Chapter Twenty-Seven
Varrik’s blood takes three bowls of water to remove.
The first turns red. The second stays pink around my fingers. By the third, the skin across my knuckles has closed and the water remains clear.
I wash them again.
Solveih sits in the chair beside my hearth with her left ankle wrapped, both wrists bandaged, and a narrow strip of linen crossing the cut near her temple. Asta finished cleaning the blood from her hair twenty minutes ago. The curls are still damp against her neck.
Snowpetal sleeps in her lap.
The healer cut away the fur around the wound in the Sanguir’s side, stitched it, and wrapped her front leg. Snowpetal objected to every part. She bit through one leather glove, broke a stool with her tail, and accepted the indignity only when Solveih put both hands around her face.
Now she’s asleep with Varrik’s man still dark around the base of her horns.
The healer declined to try a fourth cloth.
Wise woman.
Solveih watches me scrub clean hands.
I reach for the soap again.
“They’re clean,” she says.
“Not yet.”
“I watched you wash them.”
“Your head was struck.”
“It still works.”
“Then stop using it on me.”
She should argue. Her fingers move through Snowpetal’s fur instead.
The hurt enters the bond before her eyes drop. I put the soap down.
Asta stands near the bed folding the purple cloak. The blood didn’t come out of the hem. She’s been working at the same dark patch with a wet cloth while producing enough anger to sour the entire floor.
Most of it’s aimed at me.
Some belongs to Solveih.
All of it’s covering fear.
“She needs food,” Asta says.
“I’m here,” Solveih tells her.
“You need food.”
“Yes.”
“And sleep. And one morning where you don’t disappear on me, fall off anything, adopt a predator, accept a mate bond, or get kidnapped.”
Solveih thinks about that.
“That feels very restrictive.”
Asta put the mate bond on that list without slowing down.
Asta closes her eyes and takes a deep breath.
The anger thins around the edges.
“Broth,” she says. “I’m getting broth.”
“With bread?”
“If the kitchens have recovered from hearing what you did.”
Snowpetal’s purr changes when Asta crosses the room. The creature opens one white eye, confirms she’s passing, and closes it again.
Asta stops beside me.
Her gaze goes to the clean water, then my face. I left the mask on the washstand after I opened the runes and let Solveih clean beneath them. Fresh blood’s dried along the brands over my mouth.
“If she leaves this room,” Asta says, “I’ll blame you.”
“A refreshing change.”
“If she leaves this room because you upset her, I’ll use the knife.”
“Which one?”
Asta’s hand rests on the hilt at her hip.
The second remains in her boot.
“Surprise me,” I say.
She walks out, the door shutting behind her.
Solveih waits until Asta’s steps reach the stair.
“She likes you.”
“Your injury’s worse than reported.”
“She only threatens people she thinks will still be here later.”
My certainty that I’ll be here. Her chair beside my hearth. The next bowl, the next meal, the next night. Every ordinary day I refused to build because wanting one made it possible to lose.
Her breath catches.
I put the wall back up between us.
It doesn’t seal. It never seals. She still gets the edge of it though— enough to feel me step back from her, not enough to follow.
Pain strikes back through the bond.
“Don’t.”
Her hand tightens in Snowpetal’s fur.
I’ve heard that tone over thrown knives, bad coffee, and every cruelty she decided I’d answer for. It’s stopped me each time.
Apparently choice has made her worse.
I take it down again. Only her side of it.
The rest holds. The mask is off and half of Myrkvier is already inside my chest—the cook, the healer, two men arguing in the yard about a horse. Not one of them will feel a thing off me. Practice.
Nothing stands between her side and mine now.
She receives my fear first. It’s occupied the same place since the road tore it open. Beneath it sits relief sharp enough to hurt, and under that—
She looks at me.
There.
The thing I’ve kept from her since she was nine has crossed the bond without permission, dignity, or a useful way to deny it.
Her eyes fill.
“Eirik.”
“Don’t.”
“You love me.”
The words are quiet.
The bond answers her.
Tedious.
I take the bowl to the washstand and set it down beside the silver mask.
“You could say it,” she says.
“You’ve received the information.”
“That’s different.”
“It’s more accurate.”
Behind me, Snowpetal complains about being moved.
“Sit down.”
“Nope.”
“Solveih.”
“Almost there.”
The bad ankle takes her weight and doesn’t enjoy it. I get all of that. I get the exact moment she decides it’s worth it anyway.
Then both arms come around my middle, her face goes into my back, and she squeezes hard enough to move the air out of me.
I keep hold of the washstand.
“This is a hug,” she says into my shirt.
“I’m aware.”
“You’re not doing it.”
“My hands are occupied.”
“With what?”
“The washstand.”
She squeezes harder. Her thumb hooks through my belt and stays there.
