Page 57 of The Sun He Buried

He nods and starts writing.

Another touch. Slower.

Her breath catches, without a sound.

Falki’s bird came at dawn. Three lines.

She’s well.

She’s at Sólvik.

Baldr’s with her.

I burned it before breakfast. Knowing’s done nothing useful.

Pleasure climbs through her. Easy. Trusting. She wants the hands on her—and I know my brother inside that trust.

Damn him.

The marker snaps between my fingers. The whole table goes quiet.

Ketill takes the two pieces from my hand. “You’ve your orders,” he tells them. “Go.”

The clerks look to me.

“Now,” he says.

Chairs scrape. The runner first, then the clerks, then the guards at the door. Ketill sends one to the lower winch and one to the rescue line—finds work for every body in the chamber and shuts the door behind the last of them.

“I didn’t dismiss them.”

“You finished with them.”

Heat tightens again. This time it goes straight through my groin.

I flatten both hands on the stone.

Ketill thinks Falki watches a border and Solveih is a human name I forgot years ago. He’s still put himself between me and the door.

“Move.”

“No.”

Baldr.

His name reaches me without a voice. Her body draws tight around him, each pulse cutting through me. I’m hard beneath the table while my brother takes her apart, a hundred miles of mountain between us, and it changes nothing.

I want my body back.

She trusts him. She has every reason to.

Damn him for being worth it.

I turn and put my fist through the wall.

Stone cracks. So do two knuckles. The pain comes up my arm clean and immediate and mine—the only thing in me that is. I hit it again. A piece the size of my head breaks loose and lands on the floor.

Ketill leaves the wall to me.