I tried for a laugh, but it was mostly air rushing out my nose. “Almost sounds like you don’t want me to die.”
Ottoh gave me a slow wink. “I’d be fine if you stayed around for a little while longer.”
When he squeezed my hand, I nodded. “Same to you.”
Forty-Three
My heart beat a slow rhythm as Darcke steered us through the narrow inlet, each pulse bringing us closer to the overgrown island, where pine and spruce and silver birch tangled with each other.
Birdsong filled the air as the beach we’d moor at grew larger, contrasting with the death that hung in the air as all of us heirs and our seconds lined up in the bow, war paint smeared around our eyes, in battle leathers with fur-lined shoulders and with our new blades in our hands.
Darcke’s shoulder brushed mine as he came up beside me, and for a moment my breaths came easier.
Summer rain peppered us with its soft warm drops, and as Darcke turned to me, dark lines trailed down his high cheekbones from the paint on his face, making him look like a handsome death bringer. A strand of hair fell into his eyes when he righted the sword on my back, and I reached up to move it.
His dark gaze collided with mine. The world slowed at the storm raging over his features, and while I knew I shouldn’t, I cradled his neck and pulled his forehead to my own.
As his ship sailed the final distance, we stood like that.
Quiet, backs straight, eyes only for each other. It was a silentgesture of defiance not to search the shore for our enemies, and I held on to that when the hull met sand, making us slide to a stop.
Darcke’s hands had rested by his sides, but now they came up to cup my cheeks. “You’re staying with me.”
“Yes.” I meant both today and for however long we would have together.
The muscle in his jaw worked when he felt it, but he didn’t say anything else as his hand slipped into mine.
“You ready?” Ivren said as he and Viljan came up to my side.
“I think I have to be,” I replied.
Viljan looked Darcke up and down.
“She is trained,” my former guard said. “She can handle her own.”
“I know,” Darcke drawled. “I’m keeping her close so she can keep me alive.”
“Want to bet us girls will take down more than you men together?” Vero said as she dragged a quiet Rakkel with her.
I wiggled my brows at the female heir and second, even though I felt no excitement for what we were about to do. “I’d back that. What do you say, Rakkel?”
“Yes.” While her face was still more devoid of emotions than when I’d first met her, there was something determined in the way she gripped her short sword. “That sounds good.”
Stefen came up behind her, while Geord and his second walked up to the railing beside Darcke. Ottoh and Vero touched the rune over their hearts as they faced the beach, and I averted my eyes when the other heirs did the same, whispering my fingers over the back of Darcke’s hand instead before letting go and climbing onto the railing.
A low hum vibrated in my throat—the song of long-lost lands that my father’s ship would sing as we crossed vast oceans—and I closed my eyes for a second. Then I jumped, landed on the damp sand, and pulled my sword.
Darcke came next, and when the others followed, their feet finding the beach with stifled thumps around me,I started walking toward the dense forest before us. As our boots left the sand for pine-riddled ground, the soft crunching and birds’ wings beating the air were the only sounds spilling through the afternoon.
“How do we know where to go?” Geord asked after a while of walking through thick forest.
I shrugged. “The island isn’t that big.”
“So you plan to juststroll arounduntil we stumble upon them?” Geord scoffed. “Who made you the leader anyway?”
“Watch your tongue when you speak to my heir,” Darcke warned.
“You watch it, A’lian,” Geord taunted. “I saw you two earlier. I think the king would be very eager to find out howcozyyou are.”
