Chapter Twenty-Two
Tomorrow she leaves. Good. I sit on the floor of the old watch room and fail to believe either sentence.
The storm is nearly spent.
Wind moves over the roof in low passes. Snow slides from the northern eave and strikes the ground three floors below. By dawn, the watch will have the ridge markers clear. Baldr can take his wagons, his people, and the woman I pulled out of his hands.
Her mouth answered his from habit. Every evening in Sólvik knew what to do. The rest of her waited for the kiss to finish.
I received every second.
Then I crossed the Hall and ended it.
One pull.
That was all it took to tell my brother the truth I’d spent years burying.
Solveih moves below me.
The narrow stair has seventeen steps. She’s on the tenth. Guilt has been tearing through the bond since she left the long table, though now another want moves under it. Quieter. Worse.
She takes the eleventh step.
She was meant to turn at the lower gallery. Everyone turns there. The stair beyond it leads to the old watch room, empty since the eastern roof sank.
She reaches the top.
The latch lifts.
Solveih stops on the threshold.
Her pale hair has started escaping its pins. One curl lies across her mouth. Her blue dress is creased where the table caught her thigh, and a bruise is already darkening beneath the fabric.
Her eyes find the silver, then the purple above it, then the rest of me on the floor.
“Oh.”
“That word never does fail you.”
She keeps one hand on the latch. “I didn’t know anyone was here.”
“You’ve learned.”
Solveih comes one step into the room—
“Leave.”
“I’m staying.”
I stay on the floor.
“I don’t recall offering a choice.”
“You invited me to use a knife and then told me I was pathetic. Your invitations aren’t useful.”
She has no idea what that mouth is doing to me.
Goes straight to my cock, not my temper.
Her hand’s still on the latch behind her.
My hand comes up and rubs at the edge of the silver where it meets my jaw. An old habit, a stupid one to let her see. I lower it.
Too late—she’s stopped arguing and started watching me.
“Does it hurt?” she asks.
“Remarkable concern, from the woman who told me my invitations were use—“
“The mask.”
I go still. The clever answer’s right there—“always.”
Her gaze moves over the silver. “When you take it off?”
“And when I put it back.”
“That’s horrible.”
“The alternative’s worse.”
She looks at the mask. “Why wear it?”
“So I can walk through my own rooms without feeling what everyone wants while they lie about it.”
Her eyes return to mine. “You hear me anyway.”
There it is.
“Everyone in the Hall heard you today.”
“You knew before I said anything.”
“Baldr was kissing a woman who had stopped kissing him.”
Her jaw tightens. “You felt me.”
“I have eyes.”
Her arms fold. She’s not letting me have that one.
“You felt me in the snow.”
“You were drunk enough to announce yourself to the trees.”
I look toward the broken shutter. The last strip of wind pushes loose snow across the sill.
Solveih comes closer.
“You knew I trusted you when you carried me inside. You knew I was angry in the kitchen. You knew I didn’t want Baldr to touch me tonight, and you pulled him away before I could make myself say it.”
“You’ve kept quite a ledger—“
“Stop.”
The word catches harder than her finger ever did.
She stands in front of me now. Small, furious, and shaking badly enough that the loose curl moves against her mouth.
“You keep telling me what I want, then punishing me for wanting it. You pull me close. You make coffee cruel. You teach me to throw a knife, wait until I trust you, and cut me where you know it’ll hurt.”
“You should have listened.”
“To which part?” Her voice rises. “The part where you lay beside me in the snow? The part where your hand stayed in my hair? The part where I woke in your bed and knew you’d kept me safe before I remembered how I got there?”
I stand.
She has to tip her head back.
“You don’t understand what you’re—”
“Then explain it.”
The tiredness comes down on me all at once. I want the snow again.
She doesn’t move.
“Explain it.”
“Baldr’s waiting.”
Pain cuts through the bond.
Her eyes shine.
“He asked whether I wanted him to kiss me.”
I keep my mouth closed.
“I couldn’t lie.”
Her tears stay bright in her eyes.
“He knew,” she says. “He knew before I did.”
“Baldr has always been skilled at finding truths that hurt him.”
“So have you.”
Solveih takes the last step between us.
“Tell me why you can feel me more than everyone else.”
The door remains open behind her.
I could walk past her and have both of them on the road by breakfast.
I’ve done harder things.
Instead, I stay where I am.
“At the dinner,” I say, “you cried for me.”
Her face changes.
“I remember.”
“One side of a potential mate bond opened.”
Solveih goes quiet. The wind brushes the roof.
“Mate.”
“Potential.”
“What does that mean?”
“For years, it has meant I receive you at any distance. Nothing moves back the other way.”
Her eyes search my face. “That long.”
“Yes.”
“You felt me in Gullither.”
“Yes.”
“In Sólvik.”
“Yes.”
