“Freyja,” her father warned, seeing the look on her face and interpreting it correctly. “Where are you going? Rurik wanted you to be safe. He doesn’t want you involved.”
She did not argue, or shout her sudden fury to the world. Instead she fetched the kitchen knife from its block. An odd sense of calm descended over her. “And what about him?”
“He’s a dreki,” her father said. “You cannot fight this battle for him.”
“No,” she whispered, “but I can stand at his side and give him a reason to fight.”
“Freyja!” Her father caught her arm as she moved to the door.
Freyja eased his grip from her arm. “No, Father. I know you want to protect me, but that time is done.” She hesitated. “And you should know I am quite capable of protecting myself, even against dreki.”
For the first time she let the storm show in her eyes. Her father’s mouth parted, but no words came out. He’d always known she had power—how could you not, when your child tore the earth apart with a thought?—but he’d always pretended she wasn’t different. It had been her secret to keep for far too many years, something her mother warned her to hide, and her father pretended not to see.
Freyja gently let his hand go. “I cannot deny what I am anymore, Father. And I know this upsets your beliefs, but there is something within me that is not human. And I don’t know what it is or where it came from, but I know my mother knew of it too. And I have to save the man I love.”
“Your mother’s powers are what stole her away,” her father whispered. “Please don’t ask this of me.”
Freyja’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”
“She never breathed a word of where she’d come from,” he admitted, “but she always feared certain things: circles of stone, or birch; All Hallow’s Eve. I don’t know why she entered that circle that last time, but when she came back, she was never the same. It killed her. They killed her.”
“They?”
Her father shook his head and made a sign of the cross, and she knew he would not speak of it.
Freyja’s heart ached in her chest. “I love him,” she whispered. “He needs me. I know you’re frightened to lose me, but I promise I will come back. Would you have let her go, if you could have saved her?”
Her father’s hand curled into a gnarled fist. Then he finally broke down with a sob. “Be safe.”
“Always,” she said with a parting smile, and opened the door to step into her destiny.
Outside in the yard, Haakon waited impatiently. Time was running out, but she’d needed to ensure her father was all right before she went into battle.
“You want to make amends?” she asked him grimly.
“Yes.”
“Then you can start now.” She gestured to the south. “If Rurik dies, then you’ll never find out what happened to your wife.”
And she would never get to tell Rurik the truth—that she’d been such a fearful fool she’d run away from the best thing that had ever happened to her....
Oh, Rurik. Heat slid through her eyes, but Freyja was determined. She was not going to lose him, nor her chance to tell him the truth she nursed deep in her heart.
“What can we do?” Haakon demanded, bringing her back into the present. “They’re in dreki form, Freyja. Immortal, powerful, and impervious to harm. We are but human, and they could crush us like gnats.”
“Almost impervious,” she said darkly, picturing Magnus’s face in her mind. “You have a ballista....”
“A crippled ballista,” he countered.
“Then put it on a wagon. I only destroyed the wheels.”
Haakon dwelled on the thought. “And you?”
“Well, you’ve caught a glimpse of what I can do, but that’s not important. What I have is a burning desire to save the man I love,” she said grimly, turning toward the stables to fetch Hanna. “Go and fetch your ballista, and I will meet you at Krafla. We don’t have much time.”
Chapter 18
Rurik soared in slow circles around Krafla’s smoldering peak, riding the thermals and the heated edge of his fury.
There was no sign of the other dreki, but he’d expected that.
“Come out, you cowards.” He bellowed a challenge into the air, and it echoed like the thunder that was brewing on the horizon. Weakness stole through his veins, a little whisper that wore away at his confidence. Healing Freyja’s father had taken more out of him than he’d expected, but the heaviness in his heart was the true weakness.
I should have told her how I feel about her.
Maybe then she wouldn’t have run from him.
Rurik poured all of his world-weary pain into another bellow. “You want your throne? Then come out and take it from me!”
