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I nodded. “Broke the mating agreement.”
“Larsson showed his face not long after, Erik. I’d give my damn voice and say that was when they stumbled upon each other.”
Dammit. It was like all I’d known, every breath I’d taken, was built from one deadly lie.
“He murdered his own mother.” Livia closed her eyes but raised a finger to me. “Don’t you dare.”
My lips were already half-parted. “What?”
“Don’t you dare insist you did the same. It isnotthe same.”
“Bonekeeper’s a lunatic,” Celine insisted. “Damn unfeeling wretch.”
“But to don the blood crown he needed one final thread to split from the protection against him.” I brushed a knuckle down Livia’s cheek. “The last piece of Thorvald’s power of the Ever, our heartbond. That was why it took so long for him to truly strike. He needed the Chasm to open as fiercely as me.”
“But it was our bond, not your father’s.”
“It originated with Thorvald,” Narza said glumly. “It was the same power that cast the wards against the crown. He would need it.”
Livia hugged her middle. “After I came to the Ever, I’m certain that’s when Larsson reached out to his elven kin. Skadi . . . she said Arion refused to act until a battle was certain, until Larsson was prepared to claim his throne. Once the elven were on his side—”
“He took you,” I said, tongue a lash.
Larsson, for all his scheming, all his plotting, would die for that act alone.
The mirror spell faded with Narza’s hurried assurances the House of Mists would always stand at my side, but a new unease built on the shore. As though no one truly knew what to think, what to say.
I strode out of the cove. “He’ll come for the crown soon. Hebelieves his power with the elven will outmatch ours. We don’t have much time to build our plans.”
“Erik,” Livia whispered. “Not everyone who is there stands with him.”
“What we know is Larsson has dark magic, and the lot of it rests with his kin.” I pressed a palm to her cheek, stroking her warm skin with my thumb. “I’m not a hero, love. I’m not here to save them. I’m here to keep you breathing, damn the rest. There is no point in trying to get me to waste time thinking of possible ways for elven to live—I will only see you and your life. These are the darker pieces I warned you about.”
“I’m not afraid of your darkness, Serpent. I’m already consumed by it.” Livia kissed my fingertips. “But some will deserve a chance, if it is possible.”
Gods, the things I wanted to do to her. The way she looked at me, unbothered by the lengths I would go to keep her at my side.
A chance. I was not completely heartless. I’d offer a chance to see the woman who’d tried to fight for Livia safe, but if it meant harming my songbird in the process, I’d tell the earth bender to sink the lot of them into the abyss of the Ever Sea.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
THE SERPENT
Livia foundme beneath Nightfire and his lover. Half the moon was buried in murky clouds, and added a brighter glow to the edges of the lost star.
“Wanting to be alone?” She strolled through the gentle laps of sea on the sand, feet bare and a wisp of a dress over her body. Thin linen, shoulders bare, a few laces keeping her breasts covered.
I’d never seen a more beautiful creature in my life.
“No.” I scooted to one side and smoothed out the sand near me. I rested my forearms over the tops of my knees and kept my eyes locked on the symbols in front of me as she nestled close.
“What is this—bleeding gods.”
“I often have the same reaction when I come out here,” I said, venom laced my words. “My father’s burial marker often stirs all types of emotions and exclamations.”
“I didn’t know it was here.” Livia hesitantly traced the pearl stone, the symbols of Thorvald’s title.
His body was long gone in the seas, but Harald erected his marker the moment we’d returned to the Ever. Untended since my uncle’s death, now thick sea moss coated the backside, and grass andbriars climbed the edges like knobby fingers desperate to drag it to the hells below.
