Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 71403 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 357(@200wpm)___ 286(@250wpm)___ 238(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71403 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 357(@200wpm)___ 286(@250wpm)___ 238(@300wpm)
That, at least, was the fairy tale I hoped for. But I had a niggle…
I was missing something.
I tried, oh, I tried, to catalogue every detail he’d shared about his mother’s experience with the rune. About runes in general. About the convergence. But Sebastian was just so warm, and my own eyelids had become a little too heavy.
Exhausted myself, I offered no resistance. I let myself sink deep, deep into dark, peaceful waters.
One Day Until Convergence
I awakened still cuddled up to Sebastian, clutched protectively in his arms. An internal light immediately switched on. No gradual remembrance of everything since slipping into oblivion, but sudden awareness.
We were married. I was his queen. We had agreed to search for a way to destroy Jokull without giving Sebastian’s heart to the rune.
And there must be a way. There just must. Because my niggle hadn’t gone away.
Tender and aching and so glad for it, I scanned our surroundings. Oh. His bedroom. No, our bedroom. I remembered us sleepily returning to the palace last night.
Head filling with fairytales, I smiled. He could have deposited me here and gone back to his war and his maps, but he hadn’t. He’d stayed. Because he hated the thought of either of us waking alone. I sensed his residual longing, as if an invisible rope now tethered us together.
Whoa. I knew what he felt. Not just longing to be with me, but an insatiable craving for me. Goose bumps spread over my skin. I even knew what weighed on him. The worry threaded through his hope. How a part of him feared he hadn’t set me up for success but failure.
But he was wrong. I would never be better off without him. And oh my stars, the cave’s azure glow had followed us here. More shocking, the runes on the ceiling and walls were no longer a mystery.
Sebastian had said they would open to me, and open they had, weaving into the matrix of the world. Not as a replacement, but a counterbalance. Where he’d once stood defense alone against the tide, now we guarded this thriving realm together.
Those runes thrummed, each whispering a different language that told the same story. A living anchor. Blood-forged. Realm-bound. Strength taken for weakness, weakness exchanged for strength. A burden for one, breath for the other. Survival entwined.
The meaning presented itself: the dome did not protect him; he sustained it. We protected it. Endlessly. Relentlessly. Its weaknesses became ours. Our strength we shared with it. Together, we kept our people safe.
Well, well, well. I had indeed bonded to the dome.
A smile bloomed, a fierce determination unfurling inside my chest. He protected the people, ja. But he no longer carried that burden alone. I would stand beside him adding my strength.
My purpose. My mission.
I petted his chest. The convergence took place tomorrow, and a sea clock now ticked down in the back of my mind. Above us, the court had gathered for the second night of the rites without us. Tonight they would gather for the third, and when it turned, the rune would wake.
As if to prove it, the waters beyond the dome stirred. I sensed them, too, but it only doubled my determination. Find a way. Protect him at all costs.
“This is how I wish to wake every day for the rest of my life,” he rumbled. “You on top of me, your fire in my head.”
The lines of his face had softened, his hair mussed from sleep. No tension hardened his jaw as he gazed up at me. I’d never seen him like this, so content and relaxed, but I was immediately addicted.
Without dislodging me from my perch, he reached for the nightstand and held up a gold coin hanging from a chain. “This is for you. A coin—and I realize now, it seems as though I’m paying you for services rendered. Oh, wow. I did not think this through.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “It’s supposed to be a gift.”
I snatched it as fast as immortally possible and clutched it to my chest. “Mine?”
He caught my excitement, as if it were contagious, and relaxed. “Only yours.” He gently retrieved the jewelry from my death-grip and wound the chain around my neck, securing the clasp at my nape.
Hot hands, cold metal. Pure happiness. He’d remembered my collection.
“After I became king, I swiped this coin from a merchant who’d stolen it from my father. I kept it to remind myself that mistakes can be fixed, if I’m willing to fix them.”
“I’ll treasure it always,” I said, stroking the coin. A vow I meant with the whole of my being.
Features soft, he stroked the shell of my ear. His gaze dropped to my chest, and a wicked smile spread. “Let me show you something.”
One second he was stretching beneath me, the next he stood behind me, a full-length mirror in front of us. What a pair we made. The towering, muscular kraken, all shadow and ferocity, and the tiny ballerina, all moonlight and hidden fire. White waves of my hair tumbled over my arms. Lips puffy and pink from his kisses, the rest of me soft and pliant and—blue?