This entire plot had Stellan’s hand all over it. His uncle, the dreki queen's brother, always liked to tie up any loose ends, and while Rurik and his brother were still alive, the queen’s control over her throne was not complete. Amadea could keep Árdís in check, but not her male progeny.
As if exiling him for a crime he didn’t commit hadn’t been bad enough.
Pain bled through him. He’d lost every dreki he ever loved by choosing exile over a challenge to his uncle and mother, but he’d made that choice to protect them. Challenging Stellan would have dragged his younger brother and sister into the war, and they hadn’t been strong enough then to survive. He had little doubt his mother and uncle would cut their own blood down in a heartbeat.
After all, his uncle had murdered his father and his mother hadn’t blinked at blaming Rurik.
He let the rage of his loss fuel his strength. “Come out!” he roared as he overshot Krafla and went south in a swoop over the glaciers.
“You’re not fit to rule these lands,” came Magnus’s thought-whisper. “And who are you to call us cowards? You, who tucked tail and fled when your mother took the throne?”
“When your father stole it for her,” he shot back. “By plotting to murder his king.”
“My father didn’t kill yours.” It echoed with truth, and Rurik gritted his teeth together.
“Maybe it wasn’t his hand that ripped my father’s heart out of his chest,” Rurik shot back, “but his was the hand behind the murder.”
“You stupid fool.” Magnus’s laugh echoed through the link. “My father had nothing to do with the death of yours. You did that yourself.”
Truth again. The rage that filled Rurik almost threatened to obliterate rational thought, but he couldn’t afford to lose his mind now. Not when there was so much at stake.
But the answer still ached within him. All he could remember was blood slick on his hands, and his father’s ribs spread wide, the heart torn from within. And the thought he’d pushed this death upon his king, because he hadn’t known enough to back down when he overheard his mother and uncle plotting a coup. In an act of mercy, an attempt to reach the dreki who’d birthed him, he’d actually warned her he knew what she was up to. No. “Come out, you coward! Where are you?”
“Here.”
Rurik wheeled in a fury, sighting his opponent rising from a valley near Krafla. Bat-like black wings thrust Magnus into the skies, and his lip was drawn back from his fierce fangs. Twenty tons of fury struck through the air toward him, but Rurik was fueled by vengeance and rage.
Storm clouds brewed on the horizon, and he was riding his own storm now. The black dreki pinwheeled through the skies ahead of him, banking just enough to flash his claws at him.
“Rules?” Rurik demanded.
“There are no rules.”
So be it. “Killing you will be my pleasure.”
With a twist of his body, he plummeted toward Magnus, claws spread for a strike.
He had the better position and the weight advantage here, plus years of experience battling other dreki, but Magnus was no stranger to battle himself. They called him the Black Prince in the dreki court, for his cunning and deviousness, and Rurik was weighted down by the exhaustion that had stolen
through his veins the second he healed Freyja’s father. Magnus was completely fresh.
Which meant he needed to finish this battle as swiftly as possible.
At the last second, Rurik flattened his wings against his body and dove straight down toward the other dreki, knowing his claws could not pierce Magnus’s black hide. Not from above.
Magnus’s wings flared wide in surprise, and then he tilted sideways to avoid the clash in a defensive maneuver. Which was exactly what Rurik wanted. Ignoring Magnus’s wings—the most obvious target—he caught his cousin’s claws in his and then rolled and flung them both into a pinwheel of violence. The world blurred around him, sky then ground then sky flashing through his vision, and just as the ground grew dangerously close, he let go, flinging his cousin toward the jagged rocks below.
Perfectly timed. Perfectly executed. “You’re getting slow in your old age, cousin,” he taunted, as Magnus used sheer strength to haul himself out of the dangerous dive in an inelegant maneuver.
“And you’re still brimming with false nobility,” Magnus spat back. “No rules, Rurik. Remember?”
