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Somewhere in the haze, strong hands took hold of my arms.
“Blood’s spilling out of his chest!”
“Warrior,” my voice cracked.
“Erik.” Stieg, blurred and distant, looked down at me. “What happened?”
I coughed, tasting the heat of blood on my tongue. Some unseen force was splitting my body apart. One palm covered my chest, desperate to keep my heart in place.
“Did you strike him?”
Hells, that sounded like the earth bender. I didn’t care. Something like a festering disease was cracking my ribs. When I pulled my hand back, fresh blood coated my fingertips.
Through the laces of my tunic, a jagged gash carved through my flesh. I watched in a bit of horror. Tinged in the crimson was a flicker of gold, like a spark of sunlight.
“Don’t touch him.” Tait’s voice broke through the fog. Possible the earth fae were too stunned to hold to him, but soon my cousin’s face was blinking over me. “What did you do to him?”
“I did nothing.” Stieg leaned over me. “How is he bleeding?”
“Touch his blood if you wish to die, warrior,” Tait snapped, thenpointed his attention to the flow of gore down my chest. “Erik, this blood is not normal. This is a curse, some kind of spell.”
A spell. An emptiness. Something inside me was missing.
Like a blade to the heart, the truth struck without mercy.
No, gods no.
The pull, the draw, the slightest hint of comfort knowing somewhere across the seas and skies her beauty existed, wasn’t there.
“It’s gone.” My head slumped back to the floor. I stared mindlessly at the rafters overhead. “Livia . . . our heartbond. It’s gone.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE SONGBIRD
Tears mingled with blood.I grappled for my bodice, desperate to cover my body. My shoulders shook in silent sobs. An ache bloomed through my veins, unyielding. Hot agony, unlike anything I’d known before.
An end, a destruction. A death.
“Skadinia!Stop.” Arion shouted. Wooden legs of his chair skittered across the floor, and steel pulled from leather sheaths.
Blurred through salt and pain, still I made out Skadi’s shape. Beringed fingers splayed, coils of darkness embraced her palms, her arms. Not a shadow, something more. Sea spray beneath a moonless night.
“Stop? You were the one who told me to reach for pain,” she raged. “Perhaps you do not wish me to feel.”
“You’re wrong,” Arion insisted. “Has he sheltered you so fiercely that you did not know pain is due in battle? You cannot go heartless when each enemy cries out in agony. We are fighting for a stronger future of all elven. Why don’t you see this?”
Arion lifted his arms, matching Skadi’s stance. Wicks of candlelightflickered. Flames leaned toward the prince, bent—leapt away. Arion’s hands were as fire.
“The power in her veins was needed, woman,” Larsson seethed. “Your world is secure and unthreatened when the crown of the seas rests on my head. Elven folk will soon hold power in every realm. Why do you resist?”
Blue rage, hot and sharp, burned in Skadi’s eyes. She did not spare a look at Larsson, her ire remained on her fellow elven. “I know what becomes of me when a kinship bond is formed withhim. Do you think I am so foolish not to know you will make me your blade? You will have me wallow in death.”
My mind spun. I did not understand what was happening, only that something had overtaken Skadi. Something about her mists had shifted her into this cruel, venomous woman.
“That is not true,” Arion said, but his lip curled like he was more frustrated than concerned. “You will be my wife, Skadinia. Our affinities will serve each other.”
“You have no desire to serve me, Arion.”