My face looks back at me out of the dark window: my brother’s bones, black brands, one purple eye, one pale green, and enough exposed damage to make the resemblance cruel.
Blonde curls at my shoulder. Two bandaged wrists across my stomach.
The glass offers nowhere useful to go.
“Are you going to hug me back?”
“No.”
“Okay.”
She doesn’t let go.
Snowpetal reaches my boot and starts climbing.
I put one hand over both of hers.
She makes a noise against my back.
“Don’t.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You made a noise.”
“I can feel you trying to escape.”
“I haven’t moved.”
“You’re doing both.”
This arrangement has flaws.
I turn around, pick her up off the bad ankle, and put her back in the chair. She keeps a fistful of my shirt the whole way and doesn’t look remotely sorry about it.
“I spent your whole life keeping this on one side,” I say.
“I know.”
“You’ve had it for less than two days.”
“Yup.”
“You nearly died during one of them.”
Her guilt cuts through the warmth.
“I thought if I just told him,” she says. “Baldr. That if I got to him first and said it to his face—that I’d chosen you—the two of you would stop using me to cut at each other.”
“So you went out to do it alone.”
“I was only going to find him in the Hall. How was I suppose to know there were bad people here.”
“You didn’t take the Sanguir.”
“I shut her in.” Her voice goes thin. “I finally won that argument, the one morning I never should have.”
Snowpetal, who put her nose down in a foot of snow and came after her anyway, opens one eye at her name and bites a fold of skirt.
“She still got to you. The rest of us were slower.”
I kneel in front of her.
“You decided the whole thing was yours to fix,” I say. “Alone.”
“I was trying—”
“So was I. For years. It went about as well.”
“That isn’t fair.”
“Correct.”
Snowpetal lifts her head as I lean in, dried blood still on the small muzzle, one horn resting against Solveih’s bandaged wrist.
“Three of us made this,” I say. “You’re the only one who bled for it. You left Asta staring at an empty room. You handed Baldr one more thing to hate himself for. And you spent the worst hour of your life screaming down the bond for me while a man wrapped silver around her horns.”
Solveih’s tears fall faster.
“I know.”
“Look at me.”
Both glacial-blue eyes lift.
“Going off alone didn’t save anyone.”
The guilt stays. Then changes shape around anger.
“You felt me fall,” she says.
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t come.”
“No.”
“Why?”
Because she’s gone down a hundred times since I’ve known her, and not one of those falls ever meant she needed me.
Because after last night, I wanted—badly—to feel her fall and not move for it. To prove I still could.
Her hand rises from Snowpetal and touches the brand beside my mouth.
The split skin burns beneath her thumb.
“That last one was stupid,” she says.
“Pain’s affected your manners.”
“I had excellent manners before I met you.”
“Then I’ve improved you.”
A laugh escapes her. It breaks in the middle, but it’s real.
I put one hand over hers and keep it against my face.
The bond remains open.
She feels the pain from the runes. I receive the tremor in her fingers and the certainty beneath it.
She chose me.
Me.
“I’d choose you again,” she says.
“Naturally.” My smirk pulls the brands crooked, stretching the open scars.
“That was your chance to be kind.”
“You know better.”
“I can feel you being kind.”
“Keep that accusation private.”
Her thumb moves once across the black line.
I press my forehead to hers.
For the first time in my life, failing to speak doesn’t leave me hidden.
There is a knock on the door and it opens.
Baldr stops inside it. He’s washed too.
The blood is gone from his hair and face. A clean bandage circles his left forearm. He changed into a dark shirt, though the cut in his coat remains on the shoulder of the arm carrying it.
His gaze goes from my hand over Solveih’s to our foreheads touching.
Salt and iron return to my tongue.
I stand and Solveih’s hand slips from my face.
Baldr looks at Snowpetal in her lap. The Sanguir watches him with one white eye.
“How’s she?”
“Offended,” Solveih says.
“I meant you.”
“Also offended.”
His smile lasts one breath.
Then he comes closer.
Solveih tries to rise.
Pain catches her ankle, and she settles back into the chair with a small curse.
Baldr’s hand starts toward her.
He stops it.
“You can help me,” she says.
“I know.”
He takes the chair opposite hers instead.
Snowpetal climbs down, limps across the rug, and puts both front paws on Baldr’s knee.
He lifts her carefully.
The predator who killed a Skorvaer in front of us curls against his chest and purrs.
Baldr rests one broad hand around her bandaged leg.
“Traitor,” Solveih tells her.
Snowpetal kneads his shirt.
Nobody speaks after that.
Baldr looks at Solveih. His hurt remains open. He makes no attempt to spare either of us from it.
“The bond,” he says.
Solveih nods.
“When?”
“The old watch room. Last night.”
His jaw tightens.
“Before all of this.”
“Yes.”
“Did you know what it was?”