He’s quiet after that, but I can sense him closing the distance between us. I started more quickly than him, gaining ground, but I’ve been slowing. My lungs are heaving, even as I try to force them into a steady rhythm, and the muscles that started to ache when I was treading water are burning now.
Still, I make it to shore before he does. Every part of me wants to lie down—or at least lean over—and catch my breath. I don’t because I can’t. Instead, I spare a glance behind me, finding Wregen two man’s-heights away, at the most. Svend is far behind, so at least I won’t have to worry about him.
And I run. I don’t have any idea where I’m going. It doesn’t matter, though. As long as he can’t find me, I’ve won.
My chest pounds as if a sledgehammer is trying to break out from the inside. I need to stop, but as soon as I do, he’ll be there. I may have swum faster than him, but he’ll win in a foot race every time. Even as starved as he’s been, his long legs will carry him toward me faster than I can get away. My only hope is to hide.
Dodging to the right down the first cavern I see, I pray to capricious and neglectful gods that they get their shit together and help me get away. They hate Hel. They can’t want her to have me back. But they probably don’t give a shit. They sure as fuck haven’t done anything in my lifetime to suggest they care about the elves they abandoned long ago.
I might be in luck, though. The cavern splits and the chances of him finding me cut in half. It’s rock here, so I won’t have to worry about my feet leaving visible prints. Darting to the left—the bigger cavern, that I don’t think he’ll expect me to take—I push myself to go faster. I need to turn a corner before he can see me, and get far enough away that my footsteps don’t echo back.
Twice, I stumble, the light that somehow found its way to the large cavern dissipating the farther away I get. And I realize it’s time to slow down. I can’t see a man’s-height in front of me, so he’ll hear me before he can see me.
Finaan?My heart pauses and then starts to sprint, as if its life hangs in the balance, when a whisper of a voice erupts in my mind. It’s barely there. If I wasn’t trying to be quiet and still, I wouldn’t have heard it. But I did. After centuries thinking her dead, my dragon is sharing my mind with me.
Panta? Is that really you?My voice sounds raspy, even to me, and I’m suddenly desperately afraid that I’m imagining this.Speak to me.
“Finaan!” Wregen’s bellow bounces around the cavern, breaking the tenuous connection between me and my beast. “You’re testing my patience,” he spits out as one hand grasps the back of my neck. The other wraps around my arm and yanks me back toward the water. “If you do that again,” he barks, “I’ll bind you. Maybe I’ll carry you over my shoulder the whole way, so I can spank that defiant ass whenever you piss me off.”
“Let me go,” I yell, trying to rip myself away from him. But he won’t be foolish enough to release me this time. I surprised him once. It won’t happen again. Instead, I drag myself to a stop, forcing him to pause with me. “I won’t go back there,” I whisper, throwing every bit of anger and hatred and disgust I feel into my words. “You’ll never have me. Let me go. Please.”
“You haven’t accepted it yet,” he growls as he jerks me toward him, resting his forehead against mine. “You will, though,” he tells me in a voice that sends a shiver down my spine. My stomach gurgles, appalled at how close he is to me and howrightit feels. “We’ll never be apart again.” He pauses, lifting his other hand to fully surround my neck as he squeezes hard enough to still my breath. “I will never let you get away from me.”
“Do you think I’ll accept you? That you’ll break down my will and I’ll grow to love you?”
“Love,” he scoffs. His thumbs press my chin up, lifting my gaze to his. “I can’t give love and I sure as fuck don’t want it,” he rumbles. “What I need from you, my fierce skjaldmær—what I will have—is more enduring than that weak emotion. I want your fight. I hope to my mistress Hel and every other god who will listen that you never accept me. I want you to hate me every day of every millennia we’ll spend together. I crave the dark, angry emotions you’ll give me.”
“You think you’ll have those?” I demand, glaring into his dark eyes. “If you take me back there, you’ll kill that fire you claim to want. Apathy alone will keep you company.”
“We’ll see,” he responds with a smirk. “First, though, we have to get there. And you’ve slowed us down enough already.”
He returns one of his hands to my arm, tugging me in the direction we came, and my stomach sinks as I realize I have no choice. I won’t be able to break away from him until he lets down his guard. But I can’t leave without trying again to reach my dragon.
“Wait,” I bark, digging my heels into the rock below us. “I can’t go yet. Give me a minute.”
“I don’t know what game you’re playing, Finaan, but it won’t work.” His words are short, clipped.
“It’s no game,” I blurt, not trying to hide the frustration in my tone. I hate sharing anything with him—nothing good can come from letting this bastard know how important Panta is to me—but I’ll never forgive myself if I let him drag me away before I try to reach her again.
“It’s my dragon,” I explain after a moment, a catch in my voice exposing the depth of my desperation. “I thought she was dead, but I sensed her while I was in Vanatia. Then, I heard her voice just now, before you caught me. I need you to be quiet for one gods-damned minute so I can see if she’s really here, or if my mind is fucking with me.”
“I wondered if we’d get close enough,” he murmurs, his grip softening a touch. “Nobody’s found them, but nobody’s ever gone where they went.”
My thoughts splinter, the world I’ve come to accept shifting on its axis. I turn toward Wregen and his smug grin tells me everything I need to know. Panta really is alive. For some reason, this fucker knows where she is.
But now he realizes how much leverage he has over me. And what I might be willing to do to ride her again.
Chapter nine
Wregen
Evil Being
Idon’ttrytokeepthe victory from my expression. Or the smile that lifts the corners of my lips, surprising me more than my mate’s reaction. This isn’t the smirk that usually shifts my expression, a product of disdain or pride or some other emotion permitted in Helheim.
No, this is a smile, borne of what might be happiness—or another of those feelings I haven’t allowed space in my soul for more years than I can count. Joy, hope, faith (in anyone or anything other than Hel); they all led to agony in that realm. My liege has no patience for the fragility that comes with pleasure in another being’s company. She always discovered those forbidden bonds and destroyed them. It’s why I never revealed my need for Finaan, even to my mate.
My stomach lurches, the same way it does every single time Hel’s first lesson about friendship sneaks into my thoughts. I’d laughed with a wraith who saw my desolation and pitied me. He suffered as much as any wraith can—suspended over Hel’s pit for days—before she entombed him to decorate her castle. My liege trapped me at the pit’s edge, eyes pried open the entire time and tongue carved away whenever it started to grow back.And then she gave me his pain, ensuring that I felt every bit of agony he endured. I survived, but for a long time, I wished I hadn’t.