A flash of shadow in the corner of Rurik’s eyes alerted him a split second before claws raked his unprotected flank. Pain seared his nerves, but he’d twisted in time to prevent the second dreki from opening up his abdomen. Lashing out with his whip-like tail, he scored a cut along the silver dreki’s snout, and it wheeled away in a spiraling pirouette that hurt his heart.
“Andri. Stay out of this.”
His former page banked in an eerie glide. “I have my orders.” Regret laced Andri’s mental touch.
“You bring a dreki youth to this battle?” he demanded of Magnus.
“He was my brother before he was ever your page,” Magnus spat back, “and it is his turn to prove his loyalty to his blood kin.”
The betrayal would be tearing Andri apart. He knew the lad. Andri was the one shining branch in his uncle’s family, the one son who remained uncorrupted. Rurik dove for Magnus, using his larger form to batter at the black. Claws slashed and tore, and wings thrust in midair to hold them locked against each other. If he could get the bastard’s throat....
A body battered against his, knocking him aside a second before his razor-sharp teeth locked around Magnus’s neck.
Andri, forced into this conflict against his will.
The three of them spiraled apart.
“This is not your fight,” he shot toward Andri. “Remember who you are. Remember what I tried to instill in you. You’re better than this.”
The silver dreki drew back from his touch, rejecting the attempt to reach out to him. But guilt laced Andri’s withdrawal, and Rurik had to cling to that.
Two against one. He’d had worse odds, when he fled the dreki court. But this was different. He wouldn’t—he couldn’t—strike down the younger dreki he loved like his own brother.
And Magnus knew that.
Time to play dirty. There was no honor in fighting a battle against these odds, and the last thing he wanted was for Andri to be forced to do something he’d never forgive himself for.
Battered on both sides, Rurik fought and slashed, smashing his body back against Andri’s to force the youth out of the way, even as he tried to slash open Magnus’s belly. The ground was getting dangerously close. Lightning stabbed through the air, but so far neither of them had brought their powers to bear in this duel.
Can’t afford to.... Not with Andri hampering both of us.
Rurik’s lungs strained. Care for the younger dreki was possibly the only similarity both he and Magnus shared.
Again they came for him. This time they were fighting in unison. And Rurik felt a crucial claw scrape against his belly, igniting a line of fire along his flank. Panic surged through him as Magnus’s teeth scraped across his shoulder, and shuddered free. Close. Too close. For the first time, he felt the tides of the battle changing. A shiver of cold knowing ran through him.
He couldn’t defeat both of them.
Filling his lungs, in desperation he vomited a gush of white-hot fire toward the fierce black dragon, and Magnus screeched and dove out of the way in frantic haste.
It was the one true advantage he had here.
“You’re no true heir,” Rurik shot at his cousin. “I see fire still eludes you.”
Only the most powerful bloodlines still had access to Tiamat’s gift.
Banking, he began to climb, his weary wings sweeping through the air so he could get some height. A silver wisp trailed him. Andri was far lighter than either of them, and moved through the air like a bullet.
“You don’t have to do this.” He tried once again to connect with Andri. “I know you. I know this is not you. You have more loyalty in your littlest claw than either of your brothers, or your father.”
A mournful hesitation. “It’s been different since you left. You don’t understand.”
But he did, oh, he did. Stellan had always wanted to drive the gentleness from his son, and he would have ruled the dreki court with an iron fist.
One last thought-whisper from the boy. “I have to protect my mother, Rurik. Please understand.”
And then the silver dreki came after him with pure, bloody-minded vengeance.
No way out without hurting him. Rurik knew Andri’s mental defenses, could have smashed through his psychic shields and knocked him from the skies with barely a thought. But the same mind that’d conjured this ploy knew his weakness well, and knew Rurik could no more hurt the boy than he could lift a hand against his own brother or sister.
