Tyr opened his mouth to respond, but the king’s filmy eyes flicked to Ingrid and his grin widened like a crack in the earth during a quake. “And you’ve brought me a bonus prize. Word of your lovely and powerful companion precedes you.”
Tyr fought not to close his eyes, or to look at Ingrid. Word of his companion. Another of his former crewman had let his mouth run free, tried to barter with an enemy to salvage his stake in the sale of the firebird. Tyr reached inside himself, groping for his nonchalance, the irreverence that had been his protection for so very long.
“Sadly, the lady is not for you, Your Highness. I am here to deliver the bird as requested and then I’m afraid my companion and I must be off.” He met the ogre’s eyes. “If you’ve heard of her, then I’m sure you realize how foolish it would be to try and stop us.”
“It is strange to me that even after your last visit, you think you have a say in what is and is not mine.” The king leaned forward and his hair fell over his shoulder, locks looking for all the world like the rotting corpses of poisonous snakes. “My companion here was most intrigued when I told him of your delightful guide. He insisted on being present for this visit. Though I’m sorry to say I don’t think the lovely Ingrid returns his interest. I think you’d do well to think carefully before threatening us with her talents, lest you press him to show you his own.” He looked to Ingrid again. “Having seen her now for myself, I am even more certain of my decision.”
“And what decision would that be?” Ingrid demanded.
Tyr clenched his teeth as Ingrid spoke up, swallowing the urge to shush her, warn her not to make herself a bigger target.
The ogre king grinned. “I have decided that you will be my wife.”
Tyr pressed his lips together, resisting the urge to bellow his outrage, or worse, retch at the thought of the ogre king anywhere near his witch. He kept his mouth closed as he organized his thoughts, but Ingrid spoke before he could.
“Strange that a man who claims to want me for his wife would keep such company.”
The ogre king followed her gaze, glanced at the man standing just behind and to his right. “I don’t think she likes you, Typhoid. What say you?”
The man lifted his head, and a shaft of light illuminated a slice of his face. Tyr hissed. The skin was rotting away, yellowed like moldy bread. There was no eyeball in the socket, only a faint violet spark.
“I will be here only as long as it takes to perform the bonding spell at the wedding.” His voice was dry, like the slide of a serpent’s scales over stone. “Once the earth woman is bound to His Highness, and we can be certain she won’t entertain any unfortunate thoughts of harming her new husband, then I will be on my way.”
“Bonding spell?” There was a thickness to her question that suggested the words had been squeezed past a throat coated with bile.
The hooded man nodded. “Once bonded, your health will be as His Highness’. To harm one will be to harm both. A necessary precaution in the…ever-changing world of ogres.”
“A precaution only,” assured the king, a hungry gleam in his eyes. “I promise I will keep you more than satisfied.” A black tongue licked at one of his protruding canines. “I’ve heard that earth witches are quite…demanding creatures when it comes to fertility.”
Tyr must have made some sound, or else showed something of his rage on his face. The ogre king flicked his gaze to him.
“Hand the bird to the woman and leave. The guards have your treasure and you can retire a wealthy—and healthy—man. If you leave now.”
It was an offer he might have taken once upon a time. But not now.
Tyr set the cage on the ground, his joints stiffer than they’d ever been. The impending consequences of his actions had his nerves crackling with nervous energy, the instinct to flee with his life burning his muscles like acid. Carefully he opened the cage. The firebird stepped willingly onto his hand, as docile as it had always been. Thankfully, it did not seem inclined to continue its tantrum.
“The bird can stay in the cage,” the ogre king snarled.
Tyr settled the bird on the stump of his left forearm and turned to Ingrid. She stared at him, her face a hard mask, but he could see the fear in her eyes.
It’s your fault she thinks you would leave her.
“Can you defeat him?” he asked under his breath.
She held his eyes without looking behind him at Typhoid. “He’s a wizard and he reeks of necrotic energy. If we were outside I would have more of a chance, but I am limited with just rock. It would be easier for him to focus his power on just us, whereas I am limited to destroying all or none.”
