Chapter 32
Thirty-Two
Ilet him drag me toward what looked like the end of a long hallway.
When the dim light stung my eyes, I savored the pain for the second of relief it offered me.
It felt like days should have passed, but as we stumbled into a new part of the forest where low bushes and golden oak stretched to a glimpse of the sea ahead, the waning moon’s reflection glittered near the horizon.
I shook off his hand and went to sit by one of the trees, where I pulled my legs against my chest and folded into myself. As if that could make sense of the world. As if that could protect me from what I’d just found out.
“Are you all right?” Darcke asked as he took a spot beside me, although he stretched his legs out instead, rolling his neck before leaning back against the trunk of the oak.
“Is that why you hated me?” I asked.
“What?”
“From the moment you saw me… I felt it,” I said. “I mean, even without being in your mind. Sure, I stole your ship and I lied and I might be an heir and I know you hate us all, but it was different with me. You couldn’t stand me. Is it because… I remind you of her?”
He chewed his cheek for a second. “Yes.”
“You thought you heard the call,” I said slowly. “Was that my call? In the river.”
Darcke didn’t respond, but his eyes trailed over my face.
“You can’t respond because the king has forbidden you to speak of anything related to your people and your magic, isn’t that true?”
He lay his hand on my knee when I groaned in frustration.
“My father’s longship. I saw it on your island. He must…” I clenched my hands. “That’s why Viljan and my mother are worried about me. They think I found out and—” I covered my face with my hands. “Gods, I can’t believe this.”
“I thought you knew,” Darcke said as he turned his head to the sea ahead. “That you were taunting me.” The muscle in his jaw worked. “That the one person left of my people was an heir to one of the chiefdoms in Skagerik. I couldn’t stand it.”
“Wait,” I said slowly, my gut turning. “Are we… does this mean we are…”
He laughed. “We’re not related.”
I looked away as the wave of relief spilled through my limbs, as warmth made its way up my neck. Darcke chuckled again, then he tapped my knee and hummed a low melody as the moon continued its descent. I had to shut my eyes when the sorrow and heartbreak in it burrowed through my veins.
“I’m sorry about your people,” I whispered.
He was silent for a few seconds. “They were your people too.”
“I think knowing someone and losing them is worse than not knowing them at all,” I said as I picked at a thread on my trousers.
Darcke’s fingers tightened around my leg, and I lifted my gaze to his.
“I think you might be right,” he replied after a long look.
“I’m doing this for my people,” I admitted when we’d been quiet for a while and I couldn’t stand the crushing grief that rolled through the warrior beside me. “Everything I’ve done so far, I’ve done for them.”
Darcke cleared his throat. “I know.” His elbow gently pressed into my side. “You don’t need to tell me anything. There is no tree threatening to crush me anymore.”
“But what if I want to?” I blurted out.
His smile was slow. Real.
Steps sounded behind us, and I went still when Darcke lifted his hand to my face. His lips lifted higher as he wiped with his thumb a tear that I hadn’t noticed, staring at it before letting it slide down his finger and absorb into his skin.
“Save that for someone who deserves it,” he whispered as Ottoh and Vero stumbled into the small clearing we sat in.
“You survived,” Ottoh said as he helped his sister to where we were seated.
“Don’t sound so surprised,” I shot back, shifting away from where my body burned from Darcke’s touch.
“I’m not,” Ottoh said.
I arched a brow.
“He is a little shaken after that trial. We nearly didn’t get out because Ottoh here freaked out when you two disappeared,” Vero said. “You should take the compliment.”
“That’s a compliment?” I asked at the same time as Ottoh snarled, “I wasn’t the one who cried.”
I moved my lips to the side as the Briggen twin scowled at her brother.
“We should get going.” Darcke jumped up to his feet, not a line in his face betraying what we’d been through. “The bay is over there.”
“We’re going to rest,” Ottoh said, lifting a hand when Vero muttered something I didn’t pick up. “You’re still injured, and we don’t know if there are going to be more tests between here and the beach.”
“What do you want to do?” Darcke asked me.
“You’re asking me something instead of lifting me up and carrying me wherever you wish to go?” I pretended to press my hand to my chest, grateful when the strange tension that had twisted around us faded as his glower returned.
When Darcke muttered something under his breath, I stared out over the expanse of bushes and the golden oaks that glittered in the sun that began rising over the sea.
The scent of sap wove around us, and if I took a deep enough breath, the smell of newly polished and chopped wood, still warm from the work, joined it.
