Hearts of Shadow (Deadglass #2)
Page 32
He thrust himself home. Wet and wanton, she called out his name. Her arms stretched against the confining silk. Better than handcuffs, stretchier, softer. Her soul shimmered inside him; he pulsed inside her, a circle unbroken, one body, one soul until the end of time.
“Again,” she ordered.
He had no trouble succumbing to her demands. Kissing her mouth, he drove his tongue inside her to the rhythm of his cock. “I love you.”
An hour later they finally descended to the anxious crowd. The new steward, a Dreki named Ragnar with a red beard, the stocky build of a frost giant, and glacier eyes, announced them. “The Drekar Regent, Leif Asgard, who holds the throne until our Mother Tiamat awakes.”
“May she never do so,” Grace added under her breath.
The assembly rose and stomped their feet. “And my lady, the Queen Consort, Grace the god-killer.” The assembly roared its approval.
Grace felt some of her apprehension slide away. She tilted her chin up and strode down the aisle on Leif’s arm. Her gown shimmered in the torchlights. God-killer. She liked that. A queen sounded soft and pampered, and she’d worried no one would take her seriously. It didn’t have the same defy-me-and-die ring to it as Reaper.
But god-killer was definitely a step up.
She passed Birgitta. The woman wore a traditional black peasant dress with red trim, and a matching vest over a long-sleeved white blouse. Embroidery along the bodice and silver clasps completed the costume. Her white hair curled innocently about her face. She looked like she would be at home folk dancing in Norway. No one would suspect the woman could summon spirits or sold poison herbs in her shop. Birgitta winked.
Grace nodded in return. There was something to be said for subterfuge. She could appreciate the joke misleading everyone else. But it was hard to stick to the shadows when she stood at the Regent’s elbow, and so it was easier that they knew she meant business from the start.
At the dais, Leif turned to face her. “Grace Mercer, killer of gods and demons, I take you to be my right hand. May you be my vengeance against my enemies and my heart to guide my decisions. I take you to be my queen. May you be fruitful as Freya, wise as Yggdrasil, and outlast all the gods at Ragnarök.” He took an iron circlet from the iron throne next to his. The spikes would make excellent needles against aptrgangr. “May all bear witness to your vow. Do you accept?” His green eyes found hers. Even though she’d said it repeatedly, apparently the scientist was still worried this time would be different. She would just have to show him. The Valkyries were a shadow of her indomitable will.
“Yes.”
Cheers rose from the humans in the Althing. The Drekar stamped their feet until the walls rang with thunder.
Leif placed the circlet on her head. It weighed less than she’d thought it would. She took her place by his side, and together they opened the feast.
The Tablet of Destiny lay within an inch of her hand. Zetian could sense it, even though her body wouldn’t obey her commands. Even though the blood still boiled through her broken body, knitting, patching, melding split cells and cracked bones. Grace’s knife was still lodged in her heart. The runes had slowed her healing. She should have been in full form long before this, but every time her magic blood tried to close the rent in her heart, it pulled back from the magic blade as if stung. Zetian was forced to hide beneath the water of Lake Union, sheltered by the blackberries, like the lowest newt. She just needed a little extra power. She couldn’t reach the knife handle by herself to pull it out.
It began as a low beat. Da-dum. Da-dum. A slow funeral march on a drum. Or a heartbeat, deep in the earth.
The claws that had been severed regrew. The heartbeat quickened, calling to her. The nerves in her fingers attached. She moved her new hand.
Da-dum. Da-DUM.
Come to me.
Her eyelids peeled themselves apart, and the hazy world slowly focused. Mud and green water and blackberry thorns. And there at the edge of the water, a rock. A jade rock. Only inches from her outstretched fingers. She wriggled her arm. Pain shot through her. By Tiamat, it hurt. Her head whirled, her stomach revolted, but she managed to drag her hand through the red-splattered mud and close around the shard.
Immediately the pain stopped. The stone pulsed, as if it had its own heartbeat, and the pulse seized her wrist. Fire traveled down her arm. She couldn’t let go; her fingers refused to hear her. The heat washed into her chest and up her neck to burn across her skull. The blade shot out of her back.
The heartbeat thundered in her head. Like a satellite moon pulled to a larger planet, her small, weak organ lost its rhythm and began to beat in time to the drowning drum of Tiamat’s Heart.
With the Tablet of Destiny still in her hand, Zetian sunk beneath Lake Union. She let the current carry her out to sea. The salt water welcomed her home.
Tiamat awoke.
Look for the next thrilling book in
Kira Brady’s Deadglass series,
Hearts of Chaos,
coming in early 2014!
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Copyright © 2013 by Kira Brady
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ISBN: 978-1-4201-2457-6
ISBN-13: 978-1-4201-3197-0
ISBN-10: 1-4201-3197-4
First Electronic Edition: May 2013