Page 252 of The Sun He Buried

The man’s arm weakens.

His knees hit the floor.

Baldr takes the strength until the knife drops.

Then he turns and drives his sword through the man’s chest.

“Baldr.”

His face finds me.

The warmth I know is there. So is the man who taught children to hold a bow and caught me before I hit the ground.

Today he has blood in his hair.

“Sól.”

The copper-eyed rogue lunges from beside the crate.

Baldr pulls his sword free.

Purple light fills the doorway.

Eirik catches the rogue by the back of his coat and throws him across the room.

He hits the stone base of the weigh scale. His head bends farther than it should.

Eirik walks in.

The silver mask burns across every rune. Blood covers both his hands. More runs down one sleeve, though the bond tells me the cut beneath it’s shallow.

I know the man from the snow.

I know the man who lay awake while I slept in his bed.

But this is the man from the stories too.

All of them have the same purple eye.

“Hi,” I attempt to wiggle my fingers through the bindings.

His gaze reaches the blood at my temple.

The bond opens wide.

For one horrible breath, I get the moment my terror first reached him. The road pulling him toward a place where I might already be dead.

I can’t breathe around it.

Neither can he.

Varrik moves between us.

“My Dróttin.”

Eirik looks at the red cord.

Then the face above it.