Chapter 29 #2
“Do you know who you are?”
I shook my head. Somehow it didn’t matter. I’d find out soon enough.
“You don’t remember that you’re Elvara Sweengard, heir to the Oenskan fylki, and my bonded?”
“No,” I said.
Whoever that was, I’d left her behind. I didn’t care. I was exactly where I should be.
I was safe. Watched over. Following my wyrd.
“Interesting,” the man mused, before asking, “What do your instincts tell you to do?”
Prickles crawled over my skin, fighting their way into my thoughts. There were several things I wanted to do, but now I wasn’t sure which one tasted most like the truth.
“I should… guide the horse that way?” I said as I pointed to a bushy arch towering over an impenetrable darkness.
As I thought it, something within me strained. My hands tangled in the horse’s mane as I tried to hold on to it. What was that feeling?
It contradicted the warmth within me—the pull that wanted me to approach the arch.
Maybe I shouldn’t go there at all.
The man’s full mouth lifted on one side as he pulled the reins so that the horse went the opposite way. “That path we won’t go down.”
Something screeched in the darkness, and I frowned into it.
Why was it so dark? The trees around us were nothing like this man. They were frightening, and so was the spirit—because peeking at us through the trees was a forest spirit.
“She isn’t happy with you,” I said. “She wants us to go the other way.”
But who was she? And why did I know what she wanted? I felt her longing as if it were my own, but there was a different yearning within me, fighting it. I moved closer to the man behind me, nestling myself against his chest.
“I don’t care what she wants,” the man said, his voice so low my rib cage vibrated.
I liked his voice too. It wrapped around me in a way that shouldn’t feel safe but did.
“Do I care?” I asked. Should I care?
He laughed once. “You’re really fighting her, aren’t you? Feel for your instincts again. The ones that are yours, not someone else trying to influence you.”
I could do that. I think.
Keeping his gaze, I let the world fade.
I was alone with my thoughts. They were still shrouded in white—like the snowstorms that would blow over the ice back home.
I held on to that—the island dressed in white, where longships were stuck in the ice that caressed the docks and only the largest warships were able to break through the frozen seas.
Home. That felt right. That felt like mine.
“That’s right,” the man said. “That feels like a memory, not a forest spirit trying to lure you into her trap.”
The heat from his body was like a blanket of safety, and I smiled as I leaned into his broad chest. Something pulled me to him, something that also felt like home—a bond I somehow knew should be treasured.
“You’re mine,” I said slowly. “Aren’t you?”
When a jolt of surprise flipped my stomach, I giggled. It came from him—that I was certain of. I let my hand trail up his leg, my back melting into his chest. It garnered me the same reaction once more.
“I should stay close to you,” I said. Everything in me told me he was safe. He wouldn’t only watch my back but would save my soul from whatever came at us. Because that was what the bond was—protection.
I closed my eyes again. My words rang true within him, and there was something else there, too—a tug that had nothing to do with the bond tethering his chest to mine.
“You need me,” I said. “You need me more than I need you, so you will keep me safe.” More surprise, this of a different kind—one I wasn’t fond of—jabbed at my chest, and I winced. “You don’t want me to know that.”
His forehead creased again.
Was I wrong? Confusion wound its way around my mind.
He remained still as I spun and moved my hand back to his face.
“I—” I dropped my fingers when something sharp came at my thoughts, and I jerked backward. “No. I need you? Is that right?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Do you?”
I turned forward as the horse fell into a gallop, and when we left behind the arch I’d been pulled toward, the images in my mind cleared.
Faces that had evaded me sharpened, and feelings that the man’s warm ones had overpowered returned. My father showed up first, and I jerked back from the man when his memory morphed into a body on the ground, limbs at unnatural angles and blood pooling beneath him.
“Did I do that?”
“Did you do what?” He had to lean in so I’d hear him over the rushing wind.
People standing on a dock came next, their fists lifted in farewell to my father’s body as it floated away on the river in a burial boat.
No, that wasn’t right. I shook my head to get my thoughts in order.
It wasn’t my father they waved to. They were saying goodbye to me.
“Am I going to die?” I asked.
Strong arms tightened around my waist. “We’re all going to die.”
“But will I die soon?”
“Not if I have anything to do with it.”
As we passed a thick copse of the tallest birch I’d ever seen, the world stopped being muted. It was as if we’d passed beneath a waterfall, the water transforming me into me again. The mist evaporated from my mind, and panic flooded me.
Despite the mare’s speed, I whirled.
“What just happened?” I asked urgently.
Darcke grinned coldly. “You fell for the huldra’s spell. And I saved you.”
The spell? I cursed silently when Darcke’s silent chuckle vibrated along the bond.
Falling asleep must have made me vulnerable.
“No need to be so fucking smug.” I grimaced as I leafed through the memories of what I’d just done—and what I’d told him.
Heat crept over my cheeks at the way I’d touched him. I’d thought he was beautiful.
I closed my eyes. I’d told him he was mine.
But as I went over every single word leaving my lips, my shoulders lowered. I hadn’t said anything about my family—about my people. About my magic. Nothing I’d done had been too damning.
“I wouldn’t be so relaxed,” Darcke teased. “You told me how pretty you really think I am.”
I shoved at him. “I meant your tattoos, you bastard.”
“Sure.” He used his hand to move my head forward as the mare approached a massive ash where the roots had lifted from the ground, forming almost a cave beneath the thick trunk. “If you’re done admiring me, let’s take shelter beneath that tree.”
I bit my cheeks when they burned so hot they could have probably led the way through the system of roots the horse led us into.