Somewhere along the beach that skirted the bay there would be ships.
How many depended on how many of us made it out.
I threw a look behind us, but the darkness was quiet, with no sign of any other heirs. Or their seconds. Thankfully. I wasn’t sure if I could keep it together yet if I ran into Viljan or my mother.
Darcke bowed his head before I had the chance to speak. “We’ll stay for a while.”
Ottoh helped Vero to the spot Darcke had vacated, and when she rested against the trunk, the two men sat down opposite us.
No one spoke, each of us deep in our thoughts, as the day turned lighter.
The sun’s rays whispered over us, and my eyelids fluttered shut while I tried to understand how my parents could have kept this secret from me—how Viljan could have hidden it from me all these years.
Because he’d known. That was the only thing that made sense.
Had Lika known? Did my sisters?
I felt Darcke study me, and when I opened my eyes to his, my pulse leaped.
Where there used to be a cold, calculating look, there was now a curiosity that made my heart pound in my ears. And behind it was something even more dangerous: a familiarity that was starting to be impossible to deny.
My eyes moved to the hands twisting in my lap. I hadn’t even touched upon what this could mean for me walking into the gods’ halls. Was my Skagerik blood enough, or would the other half—the silent, diluted half that connected me with the strange warrior before me—instantly render me unworthy?
“Look!” Vero’s gasp made fear knit in my gut.
Darcke flew to his feet the same moment Ottoh did.
“What is that?” Ottoh hissed.
The roots from the tree Vero and I had our backs against sneaked their way through the soil. From them a thick yellow sap began bleeding out across the ground, like liquid gold surrounding us, reflecting our tense faces back at us.
“Seers’ sap,” I whispered as my reflection smiled at me.
“What the fuck is seers’ sap?” Darcke growled as he backed away from the gold trying to reach for him.
“It’s useless to try to avoid it,” I said as I rose on shaking legs, allowing the sap to encircle my feet entirely. “These trees were planted by the gods, and if they want us to see, they will make us see.”
“See what?” Vero stood as well, her blond hair mirroring the gold spilling from the tree.
“Whatever they want.” I took a breath. “The king’s shaman uses it to communicate with the gods, but since we’re not blessed with that kind of magic, we can only watch while the gods show us what they wish.”
“He can communicate with the gods too? So much for fucking perfect aim,” Ottoh muttered.
“Ottoh! Look at this,” Vero breathed. “I’m chief, like we always wanted.”
Ottoh inched across the gold until he stood by his sister. “Amazing.” His smile was sad when his eyes slid my way. “Are the visions always true?”
“I don’t kn—” My words stuck in my throat when my reflection changed.
The person who stared back at me was pale as a ghost, darkness around her eyes, standing in a realm that could be none other than Helheim. Ice spread out beneath and behind me, and an impenetrable mist swirled around my ankles, the dampness of it seeping through my ripped leathers.
Blood dripped down my arms, staining my hands crimson.
I raised my palms in front of me. I wasn’t the one bleeding.
That blood—that draining life force? It was my people’s. And this? This was my failure.
Another hand wrapped around the palm I’d been studying, and Darcke smiled at me as he lifted it and traced his lips over my skin. He was wearing my father’s iron helmet—the one my father only used in battle—and his whisper reverberated in the mist. A people for a people.
“Don’t believe everything you see.”
I flinched as Darcke’s voice vibrated against my ear, the depth of it sending a shiver racing across my shoulder. When I spun from the gold, my nose grazed his, and the sharp, electric thrill that followed stalled the air in my lungs.
“What?” I whispered.
He was too close. My eyes dipped to his chest and up again.
“You shouldn’t believe everything you see,” Darcke said, his voice rough. “The truth can be twisted, information misinterpreted.”
“That seems pretty straightforward,” I said.
“Not to me,” Darcke replied. “If you are destined for Hel? Then there is no Valhalla to be found.”
“You don’t know everything about me. You don’t know what I’ve done.” I tried to look away, but when his mouth curled into a devastating grin, my eyes followed each swerve of his full lips. “You don’t know what goes on in my mind.”
“You’ve seen too little of the world if you think whatever you imagine you’ve done makes you undeserving.” Darcke gently clasped the hand that still felt sticky from blood and pulled me back from the edge. “You are far too hard on yourself, and far too kind to others. Myself included.”
“You’re not so b—”
I didn’t have time to finish before the familiar sound of an arrow whistling through the air reached my ears.
“Ambush!” I screamed as I felt the sharp point graze my cheek.