Finaan #3
He doesn’t believe me, and I’m not sure I do, either.
He looks at me with dull eyes, the last hints of life slipping away.
His expression is flat, a little tremble on his chin that would send him into a rage.
He hates showing weakness, and I don’t think he’s ever been so frail.
It’s hard to imagine that even Hel’s torture carried him so close to death.
“Can you save him?” I mutter, glancing quickly at the female’s hands on Wregen’s chest.
“Not now,” she grunts, her gaze still fixed on the wound. “Let me work.”
So I do. I sit in silence as Wregen falls unconscious, caressing his skin and mumbling threats about what I’ll do to him if he abandons me now.
It’s a slow, perilous process. Her magic is strong and I can see his flesh slowly, ponderously, seam together.
But even when his skin is nothing but a bright, angry line, she doesn’t stop.
I suspect she closed the surface wound and is struggling to repair everything else, but I won’t drag her focus away with questions she doesn’t have time to answer.
Perhaps ten minutes after she started, she exhales deeply and shifts her focus to me. “I need to do more, but I can’t do it here. He’s stable enough to move. We’re going to take him home. You’ll have to come to us.”
“I can’t let you take him. I don’t even know who you are.”
“You’re an elf?” she asks, resting one hand on Wregen with a grimace, as if she’s taking his pain.
“I am,” I tell her, confused by whatever she’s asking.
“Do you still swear fealty to Freyr? Still consider him the father of your people?” Her eyes are bright, this random question important to her for reasons I can’t fathom.
“We do, but why does that matter?”
She looks up, a smile brightening her expression for a moment as her gaze lands on the male astride a stunning grey and black dragon.
“I’m Ailia, and Freyr is my husband,” she explains.
“Together with Freyja and her husband Will,” she says with glances at the other two riders, “we’ve led the gods who still call Asgard home since Ragnarok took the life of their father óeinn. ”
My gaze follows hers, and the air leaves my lungs when I see the male a dragon’s-length away.
I’ve never been in his presence, had no idea before this moment what he looks like, but I know in my bones that she’s telling the truth. Freyr, the elves’ guardian among the gods, is here with us.
“I’ll keep him alive,” she swears, drawing my focus back to her. “Will has vision that rivals óeinn’s. He saw your need for us, and he’s seen the role this male and his beast will play in the days ahead. He’ll be safe from Loki and his spawn in Asgard. Find us there.”
“But why can’t we come with you now?” I demand, terror at being separated from Wregen rippling through me.
“The dragon can’t fly,” the female, Ailia, tells me with a nod toward Ruxi. “Stay with them until they heal—until you all heal,” she adds with a glance at my leg—"and then find your dragon. You need to go to her before you come to us.”
“I don’t understand.” My voice is a whisper, barely loud enough to reach my own ears.
“I don’t either,” Ailia says with a sad smile. “The Norns are as elusive as ever. Will saw your role in the battles to come, and he knows you have to talk to your dragon first. Everything else is as much a mystery to us as it is to you.”
I nod once, and then again. “You’ll save him?” I murmur, my gaze fixed on this female who’s promising me the impossible.
“He has a role to play,” she tells me. “We made it in time. He’ll be alive when you reach us.”
“Weasel,” Wregen mutters, and my eyes snap to him. But he’s not looking at me. “Tell her what I did,” he orders in a low tone, gasping as the words spill out. “She needs to know.”
And then his lips lift in that half-smile I love as much as I hate, and he turns his attention to me. “You’ll want to kill me yourself,” he says, coughing with the last word. “And I’ll give you my life if you demand it. But forgive Svend. He had no choice. I’m the only one to blame.”
Lifting his hand, his thumb tugs my bottom lip for a moment as his gaze rests there. “I wish I’d had another chance to fuck you,” he mutters, “before you realized what a cunt I am. How badly I treated you.”
And then he’s gone again, alive but unconscious.
His hand falls to the ground as the males drop from their beasts.
They stride over and lift Wregen, cradling him between them.
“We’ll see you in Asgard,” the male with darker skin promises—Ailia called him Will, I think.
And then they turn their backs and hoist him toward Ailia’s dragon, who plasters herself to the ground, shifts to one side, and lifts her wing as soon as they’ve climbed on to give them a nearly flat platform.
Within a few seconds, they’re all back on their dragons and lifting into the sky.
I can only watch as they soar off, leaving more questions behind than they answered. Carrying away the male I crave as much as I hate, and the life I can’t ever let myself embrace.