by Ruby Sirois
I know how it will taste: the bittersweet tang of revenge.
“Let her go!” someone cries.
And the coven rush forward in attack. They move too fast for my weakened eyes to follow. The bloodlust is thick in my throat, distracting me.
They fall on me, razor-sharp athames in hand. They hack and slice at my scales, my wings, my face. I rear up, snapping my jaws left, right. Anywhere I sense the heat of a life.
“Aim for his belly!” another voice commands.
They surround me, a pack of filthy hyenas around a lion. I roar in frustration. They hunker down, looking for an opening.
I give them no time to find one. I whip my tail in a wide circle. Witches, familiars, trees, and boulders all go flying. Screams from everywhere around me. I fill my lungs, cry my fury to the sky. I prepare to paint the lot of them with the flames of my vengeance.
“Ragnarr, don’t!” Emelie screams, tugging at my wingtip.
My attention snaps to her.
“Please, don’t!”
By reflex I flutter the wing to rid it of a tickle. Emelie falls heavily to her hands and knees on the ground.
“Emelie!”
I am on her, nudging her with my muzzle. I hadn’t meant to harm her. If she is hurt, I will never forgive myself.
Even through the haze of my vision, her aura glows golden as noontime sun—just as bright and beautiful as that first time.
She is not hurt. Her fingers, tiny and frail as draconic eyelashes, paw at my scaly wrist. The buzzing of a gnat, the tickle of dandelion fluff on the breeze. I barely feel it in my agitated state.
“This häxjävel turned you against me,” I cry. “For that, she will pay with her life.”
“Annika didn’t do that,” Emelie shrieks, getting to her feet and backing up to be with her huddled coven, regrouped at the edge of the clearing.
“You did that, with your own actions!”
“You were mine! You are mine! And now—!”
“I was never yours,” she cries.
She’s holding my disc, still hanging around her neck, up like a shield. The fingernail of silver blinks at me, the taunting of an unattainable star from up high.
“You never won me, and this is proof. I’m not in your hoard, and I never will be!”
I sense movement from behind me. My head whips around, spitting fire. The pines go up like oil-dipped torches. I can’t see clearly, and my wings fan the flames in rage.
“You’re mine!” I roar, rearing up, my wings arching against the sky. “Mine, Emelie! Always!”
I don’t realize my mistake until a flash of gold draws my attention, glinting like a malicious eye.
“Ragnarr Thoringr, hear me! O son of Thor, I banish thee!” cries Annika.
In her hand is the damnable token.
Fröja’s token.
25: Emelie
My body is frozen. A scream dies in my throat. I want to stop Annika, but I can’t seem to move. Everything is immersed in amber, bathed in a horrible fiery glow. The world is thick, inescapable. Even breathing is like breathing honey.
The high priestess brandishes the token in one fist, holding it out as boldly as a policeman stopping traffic. A snarl mars her face.
I’ve never seen her like this, brimming with hate.
It makes me sick.
As if he can’t quite see what she’s holding, Ragnarr peers at it. He brings his snout up close. Then as if he’s been struck, he rears back in shock.
“Damn you, häxjävel! Where did you get that?” His rumbling cry is the grinding of a glacier against splintering bedrock. It carries the unstoppable weight of ancient forces, of countless centuries of power behind it.
Annika is dead, I realize. There’s nothing she can do against power like his. She just doesn’t care.
She doesn’t answer his question. She responds only with the words of the ritual.
“With this thy token, I command thee! Begone, son of Thor, by it I bind thee!”
He slits his eyes in fury. Raises his enormous wings like the sails of a warship against the sky.
Ragnarr strikes lightning-fast.
I shriek, expecting her to disappear in one gulp down his gullet. But his slavering, gleaming jaws slide across an invisible wall, as if a dome of bulletproof glass hangs in the air over the whole coven. A horrific noise like knives down a chalkboard as his teeth scrabble for purchase—but it resists his attack.
I have no idea what just happened. But he seems to realize at once what this invisible barrier is.
