by Bec McMaster
He’d been easier to manipulate ten years ago. A golden lion of a youth who’d been quick to smile, easy to laugh, and brash with the confidence of the truly beautiful.
There was a weight around his eyes now that stole her breath. Watchful. More thoughtful. Eyes full of questions he kept to himself, and she wished she knew the answers he was silently supplying himself with.
“Go to sleep, Marduk. I’ll most likely kill you in the morning.”
“You can try. But I daresay you’ll bide your time.” He stretched and yawned. “And I’m a little defensive when I sleep. If you come near me, sweetheart, you’d best be prepared to end up beneath me.”
“You keep saying ‘beneath me,’” she shot back. “Is that what makes you hard, Marduk? The idea of me on my back under you, begging for mercy—"
“Fuck.” He shifted again. “I was almost…. You did that on purpose.”
She gave an evil laugh.
“I swear you were put on this world to torture me.”
“Oh, Marduk.” She rolled her eyes. “I haven’t even started.”
“Two can play that game,” he warned.
“Yes, but you can’t touch unless I allow it.” Delight filled her. “Do you know, this proclamation of your brother’s actually works in my favor. I was going to make your punishment swift, but death is too kind. This suits me so much better. We have days ahead of us. Weeks. And I’m going to remind you hourly of what you can’t have. I’m going to haunt your dreams, Marduk. I’m going to get in your head and twist you around my little finger. I’m going to have you on your knees before me.”
And then she threw her head back and laughed.
Marduk growled under his breath. Frustration, thy name is dreki. It was almost enough to put a permanent smile on her lips.
“Can I ask you a question?” he finally asked.
“You can always ask. Whether I answer or not….”
“What will you do once Rurik ends our mating contract?”
Stillness slid through her. Without his heart, she couldn’t return home. And the rashness of her pledge to the goddess was beginning to impinge upon her. She’d been so angry—irrationally angry—and now she would suffer the consequences of that.
The loss of everything she loved.
Unless she killed him.
And if she killed him, then she risked starting a war.
Anger will be your undoing, my love, her mother’s voice whispered in her memories.
Solveig closed her eyes. “I will protect my court.” From afar, if necessary. “I will protect my sisters and see they live a happy life. I will murder my enemies and drink wine from their skulls….”
He laughed under his breath. “A worthy ambition. I was almost starting to think you weren’t a heartless monster until you mentioned that.”
Heartless.
Worse had been said about her, but the word struck her like an arrow sinking home. And she didn’t know why. She’d spent years building that reputation, so why did it sting when it came from his lips?
“May I ask you a question?”
He yawned sleepily. “You may ask. I may answer. I guess it’s a roll of the dice.”
Solveig stroked the soft wool of his blanket. “What is your court so afraid of?”
Stillness slid through him. “What do you mean?”
“There are guards at every point of the royal wing. Your warlord, Sirius, escorted his wife right to their door. The dragon-slayer hasn’t left your sister’s side. There are no rooms for me to sleep in because there aren’t enough guards, are there, Marduk? If I didn’t know any better, I’d think your court expected an attack. From within.”
Silence ticked out, until a spark cracked in the grate so loudly that he jumped. He cursed under his breath.
“I told Rurik you were too clever,” he grumbled.
Confirmation. Her heart skipped a beat. Her knife was under her pillow, but she’d been forced to leave her sword—and her boots—back at that inn. “What’s going on?”
“Give me your word you won’t breathe a hint of this to anyone else.”
“You have it.” Knowledge was power, and even if she was bound not to share it, she could use it to her advantage if she so chose.
“Ever since my mother died, there have been hints of Chaos workings within the court. It feels like my mother’s magic, and we found the necklace she was wearing when she died, with every emerald in it shattered. The ghostly imprint of an old spell was all over it. Ishtar has tried to track its remnants, but by the time she was brought here, the echoes of it were starting to fade.”
“But?” she asked, for his voice had trailed off as though he was trying to work out how to say the next part.
“We found the body of a dreki woman last week. She was only nineteen, but Árdís was beginning to suspect Marthe could wield Chaos. She showed signs of it. Or she did once.” His mouth twisted. “Her mother had seen her three hours before she disappeared, but when Marthe was found, it looked as though it had been years. Every inch of her was desiccated, and Árdís said she was drained of everything. Her life. Her magic. Her soul. When we set her body to the bonfires, nothing rose. She was truly gone, and her spirit will never ride the horizon with the rest of our dreki ancestors.”
Solveig slowly unleashed a breath in disbelief. “You think your mother’s haunting the court?”
“We don’t know. For our own sakes, I pray she’s not.”
Silence fell between them, but this time, she could sense their horror lingering like a shroud in the air.
According to her sources, the former queen had organized her husband’s murder before claiming his throne for herself. She’d exiled Rurik and named him the killer before he’d risen up to overthrow her.
Solveig had met Amadea several times, and each time had left her with a slightly unclean sensation afterward.
“The guards must work in pairs,” he admitted. “No one is allowed to be by themselves.”
Solveig stared at the ceiling. “How the hell am I supposed to get any sleep now?”
