She drew back again, lingering close enough he could feel the strands of her hair tickling his face. “Say it’s enough, Finn.”
It wasn’t enough, not for the wolf that wanted to possess her in her entirety, but for the man it was more than he hoped for.
“So you aren’t in love with the mage?” His voice sounded small, even to him, laden with enough pettiness to make her sigh again. “What? I think that’s a legitimate question.”
“Finn.”
“Sorry.” He hung his head again, the tendrils falling in splits to curtain his face. “I just… I don’t know why, but sometimes the way he looks at you gives me the creeps.”
“I think you’re imagining things that aren’t there. Bren is my friend, and he’s put his life on the line to see this done, just like us. I hate the way you two bicker. Can’t you just try to get along?”
“I can try, but I can’t make any promises.”
“Of course you can’t.”
“Look, I said I’d try. Give me credit for that, Princess.”
The silence that followed was filled with so many unspoken things, but there was a part of Finn that felt triumphant inside. Her revelation, her commitment to their future together lifted his spirits.
“Though I might be more inclined to try a little harder if you kissed me again,” he tried.
She did hit him then, though not as hard. And that night when she laid down beside him, curling her body close to his and resting her head on his shoulder, he was able to shut out the urgency of the beast that wanted her in ways she wasn’t willing to give. For the first time since he’d met her, it was enough to hold her, to know one day she would be his and his alone.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Vilnjar was hot. Hotter than he’d been in weeks, quite possibly his entire life. The under tunic he wore beneath his armor was crafted from thick-spun wool well-suited to Dunvarak’s frigid temperatures, and it clung to his back like a second skin. A dripping, itchy, uncomfortable second skin. Peeling away from time to time, the feel of it made him grimace. His mind was an overwhelming swarm of childish complaints that reminded him far too much of his little brother, so he kept them to himself and tried to ignore the beads of sweat rolling down his prickling back.
Every time those complaints reared their ugly little heads, he was forced to think of Finn. Was he somewhere warm? Was he safe? Was he still alive? He knew he should be focusing his energies on finding Ruwena, and for the most part she was all he thought about it, but one didn’t spend the bulk of his adult life looking after someone, just to let them go the minute they weren’t within sight. A lesson he should have taken into consideration when he left Rue behind.
He was such an idiot.
Every time he thought about how stupid he was, Frigga tightened her arms around his waist and pressed her cheek into his shoulder in a warm gesture of comfort that lessened his internal complaints on being hot and made him feel… loved.
She read him well, always seeming to know exactly when he needed to be reminded he was not a bad person. He’d done nothing wrong. He’d made a choice, and maybe it wasn’t the best choice, but he’d made that choice with conviction. His decision led him to Dunvarak, to his mate. They would find his sister together.
As the guilt passed, he allowed his thoughts to mingle with Frigga’s. Her mind was a beautiful place, filled with wonder and the barest memory of a world unfrozen. She was little more than a toddler when her father fled the Edgelands with her. Her mother lost to the fires that laid waste to Vrinkarn, she barely remembered the woman at all, but there was pure recollection of a brilliant white light wrapping around the child’s body and drawing her to safety. The glimpses of that light gave Vilnjar chills; the subtle familiarity of its presence in her memories drew him back to their exiling from the Edgelands. Rhiorna brought Llorveth into the hall, the god passing from the seer to Lorelei before disappearing again through the vent above the great hearth. Frigga’s memory of that light stirred a similar emotion in him, but it was not the same.
The morning’s bitter storm of powder-dry snow that greeted them upon reentry into the Edgelands passed by mid-afternoon, taking away with it the occasional reprieve of melting flakes upon their cheeks. The white ground gave way to golden patches of dried grass poking through the ice and snow by the time they made camp that night in the depth of the woods. By the next afternoon he suspected they might see the distant smoke of Breken’s hearth fires billowing against the blue, cloud-laden backdrop of the northern sky.