Her cheeks redden. I wait.
She understands.
“With Baldr?”
Years of her being happy, and me on the far end of it by myself. “Every time.”
Her eyes close. “Gods.”
“They have offered little assistance.”
She opens them again. “Did it make me want you?”
“It cannot.”
“Did it bring me here?”
“You climbed the stairs.”
“Could you use it to make me choose?”
“Never.” The answer comes hard enough to scrape my throat.
“The bond has never put love, want, obedience, or forgiveness into you. It cannot take any of them out. You can leave this room, return to Sólvik, choose my brother, or choose nobody. Your will remains yours because my blood recognized only a possibility.”
She watches me.
I make myself finish.
“I owe you the truth. You owe me nothing.”
“What happens if I choose you?”
“You feel me.” I keep my hands at my sides.
“Everything?”
I hesitate. “Enough.”
“Can I stop it?”
I shift my weight. She wants to be able to stop feeling me. I don’t blame her. “You can learn walls. They take time.”
Her gaze drops to the mask.
“You have many.”
“I had an excellent childhood.”
Her mouth nearly smiles.
“What do I have to do?”
She wants the way out. I never believed she’d want anything else.
“Nothing. You walk out that door and never say it, and you’ll never feel a thing. It goes back to being only mine.”
“That’s all?”
“Well, yes. You make it sound small.”
The shaking’s left her.
“Keep your door.”
“What—You should be frightened.”
“I am.”
That stops me.
Solveih presses both hands against my chest. The contact drives her straight through the open noise of the Hall.
I take her wrists. “You’re frightened. You’re angry. You love my brother.”
A breath. “I don’t love him.”
My hands go still on her wrists. I spent years sure she did.
“He loves you.”
“I know.”
My grip on her wrists tightens. “This will break him.”
She shuts her eyes and pulls in a slow breath. “He’s already breaking.”
“Because of us.”
“Because all three of us kept pretending.”
She’s counting me in that. She’s right to.
Her fingers curl into my shirt. “I know what you did at the dinner,” she says. “I know you killed her.”
“You know the end.”
“Then tell me the beginning.”
My jaw locks. “You will hear it later.”
Her eyes harden. “Fine. I know you let me stand there and watch that first night. I know you made me cry. I know you hurt Baldr today, and I know I hurt him too. I’m still angry with you.”
“Good.”
“I don’t forgive any of it because I want you.”
“Better.”
“Stop helping.”
Solveih pulls her wrists from my hands. Then she puts one palm over the place beneath my ribs that hasn’t been quiet since I first saw her.
“The wanting is mine,” she says.
“Yes.”
“The choice is mine.”
“Yes.”
“I choose you.”
Words I stopped believing I’d hear. Every wall in me braces for the catch…
“Sól—”
“I choose the bond. I choose to feel you.” Her hand tightens in my shirt. “Stop hiding.”
The silver’s the one thing I’ve never taken off for anyone but blood.
She’s not blood, and she reached me anyway.
I bring both hands to my face and let her watch.
The first rune gives near my jaw. It tears out of the scar and the blood starts, warm down my chin. She doesn’t look away.
The second. The third. My hands aren’t steady—I’ve taken the silver off a thousand times, never to be seen.
The last one holds beside my eye until I make it let go.
The silver comes away in my hand.
So does the wall.
Pain tears through my chest.
Solveih gasps.
Her knees give, and I catch her before they strike the floor.
The reach has only ever ended inside her.
Now it opens back.
My own fear returns through her first. She receives it, and her grip on me tightens.
Then the rest gets through.
Want. Grief. Six hundred years of anger.
I turned most of it on myself. The rest made everyone close enough bleed.
Years of waking with her joy in my mouth and sleeping with her sorrow under my ribs.
My brother’s blood on my hands though I never touched him at the dinner.
Every night I knew she was safe with him and hated the relief because it belonged beside jealousy.
Solveih takes all of it.
Her tears fall. She stays.
The bond is now two-way.
Oh, hell.
“Eirik.”
“That’s what you chose.”
“You thought this would make me leave?”
“It was a reasonable hope.”
Her hand rises toward my face.
I catch it one inch from the open brand beside my mouth.
“Don’t.”
“Does it hurt?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want me to stop?”
The answer enters the bond before I speak.
Her pupils widen.
I release her hand.
“Keep going.”
Her thumb touches the black line.
Fire runs across my jaw.
I close my eyes.
She traces the sigil over my lower lip, careful around the blood. The bond gives her every ugly part of the touch: the pain, the want beneath it, and the terror I’ve spent centuries making unavailable.
“You’re afraid of me.”
“A popular response.”
“Liar.”
Her thumb presses harder.
I open my eyes.
She receives what that does too.
Her breath catches.
“Tell me what you want,” I say.
“You.”
“Poor judgment.”
“Kiss me.”