“The same way I am. Not at all.” Marduk sighed. “There’s only a few hours until dawn. Sweet dreams, Solveig.”
7
The following morning, they winged their way east. The rest of the official delegation would meet them tomorrow near the Zilittu court, but for now, Marduk wanted a closer look at the portal on top of World’s End.
Of course, they’d had a brief stop at the inn Solveig had been staying at, because apparently, she couldn’t go anywhere without her travel bag. And sword and boots.
He’d been hearing a lot about the boots.
Marduk landed between the enormous rune stones, spread his wings, and then pulled his magic in tight and small. A shimmering cascade of sparks broke around him, and then he was crouching on a rock, his arms spread as he shook the rain from his hair.
It felt good to fly.
They’d raced across the Norwegian Sea, with Solveig a smaller, darker version of himself. She was absolutely gorgeous in dreki form. Sleek and lethal, her black scales gleaming in the sun. At first she’d flown with steady determination toward their destination, but he’d been able to lure her into barrel rolls and sharp dives that ended with his claws skimming the waters. And the second they’d seen land, she’d challenged him to a race.
“Too slow, little princeling,” called her smoky voice as he straightened. “I’ve been here for nearly a minute.”
He caught a glimpse of Solveig between several of the enormous standing stones that marked World’s End, gloriously nude as she slipped into a shirt she’d pulled from the travel-stained bag she’d carried, and the image stopped his brain in his tracks.
It wasn’t polite to stare.
Nudity wasn’t something dreki were ever shamed by, but this moment—when they slipped into mortal skins—was typically a vulnerable one. It was the only time dreki could be easily killed, and manners insisted he look in the other direction.
It
didn’t help.
He could see her painted against the back of his eyelids; a storm in mortal form. Tall, lean, her olive skin kissed by sunlight even as her thick black hair draped over her breasts. He’d caught a glimpse of the dusky tips of her nipples between threads of her silky hair, and his cock roused as he groaned under his breath.
Perfect. Fucking perfect.
Here he was in mortal form with the king of all erections, and if she saw it, she’d murder him.
“You had a head start,” he called over his shoulder.
“You’re just slow.”
Hauling his travel pack open, Marduk shoved himself into his leather trousers, wincing a little as he was forced to stuff his eager cock behind all that leather. He’d just finished buttoning himself back in when she appeared around the corner of a standing stone, wearing little more than a man’s white shirt loosely buttoned.
Torture.
The woman was trying to torture him.
Well, it’s better than murder, I guess.
“Where are your trousers?”
“I’m not bothering to get dressed. We’re going to return to the sky within minutes,” she replied, glancing up toward the watchful circling of a dreki scout. It was one of the Ikkibu watchers who was guarding the portal, though Marduk had hailed the scout when they first flew in. Solveig scowled. “Is he going to watch everything we do?”
“Most likely.”
“Well? Can you feel anything.”
Fine. He didn’t bother with his shirt.
“Ishtar opened the portal,” he murmured, circling the stones. “I can still feel it buzzing. It’s closed, I think, but it’s awake now.”
Solveig passed her hand over the stones, studiously ignoring his bare chest. “I can’t feel anything.”
“Chaos magic is like a song on the edge of hearing. I feel like I should be able to hear it—as if I closed my eyes and tilted my head just so, I’d be able to finally catch the notes of it—but I never can. I’ve spent years chasing after that song. At first I thought that maybe it was my true flame. Maybe she was out there, somewhere in the world, and I only had to find her.” A part of him had hoped, even as a tight fist squeezed around his heart. A true mate would mean a gilded cage. Surely the goddess wouldn’t tether him to a female who desired hearth and home and little dreki babies, but there was a part of him that feared she wouldn’t know his inner heart. “But I was wrong. It wasn’t my mate. It was my twin sister instead, and the second I found her, I could finally hear the song. Chaos. Pure Chaos magic. Ishtar’s magic, bound to me in the womb we shared.”
His vision came back into focus, only to find Solveig watching him with those dark eyes. “What?”
Solveig’s entire expression shuttered. “Nothing.”
She stalked around the runestone.
To the untrained eye, there was nothing about her that should have indicated her mind was anything but focused on the runes, but he could see the stiffness in her spine and the way her head tilted, as if she was listening to him—aware of his response. When Solveig turned her mind toward something, her focus was so absolute, her stare so piercing, that nothing and no one could come between her and the object within her sights.
Marduk prowled after her. “Oh no, that wasn’t nothing.”
What had set her off?
He’d been talking about Chaos, and the song, and how he’d hoped….
My mate.
The other half of my soul.
There it was.
He crossed his arms over his chest. Legally, they were bound as mates within the eyes of the dreki world until one or the other of them cast the tie asunder.
He had no reason to suspect it was jealousy—unless she suspected someone else might have a claim on his heart, when she wanted to rip it from his chest and crush it to a bloodied pulp—but he’d never considered her side of things.
What if there was another male out there whom the goddess intended for Solveig?
Marduk’s stomach lurched into freefall. “Have you ever felt the mating call?”