Ragnarr throws his head back, rises rampant on his hind legs. He screeches in rage.
Up on his hind legs, he’s at least three stories tall. His great wings blot out the sky, beating powerfully against the implacable barrier. The burning pines quiver. The flames are dancing, feeding on the winds of his fury.
A snowfall of ashes drifts across the clearing. Flakes of it catch in my hair, in my eyelashes.
The heat is a blast of desert wind, of a forge, of a sun.
A flood of fire erupts from his jaws. His head whips like a snake’s.
Never mind the barrier. He means to immolate us, the entire coven, or himself die trying.
“Ragnarr!” I shriek, my body at once released from the freezing amber grip of panic. “Stop! Please!”
But my voice is swallowed up in the whirlwind of the fire, of the shrieking wind.
I am a mayfly in a hurricane.
Dragonfire sprays into the sky in a fountain. His serpentine head whips down, taking aim for the clearing, for the coven.
Only—the invisible wall deflects it.
He rears up on his hind legs, beating his immense wings. His forepaws claw at the sky, at the barrier, but they slide off.
“Stop this, Ragnarr!”
“Damn you all!” he roars. “Fucking häxjävlar, why won’t you die!”
I can’t make myself heard over the wind and the crackling flames. If the dragon doesn’t slay us, the forest fire will. I run to him, but the barrier stops me. I beat at it with my fists, desperate to get out, to get to him, to make him stop and leave me and my coven alone.
Someone grabs my arm: Linnea. Her eyes are wild, her face deathly pale.
“Stop, Emelie!” Her voice is hoarse and smoke-damaged. “Stop! You want to die out there?”
I struggle out of her grip, claw at the barrier. It feels like silicone, elastic, with a strange grippy feel that pulls at my skin, trying to keep me in. I set my shoulder to it, and push. It starts to give way, releasing me reluctantly from its protection. I pop through, feeling it reseal itself behind me, and I run to him.
I claw at his leg, at his breast—the scales are slick and hot, like fire-polished glass.
“Leave them alone! Stop this!”
At last he hears me.
“Fröja’s token,” he growls. “Your damnable coven found Fröja’s token, and you went along with it.”
“If you ever cared for me, let them go,” I plead. “Don’t kill them. Don’t hurt them. Just leave them alone.”
He snarls, baring white teeth like daggers. But even in his great wrath, I sense that he will not hurt me.
“And do you know what you’ve done to me? Did you ever care for me?”
His draconic gaze is wide and ice-blue, just like his eyes in human form. My heart skips a beat. I open my mouth to speak—then I glance back over my shoulder. Karl is unconscious, and three of my coven-mates are clustered around him, trying desperately to revive him. Each of them is bedraggled, dazed, defeated. But the protective shield holds fast.
If it weren’t for Annika’s damned Fröja token, they’d all be a pile of half-burnt corpses instead. And we all know it.
“Did you?” he demands.
I turn back to him. I have never seen this side of Ragnarr.
For the first time since I met him, I am frightened of him. Terrified of him.
And I know that all my coven-mates were right about him—that he’s dangerous, selfish, unpre
dictable.
He is a dragon, not a man, and I have been naïve. So utterly naïve. If it weren’t for me, they would all be safe. I would be safe.
I shudder to think how close I came to being part of his hoard—I still have no idea what that entails—and I steel myself to strike the coup de grâce.
“You were a means to an end,” I lie.
It rips me apart on the inside, but it must be done. I lift my chin.
“I needed to save So Mote It Bee, that’s all.”
He rears back as if I’ve stabbed him.
“You can’t mean that.”
“I do mean it!” I yell, trying to convince myself as much as him.
“Stop this, Ragnarr, you’re scaring me! This is enough! Just leave me alone! Leave my coven alone! You have to go!”
He pulls back his serpentine head, crouches low, wings folded over his back. He looks like a great cat unsure whether to attack or to run.
