Chapter 40
Forty
As I aided Vero to her feet, Darcke dragged Ottoh out of the cave. I was about to thank him when shock rattled my spine.
“Fuck,” my second cursed.
I lifted my gaze at the same time as Vero.
“Fuck is right,” the Briggen second whispered.
It was utter chaos. Kilia and Ilse were standing back-to-back, swords glistening in their hands as they fought three hrimthursar, ducking and parrying blows from the frost giants’ ice picks.
The Briggen fourth had a sword, but his brother did not, and blood ran down his arm as the former did everything he could to keep two more giants away.
“You should go,” Vero said. “I’ll keep him safe.”
“Vero,” I started, but Darcke lifted me over his shoulder before I had time to finish.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I snarled.
“Getting you away from them,” he snarled back.
“Set me down!”
One shake of his head.
“You realize I’m holding a sword, right?”
“If my blood is the price for your breath, then so fucking be it,” he growled. “That cave fucking shook me, and I will not relive that.”
My lips snapped shut when Darcke stuttered, both of us reeling with the truth of his words.
“Huh,” he breathed. “I need you to be safe. More than anything I need you to be safe.”
I wanted to savor the way he said it: as if he’d figured out what made the waters in our realm ebb and flow. But steps thundered behind us.
“If you want me to be safe, you need to set me down,” I cried as the hrimthurs licked its blue lips before lifting the ice pick in its hand.
I felt Darcke’s decision to sacrifice himself—to throw me down and cast himself in the giant’s way—before he could act. I didn’t allow him to read my instinct. Smacking my hilt against his head, I kicked at the same time, making him stumble and lose his grip.
As I spun, I lifted the sword, and a groan ripped from my lips when the ice pick in the hrimthurs’s hands struck the steel, the impact shaking my bones until they ached. I ducked under the frozen hand that followed and sprinted between the monster’s legs, using my sword to cut at its knees.
The roar the hrimthurs let out shook the ice beneath my boots, and my eyes flew wide when bodies stared back at me from beneath the frozen water, their pale eyes unseeing and mouths open in their final cry.
“I will not join you today,” I vowed as I whirled, crouching as the giant lifted his ice pick again and hoping my arms could withstand the force with which it swung through the air.
“As if I’d fucking let you.” Darcke shoved me out of the way, sending me flying back on the ice, and I was about to scream at him when I saw the sword in his hands.
It was massive, one of the widest blades I’d ever seen, but that wasn’t what made me gape.
The weapon was the brother to my own, the same sparkling blue sapphires lining its hilt, and the silver it was forged from as pale as a moon reflecting on a calm sea.
Darcke didn’t have the finesse I’d been taught when wielding a sword, but it didn’t matter.
When he swung it like he did his axe, meeting the giant’s weapon earlier than the latter had intended, the air roared with metal clangs.
With a twist of his wrists, Darcke sent the pick clattering onto the ice, wrenching it from the hrimthurs’s grip as easily as he’d gotten me on my back when we were training.
“Don’t go yet,” Darcke taunted when the hrimthurs scrambled back. “I’m not done with you.”
The monster whipped his head around when he limped further backward, the ice in his eyes beginning to thaw, leaking down his frozen cheeks.
More roars split the air as his kin died. Vero had also earned her sword, and she screamed as she drove it upward through one of the smaller hrimthursar’s jaws, making his head shatter into a million tiny shards of ice.
As Darcke followed the one who’d attacked us, something within my stomach wrenched. His violence heated my blood, and while I could taste the same iron he did, I placed a hand on his shoulder.
“Leave it,” I ordered.
“I don’t think so,” Darcke growled, trying to shake my hand off. “He went for you.”
“And now he’s leaving,” I said, trying to calm the primal possessive fury that was Darcke’s and my bond.
“Why should he get away with it?” Darcke asked, his muscles flexing beneath my touch and chest rumbling from the snarl building in there.
It was a struggle not to give in—not to let him chase and kill and satisfy the vengeance that had burrowed into his chest like the arrows the previous owner of my blade had taken.
But I held on as the giant threw a final look at the carnage behind us before spinning around and escaping behind the bend with steps that crunched against the ice.
“Why?” Darcke demanded again, the muscle in his jaw working.
“Because he’s not the one who deserves our wrath.”
Darcke’s eyes went between mine, reading the promise there before he crushed me against his chest. His sword pressed against my back as he held me like the world would end if he didn’t.
“What was that for?” I asked when he pulled back.
He lifted the sword as if it were poisonous, letting it dangle from his fingers. “It made me watch you die.”
“Mine showed me the past.” I touched the blue stones. “I guess it makes sense that yours would show the future.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” he snapped.
“They’re siblings—twin blades.” I showed him my sword. “I think I see now. Their owners had a purpose. What if we inherited that, and that’s how we earn the swords?”
I’d found mine only when I realized who my enemy truly was—who was behind everything cruel and cold in our world.
“No.” Darcke shook his head. “We make our own wyrd.”
“Do we?” Is this where you would have been, then? Is this the life you would have chosen?
He dragged me to him. “That was not your fucking future.”
“What was it?” I asked.
“I’m not telling you, you fucking martyr.”
