“Tell me exactly what you said.” He grasped my hands tight. “It’s important.”
“I told it that I wasn’t trying to hurt it. That I knew how to stop the blight, but I needed the weapon.” I interlaced my fingers with his, stealing what strength I could from his touch. “And then I said, ‘I’ll save your kin. I promise.’”
I was bound to Rebellyn’s will. A promise in exchange for her coveted blade. If I ignored it or reneged on my vow, then I’d suffer the consequences. In this case, not confronting Death likely meant that I’d die in exchange.
My options were death or Death.
Rorik closed his eyes. Cursed. “And I’m guessing that you now feel compelled to take the blade to Death and save all Everkind.”
“That’s the gist of it, I believe.” I lifted a shoulder. “It seems I can’t hurt any of her descendants, either. When I saw Zeverin nearly kill you, I lost all control and battered him with my magic. And I felt the vow kick in, but I didn’t care. If it was going to kill me, I was going to take Zeverin down, too.”
“Fuck.” Rorik pressed my hands to his forehead and took a deep breath. When he looked up again, his eyes were steeled with resolve. “We’ll find a way around this. You broke the Fernglove evervow. We can break this one, too.”
I palmed his cheek. “Maybe. But not today. Not with how close I already am to Death’s domain. It’s like the vow knows. It won’t let me walk away without at least trying.”
Rorik watched me for a long moment. Then he moved toward his clothes and began dressing. “I hate this.”
“I know.” I sighed. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize that a dead Ever could invoke a vow like that.”
“You have nothing to apologize for.” He finished with his pants and secured his shirt. “I don’t think even Zeverin would’ve known that Rebellyn could do something like that. I doubt he even knew the blade was there to begin with.” Once his shirt was in place, he parked his hip on the edge of the bed. “You might have been the only one she would’ve shared it with. She trusted you to fix her folly and, in the same breath, protected her kin from the likes of you.”
“The likes of me?” I said, brows raised.
“A threadmender with the power of an Ever.” He shrugged. “It’s never been seen before.”
He held out his hand to me, and I willingly took it. In one smooth movement, he pulled me between his legs and caged me in place.
“But remember, Edira, while you might be the hero Rebellyn has been waiting for, I am not.” A predatory heat lit in his gaze. “A hero would sacrifice you to Death if it meant saving all Everkind. I have no such inclination.” His knuckles ghosted along the length of my jaw until he pinned my chin between his fingers. “If it comes to it, I will bring Death to his knees, sever his very head from his shoulders, and doom my kind to a mortal, painful death if it means I would gain even one more second with you. Blight be damned. Let the world suffer.”
“You’re not alone in that,” I mused as I leaned into his touch. “If you’re in danger, even if it means voiding my promise to Rebellyn, there is nothing in this world or the next that could stop me from getting to you.”
He brought his lips inches from mine. “I guess all we can do is see how this pans out, then.”
“To the grave, remember?”
He kissed me deeply. “To the grave.”
THE ONLY THING WE KNEWabout the entrance to Death’s domain was that it was south and supposedly near the fisherman’s cabin. Butnearwas clearly a relative term, because we’d been walking on uneven, rocky ground for hours and still hadn’t discovered a single brook leading away from the ocean to some secret underground cavern. The cold wind whipping off the swells was a battering ram we couldn’t avoid, and we were constantly sprayed with a fine mist of water as waves crashed into the beach. There was little in the way of life, just an occasional shrub or the scuttling of a crab as it searched for food across the surface. We kept our heads down and moved forward slowly. I’d fed the chain of the sapphire bag through the belt loops of my trousers and secured it to my hip. With every step, it thudded gently against my thigh.
When the sun hit midday, we stopped and drank sparingly from a leather canteen Rorik had found in one of the cabinets. He slipped his hands around my waist and pulled my back flush with his chest, and we stared out at the ocean together. Light bounced off the choppy waters and reflected in the crisp air like a field of diamonds. All I could smell was the tang of salt and the undercurrent of pine as I leaned against him.
“So tell me,” he murmured into my hair, “how exactly you plan on getting close enough to Death to stab him through the heart.”
“I was thinking of pulling a page out of Seville’s book,” I said. Tilting my head back, I looked up at him with a sly smile. “You know, use my feminine wiles to lull him into a false sense of security.”
Rorik snorted. “I’m sure that will work out splendidly.”
“It did with you.”
“Because I’ve always been enamored with you.” He rolled his eyes. “Not to diminish the value of your feminine wiles, but I’m not sure flirting with Death will work. Not after Rebellyn.”
“I know.” I sighed. “I’ve been thinking about that, actually. Death was spurned by Rebellyn. I wonder if we can use that to our advantage.”
“How so?”
“You probably won’t like it.” I bit my lower lip and watched as his brows rose. “But I need you to act like Orin.”
“I hate every word of that sentence,” he seethed.