If Breken still stands.
That thought troubled him more than he could ever say, and though he took great comfort in Frigga’s silent hand on his shoulder, he wasn’t feeling optimistic.
He still couldn’t believe his home, his people were gone. It never occurred to him when they were exiled, he wouldn’t see the place again. He’d thought only of Finn, of keeping his brother out of trouble and planned to work the rest out later. The Edgelands might not have been much of home, and maybe they weren’t exactly free, but it was theirs—the land their fathers died for. He spent nearly twenty years of his life in Drekne. He knew every face and every name of every single person, and one by one he ticked them off in his mind, wondering their fate and knowing in his heart it was unlikely any of them were alive.
Frigga tended to the horse while Vilnjar started a small fire. The last of the sun’s light lingered on the western horizon, crawling slowly toward darkness and yielding the night to the first rising moon from the southeast, Kierda, which shown as little more than a thin, red sliver at Vilnjar’s back and offered very little light.
From time to time, he stretched his neck, peered through the tightly knit trees and tried to spy signs of an army on the march. If the king’s men moved south, it wouldn’t be long before they came face to face with them. They would have to keep off the road; he’d need to attune his senses to the air around them at all times for the stench of a large body of men on the move. Bypassing them might not be easy, but if they kept to the trees and with a little luck, they could continue riding north and carry on their search for survivors.
Breathing in, there was a distant, acrid tinge to the air, the faintest memory of smoke that made his lungs and heart feel heavy with regretful memory. The burning times haunted every child who’d lived through them, at times the barest scent of smoke on the wind filling a grown wolf with panic and fear. That scent grew more pungent as they rode further north, until the smell became so familiar he worried it would overwhelm his sense and make it hard for him to distinguish between memory and actual danger.
A tickle stirred in the back of his throat no amount of clearing or coughing seemed to satisfy.
Again, Frigga lowered her hand to his shoulder, fingers squeezing into the taut muscle in a reassuring gesture of comfort. He tilted his head into her hand, rested it there for a long time while staring through the darkness of the trees looming over them.
The senses he attuned to his surroundings were also on alert for his sister’s scent, for others from their pack. He needed to find Ruwena. Survivors would be needed in Dunvarak if war was truly coming and a warrior of Rue’s prowess could lend aid, offer training to a whole new generation of wolves newly awakened upon completion of Lorelei’s task.
More than that, he just needed to see her again, to know she was alive and he hadn’t failed her entirely when he left her behind.
Finding her would be no simple task. She was a huntress renowned for her skill and would not be easily discovered unless she wanted to be found. Convincing her to forgive him would be even harder, but he felt sure she would leap at the chance to make a real difference for all that remained of their people. She was as devoted as he was to the survival of the U’lfer, their purposes vastly different, and yet the same. Ruwena wanted the wolves to rise again, to be granted the opportunity to thrive and live as they were meant to. Vilnjar only wanted their people to survive.
Maybe his sister was right all along. He just hoped he had th
e chance to tell her he’d changed his mind.
“We should rise before the sun,” Frigga decided. “Sleep only as long as we must and then ride until we absolutely cannot go further.”
“I don’t think Morai would appreciate that,” he snorted a chuckle and glanced over his shoulder at their tethered mount. The mare was black as shadow, her thick coat still glistening with sweat.
“We will rest when we need to, and if we must sacrifice her…”
He didn’t like the suggestion, though he knew if things in the north were even half as bad as he imagined, they wouldn’t have a choice.
“I’m only saying I think we should ride until we pick up your sister’s trail.”
She was right, but he also knew his sister. Any trail she might have left would not be so easily picked up. He would do his best to reach out to her through the bond of blood they shared, but she’d spent far more time hunting with Finn and the blood bond between his younger siblings was far stronger than any bond he had with the two of them. He’d been reaching out to her since they crossed into the Edgelands, but he felt nothing. No tingling possibility she was near him. No lingering essence pricked his awareness.