Tyr’s heart sank, but he kept his thoughts from his face as best he could. He reached out and brushed her hair behind her ear, taking the time to memorize every smooth curve of her cheeks, every spark in her green eyes.
“What I saw of your home—what I can still smell of your home every time you’re close to me—seems like paradise. It is more than likely that after the life I’ve lived, having my ashes spread across the soil of your orchard will be my only chance at seeing such a paradise after I die. I’ve done nothing to earn it, but if you could see your way to setting aside a small part of your incredible land to be the burial spot of a wretched pirate, I would do my very best to be good fertilizer for the soil.”
Ingrid’s jaw dropped. “What?”
A smile pulled at his lips, a flicker of happiness under the weight of what was coming. He leaned in and laid a gentle kiss on her cheek. “I find that suddenly…there is a life I value more than my own.”
He turned without giving her a chance to respond, choosing to hold onto the hope that she would grant his request, find a way to retrieve his body and give him a resting place in a sunny orchard. He faced the ogre king with his right hand wrapped around the throat of the firebird, its body held firmly under his left arm. “The woman leaves now. Unharmed. I will stay here.”
“You are hardly the prize I desire,” the ogre king scoffed. “Why should I agree to such a trade?”
“Because if you don’t, I’ll crush the firebird’s neck.”
“What are you doing?” Ingrid hissed.
“Save yourself,” he whispered back. “Run, Ingrid. When you pass out that door, bring the rocks down to bury the passage. They won’t get to you in time. Smalls will be watching, and he will take you home.”
Her hand twitched as if she would grab him, hold him back, but she didn’t. “Come with me,” she said instead.
He shook his head, a strange calm falling over him now that he’d made his choice. “I’ll keep the wizard occupied.”
“The woman is more valuable than the bird,” the ogre king growled, interrupting their whispered conversation.
“Then you are obviously a wiser man than I,” Tyr said calmly. “If I were in your position, I might have been tempted to talk of the firebird, brag about the inevitability of my possession of it. I would be facing ridicule if I failed to obtain it.” He smiled then, real pleasure curling his lips. “And we both know what happens to a ridiculed ogre king.”
The craggy monarch growled and the wizard stepped forward as if he would answer the insult. Ingrid stepped to the side and threw out a hand.
“Stop!”
Everyone froze, heads swiveling to face her, expectation thick in the air as they all waited for her to lash out with her power. The wizard’s energy roiled about him, the purple spark in his empty eye socket growing brighter.
“If I am to marry you,” she announced, her gaze boring into the ogre’s as her voice boomed through the cavernous throne room, “then first you will have to prepare yourself.”
“Prepare myself?” The ogre king’s shaggy eyebrows rose, his bucket shaped head tilting to the side. “How?”
“What are you doing?” Tyr sputtered.
Ingrid ignored him. “You are correct that my physical needs are great. If I am to remain young and fertile, I will require a great deal from you.”
The
ogre king hummed his lascivious approval. “Agreed.”
Her smile widened. “I am pleased to hear your eagerness. However, if you are to truly satisfy me, you must be made ready to be the consort of an earth witch.”
The ogre king tapped one meaty finger against the armrest of his throne, thick claw scraping the rock. “And what would this preparation include?”
Ingrid rewarded him with a smile that said he was an intelligent child who’d made the right choice. “Three large cauldrons must be prepared. Fill the first one with boiling oil heated by a sacred flame. Fill the second with milk from no less than twenty cows. And fill the third with freezing water carried by four brothers. When each cauldron has been arranged in a line, you must leap into each one, in the order I have described. When you climb out of the third, you will share in my power.”
The ogre sucked in a sharp breath and she smiled. “I’ll not have my husband sleeping with one eye open, always alert for assassination by his own brothers. You will have the power to keep your throne for as long as it is your wish to hold it, no matter who might plot against you.”
