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)
The stone didn’t fight the fire, either. It welcomed it, melting into Sebastian’s heart, the two flowing into each other on the currents of my flame. Those currents ran back into me through the brand, and the three of us became one. Water, fire, stone. And the rune understood.
Beneath me, Sebastian drew a breath that shuddered all the way down. “Brona.” Bewildered. Wrecked. The gray broke in his eyes, and the sea rushed back in.
A cry of relief wrenched from me. For centuries the rune had waited in the dark to be let in somewhere. Centuries of asking permission and being refused, of hollowing out the ones who said ja, because a stone with no heart of its own could only ever steal the place of one. Now it had two.
The ancient relic had a wife, and a husband, and a realm, and a bond that no primordial had ever accounted for. For the first time since the world was young, the convergence rune had something to lose. And there, behind us, reassembling itself out of ash, was the thing that wanted to take it.
Ours? the stone asked.
“Ours,” Sebastian and I said in unison.
Jokull sputtered. “How did… why… what did…” With a snarl, he lunged for us, no longer content to play.
I unfurled my smokewings, burning him to ash. Ja, he immediately began to re-form, but I hadn’t done it to kill him. Only to buy a few extra precious moments.
Sebastian rose, and I rose with him, and for the first time since the artifact had swallowed his heart, we acted as one.
Jokull ran for the wall, his claw already moving, carving the shape of a door out of the stone—the same unhurried lines he’d drawn for me, except nothing about him was unhurried now.
A glowing tentacle from Sebastian seized his wrist an inch from the final stroke.
He tore free, ripping his arm loose and leaving a strip of himself behind, just so he could keep carving with the bone.
“Sebastian,” I gasped.
Fire and water went out of us together and caught Jokull mid-line. Water sheeted over his carving hand, and my flame followed it, and where the two met on his skin, they didn’t burn or drown but set, hardening into a gray crust that sealed his fingers to the wall. He wrenched away. Left the hand.
Then he came at us, a hundred whip-thin shadows opening out of him at once. They went through the table. Through the ceiling. Through Sebastian’s shoulder and my thigh. Pain exploded across the bond, the wound aching in two bodies. Still, we fought on.
We stopped being two people and a rune fighting a monster and started moving as one. Fire and water and stone.
Jokull could not keep up. His head snapped toward the cage. “Harpa,” he called out, almost a prayer.
“Nei, primmy,” she answered from behind the bars, filing her claws. “Not this time. Not any time.”
He turned back to us and threw everything he had left. Every shadow, every limb, every ounce of a creature that had eaten his own people for six hundred years, all of it in one final, screaming reach—and we let it come, closing around it, clinging tight.
The reaching stopped. Then the screaming. In seconds he was engulfed, throat to crown, arms flung wide in a shape that would outlast the manor, the dome, and probably the sea itself.
Encased. Melded. Still, at last.
“Is he trapped or dead inside the stone?” I asked. We stood in ruin and rain, my body throbbing with aches and pangs, but at least the collapse had ceased.
“Both. Finally.” A small, unmistakable clang came from the far end of the dining room. “And now, it’s my turn.” Lady Harpa gripped two iron bars and pushed them apart. She emerged from the cage, adjusted her leathers, and tucked one loose strand of hair back into place before crossing to the primordial.
She looked him over. “By the way. The cupcakes were dry,” she said. Then she put her fist through his chest, and Jokull shattered.
The pieces lay scattered apart, making no attempt to reunite.
Chapter
Twenty-Six
A kraken will give you everything you ask for. Be very careful what you ask for.
–An Incomplete Guide to Kraken Survival
We returned home from Jokull’s with our bodies battered and exhausted, but we were finally, finally free of the nightmare. Sebastian escorted me down the long hallway to our rooms in silence. Actually, the whole palace felt unnaturally quiet.
Why did Sebastian feel farther away than he had on the battlefield?
I stepped inside, expecting him to follow me. Wanting, needing to talk and to cuddle and to kiss, and to just be with him.
But he didn’t come inside. He remained in the hall, close enough that I felt the heat of him, but his shoulders were rigid, his hands fisted at his sides. His gaze traveled over my face, as if memorizing every detail before dropping to my mouth. For one agonizing heartbeat, naked longing broke through.