“You’re going to get us both killed,” Geord growled.
Shadows crept closer, and I heard the shift of wooden swords and metal, but I didn’t care. That girl was just trying to save her sister, and Geord had just killed her. From behind, without a fucking warning, like a damned coward.
“Elvara! For fuck’s sake!Elvara!” I heard Darcke somewhere in the distance, but when I looked up, it wasn’t his face that met me. Four hooded people stood over us. When the one closest to me lifted his shield, I tried to duck, but Geord’s hands found my arms, and he stopped the movement.
Pain exploded, and I was barely aware of my body being tossed to the side like a bone after all the meat had been scraped off it. I did feel the sharp jab of a dagger in my side, though, and it was impossible to miss Darcke’s scream when a whimper of pain fell from my lips.
Forty-Five
“Elvara!”
My head was being used as a drum, each beat echoing in the void behind my eyes. But I couldn’t move—my body wouldn’t listen to my pleas of escape.
“Wake the fuck up! Elvara!”
A jab of pain went through me even though the hands whispering over my skin were soft, gentle even, but I couldn’t respond to that either. I was lost in some in-between, walking the border of light and dark, and I wasn’t sure how to pick a side.
“No. I don’t fucking accept this.”
The deep voice was loud and demanding, but it was still soothing, and it lulled me into a sense of safety, allowing me to drift atop waves of calm seas, going up and down with the water.
Something thudded into the water beside me.
No, not water. I felt something hard beneath my legs first. Then my back. Then my head.
Ground. We were on the ground.
“I thought she’d kill them!” someone else shouted, the voice grating through me. “I thought she’d use her rune.”
“If she dies, I’m not going to stop with killing you.” The deeper voice again—the one I could listen to forever. “First I’mgoing to break every fucking bone in your body. Then I will cut you open and take them out. Slowly. One by one, until you’re begging me to die. I’ll only go slower then, let you feel each bone and drop of blood leaving your body. And when you take that final breath, I’ll cut you into such small pieces not even your fucking Odin can put you together again.”
“Is she breathing?” A third voice joined the others, this one out of breath.
“Fucking barely!”
I tried to focus on the last voice—the one that felt like it wrapped around my pain and soothed it, joining his touch, which was so gentle I wanted nothing more than to feel it all over, have him cover me entirely as I drifted into nothingness.
I think he read my mind, because hot air fanned over my face and it was like someone draped a warm blanket over me, the pressure so beautifully perfect as lips brushed my ear.
“You don’t get to fucking die, heir,” he whispered furiously. “Do you hear that?Youmade me feel like this.Youfucking took my heart—stole it without me even noticing. You invaded my mind and claimed me for yours. So you don’t get to leave.You don’t get to leave me.”
I felt the truth of his words in my chest, my heart—my everything. It was a warmth that clawed itself through every vessel and vein, driving that pain even farther away. His jagged breath followed, a hot mouth kissing its way over my neck, my jaw, whispering over my lips.
“I don’t think that’s wise.” Worry filled the third voice, the one that belonged to an heir with blond hair.
Ottoh. Ottoh was his name.
“You don’t get to fucking tell me what you think,” my second—because it was my second,my Darcke—snarled. “She’s not responding.”
“Whyare you not responding to me?” That heated whisper again. It wove up my back, sending thrills of comfort along myskin as his voice bled into nearly nothing. “You can’t do this to me, Elvara. I can’t lose you too.”
His desperation made it a struggle to breathe.
Sparks of shock shot up my neck. Icouldbreathe. I was alive.
I was hurt, but I was alive. The two paths before me became clearer.
One was easier—I could fall into that darkness and let the weight of it crush every lingering concern. The other was harder—would be harder. But down it, far, far, down it, washim.
