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“Yes,” Leif said, calmly. “You glimpsed their empire, and then you joined their cause. Afraid I’ll turn traitor like you?”
Ragnar showed his fangs. “You’ve never seen anything like this. If you’re so keen on watching it work, take it back to the palace and have the little Drake do it.”
An image of Oliver this morning, eyes flaring bright, mouth open in a shocked gasp, filled Leif’s mind. Náli had swooned, as he’d predicted, but Oliver and Tessa had been shaking, pale and weak, and looking like they’d just pulled themselves from a sickbed. Oliver had grown into this confident, dragon-riding consort who dressed like them and spoke with pragmatic, savvy confidence – but in that moment, Leif had been reminded of how small he was. Erik had looked ready to jump into the middle of the ritual and grab his consort, hands lifting and lowering again and again as he fought to restrain himself.
He snorted. “And have Uncle skin us both if anything happens to him? No. You did this before, and you were fine – save the whole traitor business.”
“I didn’t–”
“I won’t turn my coat so easily. And should the urge strike you, it won’t matter: you’re mine, now.”
Ragnar’s lips pressed closed, and his brows furrowed. “Yours, eh?”
Belatedly, Leif wondered at his own phrasing – it wasn’t the sort of thing he would have ever said before. But now, with his wolf desperate to split his skin and pad across the carpet on four legs, it felt right. It was true, wasn’t it? Ragnar belonged to him, even if the idea left the human part of his brain squirming away from the…the intimacy of the word.
He huffed a loud breath through his nose. “That’s right. Do as you’re told.”
“Wanker,” Ragnar muttered under his breath. “This is bollocks.”
Leif ignored him in favor of uncorking the bottle, and tipping the mouth of it over the bowl.
The liquid poured out slow and viscous, very much like oil, and the scent boiled up, overpowering. Ragnar made a choked sound, and Leif swallowed down his own rising gorge. It smelled wrong somehow, like something artificially created, strangely akin to the Sels’ black powder.
“You shouldn’t do this,” Ragnar said. “We shouldn’t do this.”
“Shut up.” The bottle was empty, and Leif set it aside on the table. “How do we do this? We just look into it?”
“How should I know? I was high out of my mind last time.”
Leif debated returning to the chest and searching for a packet of herbs, something they needed to ingest in order to make this work, but decided against it. They were here, the bowl was full: might as well have a go at it first.
“Just do it,” Leif said. “We’ll do it together.”
He leaned in over the bowl, and with a growling sigh, Ragnar did as well. Their reflections stared back at them, ghostly in the still, black surface of the liquid, tops of their heads nearly touching. They looked, Leif thought, related, the groomed versus the wild branches of the family. A disconcerting thought, one he chased away in favor of this morning’s ritual. He thought of the three of them, eyes closed, brows furrowed in concentration.
“Are we supposed to…think of anything in particular?”
“How should I know?”
“You were there. They must have offered you some direction.”
In their reflections, Ragnar cocked a single, mocking brow. “Who’s to say it has anything to do with us? We don’t have a shaman here. It probably won’t work.”
“It might.”
“And what do you propose to do? Stare at one another all afternoon hoping something will happen? Because if I’m going to be staring, I much rather it be at someone prettier and less grumpy.”
“Shut up. Just…concentrate.”
“On what?”
“Ragnar.” A sharp growl bled through his voice, and Ragnar, blessedly, quieted down. They stared down into the liquid, both their expressions smoothing.
Leif had no idea what to concentrate on, so, instead, he let his mind wander. Let his gaze go slowly unfocused, looking first at his own face, then at Ragnar’s, then at the smooth, obsidian surface of the liquid itself. It was a bit of a marvel, really. He wondered what it was – what had been pressed, and extracted, and emulsified to create it. Where did the color come from? A berry? A bit of charcoal? But there wasn’t a speck of grit in it, as if it was any form of ground carbon. He tried to envision a process that could create such a thing; imagined a bent, bearded man with a pale, Selesee face hovering over a mortar and pestle, adding bits of dried herb, smashing ingredients he’d never heard of from across the sea. He–
The ground titled beneath his feet. The tent spun around him. A cramp gripped his stomach and he thought he might be ill, nausea slamming into him from out of nowhere. He squeezed his eyes shut, fighting his rising gorge, and when he opened them, he was outdoors.
It was night, stars wheeling overhead in a black sky. Before him, backlit by a raging campfire, stood a woman he’d never met before, one dressed in black that melted toward him through the shadows. Hair dark. Eyes a brilliant blue, familiar somehow. He felt a hand fisted in the back of his tunic, big and strong, just as her smaller, slimmer hands reached toward his face.
