I stirred after a long while, still basking in the echoes of our joining.
“I dreamed of this in that darkness. Dreamed of you. You were what I clung to when the world faded away and I lost myself …” His voice softened, twisting into something dark and aching, and I realized I would never fully know or understand what he went through.
His hand came to rest on the back of my head in a caress, holding me to him, and I felt it—the pulsing hop of his palm against me, reacting to me; the very marrow of him reaching out for me. “In those first days, weeks”—he shrugged—“not sure how long. I could only think of you with Vetr and the others. I was terrified what they might do to you. I would fantasize about getting out of that hole and seeing you again … and killing him.”
I didn’t need to ask whohimwas.
I jammed my eyes tight, thinking of that, of Fell stuck in the ground with nothing but the torment of his thoughts, his worry for me, his lust for revenge. “I’m sorry,” I whispered, my singing palm pressing deeper against him, needing the contact, the physical affirmation of him with me.
“How long was I down there?”
I closed my eyes again, struck by how the answer to that made nothing better. He had no idea, no notion of how long he was buried. Time had been lost to him. Along with everything else.
“A little over a year,” I confessed, unable to lie to him.
He didn’t say anything, and I risked a look at his face. He wasstaring straight ahead, looking up at the vastness of the sky. There were shadows in his eyes … wraiths moving over his icy gaze. It was not just him anymore. It was almost as though he had brought something else back with him from that place he had been, from that dark, deep chasm he had gone to when the svefn had expelled him. A true beast, prowling beneath his skin.
He was not the same as a year ago. If possible, he was more brutal, a ruthless hunger spinning through him that I could feel.
Understandable. He would bear scars—the kind that existed below the surface, not visible but lasting just the same.
“Fell?” I whispered.
He blinked and looked at me, snapping out of whatever dark reverie held him.
“I’m sorry,” I uttered with pained sincerity.
He frowned. “For what?”
“Not finding you sooner.”
“But you did find me.” His hand stroked the back of my head, and I released a breath—a sigh that felt like it had been trapped inside me for far too long. “I could have lost more than a year. I could have lost forever, but you came and I’m free.” Tight lines bracketed his mouth then. “Free to end those who deserve it.”
I shivered. He meant his brother, of course, and my stomach clenched at the notion of that.
It was confusing. Vetr had been wrong, but I didn’t want him dead. He was still the one who had sat for weeks by my bed in the infirmary. I did not want these two brothers at each other’s throats. I did not want it to be one or the other. Both should live. Both brought good things to a world so in need of it.
I pressed a kiss to Fell’s chest, right below the charred flesh, as though my tenderness might seep into him. I flexed my hand and brushed it against where I’d kissed him, the warm buzz in the center of my palm a comfort I sorely needed right now.
“A year, though,” he said gravely. “We have a great deal to talk about. I want to know everything … about my brother and thepride—your time there and how you escaped. What do you know about home?”
Of course he would care about Penterra. Of course it was still home to him. I knew he would care, because I cared, too.
I nodded, floundering at all I had to share with him—the news of Penterra … Stig … the Borg. More things to make the wraiths stir in his gaze, to feed the hunger of the beast within him. “I will tell you everything.” I had no choice. He had to know, but I dreaded it.
“We should probably find shelter. It will be dark soon.”
“And perhaps clothes,” I suggested.
He nodded, helping me to my feet. We looked each other up and down, assessing.
“I must look a fright,” I added, running a trembling hand down my tangled hair and over my face, my fingers brushing the dried blood on my forehead. We needed shelter and fresh clothes and food. We needed time for our wounds to mend.
He circled his arm around my waist and hauled me against him. “If by a fright you mean frightfully beautiful, then yes.”
I flushed and touched his face again. “I still can’t believe you’re real. And you’re here with me.” The relief and joy of this was tempered by wariness, an unease that it could not last, not in this life that had only seen fit to take things away from me.
He grabbed my hand and kissed it. “You’ll get used to the idea.” I doubted I ever would. However, instead of being the voice to burst our little bubble of newfound pleasure, I said, “We should go.” My time in the Crags had taught me that there were agreat manythings to be feared in these mountains—not all so easily defeated as an unsuspecting band of warriors from Veturland. Andthosethings—magical things prepared to face the threat of dragons—preferred the cover of night.
