Chapter 31 #3
So sad, he thought. So alone.
“It’s not like your inner circle is a crowd,” I tried to quip to break through the anguish rolling back and forth between us.
Maybe that’s why we like each other.
I stiffened at the warmth in that thought. Where did that come from?
“Do we like each other?” I whispered as Darcke started leading us through the darkness, walking slowly as bushes crept up our legs, their thorns ripping at our clothing. “And how do you know where to go?”
“Don’t read that much into it. I just meant that we haven’t killed each other yet,” Darcke replied. “And I don’t. I am guessing we’re supposed to live out this lovely connection, and once it’s done, the end will reveal itself.”
A memory of an overgrown part of a forest, where rampant weeds wove up every tree and bushes covered every inch of the ground, slammed into me.
My brows furrowed. “Have you been here before?”
“Of course not,” Darcke replied.
Nothing within his mind contradicted his reply, not even when I listened closely.
The terrifying pounding within Darcke’s head was gone, although there was still an echo of it, as if the magic had quelled everything but the small flame of pure will that it would never be able to quench within the warrior.
His mind was sharp now, and I swallowed before I spun around in the vast, strange space. There were tunnels in it—white halls leading away from the wall of memories locked up deep in the back.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Darcke growled as I stumbled toward something that looked like a door standing ajar. A handle appeared, and the scent of sun and summer wove out of it, too enticing for me not to press it down.
“No—”
Darcke’s voice drifted away as I tumbled straight into his memory.
Raised voices came from the longhouse, the smell of iron and death already joining the smoke trickling out of the chimneys.
“Sounds like trouble,” Torden said. “Should we investigate?”
Darcke stared at the door for a second before turning to the water and the ship he wished he could get on and sail until the end of days. But he’d promised.
He’d heard the call, and he’d promised he’d respond if he ever did.
The water running down Torden’s neck glistened in the firelight from the torches hanging outside the house, and Darcke nodded when the water stilled, telling him this was it.
“Elvara, don’t.”
I heard Darcke as if from far away, but I couldn’t stop myself from following him and his men into the warmth.
Darcke led the way, and Torden nearly slammed into his back when he stilled, his heart going silent in his chest. The redheaded girl holding the sword before him… No, it couldn’t be.
The memory shifted, a beautiful woman with huge moss-colored eyes taking its place. She had auburn hair, and her laugh echoed in the stone hall as she called something out over the crowd. But her face. It was the mirror to that of the girl in the longhouse.
The image was strange, though, the person looking up at her as if…
I couldn’t breathe.
The auburn woman looked so tall because the person watching her was a child. Because the one seeing it was Darcke as a child.
I didn’t breathe as I threw myself after the memory when it faded, trying to somehow make it stay.
But the only thing I was able to hold on to was Darcke’s devastating sense of disappointment—the choking feeling like eagerly returning home after months at sea and finding that home gone, washed up on a shore that was no longer your own.
My entire body trembled as I came to. “Who is that?”
Darcke didn’t respond, his hand refusing to let mine go even as I pulled at him as he continued stalking through the darkness.
“Tell me,” I snarled. “Or I swear—”
He spun, his face leveling with mine, and even in the suffocating blackness I knew his features were as hard as the cliffs skirting Oenskan. “What will you do? Hurt me? Do you think you can hurt me? Do you think anyone can?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t think anyone can hurt you more than the king already has.”
“I thought we weren’t allowed to speak of him like that,” Darcke spat.
“Stop changing the subject.”
I ignored the thrill of unease whispering over my skin. Because I was beginning to see that my mind might have been as muddled my entire life as it had been with the huldra.
Darcke hadn’t betrayed his people. Somehow the king had forced him—somehow he’d found a way—because how Darcke had looked at that woman… it was with love.
“You’re making some bold assumptions, heir.” Darcke’s fingers whispered over my arm. “You ought to be careful.”
“Who was that, Darcke?” I asked as the other doors in his mind vibrated—tempted me.
“Are you going to force your way into my thoughts again?”
“Maybe,” I admitted.
“Such honesty,” he drawled. “Is it so I won’t barge into yours?”
I felt a tap in my mind that turned my gut.
“Doesn’t feel so good, does it?” he asked.
“Who is she?” I asked again.
“Was,” Darcke corrected me. “She was one of our council leaders.”
“And why—” I swallowed.
“Why does she look like you?”
I could feel it. Deep within me something twisted and turned until the ugly truth started to make itself clear.
Memories of my mother treating me differently.
Of my father going above her head each time they made a decision about me: with Viljan, with the men she suggested for my husband, with my upbringing.
A jab of pain stabbed at my chest.
Viljan’s questioning. Did you have your brother killed to be here?
My mother coming here even with the danger it posed to our people. If their suspicions are true, we have a traitor in our fylki.
Njord showing up instead of the other gods. It wasn’t because of Darcke.
It was because of me.
“Is… are we related?” I asked. “Is she… Am I?”
I couldn’t finish, and Darcke didn’t voice his thoughts out loud, but we were both thinking the same thing.
A light flickered ahead for the first time since the darkness had swallowed us, and the world went so quiet I had to grip Darcke to make sure he was still there.
But it was my mind becoming my own once more, no longer threatened by the foreign presence.
“I think we passed,” Darcke said quietly.