Page 2 of The Sun He Buried

No nerves now.

She wanted me here for this.

Lovely.

Baldr gestures to the open seat beside him. It wasn’t open when dinner began. Somebody planned this and failed to mention it to me, which narrows the list of possible offenders to my brother.

She passes Baldr on the way to the chair and puts two fingers against the inside of his wrist.

His trust in me thins.

Only a little. He probably doesn’t notice. Baldr’s used to strength moving through touch, not emotion disappearing beneath it. His shoulders ease. Whatever he was about to think of me loses its edge.

My cup stops halfway to my mouth.

She keeps her fingers there.

I’ve fed from people who asked me to. I’ve taken grief from a mother who couldn’t sleep and terror from a soldier who needed one clear night. I know the exact change in a person when an emotion leaves.

Baldr didn’t ask.

She sits. Her thumb strokes once across his pulse, and another small piece of what he feels for me goes quiet.

“Take your hand off him.”

Nobody at the table moves. The musicians near the west wall continue for three confused notes before the strings stop.

Baldr looks down at her fingers. What she took from him begins to come back.

She withdraws her hand and folds both of hers in her lap. “Good evening, Eirik.”

“Was it unclear?”

“Your meaning is rarely unclear.” Her gaze drops to the cup in front of her. “Your reasons tend to be.”

The human lord beside me leans away. Sensible man. He’s finally done one useful thing all night.

Baldr sets her cloak across the back of her chair. “We’re not doing this here.”

“I’m sitting.” She turns her open face up to him. “He objected to my hand.”

Baldr’s annoyance catches, then softens when she touches his forearm.

There.

She takes it while he’s looking at me.

She takes what my brother feels for me and leaves distrust in its place, one careful mouthful at a time. She’s learned patience since she left Myrkviðr. Learned how little she can steal without anybody seeing the absence.

Anybody except me.

I could tell him.

She is feeding from you.

Baldr would believe me. Whatever sits broken between us, he knows what I can sense. He’d remove her hand. He’d deal with her fairly, because Baldr deals with everyone fairly, including people who don’t deserve the effort.

She looks at me while her fingers rest on his skin.