Chapter 8 #2
I spun around and walked to the table.
“Put m-me downnn.” The words slurred from between her lips.
“No.”
My fingers hooked around both of her hips, and I lifted her off me, placing her on the table like she was a doll whose frayed stitches I was about to fix.
“You’re going to sit here while I put you back together.
” Her body tipped forward again, losing control of herself and sinking fast toward the ground.
I whipped my attention back to her, and hooked my arm around her waist. “Whoa!” Steadying her, I silently thanked the first witch for my vampire reflexes.
“Like I said.” I chuckled. “You’re impossible. ”
She scowled at me, but I only smirked, and her expression shifted from the fury of an angry animal to vague frustration. I took the tincture that was already left open on the table and spotted a strip of fabric with it. Rubbing it against the linen, I created a sticky white paste.
“So?” she drawled. “You never answered my question. If the marriage doesn’t lure Silver here, will we be ready to follow her into the wasteland?
” My brow tightened as I soaked a new linen with the brown liquid and worked it over the holes in her neck.
Despite her obvious exhaustion, she continued.
“If I know my sister, she won’t wait another week. Not with these storms getting worse.”
“If Silver doesn’t show, then we’ll be leaving as soon as I have the masks and alchemical stones tested and the route is mapped. I’m almost finished.”
“Masks?”
“We can’t breathe in the wasteland for very long.
The masks will filter the toxic air and allow us to move through the battlefields when we’re out of the tent.
The breathing stones will clear the air inside our tent.
They’re created by witches.” I cleared my throat, knowing this would trigger a memory of her mother banished to the wasteland.
Something for which she blamed herself. Pain briefly twisted her lips, fading quickly as curiosity knitted her brow. “It’s how they survived.”
“So you stole a witch’s creation?”
“Took inspiration from. Actually. And in case you forgot, I’m the son of a witch.”
She nodded slowly, eyes narrowed. “How do these stones work?”
“When heated, the stone binds the toxins in the air and traps them in the rune.”
A strange laugh bubbled out of her. “My mother headed that creation.” I tilted my head as she continued. “I mean, I can’t be sure, but she was working on a root that drew the wealth of the soil into one condensed spot for more successful crops. It was based on a vision from Thor.”
I’d forgotten that Thor dealt not only in thunder, but also agriculture.
“Why that bastard had done nothing to heal the wasteland, I’ll never know,” I mumbled.
Except I had a pretty good guess—the gods did just enough to satisfy their own selfish means, often for their own amusement, and nothing more.
“The wasteland,” she echoed thoughtfully, shifting the subject away from witches and gods. Her voice came out like a ghostly whisper.
“Yes,” I grumbled. “You know, where thousands and thousands gutted each other and their blood ruined the entire land, making our most tenable soil the least tenable soil, leaving generations to come on the brink of starvation?”
She pushed out a breath. “You say that like it was a personal attack on you.”
“It feels personal.”
“And what if Silver shows up?” she shifted the conversation, probably to keep it from turning intimate.
“Then we follow the plan. I hold back her army while you take her down.”
“Even though I’m the vampire huntress?”
“Yes. She cannot compel you. She is neither your sister nor your maker.”
I didn’t know whether the tears she blinked away came from my words or the pain of sterilizing the bite on her neck.
Carefully, I lifted the pasty linen and pressed it to either side of the wounds. I gently tugged at it to test that it would stay, and then slipped the crook of my arm beneath her knees.
“I can make it back to my room,” she said. I backed off, but when she edged herself off the table, she stumbled, and it took everything within me not to catch her. She limped toward the door, but even that short walk left her breathless.
“You couldn’t be any more impossible,” I said as I blew out a breath. “Do you know that? You’re going to have to let me pick you up when I carry you to our marital bed. Consummation while the court listens is a Vylheim tradition, and the king always carries his queen.”
She turned, letting her limp body press against the frame of the door. Chewing at her bottom lip, she whispered. “I know. You can carry me then.”
“But you won’t let me help you now?”
Tears welled in her eyes, sharp and sudden and pricking my soulless heart. I bolted toward her, wanting to catch the tear before it slipped over the scar that was slashed across her smooth cheek. Fuck, she was beautiful—more so when she finally allowed herself to be raw and real like this.
She sucked in a breath. “It feels wrong.”
“To accept help?”
“From you?” Her brow crinkled. “Yes.”
I nodded. “Because of what I did to Silver.”
“Because I have to kill you.”
My blood stilled. That absolutely would not happen. I would be a god before she eradicated all vampires.
She dropped her gaze and blinked the tears away. “And yes, of course, I saw you as an enemy when you threatened me.”
“I was desperate and stupid to threaten your life, but not wrong about the reason behind it. If you had married me, the gods wouldn’t be in your head demanding you sacrifice your existence to destroy me.”
“Then what would you have done against Silver’s army without a huntress?”
“Become a god, and when I control Odin’s Valkryies, I’d control Silver’s powers.”
“You’re too fixated on your own plans,” she said.
I lifted my chin. “You’re right. Now, will you let me carry you?”
“Maybe,” she sighed. Not exactly a hopeful sign.
“We’re planning a fake marriage, but you forget that I still want you to be my actual wife.” Even with her shoulder against the door frame, she swayed. Despite her earlier protests, I caught her, scooping her into the crook of my arm. “Besides, carrying you is more…” my voice faded for a moment.
Her head fell against my chest. “Gentlemanly?”
“Personal. No—” I shook my head. “That’s not the right word.” She hummed as her eyelids slid shut. She is the blood; he is the rune. The words from the sagas haunted me because I could have sworn I heard Lux’s voice calling me Rune.
And it felt like I’d lived that moment before. It felt like home—familiar.
“Familiar,” I said.
“What?” she murmured.
“That’s the right word. This feels familiar.”