Wregen
Chapter seventeen
Shackles
That treacherous bastard.
Balin shot me. One little nudge from Wrath when that fucker provoked him—trying to lay claim to what’s ours—and the elf sent that arrow straight for my heart. He wanted me dead, and Wrath gave him an excuse. A flimsy one, but it probably would have sufficed if he’d succeeded.
Balin will pay for his attack as soon as I get out of here. My skjaldmaer will free me, or that weasel if she refuses.
I think it will be her, though. Warmth fills me at the memory of Finaan’s face when Balin loosed his arrow, her shove to move me out of the way.
That moment tells me everything I need to know about my mate.
She’s mine. She refuses to admit it, but now we both know.
She needs me as much as I need her. I’m going to wring that confession out of her if it’s the last thing I do.
I plop onto the bed and look around my cell.
It’s the same one that held me before, I realize as I look at the gashes Wrath dug when he seized control of our body the last time they brought us here.
The surface is too far away from my mistress, and I struggle to control my beast without her magic.
He appeared twice that time: when we first encountered them in the cavern below, where they proved that the poison on those fucking arrows is strong enough to tame even my beast; and again in this cage, built with magic capable of holding him.
I despise this place and every elf in it.
They held me here for weeks before, forcing Hel to intervene and bargain for my freedom.
I paid dearly for that. Hel suspended me over the pit for every day I was late, and then doubled it because of her hatred for Freyr, the god who convinced their queen to let me go.
They agreed, with the caveat that I was never to set foot in any part of their land again, even the cavern.
But I’ve no better route to return to Helheim and they rarely visit that place.
Fucking fate, drawing them there at the worst time possible.
Now Balin has Finaan, and I’m trapped in this accursed cell.
I’ll kill him. Slowly. And I’ll enjoy every second of it.
He keeps me here for hours before deigning to come visit, sauntering in with the smirk I know too well, a box in his hands.
“I knew you’d return,” he tells me as he drags over a stool and sits in front of my cage, setting the box on the floor next to him. “It’s sooner than I expected, but you’ve always liked to surprise me.”
“I live for it,” I mutter, staring down at him perched on that fucking chair.
“Is that what you call your existence in Helheim? Life?” His eyes are three feet below mine but fuck if it doesn’t feel like he’s looking down at me, as he’s always done.
“I call it glorious. I serve the most powerful female in any of the worlds, and I wouldn’t trade it for a thing.”
He knows I’m lying through my teeth, but I don’t give a fuck. We’ve been lying to each other for centuries.
He nods, watching me, before bending down to lift the lid and pull out a pair of shackles. “The female you’re traveling with…”
“My female,” I clarify. “She’s mine.”
The pompous smirk returns, joined by a wink that makes me want to cut off the offending eyelid. “She disagrees.”
A flurry of emotions spills through me at his suggestion that he knows my skjaldmaer better than me.
My stomach twists as I see past the mask he wears into the male I’ve always known him to be.
I would mold her into the female she was born to be, help her release the fears that hold her back.
Balin would turn her into a shadow of that female, a plaything he’d toy with until he grew bored.
And she wouldn’t see his true purpose until it was too late.
He’s learned how to hide himself, even from the most perceptive elf.
The compulsion to claim Finaan as mine lies on top of feelings I almost don’t recognize, it’s been so long since any of them breached the walls I built in Helheim.
I need to protect her, but not because she belongs to me.
No, I need to protect her because she should always belong to herself.
The idea of Balin changing anything about her causes me more pain and angst than I’d ever thought possible.
Fuck me. Maybe there is a hint of a noble male still alive inside me.
“I don’t give a fuck,” I snarl. “She’s mine. If you touch her, I’ll skin you alive, slowly, before giving myself to Wrath and letting him suck your entrails out, bit by agonizing bit.”
“You’ve always had quite the imagination,” he murmurs, one eyebrow jutting up in the arrogant way it does sometimes.
“Anyway,” he says, shaking his head as if to clear his thoughts, “the female you’re traveling with asked me to free you.
I think you’ve earned her pity. Not the emotion you want, but sometimes you have to be grateful for what you get. ”
I snarl but he wags his eyebrows and keeps chatting like the bastard he is. Fuck, do I hate him.
“I decided to indulge her,” he continues. “You’ll wear these and we’ll let you move freely within this building.” He gives them a little shake, as if he’s displaying them for me.
