“Is it because of me?” Darcke leaned in. “Didn’t think it through when you chose me for your second?”
No, but not for the reasons he believed.
“Answer me,” Darcke rasped. “Because we can stop this now. If you regret it, we do not have to bond.”
No, we couldn’t stop this now. I didn’t have a choice. I had to see this through.
But I couldn’t breathe in these leathers. I scratched at my neck. My throat was closing up.
I needed to get out of these clothes.
Darcke stilled as I started unlacing my shoes. “What are you doing?”
“I can’t stand it,” I snarled.
I kicked off my boots.
“Stop undressing. It’s fucking freezing.”
My trousers went next.
“Stop it,” Darcke growled.
I was only in my tunic and undergarments, but it wasn’t enough. And I couldn’t take off the shirt.
“I need to go in the water.” I spun. My chest felt as if it were being lit on fire. “It’s toohot.”
“No! Don’t fucking go there!”
The wind caught Darcke’s voice as I began running to the sea.
It was so blue. The gentle waves looked so welcoming. The wetness touched my toes first, and for a second I reveled in the cool water caressing my ankles. Then I blinked, and the world shifted.
“What…” I widened my eyes as the bright beach was replaced by white snow.
A roaring wind slammed into me, filling my ears with its deafening howl. I spun, finding myself at the foot of the tallest mountain I’d ever seen. Snow covered the slopes, but my breath stuttered at the orange-and-red fire that devoured the village carved into it.
Screams joined the wind, and my hand flew to my mouth at the smell of burning flesh and of people trying to escape but having nowhere to go as the wall of fire surrounded them, driving the ones who’d left their homes toward the steep drop.
A primordial scream split the air, filling it with more torment than I could stand. My hands covered my ears as I spun to the frozen sea behind me, and I pressed my palms harder against my head when the ice shattered, cleaving in two as the god Njord cried out his agony while his people died in the flames.
Fire to take out Vikings who worshipped the water. That was a rare kind of cruelty.
People started falling down the drop, their bodies hitting the mountain with thuds I shouldn’t be able to hear from here. The pain of their screams beat into me until my body began trembling.
“Don’t look.” Darcke came to my side. His face was pale, his dark eyes hard, and snow glittered as it covered his pale hair. If I’d thought he was dangerous before, what rolled off him now made me slip on the ice as I shuffled backward.
“Is that…” I trailed off when the warrior turned his back to the slaughter.
“It happened a long time ago. This isn’t real.”
It felt real. It smelled real.
Cold crept up through my bare feet, an aching, painful chill weaving up my body.
I swallowed as Darcke stared out over the snow-covered landscape, at the ice, which was split in two but still didn’t reveal what the sea hid in its depths.
“Did you do that?” I regretted the question as soon as his hands clenched.