Solveig’s fingertips slowly trailed to a halt. “Me?”
Marduk winced. Males knew first. Always. And while his original rendition of the song about her had said nothing of her being mateless—only heartless—he knew it had grown in the telling.
War came into her face. Rage.
Marduk held up his hands in surrender. “I was asking a question, Solveig. Not intending to demean you. Just a question.”
“No,” she said in a tone that indicated the question ought to die a swift death. “I have no intentions of truly mating with anyone.”
That made his eyebrows rise.
Theirs was a political match, but there were all sorts of levels of bonding. Some dreki mated in order to breed. Some mated in order to elevate themselves or secure peace.
And a very few embraced the firestorm of true mateship—their souls and spirits entwined until the bond between them was breakable only by death.
“I thought most dreki hoped for the possibility of finding the other half of their soul?”
“I am not most dreki.”
Clearly.
He followed her as she prowled through the runestones. “Then what do you dream of? Aside from crafting a throne with the skulls of your enemies?”
“My father will not live forever. And my clan bloodlines have always ruled the south of Norway. I intend to sit on his throne after him and rule our gilded halls. Siv or Aslaug can produce heirs.”
It wasn’t unknown for females to rule—after all, both his mother and Sirius’s mother had named themselves queens—but it was more common for a male to seek power. Male dreki were generally bigger and more brutal, and when thrones were often won through sheer brute force, they had more of a chance of keeping them. The females who did claim thrones were often ruthless to the point of murderous.
Solveig could do it.
He had little doubt about that. There was such a presence about her that when she stalked into a throne room, even male dreki warriors knelt before they realized what they were doing.
“Don’t think I can do it?” she asked.
“That wasn’t what I was thinking at all. I was thinking that when it comes to you, a dreki would underestimate you at his own cost. You’re cunning. Ruthless. Powerful. Intelligent.” His lips quirked, almost fondly. “There is no one more suited to lead the Sadu in your father’s place than you.”
Solveig trailed her fingers down the stone. There was no hint of emotion in her dark eyes, but he thought perhaps he’d assuaged her anger.
Marduk rested one hand against the other side of the stone, staring down into her eyes. When she wore her heeled boots, she could look him in the eye, but now, with her bare feet tramping through the ruins, he had three inches on her.
He didn’t know what it was about those bare feet that drew his eye.
Again, maybe a hint of vulnerability.
The stone walls she kept around her chafed at him a little. He wanted to see inside. He wanted to know her.
It had always been his downfall when it came to her.
“Why are you staring at me?” she whispered. “What sort of game do you have in mind right now?”
“Why do you always presume I’m playing games?”
“It’s what you do, Marduk.”
He met her gaze. “Perhaps I was staring at you because I like to look at you.”
Suddenly, she was a deer catching scent of the hunter. “If you use the word ‘beautiful’ I will know you’re lying—”
“You are beautiful.”
“I am most distinctly not. And the least interesting thing about me is my appearance.”
He leaned closer. “What is beauty? You are savage and wild and untamable, and I’ve never wanted to touch a woman more in my life. You have the eyes of a falcon, so dark and bottomless. I love your eyes. I love the predatory look in them. I love the way you focus on something as if the world around that object ceases to
exist.” He couldn’t help himself. He reached up and touched her lips, so softly it might have been more of an intention of a caress than an actual caress. “Your hair is like silk. It’s so straight and dark, and I want to bury my fists in it and rub my face against it. I want to breathe you in, like some mountain wind I can never catch. And your lips….” He did graze his fingers against them then. “Your lips are forbidden. They are temptation. They are torture, because I’ve had them on my skin once, but there’s the possibility I never will again. You are beautiful, Solveig, because you are unlike any other woman I’ve ever met.”
She blinked at him in shock. Just a moment of the real Solveig before her walls came crashing down. In an instant she was ice again. But he’d seen the heat. He’d seen a glimpse of a young woman, surprised to find herself desirable—and not merely for her body, but for all the qualities that made her what she was.
His breath caught. Was it vulnerability that insisted she keep those stone walls in place?
“I see,” she said slowly. “You want what you can’t have.”
I want you.
I’ve always wanted you.
But he didn’t say it, because she would not hear him. Only what she wanted to hear.
“I’ve always wanted what I can’t have. But you mistake me if you think that’s the reason I can’t look away from you.”
And then he pushed away from the stone and turned to survey the trampled grass within the center of the henge. This was madness. He didn’t even know why he was bothering to… what? Charm her?
It was as if some part of him couldn’t resist her challenge.
“There’s no sign the gates have been opened again.” The familiar buzzing of the portal set his teeth on edge, but its song hadn’t changed from the night they fought to rescue Ishtar from her pursuers. “We have to assume those elves we ran afoul of in Iceland were Tyndyr and his little cohort.”
Soft footsteps stalked him. “One task checked off our list then. Gate is currently closed, and your watchers are in place.”
“As promised,” he pointed out.
“I wanted to see it for my own eyes.”She stared wistfully to the south.
He followed her gaze toward the mountains. “We’re not far from your home. And we need to take shelter tonight. If you wanted—”