Chapter 25
Twenty-Five
The brow of Darcke’s ship purred beneath my feet as I walked up to the deck, and I slid my hands over the railing, lingering for a moment when the wood warmed in hello.
She was so beautiful. The black glittered in the night, and the shining deck reflected the stars, making it seem like we were standing in the middle of the dark sky.
Every inch of the vessel was polished and buffed, and even the sides—where salt surely tried to stain her every journey—shone like the onyx stones my father had brought my mother from one of his journeys.
A vibration went through my feet, up my legs, and through the rest of my body. I laughed softly. “You’re very welcome.”
“Stop fawning over her. It makes her insufferable,” Darcke ordered. “Food is this way.”
“How do you stand him?” I mumbled, and the wood rumbled again, the planks beneath my feet shifting from side to side.
“No, I think he is that bad,” I replied when Darcke spun, his hands shooting out. “At least with me.”
The creaking followed me as I approached Darcke, and while it was his ship and as such she would turn against me in a heartbeat if I so much as picked up an axe, a warmth surrounded me with every step, making me far more relaxed than I should have been.
“You’re not staying,” Darcke warned as he opened the door leading down into the quarters where his bedroom lay, and where I’d glimpsed a few other rooms, one of which I hoped was a kitchen, ideally stocked with meat and vegetables and something to quench my thirst.
“I know,” I said, trailing my fingers over the beautiful craftsmanship of sea monsters, sirens, and mermaids that decorated the walls surrounding the stairs. “Who built this ship? She’s a masterpiece.”
Heirs who survived the trial of wood were granted ships born of Morkskog—the forest that demanded we enter its depths and endure until the tree spirits deemed us worthy.
Those ships were forged from the timber that accepted our souls.
Once we set sail, that same wood took root in our own lands, growing with a divine speed, and provided the bones for our longships, our warships, and our homes.
Each village had shipmasters—men and women who worked only on building our ships—and while my father’s had been skilled, even our fastest warships had nothing on this one.
“I built her,” Darcke said as we entered the small kitchen, gesturing for me to take a seat on a rickety chair by the table in the middle.
“Yourself?”
“You sound surprised.” He rummaged through a cabinet, and my mouth nearly watered as he took out wine, strips of dried meat and fish, flatbread, and a bowl with a cold stew that didn’t look too appetizing, with its white and soggy contents, but smelled amazing.
A seed of shame took root in my gut. “Sorry, I just… you don’t seem…”
I winced when Darcke gave me a sharp look. The walls of the ship rumbled, and I quickly pretended to wrap his jacket tighter around myself when a grin wanted to lift my lips.
“I don’t seem what?” Darcke waved for the food. “Eat. I can’t focus while feeling your hunger.”
I stuffed my mouth with food, groaning loudly as I swallowed.
“This”—I took another bite—“is so good.”
Darcke placed his hands on the table, and my face warmed under his glare. I wouldn’t have blamed him if I’d felt disgust, but there was none. Instead there was a curiosity—one he was fighting hard—and something that felt like confusion, but his irritation kept overshadowing it.
“You…” I swallowed before continuing. “You don’t seem to have the patience for building something as intricate and stunning as this vessel.”
The table trembled along with the walls, and Darcke shook his head as he leaned over it. “You don’t seem to have the manners of an heir.”
It’s because I wasn’t supposed to be an heir.
My face was probably bloodred by now. “Fair.”
I tried to take smaller bites, using my hands to break up the bread.
“Eat,” Darcke said as he refilled the bowl of stew for me. “I don’t care for manners. That’s your people. Along with the honor, and glory, and appeasing your gods.”
“What about your god?” I asked cautiously. “That was him back there, wasn’t it? That was Njord?”
Darcke’s hands tightened over the table. My worry mingled with something harsher, a fury that made me shift on the chair.
“It was.” He walked up to the window where the moon teased the horizon, ready to give way for dawn.
“Did you call him here?”
Darcke stiffened. “And why would I do that?”
I twisted my hands in my lap. “Because you’re angry I forced you to become my second?”
Another surge of heat flared in my chest, as violent as a storm far out at sea.
“You know as fucking well as I do that even if I wanted to, I couldn’t.” There was strain both in Darcke’s voice and along the bond between us.
I felt the truth of his words like I felt the chair beneath me.
“Because of your severed rune?” I asked.
He didn’t reply, but his pain cracked through my chest as if it were my own. It was so raw, the bitterness of his rage tasting like copper in my mouth, and my heart ached for that closed door in his mind, where his essence had been banished by the king’s shaman.
I might have lost my father’s rune, but I would have lost it when Lika faced the gods anyway. The gods erased an heir’s inherited rune before they allowed them to carve the one they’d selected into their flesh.
Only the king and his loyal men were allowed to wield more than one power.
But Darcke? He’d lost the one he’d earned—the one that made him him.
“Then why… how is Njord here?” I tried to keep away the simmering apprehension that I could be the one to do the same to my people, but given the look Darcke shot me, I wasn’t successful.
“Your gods must have allowed it,” he said quietly as he placed a hand on the wall, his face turned into the night. “They’re always starved for entertainment. Perhaps they want Njord to watch as they erase what little is left of his people.”
A haunting sense of foreboding made my throat close up.
What if the gods weren’t judging me but simply amusing themselves with my struggle?