That tension between us returned tenfold, the ice creaking beneath us not the only threat in the air. Darcke’s chest heaved, the vein in his neck throbbing as he leaned over me like he was physically trying to stop me from doing whatever it was he’d seen.
A crack shattered the silence, and we flew around as one, our swords lifted.
“Elvara!” Vero screamed.
I didn’t wait as I started sprinting. Vero was dragging Ottoh with her as a gaping wound in the ice opened behind them, chasing them across the lake we’d been standing on.
“Elvara!”
I’d thought it would be Darcke who’d be the next person to yell at me, but it was Kilia and Ilse from the other side of the jagged maw where dark water spilled out at the sides, forcing my third and fourth backward.
Ivren, Viljan, Rakkel, and their iron-bound came sliding to a stop behind them, closely followed by Geord and his men.
I didn’t like Viljan’s face at all as he cupped his hands around his mouth.
“Watch out!” he screamed. “Behind you!”
My feet kept moving as I turned my head over my shoulder and realized why Darcke had been so quiet. Three men in tattered clothing swarmed him, and while he easily parried the blows from their axes, they weren’t trying to outfence him—they were herding him.
With every strike he deflected, they forced him closer to the fracture in the water.
Enemies had found us here? They’d braved Gravsgard to kill us?
Something moved in the corner of my eye, and I cursed violently.
Two more men were approaching Vero and Ottoh, coming from the hill we’d slashed ourselves out of. My head snapped back and forth between the Briggen siblings and my second, and I had only heartbeats to make up my mind.
“Fuck!” I swore. “Vero! Duck!”
Fear twisted her features as she did what I said. As soon as her back bent, I threw my sword.
I didn’t stay to see my blade hit true, but my ears picked up a pained groan followed by a thud when I ran to Darcke and the men trying to get him into the vicious tide that churned beneath the ice. Hopefully Vero would be able to deal with the other one herself.
Darcke had managed to get one of the men. I jumped over his unnaturally twisted body, praying I wouldn’t slip on the warm blood pooling beneath him. The other two were relentless, attacking my second again and again and again, each time forcing him another step backward.
Darcke didn’t realize my plan until it was too late. By not deciding what I would do until the last second, I kept my intent hidden from him. I saw his mouth open as I lunged, but I only used the fear erupting along the tether to fuel my leap.
The man I’d aimed for didn’t see me coming. As I slammed into his back, I sent us both careening over the slick surface, hurtling toward the water.
It would have been easier if I’d had my sword, but I sacrificed my nails to dig into the ice—to try to stop, or at least slow myself down.
I cried out as my nails ripped clean off, but it worked.
The split in the ice wasn’t coming at me so fast anymore.
Then something wrapped around my wrist, and my breath hitched in my throat when I sped up again before the man I’d knocked down dragged me with him into the water.
The freezing waves shocked me, every nerve within my body firing.
I knew I had only seconds if I wanted to even try to survive.
Kicking myself free from the man’s grip, I reached upward, but my fingers touched nothing.
I didn’t dare spin—I didn’t want to become confused in the dark water—but only used my legs to thrust upward and try again.
Nothing. Bubbles rose before my face when I screamed in frustration, but it was when those bubbles became smaller that terror truly settled like a hand around my throat. My limbs were already stiffening, and I still couldn’t see anything in the swirling dark.
One more time. One more.
I stretched an arm as high as I could, and this time I felt ice. I could have cried from happiness—at least I hadn’t accidentally swum to the bottom—but I stopped the air trying to wrangle itself from my lungs. I would need it for as long as possible.
Keeping my fingers touching the barrier between me and air, I turned my head.
I had to find the crack before I started swimming. I’d been in the water for maybe only half a minute, but it didn’t matter when it was this cold. The sea would take every bit of my energy. As I turned the other way, my heart went still, and I lost control over the breath I’d held.
Darcke’s face disappeared behind my final air bubbles, and I wondered for a second if I’d imagined it. But as the froth faded, he was still there—unyielding and impossible. His wild face was barely an inch from mine, his eyes filled with feral desperation.
When his hand found mine, our bodies convulsed.
My eyes were locked on his as muted screams filled my ears—heartbreaking cries of help.
It was Darcke’s people, and then it was not.
Pleadings in other languages mingled with each other until they became a song of sorrow, carried here by the sea in the hopes of someone who would listen.
My lungs protested as I tried to listen to what they were saying, but when another spasm shook me, I heard Darcke’s voice in my head as clear as if it were my own, breaking through the others.
It’s enough now. It’s enough.
My eyelids fluttered, darkness flickering in and out.
Stay with me, he ordered as he started swimming backward, holding on to my hands and pulling me with him. Stay with me, Elvara.
As I squinted at him, something golden caught my eyes.
Around Darcke’s neck was a physical collar, one that was gilded and pretty, but a shackle all the same. I blinked hard, trying to get my eyes to focus. When I saw it again, I felt the divine tether that wasn’t the one we shared but the noose the shaman and the king used to control him.
Sorrow creased his face when I looked back at him, and I tried to speak, but darkness pressed in like a predator, and the world fell as silent as the vow echoing in my mind.
I’m going to free you.