Chapter Twenty-Six #2
Gold moves between the trees. His sword catches firelight, disappears, and returns red. A rogue strikes at him from the left. Baldr blocks, catches the man by the throat, and drives him into the side of the storehouse hard enough to break the boards.
Eirik goes after the next one.
One man turns and finds Baldr. Another gets past Baldr and reaches Eirik’s hand. They leave each other no open side.
I saw them with the same face before I understood they were brothers.
Now I can’t see how anyone missed it.
Varrik backs toward me.
His sword remains raised.
“Take her,” he tells the copper-eyed man.
The man beside the broken scale is still alive.
Apparently I was too hopeful about his neck.
He drags himself upright, catches the chair back, and pulls.
The short leg scrapes across the floor.
“Don’t touch me.”
He puts his knife against my throat.
The blade’s cold.
I stop moving.
“Call them off,” he says.
“They don’t take my orders.”
“Try.”
A white body drops from the rafters.
Snowpetal hits him horns first.
Both points drive into the side of his throat.
The knife leaves my skin.
He falls against the chair, tipping it onto two legs. Snowpetal clings to him. Her talons open his coat, and the club-tail strikes the floor beside my ankle.
Blood pours over her horns.
The red thins across the white surface, then disappears into it.
She holds him there and feeds.
His hands stop clawing at her.
Snowpetal pulls her horns free.
She steps onto his chest, climbs my skirt, and curls into my lap.
Her whole body begins to purr.
Blood coats her face.
“Baby.”
The purr gets louder.
“You can’t do that and then sit down.”
She kneads my cloak.
One wet paw presses into my stomach.
Fine.
Varrik stares at her.
The command goes out of his face.
He knew she existed. Knowing hasn’t helped.
Snowpetal closes her eyes.
Outside, the last sword falls.
Baldr enters first.
Eirik follows.
Varrik pulls me backward by the chair. The short leg catches, and pain tears through my bound ankle.
Eirik feels it.
He stops.
Varrik puts his sword beneath my jaw.
“You came faster than expected.”
Eirik’s hands hang at his sides.
“Remove the blade.”
Varrik presses it closer.
“I asked for a conversation.”
“You were given an answer.”
“Your answer was a mistake.”
“You took her to improve your chances of a meeting.”
Varrik looks toward the bodies.
“It worked.”
Eirik’s purple eye fixes on the sword at my throat.
The bond gives me everything he keeps from the room.
He wants Varrik dead.
He wants him alive long enough to take apart.
He wants my skin away from the blade.
Baldr moves one step to the side.
Varrik sees him.
“Stay where you are.”
Baldr stops.
His grip tightens on the sword.
Varrik looks back at Eirik.
“I’m only a general. Kill me and the ones I answer to still come. You gain nothing.”
Eirik’s head tilts.
“I didn’t come to gain.”
“Then what?”
“You took her.”
Purple light flashes through the mask.
Varrik’s sword drops away from my throat.
His anger reaches Eirik first. Then the fear. Conviction follows, hot and hard, full of roads, hidden camps, and faces I can’t see.
Eirik takes all of it.
Varrik’s mouth falls open.
His eyes stay on me, but nobody’s looking through them now.
I know that face.
White linen.
Blood across Baldr’s hands.
Nine-year-old me between the wall and my father’s legs, crying while everyone else screamed.
Back then I saw Eirik kill and knew it hurt him.
Now he’s inside my chest.
Varrik’s fury, terror, and devotion pour into him. Eirik carries every piece.
He crosses the room.
One hand closes beneath Varrik’s jaw.
Eirik pulls.
Skin tears.
Cartilage breaks.
Varrik’s throat comes away in his hand.
Blood strikes the floor, the chair, and the edge of my purple cloak.
Varrik drops.
Eirik stands over him. The same hand. The same blood.
The same purple eye finding me across a ruined room.
I cry for him again.
His face turns toward the door.
For half a breath, I’m nine and he’s leaving.
“Eirik.”
He stops.
The bond jerks with the sound of his name.
I lean toward him as far as the rope allows.
“Come here.”
He drops Varrik’s throat.
Then he kneels in front of me.
His bloody fingers reach for the knot at my ankle and stop before they touch it.
“Where are you hurt?”
“My head. My knee. My wrists. This ankle. None of them feels deadly.”
His eyes close.
Relief hits through the bond hard enough to make me sway.
His knife comes free.
He cuts the rope at my ankles, then reaches behind the chair. The blade never touches my skin. Each strand falls away carefully, one at a time.
Snowpetal remains in my lap.
She purrs through all of it.
When my hands come free, I bring them around.
Pins and fire race through every finger.
Eirik catches my wrists.
His thumbs pass over the raw bands the rope left behind.
The hands that tore out Varrik’s throat hold me gently enough that my eyes fill again.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“Later.”
“I went to find Baldr. I thought if I told him myself—”
“Later, Sól.”
The bond says the rest.
He came when I called.
I slide out of the chair and my legs fail.
Eirik catches me against his chest.
Snowpetal climbs between us and hooks both front paws over his shoulder.
Her bloody face presses beside the silver mask.
He holds both of us.
I press my forehead to the runes.
“You came.”
His hands come up and frame my face, one on either side, tilting it up until the purple eye is all I can see.
His thumb drags slow across my cheekbone. It leaves something wet behind—his blood or Varrik’s or mine, I’ve lost track.
“I will always come for you, Sól.” His thumb goes still against my cheek. “There’s no treaty I won’t burn. No king I won’t unmake. No queen I won’t pull down from her hall. And there’s no ground you could stand on that I wouldn’t raze to stand on it beside you.”
The bond says the rest. He’d have kept coming until the road ended or he did.
Baldr stands a few paces away.
Blood darkens his coat and sword. A shallow cut crosses his forearm. His amber eye’s stopped glowing.
He watches Eirik’s hand move to the back of my head before I wince. Watches him turn my face toward the light before I tell him where the blow fell.
The hurt crosses his face.
He lowers his sword.
I reach one hand toward him.
Baldr takes it.
His palm’s warm and rough. He squeezes once, then lets me keep the space between us.
Eirik doesn’t release me.
Baldr doesn’t ask him to.
Snowpetal purrs against both their blood.
Beyond the open door, red covers the clearing. Bodies lie between the black pines. Fine vein-silver mesh spills from one broken crate, and eight stolen bars rest beneath it.