Page 3 of The Sun He Buried

Triumph flashes beneath every wall she has.

She believes I’ll let her do this because speaking would expose that I still care what happens to him. She believes she knows me that well.

“Eirik.” Baldr puts enough warning into my name to start a fight without technically starting one. “Sit down.”

I’m on my feet.

She smiles.

I set my cup on the table. It lands inside the woven ring in the cloth. Not a drop spills.

Then I go to her.

Baldr moves between us. He’s always been fast. I’ve always known where he’ll move.

I catch her wrist the instant it clears his arm.

Her fear breaks loose.

I take it.

Anger follows, hot and old, then the satisfaction she carried into the hall. I take those too. Her want comes next—all of it fixed on rank, power, the place beside a Dróttin she decided should’ve been hers. Beneath that sits the tenderness she once had for me and the hatred she built when it failed to buy what she wanted.

I take everything together.

She tries to close her emotional walls. I pull those open and empty what they hide. Every joy. Every grief. The small mean pleasures. The private shame. I keep going until she has no emotion left to give me.

Her eyes stay open.

Her mouth goes slack. She looks at Baldr and gives no sign that his face means anything to her. Her free hand hangs at her side. She’s awake. She can see us. Nothing she sees reaches her.

People recoil from an absence only I can sense.

Baldr says my name again.

I close my other hand beneath her jaw and pull.

Skin tears. Cartilage breaks. Her throat comes away hot in my fingers, and white cloth turns red.

She drops before the first person screams.

Baldr catches her. Blood runs over his hands and down his wrists as he lowers her to the floor. He presses one palm against the ruin in her neck. There’s no point. He knows. He does it anyway.

The room tears itself apart. Chairs strike stone. Human guards pull steel. Half the Skorvær stand, unsure whether they’re meant to protect Baldr from me or me from the humans. Somebody knocks over the musicians’ bench. A woman near the doors keeps screaming. Another scream rises louder.

The mask burns against my face. Every fear in the hall slams into it at once. Rage joins it. Horror. Grief. People who spent the evening lying about peace are honest at last.

Baldr looks up from the floor.

His left eye is the same pale green as mine. His right burns gold.

He doesn’t ask why.

Perhaps he already thinks he knows.

One small person in the far corner doesn’t scream.

She’s crouched beside an overturned chair, tucked between the wall and a human man’s legs. Nine, perhaps. Blonde curls have come loose from whatever pins held them for dinner. Both hands cover her mouth.