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“You can let go of me now,” Maude said to him, squirming in his hold. Her movements were only making his desire more prominent, so he tightened his hold around her waist, fingers splaying out across her belly. His fingers begged him to move them lower, down to her very center.

“Never,” he said in her ear, voice low and full of need.

He saw her flesh ripple with goosebumps, and he knew he was not the only one affected by their proximity. He slid his hand from her stomach and rested it on her leg, dangerously close to the apex of her thighs. Maude shifted slightly under his touch. Herrick looked to the group ahead of him to see if they were still out of earshot before he used his other hand to brush her braid from her neck, the sweat from their fight and the relentless sun causing her charcoal-stained hair to run a bit.

“I’m never letting you go,minn eldr. Not for anything or anyone,” he whispered again into her ear before daring to tug on the lobe gently.

Maude let out a small gasp, arching her back as he placed a gentle kiss beneath her ear. He swallowed a groan at her movements and how they affected him so viscerally. A small smile played on her lips.

“We’ll see,” she echoed back to him.

9

The ride to the southernmost point of the Bone Chasm was an almost painful one for Maude. Herrick had pulled her closer to him in the saddle and she had quickly felt how aroused he had been when they had been teasing back and forth. She couldn’t deny that she had also reacted to his touch; when he bit her earlobe, she had almost gone completely feral and taken him right there. All her concentration had gone into remaining where she sat, ignoring the hand that was so high on her thigh that she was molten within.

When they finally stopped to rest before they headed through the Dead Waste, Herrick had dismounted first, and she saw the purely male arrogance on his face. He had extended a hand to help her, as he always did, but she had swatted it away and jumped down on her own. She looked past his shoulder, spying the cliff they were standing on, and made her way over to it.

Maude froze when she realized they were not standing on a cliff but rather the lip of the Chasm itself. She looked down into the opaque darkness that started a few hundred feet below her and got a little dizzy, unable to comprehend just how enormous this chasm was before she was standing right in front of it.

She let out a quick breath as she took in the massive piece of her land's history, the distance between each edge so far from where she was standing that she couldn’t see the western side of it.

It took her a moment to absorb that the Elven King of Light had wielded the power of the sun and created this hole in the earth to stop the kingdoms from fighting. Sadness crept through her at the thought of that sacrifice and how, only two hundred years later, they were on the precipice of another war.

Maude had left religion in her past— the temple visits, the solstice celebrations, the Norns who wove their fates. She had lived for ten years in the present, foregoing sacrifices to the gods and ignoring her fate. But now, in the presence of the massive chasm that lay as a tombstone for the Elven King of Light, Maude pressed her index and middle finger to her lips, crouched before the drop-off, and laid them on the dirt.

Whispering a few words of prayer for the Elven King, she drew runes for Freyr to bring peace in death for the male who had been a warrior until the end. She prayed he was in Odin’s great halls now, shining brighter than the sun ever could.

Standing from her position near the ground, Maude turned back to the small camp her companions had erected. The hours they had traveled since their morning skirmish with the desert raiders had passed quickly; the afternoon sun hanging high in the sky made the barren lands around her feel open and raw.

Before she could make it more than a few steps, Maude felt a presence hovering over her shoulder, dampening the sounds of her surroundings. She froze, the presence behind her bigger than the yawning chasm below, shifting to her other shoulder to demand her attention. Awareness shivered down her spine, eyes on the back of her head sending warning bells into full swing.

Daring a glance, Maude peeked out of the corner of her eye and spotted a moving shadow in her peripheral vision. Before she could fully turn and look over her shoulder, the presence hanging over her was gone, and theshadows evaporated. Sounds belonging to her travel companions returned as Maude was alone on the chasm’s edge again.

They had stopped by a small lake that fed into a larger river a few leagues away. The water was calm enough that the group took turns washing in the cool water before continuing their journey to Dagsbrun. They planned to stay overnight by the lake before they headed out in the morning.

Maude said she would bathe last, as she needed to create more charcoal to rub into her hair. She sat down in the dry grass and built a small fire that she lit with hergalder, letting the wood burn nice and hot. Herrick sat down next to her sometime later, unsurprisingly, and started shaking the water from his long curls, splashing her with the droplets.

She smacked the side of his arm and tried to hide her smile. Herrick laughed and poked her in the ribs.

“You’re going to laugh again.”

“Absolutely not. I was amused at the fact that you looked like a rabid dog shaking your hair like that. I thought it suited you.”

Herrick laughed again and made a loud barking sound that drew the attention of their group. Maude bit her tongue again, forcing herself to stay neutral.

“What are you doing, anyway?” Herrick asked as he adjusted the ties on his boots.

“I’m making charcoal,” Maude said, the breeze swirling around them, stoking the fire.

“For your hair? We’re far enough out of the city now that you can let it wash out to whatever color it is.”

“Why do you care how I wear my hair?” She asked sharply, ignoring that he had realized she was disguising herself because, of course, he had noticed.

“I’m just curious. You always wear your hood up anyway. It’ll be covered well enough out here.”

She wanted to ignore the logic in his statement. She had lived so long with her hair colored black that she felt exposed without it. Perhaps he was right, though, and she should wash it out now that she was the furthest away from the Kingdom of Flame she had ever been before. She said nothing to him, only kept the fire burning.

With a flash of his hands, Herrick pulled the water from his hair and directed it to her fire, dousing the flames and ruining the wood she had been burning. His dark hair shone in the sunlight, revealing strands of gold that peeked through its regular, practically pitch-black darkness.