He kept telling himself she was too far north to sense, but deep down he fretted constantly she was…
No.
He stopped himself once more from entertaining the very real possibility his sister was dead. The awareness of his greatest fear clung to his heart like a cold hand, gripping, squeezing, making it hard for him to catch his breath.
Frigga, feeling his inner-turmoil with as much intensity as he felt it himself, dropped down behind him, her arms circling his waist as she pressed her chest into his back and squeezed. The immediate comfort of her nearness lifted most of the weight away, but it never quite left him.
“Your sister was a huntress, Vilnjar,” she reminded him. “She mastered the art of invisibility required to stalk one’s prey before her first transformation. She is alive, and she is out there somewhere. It won’t be an easy task for us to find her, but we will find her. I know this.”
She trusted his judgment, but she also knew when his own fears were too overwhelming for him to handle. When he needed the outside comfort from someone who understood him, yet was able enough to distance herself to bring him back to reason. He felt her trust, her devotion and strength tingling through his blood. She was determined, but skeptical about the journey she’d pushed them toward. She embraced his worries and fears and made them her own, a silent part of her fretting deeply over a woman she’d never physically met, but felt a great attachment to due to the bond she shared with him.
No one had ever understood him the way she did, and though it should have been strange how instantly the bond between them formed, it was the way of things. A way he’d scoffed at just weeks before when Rhiorna told him Finn was mated to Lorelei, and his brother would go anywhere, do anything for that accursed girl who’d put all of it in motion.
He turned his head in, kissed her knuckles and felt glad he’d been wrong about the bond between mates. He felt even gladder the gods had not seen fit to deny that bond to him because of his misgivings in the past.
It was more than an hour before they found a wide enough clearing to set up camp. In the shadow of a copse of tall firs, the dwindling strands of sunlight barely streaked through the tree-choked world around them. It was dry, very little snow managed to drift through the sparse spaces between the branches reaching for the sky, and he could barely feel the wind he could still hear howling just beyond the safety of those trees. The clean smell of pine needles rose above the scent of smoke on the wind, and for the first time since he’d first caught wind of that startling scent just below Great Sontok, he realized how overpowering it was.
Their fire was small, just enough to take the edge off of the night’s damp chill without giving away their position in the trees. After the smoke lessened, and he could once more smell the soothing scent of the trees around them, he convinced himself the underlying stench of smoke was from their own fire.
It was a very small fire, scarce enough it wouldn’t be easily detected from any great distance within the low branches huddled close around their camp, and after a time the smoke lessened and he could once more smell the soothing scent of the trees around them. It was bright enough the two of them could see one another, make out the outline of their horse at the edge of the trees, and warm enough to take the damp chill off the descending night.
Frigga tore a hunk of bread from the loaf and handed it to him when he sat down, then ripped off a piece for herself before rewrapping it and drawing out a smaller satchel of dried venison for them to share.
Silence as they ate, save for the profound murmur of the wind through the needles in the trees. It occurred to him, as he glanced up at her, he’d never shared a silence like it with anyone before. His life before Frigga was filled with endless chatter, council meeting arguments, Finn’s ceaseless babble, even Ruwena always seemed to have something to say, but Vilnjar preferred silence.
So much more could be said with it, than the meaningless drivel that often came with words.
He’d never wanted to protect anyone as much as he did her. The fact that she didn’t need his protection didn’t even factor in. She was his, his for protecting and keeping. His for the rest of his days.
Loose pieces of hair disentangled from the braid she wore and dangled in front of her face. They swayed with her every movement, tickling across her lips and nose as she chewed the leathery strip of venison she’d torn into with her teeth just moments before. Stuffing the last bite of bread into his mouth, Vilnjar reached over and tucked that rogue strip of hair behind her ear, and she looked up at him with a tender smile.
“The way you look at me,” she swallowed the food in her mouth before continuing, “no one has ever looked at me like that before.”
