“You’re not staying,” Darcke warned as he opened the door leading down into the quarters where his bedroom lay, and where I’d glimpsed a few other rooms, one of which I hoped was a kitchen, ideally stocked with meat and vegetables and something to quench my thirst.
“I know,” I said, trailing my fingers over the beautiful craftsmanship of sea monsters, sirens, and mermaids that decorated the walls surrounding the stairs. “Who built this ship? She’s a masterpiece.”
Heirs who survived the trial of wood were granted ships born of Morkskog—the forest that demanded we enter its depths and endure until the tree spirits deemed us worthy. Those ships were forged from the timber that accepted our souls. Once we set sail, that same wood took root in our own lands, growing with a divine speed, and provided the bones for our longships, our warships, and our homes.
Each village had shipmasters—men and women who worked only on building our ships—and while my father’s had been skilled, even our fastest warships had nothing on this one.
“I built her,” Darcke said as we entered the small kitchen, gesturing for me to take a seat on a rickety chair by the table in the middle.
“Yourself?”
“You sound surprised.” He rummaged through a cabinet, and my mouth nearly watered as he took out wine, strips of dried meat and fish, flatbread, and a bowl with a cold stew that didn’t look too appetizing, with its white and soggy contents, but smelled amazing.
A seed of shame took root in my gut. “Sorry, I just… you don’t seem…”
I winced when Darcke gave me a sharp look. The walls of theship rumbled, and I quickly pretended to wrap his jacket tighter around myself when a grin wanted to lift my lips.
“I don’t seem what?” Darcke waved for the food. “Eat. I can’t focus while feeling your hunger.”
I stuffed my mouth with food, groaning loudly as I swallowed.
“This”—I took another bite—“is so good.”
Darcke placed his hands on the table, and my face warmed under his glare. I wouldn’t have blamed him if I’d felt disgust, but there was none. Instead there was a curiosity—one he was fighting hard—and something that felt like confusion, but his irritation kept overshadowing it.
“You…” I swallowed before continuing. “You don’t seem to have the patience for building something as intricate and stunning as this vessel.”
The table trembled along with the walls, and Darcke shook his head as he leaned over it. “You don’t seem to have the manners of an heir.”
It’s because I wasn’t supposed to be an heir.
My face was probably bloodred by now. “Fair.”
I tried to take smaller bites, using my hands to break up the bread.
“Eat,” Darcke said as he refilled the bowl of stew for me. “I don’t care for manners. That’s your people. Along with the honor, and glory, and appeasing your gods.”
“What about your god?” I asked cautiously. “That was him back there, wasn’t it? That was Njord?”
Darcke’s hands tightened over the table. My worry mingled with something harsher, a fury that made me shift on the chair.
“It was.” He walked up to the window where the moon teased the horizon, ready to give way for dawn.
“Did you call him here?”
Darcke stiffened. “And why would I do that?”
I twisted my hands in my lap. “Because you’re angry I forced you to become my second?”
Another surge of heat flared in my chest, as violent as a storm far out at sea.
“You know as fucking well as I do that even if I wanted to, I couldn’t.” There was strain both in Darcke’s voice and along the bond between us.
I felt the truth of his words like I felt the chair beneath me.
“Because of your severed rune?” I asked.
He didn’t reply, but his pain cracked through my chest as if it were my own. It was so raw, the bitterness of his rage tasting like copper in my mouth, and my heart ached for that closed door in his mind, where his essence had been banished by the king’s shaman.
