, no explanation, no amount of preparation could have readied me for the reality of this. The rune had reached out to him.
How dare the rune touch him without my permission?
“I. Say. Nein. No permission!” I growled at the ancient artifact, switching from gentle caresses to absolute action in an instant.
I slammed my hand over my brand and his chest. Once. Twice. My palm burned through his clothing and seared his chest, leaving a print behind. My mark and a clear message to the rune: Leave.
It obeyed, not even trying to fight, and the block between us opened, allowing fury, relief, and love to pour into me.
Sebastian yanked me onto his lap. I curled into him, clinging. He enfolded me in his arms and released a heavy breath. “I know we both wanted there to be another option, but I think we suspected deep down there wasn’t.”
“Ja.” A whimper lodged in my throat. How effortlessly Jokull had come back to life after his beheading. “I understand the rune is the only way. I felt its power, too. But I can’t release your heart. I just can’t. So. We will give mine. Because it is now yours.”
He stroked my cheek. “Nei, love. I’m not strong enough for that. So you must be stronger and give it the one I’ve given you.”
I was shaking my head, ready to fight this out, when the whispers hit me. Not my ears, but my being. The rune, with a message of its own: I’ll take one or the other, but either way, I’ll take.
Our gazes met, both of us forgetting how to breathe. He’d heard it too.
One Minute Thirty Seconds Until Convergence
Time was running out. The convergence was coming, and neither of us was willing to bend on who must give up whom.
We stood in the center of the Singing Reefs, where we’d once played, the rune set between our feet.
As minutes counted down, the sky over Krakenstrond turned the color of an old bruise. I felt the storm in my teeth, in the mark on my chest. Stirring and brewing.
Beyond the dome, the outer tide dragged one direction, the dome tide dragged another, and above them both, the moon leaned down, enormous. Three things bending toward each other like conspirators.
Sebastian’s warriors ringed us in silent ranks. Harpa perched on a reef arm, in her battle leathers, hair scraped back, chin high, and she did not look at her grandson. She could not. I understood.
Gunnar waited near us, his blades already out.
Sebastian took my hands in his. “The clock starts when the rune speaks,” he said, grave.
Cracks of light spread over the entire stone. Splintered. The stone’s edges softened, blackness bleeding into the ground. With a final ripple, it slipped under our feet and churned around us. Then…
“I’m ready,” he told the rune, and light climbed his boots, his calves, his spine, claiming him. I watched it happen, hating every second. But I had my plan. One I would not break.
My heart was whole. It overflowed with love and purpose, and it would unmake Jokull. Sebastian would live. He might despise me for it, would absolutely rage and grieve and maybe never forgive me, but he would be warm. He would laugh again one day. That was worth anything.
That was worth everything.
“Brona.” His hand tightened on mine. “Thank you.”
“Nein, thank you,” I said, and smiled at him, and I did not tell him he was about to lose this battle. I’d bragged about my strength time and time again. Today, I proved it.
The realm groaned, deep and resonant. The sound of convergence vibrated and hummed until my inner ears ached. Then the world went white, and I was somewhere else, and nowhere. The rune with me. Not a stone any longer but a presence—vast, patient, ancient, and so terribly, terribly ready.
And it reached.
Not for me.
For him.
I sensed it close around my husband’s heart. Beneath that terrible grasp, his heart fluttered once, warm and stubborn and full of me, of Harpa, of a thirteen year-old boy who never got to be young.
Mine? the stone asked me in every language at once.
The clock starts now.
It turned to me, expecting me to agree.
“Nein.” I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. Because Sebastian’s heart was mine. He’d said so himself, in a cave, with his palm burning over my chest. What is mine belongs to my firebrand as well. “Sebastian’s heart is mine.”
“Brona,” he bellowed. And suddenly I could see him, there in the world of white. His eyes pleaded with me. “Say it. Say the words.”
Ninety seconds.
“Nein.” I screamed it with my entire body, and my dragon screamed it with me, fire and instinct and everything I had. “Nein! Take mine. I gave it to him, it’s his to give, take it. I offer it freely. It’s whole, it’s here, take it—”
Seventy seconds.
Light and heat climbed up my legs, settling over my heart. But I felt Sebastian, too, fighting. Fighting with everything he had.
Mine? it asked him, requesting permission to replace my heart.
“Nei.” His voice tore out of him like something dying. “Mine.”
I refused for him, and he refused for me, so the stone drained from me and hung between us.
Convergence intensified. Above, the three tides ground toward alignment. Below, the runes on the disc pulsed faster, faster, and neither of us gave, so the stone could not take.
Fifty seconds.
“Sebastian.” My throat went raw. “Say it. Give it my heart.”
“Nei.” Wind whipped around us. “Nei.”
Somewhere behind me Harpa was shouting something, but I could not hear it.
I didn’t need to hear it to know. “The convergence is passing,” I screamed at him.
“Sebastian, if neither of us gives, it takes nothing. Jokull walks into this dome and he eats our people.” My voice broke into pieces. “Everyone you love.”