“I’m not interested in your jewelry,” I tell him. “I think I’ll stay.”
Balin smiles—a genuine, I-had-sex-for-the-first-time-in-my-life smile—and I realize I’m gonna put on the fucking bracelets and wander this building.
He’s hoping I’ll refuse, and I’ve always been a stubborn bastard.
But Finaan is out there somewhere. The idea of them spending time together while I’m stuck here is like a knife being shoved into my gut and twisting, pulling and ripping my entrails as they coil around the blade.
“I’ll tell her what you decided.” He turns to drop the shackles into the box and plop the lid down. “She really is quite beautiful,” he adds as he stands, kicking the stool back toward the wall. “No wonder you want her.”
“What the fuck will they do?” I growl, jutting my chin toward the shackles as I ignore his dig about my mate.
“You don’t trust me with the female you’d like to claim?” he asks, one side of his lips curling up.
“The female I’ve claimed,” I tell him again. “And that you will stay the fuck away from.”
He cocks his head, like he’s considering it, then looks down at the box.
“They’ll restrain you and your beast. They’re also spelled to this building.
If you leave it, you’ll suffer. I’m hoping I’m there to see it,” he adds with that same gods-damned smirk he’s been throwing at me since our days in Midgard.
“And when it’s time for me to leave?”
“We tried that before,” Balin responds with a shrug. “I don’t know what Queen Haleth will do with you, but I doubt it will involve your freedom. You were warned not to return, but here you are.”
“You won’t keep me in this place,” I growl. “Helheim is my home and I will return there.”
The fucker shrugs again, a dismissive shift of his shoulders. “That’s not for me to decide. I’ve come to offer you the only freedom you’ll have in álfheimr. Do you want it?”
I give him a sharp nod and shove my wrists through the bars, loath to agree to his terms but even more resolved not to sit in this cell a second longer.
Balin would pursue Finaan just to anger me.
She’d reject him—my skjaldmaer would never stoop so low—but the thought of it has had Wrath writhing inside me since we woke up in this place.
He snaps the metal around my wrists and I gasp, fighting to hold in the scream that shoots from my gut and almost makes it past my sealed lips.
Still, I can’t stop the tremor shaking every part of me.
The flame that ripped from my wrists and out the moment they bound me is an inferno, nearly as agonizing as the pit.
It incinerated each smidgen of magic in my veins.
Even Wrath disappeared. His perpetual presence—a tangible part of me, even when he’s in his hole—gone as if it never existed.
My stomach revolts, vomit erupting into my throat as I lean over and retch. Balin dances back, barely missing the remnants of the meager meal someone brought me hours ago. The smallest glimmer of a laugh kindles in my chest.
I should have aimed better.
It’s a full minute or more before I’m able to stand and stare down the bastard. He grins.
“I had no idea I’d enjoy that as much as I did,” he declares, the corners of his eyes still wrinkling.
“You always did look to me for your happiness,” I respond. “Fool that you are.”
“Oh, come on now, Wregen. You’d be laughing if it were me wearing the cuffs.”
“You’d be dead, Balin,” I remind him. “When you join me in my home—and you will, because óeinn and Freyja will never welcome you to theirs—you’ll wish my ministrations were limited to a couple of cuffs around your wrists.”
“Time will tell,” he responds, the enigmatic bastard. He fishes a key out of his pocket and opens my cell door, waving his arm as if he’s inviting me to join him in a meal. “Shall I show you to your room?”
“I’ll sleep with Finaan,” I declare. I’ll be damned if my mate is free to roam this place without me at night.
“I don’t even need to ask her to know she disagrees,” he claims, leaning back to cross his arms over his chest as he lifts his chin and tries his damnedest to look down at me. “She has her own room.”
“We’ll see about that,” I mutter as I stride past him and toward the door. “Lead me to her.”
“I’ll lead you to your room,” he tells me, “and tell her where to find you.”
Throwing a final glare at him, full of the hate he’s inspired inside me for nearly as long as I’ve known him, I open the door. “Never mind. I’ll find her myself.”
A hallway stretches in front of me, and I realize this building is larger than I assumed.
The last time, I was passed out when I came and when I left, never seeing anything beyond that room.
I’m not sure why they’re giving me free reign now, but I won’t question it.
I’ve been away from my skjaldmaer too long already.