Chapter 31 #2
I grimaced at Vero’s grip when a sob broke through her brother’s scream.
“The bond,” Ottoh continued, panicked. “I don’t feel it anymore.”
“I’m here! I’m right here, Ottoh!” Vero screamed into the thick shadows. “I’m all right!”
“She’s—” Ottoh’s voice cracked. “She’s gone!”
“It’s the forest.” Darcke tried to calm him. “I feel my heir. They’re out there.”
“Do you feel your bond?” I asked, lowering my tone even though they couldn’t hear us.
“No,” Vero admitted, a tremor sneaking into her words. “No, I don’t.”
I drew a breath, feeling Darcke searching for me and trying to show him I was doing the same.
“Come on,” I said as I tugged at Vero’s hand. “Maybe you need a physical connection somehow.”
“Fuck,” Vero cursed.
My heart flew into my throat. “What?”
“I stepped in a puddle or something,” she replied. “I’m drenched.”
I took a seeking step forward to where I thought I’d heard Darcke last. My free hand flew to my pounding chest when I also stepped into something deep, and wetness crawled up my trousers.
A question whispered over my skin until my shoulders jerked upward.
“She’s all right,” I whispered into the void. “We’re both all right. It was just water.”
“They’re okay,” Darcke said. “She just told me they’re okay.”
That was new. I hadn’t exactly heard him in my mind, rather felt what he wondered.
“Are you sure?” Ottoh snarled. “Vero is the only thing I have. I need you to be sure that she’s all right!”
“Yes,” Darcke replied. “But if you don’t release me, you might not be.”
Keep talking.
“Come on,” I said as Vero and I inched forward. “Say something again.”
Darcke. Say something.
“We’re over here.” His voice came from the left, and I pulled the limping Vero with me.
They were so close. I could smell driftwood and sun—could feel Darcke’s body heat.
It’s a test. His voice echoed in my mind, and I took a short breath.
“Yes,” I whispered.
Like the huldra and the tree, this was also a test. But none of us had figured out what for yet.
Vero sniffed loudly as feet digging into dirt reached our ears.
I forced my mind to collaborate instead of spinning.
I wasn’t sure what the huldra had tested Darcke for, but for me, she had fed off my fear of losing control.
The tree had tapped into Darcke’s refusal to be caged—I’d been able to taste his hatred for something else controlling what he did—as well as my unwillingness to tell the truth. So what would this be?
“Do you know why the forest would sever your bond?” I asked Vero.
“N-no,” she stuttered. “Unless they want us to know what it’s like to be all alone. We’re twins, so we’ve always done everything together. With the bond, we will also continue to do everything together.”
A chill made the hair on the back of my neck rise.
“Your bond is broken, but ours…” I trailed off, but Darcke’s thought was as clear in my head as if I had been the one to speak it. Is tethering us closer.
“What are you thinking?” Vero asked hesitantly.
“They’re testing the weaknesses of our bond,” I said. “You are so dependent on each other that they want to see how you will make it out of here alone. And we…” I cleared my throat. “Are not.”
“Where are they?” Ottoh demanded. “Are they close?”
“They’re almost here,” Darcke said. I feel you behind me, he added silently.
“I… I think you might be right,” Vero said. “I can barely hear Ottoh anymore.”
They need to finish alone, I thought.
“You need to go,” Darcke said out loud to the Briggen heir. “They’re testing you to see that you can do this alone.”
“Fuck that,” Ottoh snarled. “I am not leaving her here. She’s injured. You might not be excited to be the Sweengard second, but we have trained our entire life for this.”
I made a noise of surprise as I bumped into Darcke’s back. I felt him spin, his hand searching for mine, and as soon as his fingers tangled with mine, Vero’s hand was ripped away.
For a moment the world was quiet. Dark and quiet and filled with anticipation.
Then it exploded in light, as if a star had fallen and enveloped us in its warmth.
So many thoughts attacked me at once—so much anger and frustration and urgency. Letting go of Darcke, I cradled my head in my hands as they continued to overwhelm me, forcing their way into my mind, taking over everything.
“Make it stop,” I pleaded as I pressed my palms against my eyes.
“You make it stop,” he growled. “Get the fuck out of my head.”
Images began flickering before my eyes—too fast for me to make out much at all.
There was snow. Water. Ships. Fire.
Then the same thing again.
Snow. Water. Ships. Fire.
Again. And again.
Each time the fury mounted, filling me until my closed eyelids glowed with crimson.
It was like a wall held the memories back, as if they weren’t allowed to exist. And they didn’t like it. A banging started in my head, hands slamming against an invisible cage until the drumming overtook everything, my very bones vibrating with the effort of holding myself together.