Forty seconds. He looked at me. And he was calm. Because he wasn’t wrestling with this. He wasn’t tormented. He had decided in a cave when he’d marked me as his queen.
“Já,” Sebastian agreed softly. “They will.”
And that’s when I realized. This man knew me. Every stubborn, duty-bound piece of me. He knew I would protect this realm, these people, our kingdom to my last breath.
And he was counting on it. Forcing me to make the choice he knew I would make. To back down. To give the rune permission to take his heart.
Because what if I didn’t?
If I continued to refuse, I wouldn’t lose him tonight, but I’d still lose. We both would. Slowly, over centuries, as Jokull destroyed our home. As innocents died and villages fell. And I couldn’t let him live through that. I loved him far too much.
Twenty-five seconds.
He’d told me, chapter and verse, from the very first night. Enemies adore nothing more than exploiting a berserker’s firebrand.
Ten seconds.
It had been a warning. Love over obligation, and everyone would suffer for it.
Now, the stone waited. The convergence crested.
Five seconds.
Four.
Three.
Finally, I made my choice. The choice he’d wanted me to make all along, and my dragon released a cry that would forever haunt me. “I give my permission.”
The light climbed up Sebastian again. There was no scream. No muscles contorted in agony. He simply stopped. The light now drew up into his chest, collecting in his heart. No, replacing his heart. I watched it happen.
I forced myself to witness as love drained from my husband’s face. As my palmprint faded the brand in my chest iced. As his eyes, those shifting, roiling, impossible eyes that had stormed and softened and burned for me since a mist-cloaked clearing in a circle of standing stones went flat.
Then still.
Then cold.
He blinked once, and the wind died. There was nothing there. Not confusion. Not pity. Not even dislike. Empty.
“Sebastian,” I whispered.
“Your obligation has now ended. You may go.”
Dismissed. A barbed lump grew in my throat. “I love you,” I told him.
He was already looking past me, at the reef, at the water, at the work. “Prepare,” he ordered his men. “Jon sent a contingent of shifters here. The worst of the worst. They are hiding. Show them no mercy.”
I wrapped my arms around my middle, tears streaming down my cheeks.
When shifters exploded from the ground and through the reefs–ten, twenty, fifty, a hundred–I stood there, unable to force myself to move. What had I done?
What had I done?
I’d let Sebastian become this… this monster. He cared about nothing except destroying Jokull. Every promise Sebastian had made about the rune had come true.
Permanent, he’d said. Unchangeable.
I’d… I’d lost him. I’d lost my husband and my friend. My best friend. My lover. My everything. I’d just given him away.
A hard thud popped my mental bubble, and the world came back into view.
Battle raged all around. Shifters with unhinged jaws and row after row of fangs.
Shoulders that heaved and then kept heaving, plates of gray-white cartilage cutting through skin.
Arms doubling. Doubling again. Torsos that grew a mass of limbs.
Six of them, eight, each tapering to hooked points that punched into rock and held, letting them pour over the reefs, faster than anything their size had any right to move.
Gunnar slew anyone who neared me.
Sebastian fought twenty feet away, cutting a lane through the horde.
He didn’t look back. Didn’t care what happened to anyone.
But he was magnificent. No berserker rage lived in his movements.
Nor any of the terrible, beautiful violence I’d seen him wield beneath the sea when the mers came for us.
Only efficiency. His tentacles, now glowing, slicing through those impossible bodies as easily as breathing.
But. And oh, was there a but. When one of his own went down beside him, gut open, reaching up for help, Sebastian stepped on him.
Because he needed the angle, and the angle was there, and the man was not the objective.
So unlike the king who’d once comforted a citizen after the death of their child.
I rushed toward the soldier, but I wasn’t fast enough to save him as shifters trampled on his body. And then, almost as quickly as it started, the battle ended.
The few remaining survivors ran, terrified of Sebastian. I saw them go, scrambling over debris.
“Stay,” the king commanded, allowing none of his men to give chase, his voice hollow and without timbre. “They are not the primordial.”
The last lingering effects of the convergence ended, too, the sky healing, tides unlocking and sliding apart. Krakenstrond stood. Victory had never felt like so much loss.
He began calling out orders, preparing for war. One of those orders made me feel as if I were being stabbed with an invisible blade. “Gunnar, escort the princess home to Ashmorra, as planned.”
I jerked back. Princess. No longer queen.
Gunnar headed in my direction, but I backed up right into Harpa.
She motioned for the soldier to halt, and he obeyed. Side by side, we watched the king walk through the wreckage of his enemies with no expression on his face. After a very long time, she said, “You did the right thing.”
“Did I?” I croaked.
She gave me a terse nod. “Oh, já. Now the real fun begins. He’ll hunt Jokull. And you…” She gripped my wrist and squeezed twice. Danger. Leave. “You’ll find a way to win Sebastian back. Because you must. Now go. Hide. Goodbye, Queen Bronwyn. Until we meet again.”
She waved Gunnar on, and he resumed his journey my way, stoney-faced. Too late. I took her words to heart, unleashed my smokewings, and flew off.