Chapter Twenty-Three
The sky clears while I’m sleeping.
Blue morning fills the gap between the shutters. I stare at it from my own bed, under my own blanket, in the dress I wore upstairs last night.
The fastening at my hip is broken.
Oh.
Then last night comes back all at once—his mouth, his hands, the bare black lines under my palms where the mask had been.
I choose you.
I choose the bond.
The old table striking stone, with Baldr awake in the west rooms while I came apart around his brother.
I remember every second.
Snowpetal is asleep across my feet. Her white belly points toward the ceiling. All four paws are folded against her chest, and one little fang rests outside her mouth.
I have no memory of leaving the watch room.
Eirik carried me back.
Again.
Without meaning to, I reach for that new place under my ribs. He’s there.
He’s awake.
Somewhere above the records room, a hard ache presses through the bond. I can’t tell which parts are his and which parts are mine yet. Last night I could. Last night everything came through at once—his fear right inside me, all of it, no wall anywhere to stop it.
This morning we have walls.
His are cracked.
Mine are apparently made of wet paper.
I lie still and breathe until Snowpetal’s tail knocks the bed frame.
The room stays quiet.
So does the passage beyond it.
I know what I’m going to do.
I wish I didn’t.
I sit up.
Pain catches between my thighs. My hip aches where I hit the table, and the broken fastening scratches my skin.
Last night happened.
I chose it.
I’d choose him again.
Baldr’s face at the long table comes back so clearly that I bend forward and press both hands over my eyes.
Did you want me to kiss you?
I wanted to.
That’s not what I asked.
He’d have stopped.
I let him kiss me because telling the truth in front of Eirik would hurt him.
After that, I went upstairs and gave Eirik every truth I had kept from Baldr.
Brilliant.
I’m very good at protecting people.
Snowpetal rolls onto her side and opens one eye.
“Don’t start.”
Her purr begins.
“I mean it.”
She stretches until both front paws touch my knee. One talon catches in the blanket.
I free it.
“I’ve made a decision.”
Snowpetal yawns.
“You could try to look concerned.”
She closes her eyes.
I get out of bed and open the shutters.
Myrkvier’s gone white. The storm buried every roof to its dark edge, filled the yard flat, and bent the pines nearly to the ground. Above all of it the sky’s blue from ridge to ridge. Full blue. Clean and cold.
Road weather.
My stomach drops.
Open road means they leave.
The Hall’ll wake any minute. Asta with her lists. Baldr checking the wagons have blankets. Ketill counting his seals. Eirik behind his silver somewhere, feeling it every time I look at him.
And Baldr getting ready to ride home like I’m coming with him.
He doesn’t know. That’s what I keep snagging on.
If I let him ride off not knowing, none of this ends.
He comes back. He writes. He waits. Eirik keeps cutting at anything that reaches for me, Baldr keeps reaching, and I stand in the middle of them loving one and helping neither—until one of them does something to the other that can’t be taken back.
I thought I was the thing they were fighting over.
Turns out I’m the blade.
And I’m so done being the blade.
Here’s the thing I still haven’t done, in all of this—I haven’t actually told Baldr. Not once.
He asked me straight out if I wanted him to kiss me, and I gave him every answer except the true one.
Then I let Eirik say it for me, with a hand on Baldr’s shoulder, and I just stood there and let it happen.
He deserves better than that. He deserves to hear it from me. Out loud, to his face—before the wagons roll and he goes home still thinking I’m getting in one.
So that’s what I’m doing.
I cross to the washstand.
Cold water takes the last of the sleep from my face. It does nothing for the swollen place on my lower lip or the dark mark near my collar.
And there’s him. Dried on the inside of my thigh, still tacky higher up. He didn’t pull out at the end. He stayed. Pressed his face into my hair and let me feel all of it through the bond.
Eirik. Who doesn’t give anyone anything.
I wet the cloth and clean him off my skin. My face goes hot doing it, which is ridiculous. He’s felt everything else.
I pull my shift higher.
Asta will see both before breakfast.
Asta sees lint from across a room.
Which means I have to get to Baldr before she gets to me. One look at my face and she’ll have it all out of me on the stairs—and Baldr should hear it from me first.
I get dressed fast. Not the blue dress—the fastening’s gone, and I leave it on the floor where it belongs. The green one. Clean stockings.
The purple cloak’s on its peg. I put it on.
Snowpetal watches me from the bed with the flat look she saves for choices she doesn’t approve of.
“You’re staying.”
She lifts her head.
“I mean it. Stay.”
She looks at me a long moment.
And for the first time in her whole ridiculous life—she stays.
I let myself out before I can lose my nerve.
The passage is already going—servants turned sideways with travel chests, cold pouring in from a propped door, everybody halfway gone already. Baldr’s door stands open, bed made, room empty. So he’s down in it already. The yard, the wagons, wherever the lifting is.
On the lower stair a man tells me the Dróttin’s at the lower gate with the wagons, if I’m after him. Another one says he’ll walk me down—the drifts are bad along the wall, easy to go over.
“Thank you,” I say, both arms full of cloak, and I mean it. It’s a normal thing to offer on a leaving-day.
We go out the side passage by the wood store. The cold gets under the cloak the second we clear the door. The yard noise falls off behind the wall, and I’m still working out how I’m even going to say it to him—soft, or just straight out, or—
Something hits the side of my head.
The white ground comes up.
Then nothing.