Someone else didn’t have the same conflict. Andri flinched as he came after Rurik, shaking his head, and Rurik saw the golden dancing lights of Freyja’s touch strike the youth.
Freyja. Intense terror suddenly struck him, straight through the heart. She shouldn’t be here. She couldn’t be here.
But he also knew the stubborn woman would have come after him, if she’d caught any hint of what was going to happen here.
“No! Freyja, stop! Go home!” He threw the thought at her, losing track of what was going on around him for a split second.
And it was in that split second Magnus attacked.
The furious black dreki came out of nowhere, slamming into him. Rurik staggered sideways, his right wing momentarily locking with Andri’s. The smaller dreki lashed out, trying to catch his balance and stop himself from plummeting, and Rurik caught him with a claw around his shoulder, helping the boy stabilize—
Pain smashed through him, razor-sharp claws shredding through his left wing. Magnus saw only the win, not the risk to his brother.
Rurik flapped desperately, trying to get out of Andri’s path, but something was wrong. His wing wasn’t working properly, and as he plummeted between them, he clipped Andri, sending the youth into a spin.
One last thought speared through him. Rurik caught at Andri’s mind, even as his crippled wing began to scream in pain as he fell. “I forgive you,” he whispered, and then lost the connection.
Air whipped past him. Panic. Fear. His claws scrabbled to right him as he tried to haul out of the dangerous plummet with his one good wing, knowing, knowing it was too late.
Freyja! He saw her face in that moment, as if she stood there watching him, her hands clapped to her mouth and her eyes wide in horror. The only true regret he had was not knowing her love. And not telling her how much she meant to him. Capturing her mind in a caress of golden thread, he sent that last thought to her before it was too late.
“Rurik!” Andri cut through their connection as Rurik fought the air... and lost.
“Hurry!” Freyja screamed, urging Haakon and the rest of his men up the rough road that cut through the landscape. She could see the three dreki fighting in the air above him, and every harsh bellow and dive stole her breath, as the three clashed again and again.
The bloody wagon with the ballista was too slow. They’d never get there in time.
And Rurik was being hit from both sides.
It was also clear that though he attacked the black dreki, he merely avoided the silver one, when he could so easily clip him from the skies with one hard slam.
Something was wrong. Why wasn’t he fighting back? He couldn’t win against those odds. She could see it in the oddly reluctant way he tried to duel.
Her heart stayed in her throat as she belted her heels into Hanna’s flanks and urged the small pony into a gallop. Everything that had never been said welled up between them, and for one ridiculous moment, her eyes were blurry with tears.
I never told him how I feel. I never told him I love him.
Pure stubborn pride and a healthy dose of fear had stopped her from letting him inside her guarded heart, and she had the horrible suspicion that now she was going to be too late.
“Freyja!” Haakon bellowed behind her, but Freyja leaned low over Hanna’s shoulder and urged the startled mare on.
Blow after blow was rained upon Rurik. Hanna balked at the top of the hill, nearly throwing Freyja over her shoulder. Three dueling dreki were probably more than the mare could handle.
Freyja wasted no time. Slinging her leg over the mare’s back, she landed on her feet and let the mare flee. Then she was running, her skirts flapping around her calves as she hauled herself across the barren terrain.
The earth rumbled beneath her feet. Freyja’s lightning flickered in the southern skies, but it wasn’t anger she felt now, not when Rurik’s was so hard-pressed, but fear. And fear kept her thunder quiet.
“Rurik!” she screamed, hitting the crest of the hill.
Freyja spread her feet, grinding her teeth together as she locked eyes on the silver dreki. Magnus and Rurik were too close together for her to attempt to take the black, but the silver dreki was like a dart in the skies, hammering at Rurik’s golden back. She lifted her arms and felt the rush of lightning begin to skitter along her nerves. She’d never attempted something so powerful or focused before. The very air felt like it grew thick and static with electricity. Freyja unleashed everything she had in her toward the silver dreki.
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