Rune’s attention, however, stayed on me. He looked me over, examining a few scrapes along my arms. When he noticed blood on my trouser knee, his brow furrowed and he scooped me up into his arms.
“That’s hardly necessary,” I said with a laugh.
Ignoring my protests, he motioned at Arvid, who hovered a few feet away. “You mind grabbing Frida’s things and bringing them back to my cottage?”
“My pleasure,” said Arvid.
Rune took off after Arvid’s confirmation. His purposeful strides were long and quick, making me realize he’d been slowing his pace significantly whenever I’d walked with him. We were halfway back to the cottage before I seized control ofmy thoughts. It was difficult to think straight with his powerful arms wrapped possessively around my body and the scent of him filling my head. Where our skin made contact, it felt like a thousand tiny butterflies were fluttering against me. It made little sense.
Maybe I was just delirious from crawling into a fallen building.
I cleared my throat, trying to focus on anything other than the thrumming of his heartbeat in his neck. “You can put me down, Rune. I’m sure I can walk the rest of the way to your cottage.”
“Your knee is bleeding,” he said gruffly.
“All right, but it barely hurts. I’m sure it’s just a little scratch.”
“Let me take care of you, Frida. The way you took care of me when I was wounded.”
“Says the orc who is currently sporting twice as many welts as he had last night.”
He grunted and tightened his arms around me. “I’m carrying you home and seeing to your wounds, then we’ll worry about me.”
Guilt spread through me, like a particularly nasty plague. I clenched my jaw and looked away. I had no right to accept help from Rune, knowing what I’d come here to do. Sure, it was only thieving, which was nothing compared to what Erik could have ordered, but the thought of doing anything that might cause him grief churned in my gut like a pint of poison.
Poison that had been in my veins from the first moment I’d breathed the air of this world. I’d tried to escape it, but a snake couldn’t shed its fangs any more than a born assassin could.
Rune’s cottage appeared through the trees, and as he carried me over the fallen branches, a wild thought came to me. It was like the sprouting of a seed I hadn’t realized I’d buried until now.But deep down I knew it had been there since the moment I’d met Rune and he’d shown kindness to me.
Maybe I just wouldn’t do it.
I could leave without taking his dragon.
As soon as the thought poked up, I shoved it down. I couldn’t even consider it as an option. Because it wasn’t one. Erik and my father had made their orders clear. If I failed this assignment, I’d never join the guild, which meant I’d never see my family again.
And so I did the only thing I could: I buried the thought beneath ten feet of dirt.
14
FRIDA
Rune lowered me into his rocking chair, then vanished into my room. When he returned, he handed me the book he’d given me the night before and moved away again, this time to stir the embers of his smouldering hearth-fire. As he stoked the flames back to life, my knee throbbed with pain. I hissed through clenched teeth and opened the book to use the written word as a distraction, the way I always had through so many rough times in my life.
“Clutch that book any harder, and you might end up ripping the spine in half,” Rune grunted as he returned to my side and knelt before me.
“Sorry.” I tried to relax my grip, but the throbbing pain was building into a blazing heat.
“No need to apologize. It’s your book now, not mine. Now I’m going to cut a hole in your trouser leg so we can get a look at what’s going on with your knee,” he said, his voice softening into a tone I’d yet to hear from him.
Swallowing, I nodded and relinquished my grip on the book, placing it on the table beside the chair.
Rune gazed up at me. Several strands of his midnight hair had sprung free from its knot, scattering into his eyes. Something fluttered in my chest.
“You’re not going to read?” he asked, his voice still so gentle that I could scarcely believe it was his.
“I don’t think I can concentrate on the words right now.”
“All right.” He nodded and went back to studying my trousers. “Do you remember the first book you read? ‘Cause I keep picturing you sneaking into your parents’ library and stealing a Silva Sweetwater novel off the shelves without them knowing.”
