Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 71403 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 357(@200wpm)___ 286(@250wpm)___ 238(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71403 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 357(@200wpm)___ 286(@250wpm)___ 238(@300wpm)
His eyes widened. “You love me?”
“So, so much.” I rose onto my toes and kissed him, and for one breath he kissed me back so hard I would feel him for days. Then he pulled away, breathing like a drowning man surfacing.
“Why didn’t I fall in love with a doormat?” he growled, and I chuckled. “I have never once been able to make you do anything.”
“Ja. That’s true.” I stroked his jaw. “And it’s one of my finer qualities, if I do say so myself.”
He didn’t laugh, but he did press his brow to mine. “I love you, Brona. You have a kind heart. You’re brave, and funny, and you aren’t afraid to challenge me. You are my everything.”
I felt his love. His and mine, flowing between us, twining, becoming ours. Overcome, I wrapped my arms around him, holding him tight. My determination drilled deeper. I would do whatever proved necessary to keep him alive and us together.
We stood like that for several seconds. He flattened his palm over the brand, mirroring my action. “Signal me if anything goes sideways. If Jokull even breathes in your direction wrong. Tap thrice, and I’ll come.”
I nodded, throat aching.
“Oath or no oath. Dome or no dome,” he said. “If I think, even for a moment, things have gone badly, I will tear the ocean in half to get you.”
“I know,” I whispered. And I did.
Then I walked away to meet Harpa and face the big bad.
The half-drowned manor sat on a mountain of black rock a hundred miles from anywhere, in a dome of its own. A dome we’d slipped past, as if it were nothing but mist. Every window above the waterline blazed with golden light. He’d lit it like a wedding.
“You have no reason to worry,” Harpa said, sitting across from me in the small boat as we sailed under a darkening sky, through thick fog. “I’m eighty-seven percent sure I can get us out.”
I swallowed a groan. “I’m not worried.” One way or another, we would be leaving tonight. “Have you been where we’re going before?” I asked.
Her eyes flicked to me. “I lived there for many years with my husband.”
“So Jokull chose your former residence for this dinner.” Beyond cruel. The primordial had hidden a weapon within a weapon.
She turned back to the window. “It is a very fine house. Jokull has always had excellent taste.”
Our captain docked the boat. A dock that led straight to the front door, where Jokull waited. I had seen him wreathed in mers and slaughter, a predator surrounded by fire, and I would’ve sworn that was the worst version of him. I would have been wrong. Cleaned up, in dark silks, with his hair bound back and his hands empty and open, he was almost handsome.
He looked like the perfect host.
My dragon roared at first sight, yanking at a chain I longed to let slip from my fingers.
Count the steps. Head up. I was the Pirouette Princess. I had performed for ten thousand strangers with a stress fracture in my left foot and smiled through every bow. I could survive one dinner.
“The Raving Pearl.” Jokull’s smile was slow as we approached, but it never reached the ash-and-gold of his eyes. “You wore green the last time we were together. I’ve only thought about it for six hundred years.”
“You have thought about a great many things, Jokull,” Harpa said, sweeping past him. I stayed close to her heels. “Most of them badly.”
His laughter followed us in.
The hall was magnificent. Candles by the hundred. A table set for three in the dining room with cutlery of blackened silver, plates of fish in citrus, roasted fruits, warm bread—a dragon’s meal and a kraken’s meal, side by side, because of course he had looked into what I liked.
And there, dead center on a pedestal of salt-white stone, sat the rune. I knew it. I’d never seen it, but I knew it, because it hummed to me, beckoning.
My breath stopped. It was smaller than I’d imagined. A palm-sized disc of something that wasn’t quite stone, black and wet-looking, and across its face symbols crawled, rearranging as I watched, refusing to hold still long enough to be understood.
I let my eyes unfocus the way I did when a corps of dancers was moving too fast to track and I needed the shape instead of the steps. The symbols slowed, but the meaning remained just beyond my grasp.
“Excellent,” Jokull said, and I realized with a lurch that he had been watching me, not the stone. “I wondered if you would hear its song.”
I schooled my features. Too late. Ja, I heard the song.
“His mother heard it too.” He pulled out my chair himself, courteous as any gentleman. “Sit, little lizard. We have so much to discuss.”
“Can you not hear the hum?” I asked, removing my cloak and easing down, forcing my attention off the rune. For now.