Page 36 of A Bond in Blood (Blood Bound Duet #1)

Chapter 36

U lrich did not send me off. He did not arrive at the docks. He did not walk me up the plank or order my trunks to be carried.

Olen, however, was tasked to ensure the black vessel went to my island home and my island home only.

I laid in the cot of the ship, my stomach rolling with the waves, watching the sun high in the sky. My eyes went heavy, now used to sleeping during the day, knowing this hour was well past my usual hours of sleep.

The cabin door creaked open, and I turned to find Olen in beast-form staring at me.

“How are you feeling?” his voice rumbled.

“Like I'm going to be sick,” I laughed. “I’m not sure how I’m going to travel in my life if I can barely handle the sea.”

Olen’s canines came over his lip with his smile.

“May I sleep in here? The crew quarters are disgusting.”

“Olen you have been inside of me. Yes, you can sleep beside me.”

His eyebrows rose with amusement and his laugh rumbled throughout the cabin. “Gods, will I miss you.”

I shifted on the cot, patting next to me.

“I won’t fit there,” he laughed.

“We can fit,” I replied. “Please, I have grown accustomed to someone sleeping next to me.”

Olen dropped his eyes but nodded and his massive body climbed onto the cot, pressing me against the wall with the small window.

“Will you be able to sleep?” he asked.

I shifted, turning my back against his, facing the window.

“Yes, actually. I will.”

His breathing slowed quickly, and his light snores picked up, filling the cabin with the sounds. I held my hand to my chest, listening to him. Appreciating his comfort, but wishing I was back in a large bed, in a room in a stone palace, lying beside the man I shouldn’t want.

“Princess.”

I glanced up from the book I’d pulled from the small shelf in the cabin and found Olen at the door. My hand went to my barely aching foot, thanks to Frode’s salves and care instructions.

“Yes?” I asked.

“You’re home,” he whispered.

I threw the book, rising from the cot. I ran through the cabin door and out to the deck of the ship. Wincing at the pressure on my scarred sole.

The sun was bright above the deck and then I saw it, my beloved fjord. The end of the small neck of water we traveled down, opening to the blue my home faced.

I ran to the edge of the ship, leaning over, and watching my village appear.

“Gods,” I sobbed. “Oh my Gods.”

Olen’s paws clinked against the wooden deck. His warm body brushed my leg, and my hand went to his fur.

“Olen,” I sobbed. “What if she is not…?”

Olen’s shoulders shook. “Do not, princess. This ship has been moving at its highest speed. It has only been days since Frode received word and we left Muspell. Do not lose hope.”

I gripped the edge of the ship, unable to accept that I was at the helm of the vessel that had taken me nearly a year before. That I was the one approaching, likely terrifying my people in the distance.

Rain and clouds did not follow us while we made our approach, and instead of screams of fear, my ears pricked at shouts.

Cheering.

Proclamations of excitement.

“They’re waiting for you,” Olen whispered, nipping at my fingers.

My tears were heavy and thick when the gangplank hit the dock. Olen butted his snout to my knees, trying to push me to descend into the echoing screams.

I turned around. “You are coming with me, correct?” I asked.

He shook his head.

“I was tasked with returning you to the dock I took you from, princess. This is goodbye.”

“No,” I cried. “Please at least walk me to my home. Please.”

Olen shook his head once more. “Princess, I would terrify them all. Go home, Brenna. Go home. ”

He backed away and I ran to him, dropping to my knees, wrapping my arms around his thick neck.

“Don’t let it claim him,” I muttered through my sobs. “Whatever it is that he fights. Do not let it claim him.”

Olen was stiff in my arms, his body heaving with his breaths.

“I will do my best,” he growled.

I wiped my tears and stood, watching troll carry my trunks away. Followed by startled shouts below.

I chuckled then shook my head, allowing my expression to shift to my mask of my home’s dutiful princess.

