Chapter 49 #4
A gilded chain clattered to the ground, snaking its way across the pale path. Darcke pulled at his jacket, revealing a tanned chest where an onyx rune of water was stark against the blood dripping down the cut muscles.
I wasn’t fast enough to evade him this time. He dragged me against his chest, his lips whispering over mine, not touching but so close every hot exhale made me tremble.
“I hope you claimed every fucking rune in there.” His eyes dipped to my chest, where the six runes lay in a curve around my heart. A slow smile lifted his lips. “Ruinous,” he whispered.
Darcke’s hand on my arm sent feverish currents over my skin, but they weren’t unpleasant. Waves of warmth and strength and home rolled through me until my breathing steadied—until I returned his smile.
Familiar. Kin. Mine.
The water in his blood sang to the water in mine. We shivered as one when the sea responded, waves lifting and falling until drops rained over the battle still ongoing around us.
I exhaled when the power surged in the air—mine and Darcke’s and a divine one that should have been terrifying but only made my feet twitch toward the water.
Njord’s welcome was as violently alluring as Darcke’s fingers dancing over my arm.
A drop of sweat trickled down my temple, and when I brushed it off, it fell onto the path, slowly sliding across it until it merged with the sea.
The world slowed again. Everything was so clear. The sounds of the battle were muted, but I could still hear every heartbeat in the people around me. I could see the way they’d move before they did, the water that made them up whispering their intentions.
Darcke’s laugh trickled over me, and for the first time since I’d met the warrior, it was a real one. His hand moved to my cheek, his thumb brushing excruciatingly slowly over my heated skin.
“Do you hear the waters’ call?” he asked quietly.
His words raked across my skin with the force of a vicious current.
I did hear the waters. The song within me surged into a roar, bleeding into the air and earth and water. As I lifted my eyes to where my friends held the line against the enemy tide, standing shoulder to shoulder against far too many, I knew what I had to do.
We would not win this if we fought Viking to Viking. Our enemies outnumbered us, and my friends were tired and hurt. But from the depths of the sea, answers breached the surface like the pale reaching hands of the drowned—guidance from those who’d come before.
Turning to the north, to Nordoen and Svartoarna and the ships waiting for us in the harbor, I dipped my hand into the water, calling for the familiar—for friends now and in the future to stay safe.
A gasp spilled from my lips when a wall of water rose once more.
I knew people were screaming, but I only heard the sound of rushing rivers as the water forced our enemies back, taking in its path some of those who wished my people ill and claiming their souls for the sea’s bottomless darkness.
Others were hunted backward until they stood within walls of water like I had in the Great Halls, crying as they tried to escape.
My mother hit me with the gaze of an executioner as she cowered between two men, her mouth opening in a snarl to demonstrate how she would have ripped out my throat with her teeth if the body of water wasn’t standing in between us.
Ghosts surged in my mind.
My father. Adrion. Oscri. Rakkel’s third. Ottoh.
Then Lika smiled at me. My ruthless brother, who might have been wicked and deadly, but only because the woman before me made him so.
Unlike Darcke, he had not had a magical leash around his throat, but he’d been bound all the same—caught in an undertow of Seindra Sweengard’s current and unable to escape.
Another idea built at the back of my mind, driven by the image of other collared souls.
My friends’ gazes were on me as I tested the limits of the melody the waves and I wove together.
A seam ripped through the swell, and I let out a shocked breath when it wound all the way from the prison I’d created to Svartoarna.
A howl scoured the water, met by the fractured shouts rising from the pit of enemies as they ran toward the corridor as if they were chasing dawn instead of a grave.
Paws thudded against the ground, a scraping of long nails against a damp bottom, and the chiefs and their warriors understood what I’d done a second before the animals appeared.
My mother turned her head over her shoulder, her eyes wide, but just as her mouth opened, a maw with sharp teeth closed around her throat, her final words forever swallowed.
It didn’t take long for the two wolves whose chains had broken when Darcke’s did to silence the final cry and return to their home. Only then did I rise, and as soon as my hand was no longer in the water, it collapsed into its previous rhythm, quietly purling on either side of us.
While my friends closed their gaping mouths, Darcke tugged me back to his side.
“You are”—his hand lifted my chin, his eyes searing into mine—“utterly, terrifyingly, devastatingly infinite.”