“Emelie, you can’t—”
“Go, Ragnarr Thoringr! Just go! You’re a monster! Just—go!”
Tears stream down my face. My heart is broken shards of ice. But I cannot continue with him. He is vicious. He is a beast. An animal.
And I’m better off without him.
“Go!” I shriek.
Ragnarr throws his head back, spits dragonfire at the sky with a noise like a thousand forges. Without another word, he spreads immense wings, flexes thick hindquarters, and takes to the sky.
I fall to my knees, sharp rocks digging into my skin. I barely feel it. I barely feel the night chill or the roaring volcanic heat of the fire around us.
I would happily throw myself on those flames if I could move, because there’s nothing left worth living for now.
I’ve sacrificed the most precious thing in my life to save the lives of my coven.
26: Ragnarr
Eiríkur watches me from his place on the leather couch in my study. I can’t sit still.
I get up, pace the room, sit down—over and over. My body is both full of nervous energy, and yet too full of lethargy to do anything of consequence.
“Why don’t you come to Tredje Kronan with me tonight?” he says at last. The ice in his empty rocks glass tinkles faintly.
“Why should I?”
Up. Pace. Down.
“You’re driving yourself crazy. Fy fan, you’re driving me crazy.”
He takes a sip, grimacing at the taste of melted ice. Sets the glass down.
“Plenty of women there, help take your mind off. Get out of this gilded cage you’ve locked yourself up in for weeks.”
“Fuck them,” I snarl.
Up. Pace. Down.
“Well, that is the idea.” A sly smile.
“Not. Interested.”
I have half a mind to throw something at him. Eiríkur sees the wild look in my eyes. He backs up, holds his hands up in a gesture of peace.
“Always cheered you up before,” he offers.
I can’t believe he is this dense.
“Before I had Emelie.”
“You don’t have—”
“Don’t you think I know that?”
I jump up. Pace the room twice like a caged tiger. Back down in my leather armchair again.
“I’m so fucking stupid. Another fucking häxjävel. And this time I thought it would be different. Eiríkur! Why didn’t you talk me out of it?”
“Ragnarr, I wasn’t even there—”
“But why didn’t you remind me? Fy fan, this is even worse than the first time. And that damned amulet! How has it even survived this long? Fy helvetes fan, I’m an idiot. I must be the stupidest dragon in existence.”
“Come on, brother.” His voice is low and soothing. “We’ll get Hjalmr to come out, make a crazy night of it, Thoringr-style. It’ll be fun.”
“Fun.” My voice is dripping sarcasm.
But there’s no telling him nej once he’s got an idea in his head and the bit in his teeth. He’s not going to drop it until I agree.
I take a breath. Let it out. He just keeps looking at me expectantly, like a dog wanting to go out, leash in his mouth and tail wagging.
Despite my black mood, I let him win. I don’t want to, but I don’t have the energy to fight him on it either.
I sigh. “Fine.”
The three of us are at Tredje Kronan. I don’t even remember the trip here, or when Hjalmr met us up. Tonight, the place is full of Europe’s elite, crawling with some of the most beautiful women in the northern hemisphere.
Some, but not all. Notably, not the only one who means anything to me. The only one who means everything to me.
We sit at my usual table in the back. The table where I sat with Emelie not so long ago, where I fed her truffles.
Where I listened to her laugh, listened to her describe the lush flavors of a decades-old Barolo.
I would do anything to hear her laugh again. I’d burn the world down for her, if she asked me to.
The loss of her is a physical ache. A black hole in my gut.
All I want to do is go back to my lair and hide. Lick my wounds and try to regroup.
This is the last place I want to be.
The buzz of the crowd rolls over me like cold ocean waves. Groups of brightly-clad women approach like curious schools of fish. Eiríkur talks to them, flirting with the most beautiful ones. Throws the others back into the sea.
I recognize a duchess, an actress, a renowned news anchor, an Olympic champion. Hjalmr already has a voluptuous brunette on his lap. He murmurs to her and they giggle together, lost in their own bubble beneath the crashing surf.