Tyr gaped at her, feeling light-headed and more than a little sick. The image of Ingrid standing at an altar with her small, delicate hand in the grubby fist of the greedy ogre king had the last apple he’d eaten rising up in his throat. “Ingrid,” he choked.
She refused to look at him, her gaze set firmly on the throne. The ogre raised a bushy eyebrow, but did not speak for several long moments. He looked from Ingrid to Tyr and back again. He looked to his wizard as if waiting for him to step forward and call Ingrid out for describing an impossible ritual. The magic user remained silent, his decaying face betraying not even a hint of emotion.
Finally, the king nodded. “All right, fine. Three baths it is.” He bared his teeth in what even the most charitable person would hesitate to call a grin and pointed at Tyr. “But your captain goes first.”
Chapter Twelve
“Clever girl. I understand why you did what you did, but I just want to put the suggestion out there that you let the pirate scald himself a bit. I’m not saying let him boil alive, but just a bit of singed hair, perhaps a few painful patches that will serve as reminders in the coming days that it’s not wise to upset an earth witch—or a firebird.”
Ingrid ignored the firebird, unable to tear her attention from the scene playing out in the courtyard below. From her vantage point in the highest tower of the ogre’s palace, she could see the king’s minions milling about like square-bodied insects, stuffing dry sticks and thick crusty logs beneath the first of three enormous iron vats. They sat all in a row as she’d ordered, their contents gleaming in the sun. Oil, milk, and ice water.
Feathers rustled as the firebird flew up to perch neatly on the windowsill beside her. It poked its head out one of the square holes in the iron grate set into the stone of the window frame to peer down at the fate that waited for Tyr. “Who would have thought the ogre could get his hands on twenty cows so quickly?”
Ingrid leaned forward, pressed her forehead against the bars. “I don’t know what made me do this.”
The firebird pulled its head back inside to look at her, the feathers of its neck sticking up at odd angles where the iron had rubbed it the wrong way. It studied her with the eerie intensity that only animals seemed capable of, its pupil-less black eyes unreadable. “It won’t take the oil long to heat,” it said finally, its voice calm, unruffled. “If you truly don’t know why you did this, you’d best figure it out soon.”
Ingrid sought out Tyr, needing to see him, to make certain he was all right. The pirate stood beside the temporary throne that had been set up for the ogre king to watch what he was certain would be a particularly gruesome end to the one-handed pirate. Thick manacles circled his wrist and ankles, connected him to the wooden support of the shelter that provided shade for the throne. He stared at the vat of oil with a blank expression, though the rigidity of his shoulders left no doubt to the path his thoughts were taking.
“He wanted me to tell him I love him. Asked me straight out. Just wanted to hear the words, I’m not sure he even cared if they were true.”
The firebird made a strange sound with its beak that might have been a snort. “Of course he cared.”
Ingrid turned her back on the firebird and its unnerving stare, searching her temporary prison for some distraction. Unfortunately, her sparse surroundings included only a thin bedroll and a bucket. No doubt a not-so-subtle reminder from the king of what alternative waited for her should she change her mind about their upcoming nuptials. A queen or a prisoner.
Her unanchored thoughts returned to Tyr. She tried to hold her emotions at bay, tried to focus on the barred window, the iron vat of oil slowly heating to a death-inducing boil, but it was no use. The memories flooded her with the intensity of a rain-swollen river, eating at the banks of her control and melting them away. She heard Tyr’s passion-rough voice in her ear, saw his grey eyes shining with desire. Her skin remembered his touch all too well, the hot press of his mouth, the near-bruising grip of his hand. For the first time, she understood what Baba Yaga had always told her, the completion an earth witch could feel only with a mate.
More than the physical connection, she remembered waking to see him tending the trees, going about the work with only one hand and an expression of complete serenity on his face.
