Chapter 13 #2
Kilia heaved against me once more, and stone cut my hands as I tried to withstand it. A tapping sound reached my ears, and I involuntarily glanced up again. Darcke remained there for a second before he spun, his silhouette against the dark sky disappearing from view.
As I twisted my body, a splintered rib of a longship floated my way, and I didn’t hesitate as I used my last strength to dive for it, pressing one shoulder up to throw Kilia off.
The wood sealed itself in my hand as if it had been made for me, and I wedged it between us, driving the tip into Kilia’s throat. I used enough force to draw blood, but I stopped after the wood broke his skin.
There was no fear in his eyes when he glared at me. Only rage and regret. From somewhere in the battle around us, someone screamed his name. I didn’t need to look up to know it was his brother.
A swallow rolled down my throat.
“Why”—I took a breath—“do you keep trying to kill me?”
“Blood for blood,” he spat.
“Who did my brother kill?”
The muscle in Kilia’s jaw worked. “My sister,” he admitted.
My brows pinched. Lika might have been ruthless, but he did not kill easily. And he definitely didn’t kill women.
“No.” I shook my head, firming my grip on the driftwood. “You’re lying.”
The corners of his eyes twitched, and it wasn’t a bead from the bed of water surrounding us that traced down his cheek. It was quiet for a moment, until a drop of blood escaped the wound I was creating and forced a decisive look over his features.
“He promised her it was love,” Kilia snarled. “He promised her she’d become his wife! That he’d come for her. She waited for him for years, and he kept dangling his lure. Every fucking summer he’d bait her, but when winter came around, he was nowhere to be seen.”
“So?” My voice sounded sharper than I felt.
Everyone had flings over the summer when we met at battles or on travels for trade.
But promises of weddings? That wasn’t common. It also wasn’t something Lika could offer.
“She decided she didn’t want to wait anymore, so she went in search of him!” Kilia screamed, pressing himself harder against the weapon draining his life. “She was killed. My mother’s only daughter was killed by enemies, her head severed like a fucking thrall! It’s Lika’s fault, and he knows it!”
“No,” I said.
Kilia didn’t say anything else as my thoughts waged war inside my mind.
Lika couldn’t have promised marriage because a chieftain’s bed was not theirs to give.
Heirs could play around—we were no prudes—but that freedom ended with the Hird.
Once an heir was the king’s chosen, their hand became a coin of the realm, to be spent by the crown on an alliance of their choosing. That’s how my parents wed.
“You lie,” I accused him again.
Kilia’s face grew paler by the second, and a tiredness seeped across his features as he turned from me. I followed, and Oscri, the mirror to the man whose life I had in my hands, stood a few feet away, his skin as white as the one before me.
To his side, Ottoh wiped blood from a busted lip while the boy tied to him heaved the limp body of a captive to the side, shoving it into the surge, where it joined the many others.
I waited for a smirk from the heir, perhaps a sharp comment as to why I hadn’t killed this brute for these accusations yet. But no razor-edged smile came.
Instead Ottoh shook his head. “You knew a different Lika to us.”
It was the echo of pain in those words that had ice cascade down my spine. It also made me wonder what my brother had done to the Briggen heir for such a darkness to shade his features.
The fighting behind Ottoh continued; a group led by Ivren and Rakkel drove a dozen captives out to sea, claiming a bank of the beach as their own.
On the other side, Adrion fought a massive man, the initiate bound to him slowing the heir’s movements as he stumbled behind him, injured from something sticking out of his thigh.
Above us the ship floated proudly with Darcke, Torden, Guner, and several other men watching as the brothers and sisters of the Hird fought and died and swam.
I sensed something in the air a second before the bastard warrior’s lips twitched.
I whirled so swiftly the water splashed around me—exactly like it did around the man with a salt-hardened spike barging right for Oscri. A sound left Kilia, and I took only a second to decide before I ripped the driftwood away and threw it with every ounce of energy left inside me.
Even without my father’s strength, the sharp edge pierced the attacker’s chest, and there was a hollow plunge as his body met the water and was claimed by the current.
Had it not been for the fighting, the world around me would have gone quiet.
Ottoh gaped, and identical gazes captured me. Kilia’s lips pressed together, his hand wrapping around his neck for a moment before he lifted the palm to his face, eyeing the blood covering it.
I caught my breath. “Blood for blood,” I got out.
His jaw worked as he turned to his brother, then to me.
I lifted my chin.
Finally, Kilia’s head dipped. Only the slightest inch. But it was enough.
“You’ll stop trying to kill me,” I demanded breathlessly, still surprised I’d managed to kill that man. “I saved your brother. So you will spare me.”
His eyes were on Oscri when he hissed, “For now.”
I had no idea why I smiled, my face turned to the tinted waves churning around us.
“Touching.” Darcke drew out the word until it sounded like the most vicious of insults as he came striding through the water as if it wasn’t there at all.
I turned away from him, suddenly regretting having thrown the weapon. But I still knew he spoke to me when he said, “You’ll all be killed unless you stir your fucking bones.”
My back jerked straight at the same time Kilia’s did.
Viljan and Stefen were fighting several captives in the middle of the beach.
Rakkel and Ivren were surrounded, their attackers driving them against the tree line, away from the water.
Adrion was out of sight, while a group of karls tried to board the ship Darcke had just come from but were chased off by Guner’s men.
More enemies came our way. Ottoh gave me a cocky smile before he spun to tackle two oncomers, then began sprinting through the sea while waving at the rest of us to follow him and his partner toward a bend of the island.
I stiffened when a touch grazed my cheek. Kilia’s nostrils flared, and his hard features didn’t mirror the gentleness with which he dragged two bloodied fingers across my face before doing the same to himself.
“Don’t slow me down,” he ordered.
I raised my brows. “Don’t slow me down.”
A shadow of amusement crossed the silver-haired twin’s face.
“Any time before the gods come to reap us all,” Darcke drawled. He’d already turned to wade through shallow waters, shoving an enemy aside as if he were a mere piece of flotsam, discarded and nameless against the tide, but I still caught a glimpse of his face.
If I didn’t know better, I would have thought there was a shard of respect in the way his mouth hooked to the side.