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“And get torn to pieces by draugrs? Are you mad or just stupid?” she hissed. “I’d rather you tear my throat out. It would be quicker and less humiliating than being ended by a dead man.”
I frowned. “What do you suggest then?”
Fyrcat squinted out the front window. The snow was coming down so thick and fast, it piled onto the hood even at this speed. The wind would fling it up and into the glass once more, obscuring our line of sight. The conditions were treacherous. I stood by my reasoning. It would be safer on foot than in this death trap.
“There’s a tunnel near the train station on the outskirts of town.”
“And how do you know that?” I asked. “Do you use it to perform your blasted rituals?”
Fyrcat let out a bark of deranged laughter. “Yes, I slaughter babies and paint the walls in blood. I invoke my goddess and I pray daily for the death of the Aesir.”
I stared at her. She made a disgusted sound when I didn’t say anything.
“It’s a joke, Skarde. Do you think you could extract your broadsword from your magnificent ass for once and act like I’m a human being?”
“You’re not.”
“Fuck you.” Her eyes blazed with anger as she stared into the blank whiteness outside the window. If I squinted, I could make out the shapes of buildings, but no more than that. “And I use the tunnel to cultivate herbs. Some of them do well in darkness and no one disturbs them.”
It was such an innocuous answer, I couldn’t come up with a reply. It was hard to picture the witch doing anything as innocent as tending a garden.
“And what will we do in this tunnel?” I asked.
“I don’t know; what do you suggest?”
My cock twitched at her words, as if she were inviting the lewdest of all suggestions. She had a way of calling to the thing in my trousers, and I hated her for it. I hated that she’d shoved the thought into my head. With the prospect of death looming so close, it was tempting. It would be a simple matter of hiking her skirts around her pale thighs. Her hair was soft, her quim warm. It would be easy.
And wrong.
“Perhaps I shouldn’t have asked the question,” she said, glancing from me to the erection straining against my trousers.
“I have a mate.”
She laughed again. “Do you really? Because from where I stand, Eir is lost to you either way.”
A snarl ripped its way out of my chest before I could stop it. It was almost deafening in the confines of the vehicle. Fyrcat cringed away from it, hunching over the steering wheel.
“Bite your tongue, witch!”
She took her eyes off the road for a moment, glaring at me with a look so contemptuous, it made my hackles rise, even in human form.
“Think, fool. Even if she is Eir, what then? She’s in love with your brother.”
“She’ll love me too,” I argued. “When she knows the truth, she’ll—”
“She’ll what? Leave Torsten for you? Unlikely.” She shook her head. “You’ve seen how they look at each other. They’re mates, whether you like it or not.” Then she laughed at me. “Don’t tell me you think your brother will share?”
Fury twisted in my chest, and I dug my hands into my sides in an effort not to go for her throat. Lies. Witches spoke them fluently. And yet…
“Her memory has been altered. If she remembers, she’ll feel differently.”
Fyrcat deflated, and whatever sense of indignance had fueled her evaporated. It left her looking smaller, frailer. Dark circles ringed her eyes, and worry lines creased her brow.
“Memories make us what we are, Skarde,” she said quietly. “And Jovi has a lifetime of them. False or not, they have changed her. If you tear down a house and build another over the wreckage, does it change the structure of the new house when you discover what existed before?”
“What are you saying?” I demanded.
She blew out a frustrated breath. “That Jovi doesn’t owe you anything, fool. If she is Eir and she does learn the truth of her heritage, she will still choose Torsten. She loves him.” She looked at me then. “Will you kill your brother to win a woman who doesn’t want you?”
