Page 36

“Good.”

The knife left my throat and a hand grabbed my shoulder, spinning me to face my captor. Byrgir’s shirt was still caught around my neck, and the man glanced down quickly at my exposed breasts, a hungry smile appearing on his stubbled face. My stomach turned with the familiar dread of the predatoryattention of an unwanted man, and I reached up to yank my shirt down. The knife was back at my throat with my sudden movement, and my captor roughly pulled me close to him again. I felt the blade cut into my neck and a warm trickle of blood start to flow down my skin.

“Now now, not so fast, darling. Hands out so I can bind them, and then maybe we’ll have some fun later.”

Fear and adrenaline pulsed within me, my mind raced as I tried to think of something, anything, I could do. If I could heat the dagger he held, I could burn him and make him drop it.

I opened my mouth to speak the incantation just as a blade exploded through the man’s chest, the point of it stopping mere inches from my face. The hot spray of the man’s blood coated my skin, and a second spray followed as the blade twisted, final heartbeats pressurizing severed arteries.

I tasted the iron tang on my tongue. Somehow, I also felt its power. Ancient, deep, and roiling. I could feel an energized tingle where it sat on my tongue, my face, my hands, where it mixed with the power I had just begun to summon.

The blade withdrew and the man dropped. Behind him stood Byrgir, and another man with one arm in a sling was running toward us as the huge black shape of Garmr knocked him from his path. Both wolves were on him in an instant. Vardir grabbed his broken arm in her fangs and he screamed. I saw the flash of a long knife as he raised it above her with his good arm, preparing to bury it in her side.

Byrgir struck faster with his bloodied claymore, severing the hand that held the knife at the wrist. Garmr pounced and clamped his jaws around the man’s throat, cutting off his scream. He writhed beneath the wolves until Byrgir spun his sword and sunk it quickly into the man’s chest. I heard his sternum shatter with the force of it. A quicker end than the wolves would’ve given him.

“I warned you,” Byrgir murmured, withdrawing the blood-drenched blade.

I staggered back, away from the fallen man at my feet. I dropped to my knees in the soft moss and put my hands to my face. Sticky and warm.

Byrgir was with me in a flash, kneeling on the soft earth in front of me. His strong hands gripped my shoulders.

“Halja, are you alright?” Deep concern coated his voice. He held me at arm’s length and examined me.

“My… my clean shirt,” I choked out. I looked down at my chest. I was soaked in blood.

Byrgir grabbed my chin and pulled it up so that I looked at him. Then both his large hands were on my cheeks, holding my face and trying to wipe it clean with his thumbs.

“Are you hurt?” He saw the cut across my neck and tipped my chin up to inspect it. He swore.

“No, not really. I don’t think it’s that deep,” I answered in a daze.

He pressed a hand around my throat, gentle but firm, to stop the bleeding.

“Is that too tight?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“Did you bait them in?” I asked.

“Halja I–”

“Did you bait them in?” I repeated.

“Yes.” He met my gaze, the regret brimming in his eyes. “I didn’t think they would be here so quickly. I thought the wolves and I would get to them before they could get to you.”

“You could’ve told me. I could’ve been ready.” All the helplessness I’d felt for the last few days, months, my entire life began to well up. Climbing to a high pressure that was about to burst.

“I thought I would beat them to you. I thought I would be faster, and you’d never even know they were there.”

“I’m not useless!” I continued, snapped out of my shock by my building rage. “I could have helped!”

“I don’t think you’re use–”

“Yes, you do!” I cut him off. “I’m so sick of being helpless! Of nobody telling me the truth. So sick of always being in the dark, being pushed away like some child who has to be protected!” I pushed Byrgir’s chest and stood, leaving him kneeling in front of me. My hand went to my neck as the bleeding he had stopped began again.

“I never lied to you,” he countered. “I’ve been telling you the truth.”

“Since when? Everything I thought was true about you was a lie! You could have told me about the Ironguard the morning after Litha. I barely even know you!”