“That’s fine,” came the reply. “I’ll move them.”
I closed my eyes. Of course she’d try to move all the rocks herself. It made me even more determined to protect her from me. “Astrid, you’re better off without me in your life. Look what just happened. Next time, you could get hurt.”
“I am not better off, thank you very much. You’re just cursed, and we can bloomin’ fix that,” she snapped.
I frowned at the wall of stone separating us. “I don’t want you to do this. The rocks could come crashing down on you if you try. Besides, you’d only be wasting your time. You need to get on with your quest for the sunstones. The dragon could be back inside her lair now.”
“Ah, there it is.” I could hear the smile in her voice. “You’re trying to control everything. Well, you can’t. I’m going to dig you out of there, whether you like it or not.”
A scraping sound soon followed. I stood and paced the length of the cramped space, running my hands along the base of my horns. Astrid was better off without me. She didn’t need my help to bake the moss cakesordeliver the treasure to Rockheim. In fact, she’d be safer without the threat of my powers crashing down on her—quite literally.
After a while, she called out, her voice a little closer now. “Have you thought about what I said?”
“I’ve been thinking that you’re making a mistake.”
She thumped the rocks. “No, we’re not doing that. If I were you, what would you tell me?”
“Except I am not you, which is why I don’t deserve you.”
“You are a very infuriating demon.”
“See? I don’t deserve you.”
“I can’t wait to dig you out of these rocks, sit on top of you, and show you just how wrong you are.”
My pulse pounded in my neck. Even in the midst of all of this, the thought of Astrid atop me, riding me, moaning at me, arching her back so her glorious breasts were in my face…it was almost enough for me to hope.
As if she’d picked up on that, she carried on. “I want to run my fingers along your horns and feel your tongue inside me.”
“Fucking fates, Astrid,” I muttered, going hard.
“But what’s more, I want to wake up beside you every morning, nuzzle into your shoulder, and listen to your plans for the day. And then I want to come home to you after a long day in the mines. We can enjoy a nice home-cooked meal, trade stories, or just sit in comfortable silence from knowing each other so well. I want a future with you, Tormund, and I don’t care if your powers are volatile. Because even when you lost control, you made sure I didn’t get hurt. I think the truth is that your powers aren’t as destructive as you believe they are.”
My chest tightened. It felt like my heart wanted to leap out of me, shove the boulders out of the way, and run to her. Gods, what I would give to have everything she’d said. It was a nice, peaceful kind of life she dreamt of, one I could truly love. One where I could unravel all the twisted up pieces of myself and finally be free.
But how could I do that if my power would destroy everything?
“What happened if I did this in your cottage, Astrid? It would destroy your home and all your beloved plants,” I said.
“Well, your power wouldn’t do that if it’s not powerful enough to do that, eh?” I could practically hear her rolling her eyes at me. “Listen to what I’m saying to you, you frustrating demon. Your power…it’s only this strong because you believe it is. So stop bloomin’ believing it!”
27
ASTRID
This demon.I swore to the fates above that if he didn’t listen to me, I was going to have to throw some moss cakes at him to knock some sense into him. It was like he couldn’t see the truth of his own lessons. Ever since the day we’d met, he’d been telling me tobelieve. Believe in my own strength, believe in my own smarts, believe in my own skills.
Not only that, but he knew how curses worked. It was all aboutacceptance, too. He needed to accept what he’d done, stop believing he was going to destroy everything, and get his bloody arse out of that cave so he could sweep me off my feet and spend the rest of his life with me.
I let my annoyance fuel me. There was an incredible amount of rocks between me and him, and some of them were quite large. I had to admit, I had my task cut out for me. There was a distinct possibility I could hurt myself trying, though I wouldn’t tell him that until he was out of there.
The situation was this: there were two boulders—both about the size of me—squeezing together and forming a triangle with a boulder so large I’d dismissed it from my consideration. Itwasn’t going to move, no matter how much I believed in myself. I’d already moved quite a lot of smaller rocks out of the way, but dozens more were piled on top of the big boulders. If I didn’t move them first, they’d collide with my head. And I didn’t think that’d be particularly enjoyable.
But instead of crying about it, I just got to work. First up, I had to hoist myself up to the top of the boulder, where all the smaller rocks were. The rough surface scratched my palms, and my knees throbbed with pain from knocking against the stone. With only a couple of footholds, it was more of a scrabble than what I’d call a climb, but I eventually made it up there.
At the top, I grabbed a handful of rocks and started lobbing them across the cavern. It made quite a lot of noise, theplunksandplopsechoing like the chorus of a hundred pickaxes. If the dragon was back in her lair and hadn’t known someone was out there, she did now.
Hours passed like this. I had to take a lot of breaks. While I was a lot bloomin’ stronger than I’d ever let myself believe, I was still just me without any enhanced shadow demon powers to keep me going for hours on end. I took a rest after a while, staying on top of the boulder. I’d made a big enough dent in the rocks to form a seat of sorts. But one moment’s rest turned into two. And soon, I was drifting to sleep.