He felt the corners of his mouth twitching with happiness, the heaviness of his lids closing over his eyes as he lowered his head almost sheepishly.
“Well don’t stop just because I’ve noticed,” she scolded with a laugh, reaching a hand out to playfully swat at his arm. “I like the way you look at me.”
“I don’t think I knew what beauty was before I saw you. I thought I did, I thought it was the thing of sunsets and moons rising, of blazing stars as they fall across the sky in trails of fire, but none of those things even compares to you, Frigga.”
The sound of her laughter surprised him, and glancing up at her again he saw the playfulness in her eyes. “I bet you say such flowery things to all the girls,” she winked and tore another strip of meat, folding it into her mouth and chewing.
“Only you,” he grinned.
“I will take first watch,” she declared, bringing her fingers up to curl around his wrist. She nuzzled her cheek into the palm of his hand and closed her eyes as she declared, “You need to rest if you’re to find your sister.”
They hadn’t even bothered to set up their tent, intending to sleep in turns by the fire while the other kept watch.
He started to argue, but the glare of her bright blue eyes in the firelight stayed his tongue. Instead, he began to withdraw his touch and absently rolled the jerked meat in his other hand between anxious fingers.
“What if I can’t find her?” Speaking that fear aloud made it feel realer to him than it had the moment they’d crested the mountain pass and he’d not seen Ruwena’s face among the survivors there. “What if we’ve come all this way only to find she’s…?”
“Shh,” Frigga hushed him, shaking her head as if the gesture alone was enough to make his fears disappear. “You will find her. I know you will.”
“How do you know?” Squinting his eyes, he stared down into the fire. “How can you possibly know such a thing?”
“Because I just do.”
He felt the swell of her confidence surge through him, a tingling warmth and reassurance that shouldn’t have made him feel better, wouldn’t have if it came from anyon
e else, but did because it was hers. How had he lived for twenty-eight years without Frigga? It baffled his mind whenever he thought about it, and he knew for the rest of his days he would live every moment of his life with and for her.
“Come here,” he held his arm up, and she scooted underneath it, nestling her body close to his beside the fire, and for a long time they sat that way, enjoying the perfect silence of each other’s company.
The tiny fingers squeezing his felt slippery with sweat, and the way they trembled made it feel as if her grip was slipping from his. He squeezed harder, yanking her forward until she stumbled behind him, her bare knees scraping through the dirt. She was still wearing her nightgown, the braids of her black hair disheveled from sleep. The patterns where the pillow pressed into her cheeks hadn’t even begun to fade.
“Come on, Rue!” he roared desperately over his shoulder, his voice echoing through the crackling hiss and roar of fire burning all around them. Just over his sister’s left shoulder, Vilnjar watched the blazing tavern collapse in upon itself in an explosion of sparks and embers. The rumbling of the earth as it fell startled her into action, and the clear passages marking her soot-smudged cheeks glistened in the orange glow of destruction.
For a moment he’d almost forgotten she was just a little girl; it was his job to protect her.
Deken distinctly assigned the task to him, clapping a heavy hand down on his son’s shoulder before lowering to look the boy in the eyes. “You must see to them while I’m gone, Vilnjar,” his father said. “Look after little Rue, and your mother. Protect them. While I am gone, you will be the man of the family.”
“But Father,” he protested, trying to squirm out from under the hard clasp of fingers digging into his shoulders, “I’m not yet a man.”
“A boy becomes a man the moment he knows he has no choice, Vilnjar.” Deken’s eyes were harsh as ice, cold and calculating, as though he’d been preparing to destroy his son’s childhood since the moment he’d been wrenched screaming from his mother’s womb and into the world. “You have no choice, my boy.” Something softened in his father’s face then, a hint of tenderness unlike any Vilnjar had ever seen, and then he smiled and said, “You will make me proud. I know you will.”
Sorrow's Peak (Serpent of Time Book 2) Page 25