Page 101 of The Sun He Buried

Baldr’s eye.

The coffee cup tips in my hands.

Asta catches the bottom before it spills.

The man takes the empty chair at the head of the table. Nobody pulls it out for him. Nobody speaks.

Baldr’s hand leaves my knee. “You found breakfast.”

The purple eye moves to him. “The hall is full of wonders.”

Ketill folds the page. “We had begun to mourn.”

“You recover quickly.”

His gaze reaches me.

Snowpetal abandons her venison.

She walks beneath the table and stops beside Eirik’s chair. Her white nose lifts toward the silver mask.

Eirik looks down.

Snowpetal looks up.

Nobody warns either of them.

“Your animal is considering my leg.”

“She does that.” Snowpetal leans in and sniffs his boot.

“Has she finished one before?”

“Not an entire one.”

He looks back at me. “Reassuring.”

Snowpetal sits on his boot.

Ketill presses his lips together.

I forget the coffee.

The purple eye. The pale-green one. Baldr’s face above the mask.

No.

Oh, gods.

Baldr looks between us. “Sól, my brother. Eirik.”

The dinner breaks open inside my head. Blood over Baldr’s hands. A child’s fingers gripping my arm. One silver mask turning toward me.

Then the study. The same silver. His hand under a woman’s dress.

Same man.

Same eye.