“I will miss you, Bren,” Olen said when my foot hit the gangplank.

I twisted to him, my eyes wide. “What did you just call me?”

He winked then backed away, motioning me forward with his snout.

My hands trembled at my sides when I turned again, making my descent. Into the arms of my joyous people and their relieved sobs.

“My grandmother,” I called out to them. “Please, I must get to her.”

“I will take you.”

Relief, mingled with hate, rose in my chest when I found my father before me with his own tears running down his face.

I said nothing, refusing to argue with the king before his people.

“We must hurry,” he whispered.

I allowed him to take my hand, pulling me through the crowd. But my eyes did not follow him. No, I turned my head, watching the black vessel sail away. Finding the dark creature at its helm.

“She has little time,” my father whispered when we made it back to my childhood home. “She has waited for you.”

I ripped my hand from his grip. “I know where her rooms are.”

He stared at me with shock. “Brenna?”

“I will not discuss the words in my heart right now. I need to say my goodbyes. I need to hold her hand until the Gods claim her. Only after we have burned her body at sea, and said our farewells, will we speak. Do you understand?”

I didn’t allow him the chance to reply before I was rushing through the palace. More like a small home in my eyes after having explored and lived in Ulrich’s stone fortress.

When I arrived at my grandmother's room, my heart was racing. With fear and sorrow. Anger and regret.

I pushed it open, welcoming the familiar scent of her. Of the sweet cakes she always had on her table. The fresh tea, hot and waiting for a visitor.

“My child.” Her voice was a welcome sound.

I rushed through the room, falling onto the bed and into her open, frail arms.

“My child,” she whispered, raising her arms to stroke my hair.

I cried, releasing every broken part of myself into her embrace. Sobbing until her nightgown was soaked, until my sobs could no longer come from my chest.

“You did not come for me,” I cried.

She held me as tight as her weakening limbs could.

“Do you think I could have?” she laughed.

The sound—oh Gods—it broke me in two. A noise I knew like a piece of my soul, but it rattled now. Evidence of her illness.

I sat up, staring into her blue eyes and the wrinkles painting her face. Her hand held mine and I shook my head.

“Why?” I cried. “Why leave me? Why not fight?”

“Did you fight?” she asked before coughing.

I stood, pulling the shoulders of the gown from my body and turned for her to find the scars not covered by my chemise.

“Bren,” she gasped. “What in the Gods?”

“The Gods are silent, cruel beings,” I replied, settling beside her. “I tried. Each day for the first month and several days after. Even when I was thrown in the dungeon to lay on rot and death, I still tried. So, he punished me.”

I met her eyes, finding them burning with pride.

“Yet you live. Does he?”

My gaze dropped.

“Brenna?” she pried.

“He lives. He released me, three months early.”

“Three months?” she coughed again. “No, two months.”

I smiled, like a fool. “He added a month to my service. After the murder attempts.”

Her laughing put her into a coughing fit and I startled. I leaned toward her, helping her sit up to clear her lungs.

“You’ve changed, my child.” She coughed. “A woman stands before me.”

I left the bed, slipping my gown back over my shoulders and turned to her once more.

“I was a woman when I left home.”

She shook her head. “No, you were an obedient daughter in a woman’s body. A quiet shell of a woman. Doing what she was told. Waiting on that dock like a prize to be claimed. You return with scars of torment, a head high in confidence, and something else I cannot quite place.”

“He tortured me,” I replied. “Yet…” My voice went quiet.

“What, child?”

I went to the window, staring at the hills beyond, searching for the bears in the distance. The ones that would not yet come close to our village with heat still in the air.

“I wonder what he is doing now. I imagine him walking through that stone palace with his creatures at his side. Barking orders, claiming deals he started.”

My heart tightened. “I wonder why he left me there in that courtyard and if we were supposed to end this all with the spilling of my blood.”

“Tea and cakes,” my grandmother’s demand pulled me from my spiral.