“Stop it,” I screamed. “Stop it!”
Familiar splinters of memory ripped through my thoughts, mixing with the foreign ones.
My mother holding my sisters close.
Viljan’s reflection in the water above me.
My tears dripping into the river.
My father’s smiling face.
No. No. No.
Lika waving at me from the ship my father sailed.
“Get out of my head,” I cried. “Stop this!”
Stop thinking about them. Stop. Stop. Stop.
“You get out of mine,” Darcke gritted. “Stop making me relive this!”
“I can’t!” I shouted as me killing the karl that first day was replaced by an image of warships heading to an island where people screamed as they scrambled to get down from the mountain.
I could hear Darcke’s heavy breathing—feel him trying to figure it out.
“Enough!” My nails dug into his leather tunic when Geord and his friends chasing me through the woods came next, followed by Darcke falling to his knees by the ocean. “Stop!”
His hands found mine again, and he pulled me to him.
“Breathe,” he whispered. To me or him, I wasn’t sure.
“It’s too much,” I cried, choking on the emotions that weren’t mine but filled me all the same.
“Breathe.” His hands slid up my arms, over my shoulder and neck, until they settled across my cheeks. “Just breathe. You need to calm the fuck down so we can figure this out.”
“You calm down. You’re doing this to me!” I pressed my hands against his chest. “Stop it!”
“I’m trying to calm too,” he hissed. “But you need to help. It’s quite fucking hard when you’re used to fighting it like this.”
“Fighting what?” I screamed as the pounding intensified. An image of Darcke dipping his hand into the ocean filled my thoughts, making me feel like my head might burst open. “What is this?”
“My mind,” Darcke said through his teeth. “It’s my mind.”
I huffed a breath. This was his mind? All the time? It felt like I was about to go mad—as if I was trapped in a loop of violent thoughts that wanted nothing more than to crush my mind and me with it.
“Yes,” Darcke replied. “All. The. Time. Now, breathe!” His chest tapped against mine, and when his hot breath rushed out, I tried to make mine follow.
“Again,” he ordered, his thumbs brushing rhythmically over my cheeks.
We took a shared breath. The hammering quieted a little, the urgency softening.
“Good,” he said.
It didn’t feel like the thoughts might fight their way out of my skull anymore—as if they’d rip my skin to pieces in their panic to escape their hold.
“What happened to you?” I whispered.
The images making bile build at the back of my throat slowed, but it was like Darcke’s mind fought against it—as if there was something he was trying to show me, but that memory hid amongst the rest, seeking refuge in the chaos.
Finally the onslaught of thoughts cleared enough for me to make separate ones out.
Darcke stood beside the king, his face pale and gaze hollow. He didn’t want this, but he was going to do it anyway.
“Now,” the king ordered. “Do it now.”
The shaman appeared.
I bit back a bout of nausea when that strange leash tightened around Darcke’s mind, forcing thoughts and memories and magic back until they hammered against an invisible wall, like a prisoner screaming in an empty dungeon.
The image vanished instantly, disappearing like a ship cresting a tall wave. Darcke’s hands fell to my shoulders, and my stomach knitted when a shudder went through him.
Darkness still surrounded us, but as Darcke’s thoughts calmed—as they tired from the fight they had put up against the magic leashing them—I could see his eyes in my mind.
“The king did that to you?” I whispered at the exhausted sorrow spreading through us both.
He didn’t reply, but he didn’t need to.
“Why?” I asked.
His fingers dug into my skin, pulling me closer. Darcke’s chin brushed my forehead before he lifted it an inch, letting it rest atop my head.
You can’t tell me, can you?
Goose bumps peppered my skin. That had been something else. He was something else. And his mind was a very, very dark place.
“Yours isn’t all sunshine, either, heir.”
I know.
“We should go.” Darcke’s hands moved down to my own.
“Where?” I asked, a sense of despair sticking to my skin like cold sweat.
Something in my mind opened—memories rushing through like a river in spring when the ice melted. Darcke’s fingers tangled around mine when the clammy feeling spread across my skin, and my eyes shut even though I couldn’t see anything.
My reflection in the water looked back at us, the devastation so clear in my face it took my breath to relive it. “Please help me.” My broken whisper went through my chest, cracking my heart wide open again, throwing me back to that day.
“Don’t,” I pleaded.
Tears began dripping down my cheeks, and Viljan turned his back on me, giving me privacy.
“Obviously,” Darcke snarled.
“Please, stop,” I begged. “Please get out.”
“I’m trying,” he said through his teeth.
His fingers brushed the back of my hand, and it was like he dragged himself a step back even though he didn’t physically move. Then Darcke’s eyes closed in my mind.
I let out a shaking “Thank you” when the memory was released.