My hands tightened in my lap. “They wouldn’t—”
“Wouldn’t they?” Darcke interrupted. “They’ve watched your people take over almost this entire continent, and they’re still asking for more blood. They don’t want to risk any other gods becoming too strong—they want everyone to honor them.”
“Stop!” I hissed. “Stop talking like that.”
My head whipped from side to side as if Odin and the others might appear in this cramped cabin.
Darcke laughed hollowly. “Why?”
“They’re everywhere!” I continued in a worried whisper. “They can hear you.”
His tongue slid over his top teeth. “Even better.”
“Stop it,” I said again.
Darcke turned around, his back against the wall. “What are you so scared of? You’re an heir. Your very existence is an honor to the gods. Your power is allowed even though you didn’t earn it yourself.” He chuckled. “As if that’s fair to everyone else.”
I picked up the cup of wine Darcke had left on the table and took a deep sip.
Darcke’s eyes narrowed. “What are you so scared of?”
“Nothing,” I replied quickly. Too quickly.
When he raised a brow, I shrugged a shoulder. “Everything? We have two trials coming up. I need to earn my wood and my steel before I can face the gods, and I have a feeling you’re not going to make it easy for me.”
“That’s not it.” He took a slow step toward me. “What are you really scared of?”
I lifted my chin. “I just told you.”
“No.” Darcke’s voice lowered. “You just lied to me. I can feel what you feel. You tied me to you, remember?”
As if I could forget. Especially with the emotions that made me jump to my feet as Darcke came closer.
“Thanks for the food,” I said. “I should get going.”
“To sleep in the woods?” Darcke cornered me against the table. “Hide from the other initiates?”
Unease whirled up my spine.
He chuckled darkly. “You’re clearly excited about that.”
“It’s not like I can stay here,” I replied as I tried to sneak around him.
Darcke moved with me, blocking my path. “Now, now. You’ve made your problems my problems, heir. Time to tell me what makes you so skittish.”
I cursed to myself as the ship stayed silent. She was on his side.
“I just want to honor our gods, and you’re making that difficult.”
“Your gods,” Darcke snarled. “Still not it. At least not all of it. What are you hiding?”
“What are you hiding?” I shot back.
His body lined up with my own, and I became very aware of his trembling muscles, his hard chest heaving against me. My eyes darted to the window before coming back to his, and my body swayed at the challenge in his eyes.
“Are you scared of me?” Darcke asked.
“Yes,” I answered truthfully.
“Why?” he asked.
“If you didn’t betray your people, why are you working for the king?” I blurted out.
Darcke’s slow grin chilled my blood. “If you’re scared of me, why did you choose me as your second?”
Because I didn’t have a choice.
I suddenly wasn’t sure if the thought was his or mine—a strange understanding filled me that allowed me to take a deep breath for the first time since the choosing.
Strength that I hadn’t felt since my father rushed through my body, the bond between us tightening, becoming clearer, like a bridge guiding us over a roaring river.
The silence that followed became leaden, and I fought a shiver when Darcke leaned in farther. “Look at us finding some common ground.” One of his legs spread mine apart, and he stepped in closer, his body pressing against mine until the table bit into my back.
“Do you feel that?” he asked. “The bond likes it when we speak the truth.”
His breath was hot as it hit my face, and I should have moved—I should have sneaked by him as his arms fell to his sides instead of caging me against the table. But a challenge echoed in me, and instead of backing down I pressed a hand to his chest, right over the broken rune on his heart.
I tilted my head back. The bond surged, a pulse pounding along the tether connecting my soul with his. Darcke’s heart thudded against my palm, and my eyes widened when a flash of heat flooded my veins. Warmth and worry collided within me, a storm of conflicting emotions that left me breathless.
“I should go,” I whispered.
Darcke dipped his chin, leaving our faces only inches apart. “That’s probably best.”
When my fingers splayed over his chest instead, his heart skipped a beat. Mine followed, beating a rhythm that did nothing to help the fog spreading in my mind.
“You’re not scared of me,” Darcke rasped. “Not as much as you’re scared of something else.”
I tried to quell the vibrations of unease within me, but it was impossible when his hand sneaked around my back, and I stopped breathing entirely when Darcke’s lips brushed my ear. “Your body doesn’t lie as well as your mouth does.”
I went cold.
Darcke’s lips twisted into a wicked smile as he stepped back. “You should remember that if you’re going to continue hiding things from me.”
I closed my eyes when my heart leaped, then began thundering in my chest.
“It’s the same for you,” I snapped, but my voice betrayed me, a tremor finding its way into it. “You need to watch out too.”
“Maybe I want you to find out all my secrets.” Darcke walked up to the window again, his back turned on me.
“Liar,” I whispered when the bond strained, something sharp and harsh winding around it.
He turned his head over his shoulder, raising an arrogant brow. “Weren’t you supposed to leave?”
I started stalking to the door. “Whatever.”
A loud clattering stopped me in my strides, and I spun to the table, which shook so violently the food atop it flew into the air with each wave.
“Fine!” Darcke grumbled. “Bring some fucking food, but then get out of my sight.”
“And you said he wasn’t that bad,” I whispered as I patted the table.
Darcke’s eyes seared into mine. “What are you hiding now?”
I scooped up every bit of food I could fit in my arms before starting to back up.
“Nothing.” I offered him a blinding smile as I stepped over the threshold. “It’s not a secret that you’re a bastard.”
The door behind me slammed shut as Darcke flew toward me, and despite everything, I giggled when he snarled at the wood.