“Hi there. What’s your name?”
I look up from my dark reverie. She is tall, blonde, with a body that could win beauty pageants. And I couldn’t be less interested.
Everywhere I look, I’m reminded of Emelie: there’s the waiter who served us that night. There’s a plate of truffles on another table. There’s a half-empty glass of red wine, gleaming like heart’s blood in the candlelight.
A twist in my chest, a knife ripping me apart from the inside.
“Ragnarr Thoringr.”
I don’t have the patience to be polite. My voice is glacial.
“I’m Natalia.”
She offers up a pretty smile. It’s wasted on me. She is confused.
“I think Eiríkur is maybe more your style, Natalia.”
He is on the other side of the booth, oblivious to our exchange, chatting and laughing with three equally stunning women.
“I… what?”
Her big green eyes are wide and shocked. Poor thing. She’s never been rejected before in her life. I don’t even have the patience to toy with her just for the hell of it.
“I’m sure lots of people tell you you’re pretty, but you’re just not my type.”
Ja, Natalia is objectively beautiful—but to me, lovelorn as I am, she looks scrawny and unappetizing—a chicken after a hard winter.
Not like my Emelie, with her lush curves and generous smile. Every other woman is judged and found wanting—pale specters all, in comparison to my Emelie.
But Emelie is not my Emelie. Not mine. Not anymore, or never was. My hands tighten into fists on the table.
Natalia sees the change in my eyes.
“Oh—okay. Well, have a good night.”
She almost stumbles over her own stilettos in her haste to get away.
I don’t watch her leave. I stare down into my empty rocks glass instead.
I suppose I should feel bad, but I don’t.
Good riddance.
“What’s the deal, brother?” hisses Eiríkur, finally tearing his attention away from the multiple sets of masterfully enhanced breasts in his face.
“Oh, hi. Time to come up for air? How nice.”
“You’re going to ruin my reputation. At least give it some effort, Ragnarr. Stop making me look bad.”
I don’t have the energy to humor him.
“I couldn’t care less for your fucking reputa
tion. You dragged me out here. I told you I didn’t want to come.”
“And what was I supposed to do? Let you waste away at home, pining for your lost lilla häxjävel?”
I’m at his throat in less than a second, the collar of his immaculately tailored shirt crushed by the force of my grip.
“Don’t you ever speak of her,” I say. My voice is low. His playthings scatter like down feathers in a hard breeze. “Especially not like that. She never crosses your lips. Ever. You could never understand what she means to me.”
“Come on, Ragnarr,” says Hjalmr, his sea-green eyes finally torn away from his brunette du jour. “Let him go, he didn’t mean it like that. Right, Eiríkur?”
“That’s right,” Eiríkur says.
His tone is affected, light. Designed to calm. But his eyes never leave me.
“You’re right, Ragnarr. I don’t understand.”
I give Eiríkur a hard shake. Let him go. His hands drift up to adjust his collar. His face reveals nothing, but I know he is more shaken than he lets on.
My patience has evaporated.
I get up. Stalk to the bar. Brush aside the other patrons as if they’re nothing more than dry grass.
“Scotch,” I say. “Neat. Make it a triple. Leave the bottle.”
I’m about to get roaring, blazing drunk.
My scales rustle against the piles of gemstones, the stacks of gold coins. Everywhere I turn, immense piles of treasure surround me. Once, it gave me solace. Once, it was my heart’s pride. Once, I nearly gave my life for it.
Now, I think back on what I did to earn it, and it makes me feel sordid.
Soiled.
Monstrous.
I curl up, try to sleep. My lair, always so warm and inviting, is now too cold, too empty.
Every tiny sound echoes off chilly stone walls, like it’s coming from everywhere and nowhere.
Time is endless, a black pool with no bottom. I’m drowning in it.
The sharp-toothed fish of my thoughts nip at me, taking out bloody chunks of my flesh with every bite. There’s nothing I can do, nowhere I can go, to escape them.