He would be happy with her. He would be in paradise in her orchard, lost amidst the apple trees, snacking on the fruit as he went about his work. She’d known that the first time she’d touched that seedling, the pathetic little monument to Tyr’s real fantasy. But it wasn’t until she’d allowed herself to play along, allowed herself to fall too far into the trap she’d laid for him and he’d walked so willingly into, that she realized that perhaps, she might be happy with him too. She might be willing to tie her life to him for a chance at that happiness.
Ingrid snapped her head up, staring at Tyr as if no stone or iron separated them. Just like that, she understood why she’d chosen to set this task before the ogre king, knowing he would force Tyr to go through it first just in case Ingrid was lying. Why she hadn’t fled when he’d told her to, left him behind to die.
“Ah, now you understand.”
The door to her prison opened before she could answer the smug bird. The wizard’s power entered before he did, rolled over her in a nauseating rush. Typhoid seethed with necrotic energy, the sickening touch of which sucked at Ingrid’s magic, the life that sang in her veins. The wizard was a symbol of death and rot, his own body ravaged by the acidic quality of his own power.
His eye socket gaped at her, that one spark of purple flame providing just enough light to hint at the rotted remains of his face. Even the bandages that bound his body seemed to be eaten away by his power, unraveling at the edges, wearing thin and covered in wet, foul-smelling stains. It took a great deal of effort not to vomit just standing in his presence.
“It is time.”
The wizard’s voice was dry and rough as sandpaper. It sent a chill down Ingrid’s back and she jutted her chin out, hoping to distract him from the physical effect he had on her. She would not show weakness to the putrid likes of him. She took a step toward him, and he pointed a hand behind her.
“The bird stays.”
She opened her mouth to protest on principle, but the firebird spoke from the windowsill.
“I will wait.”
Its voice was calm, with an undertone of something else. Humor or expectation, she couldn’t be sure which, but either seemed inappropriate. There was no time—or privacy—to question it, so she merely nodded once, then followed the wizard out of the tower.
The ogre’s castle was carved into the mountain. From the sea, it looked no different from any other mountain, easily blending in with its dark, stony surroundings. Even on the side facing the land, there was not a lot to catch the eye. But for the single prison tower that rose like a spear tip, one wouldn’t see the castle facade unless one stared
at the mountain long enough for the black rock to give up its secrets, for one’s eye to distinguish the random curves and jutting lines of unhewn rock from the carefully carved windowsills and occasional gargoyle’s roost.
The wizard led Ingrid out the front door and around to the courtyard where the ogre king was already seated on his makeshift throne. Directly to his left stood one of the ogre guards, and then another ogre, one Ingrid had not seen before. He bore a strong resemblance to the king, though his horns were shorter, his teeth less pronounced. He looked at Ingrid as the wizard led her to a chair beside the king, and there was a flicker of interest in his hazy eyes that wound Ingrid’s nerves a little tighter.
“That is the king’s youngest brother,” the wizard said conversationally, his tone sounding for all the world as if they were old friends gossiping at a social gathering. “He is here to witness the king’s transformation and following marriage.”
Typhoid’s breath was as Ingrid had expected, fetid like the wind off a polluted bog. She let her disgust show on her face, earning a chuckle from the wizard as she lowered herself into her chair.
With her epiphany still fresh in her mind, she couldn’t help but seek Tyr’s eyes, try to meet his gaze. He stood less than ten feet away from her, but he wouldn’t look in her direction, didn’t betray that he even knew she was there. She could barely make out the dull slate grey of his eyes as a second guard came from behind the throne to unfasten his shackles and manhandle him toward the waiting platform.
Some of the indifference leaked from his face at the sight of the three enormous cauldrons, each one filled with its own danger, promising its own special brand of torture. He closed his eyes, his lips moving rhythmically as though he were praying.
“I find that suddenly there is a life that matters more than my own.”
His words floated to her on a wave of memory, and she found an answering sentiment in her own heart. The firebird was right. They’d played a dangerous game, acting out a fantasy, each of them believing they were immune to the spell it wove. Neither of them had emerged unscathed.
The Pirate's Witch (Blood Prince) Page 13