I obeyed, gathering her sweets before climbing onto her bed and setting a small tray on her lap. Her hands rose to pour the tea like she had every day of my life, but her arms shook. A clear indication of her quickly losing her strength. My hands wrapped around her wrist, stopping her.

Her eyes were full of sorrow when she met my gaze, but I nodded my chin, letting her know she was okay to give up this sacred rite we’d shared for the last one-hundred and fifty years. Reluctantly, her hands passed me the pot and I poured our tea, making sure to leave hers with less liquid so she could lift her cup. I laid beside her, leaning my head on her shoulder while she brought her drink to her lips.

My heart grew heavy at the familiarity and comfort of it all. A new painful reminder that soon I would have more mornings without our tea and whispers. Mornings without the sound of her harsh laugh. Her stern lectures. Her loving advice.

My tears fell again. Quiet, barely falling onto her frail shoulder.

“Is he handsome?” she whispered.

I laughed at the question. “Grandmother,” I scolded.

“Entertain a dying woman, Brenna. I need to know. The curiosity may take me to my grave the longer you refuse to answer.”

I scoffed at her jests and sat up. “He has handsome features. Thick hair, a groomed beard, inked skin that is—” I paused, finding her eyes wide. I shook my head.

“I cannot have this conversation with you.”

She sipped from her teacup slowly. “I entirely disagree.”

Biting my lip, I chuckled. “His inked skin is like a spell to the eyes. Pieces of art that are beautiful, sorrowful, and horrifying.”

“Go on,” she whispered, picking up a small cake.

“But I have yet to see his face.”

She choked on her treat.

“What?”

“He wears masks , grandmother. Every single day. Blocking me from seeing nothing more than a small bit of skin on his nose and his eyes behind them. I have never seen the upper half of his features. Besides the few times I’ve seen the top of his forehead, I have no idea what his brow looks like or his nose. Or how his jaw, hidden by his beard, fits with the rest of his face.”

“My Gods,” she whispered. “How exciting.”

I laughed. “There is no light that breaks through his darkness. When we climbed into our bed each night, the lights were gone, and I could not see him.”

“Our bed?” she asked, raising her brow.

“My service was to sleep beside him each night. An odd request.”

She coughed and pointed to the mantle on her hearth.

“Bring me that.”

I turned my head, following her direction to a long box. Glancing back at her, I cocked my head. “What is it?”

“Get off this bed and go and grab it, child. I cannot.”

I bit my lip at her sternness, my body flooding with love at the familiarity to it.

Once again I was climbing off the bed, fetching her something. When I returned, I held the box out to her. She stared at it, not reaching for it.

“Open it.”

“What?” I asked.

“Open it, Brenna.”

I did as I was told, lifting the lid and finding one black candle and a glint of gold beneath it. I lifted the candle from the velvet fabric, finding a gold coin underneath.

“What are these?” I asked.

She held out her hands, finally asking for her items. “I’ve kept our family’s most hidden secret. Every woman in our lineage has.”

“What?”

She hushed me, holding up the black candle with her frail hands, studying it.

“There is a woman’s mark on these. A kind of magic I have never experienced. A knowing, the only kind that comes from a woman’s mind. And this coin?” She held it up. “Gods, do I wish to know where it came from. The weight of it, the markings. Again, a woman’s marking on it as well.”

I sat on the bed once more, holding out my hands.

“My secret,” she paused, “the secret of the women, the one I was to give to Frey before that cursed night.”

I choked at the mention of my mother.

“An ancient, mortal woman in our family was given these. A gift to honor her new marriage to a fae king. The gifter has been lost to history, but she was told to hold them until the time was right. That the women of our family would know that moment; when a warmth and buzz of a deal being completed would settle over them.”

“Grandmother,” I whispered.

“A deal once made,” she muttered. “Brenna, take them.”

I shook my head. “What am I supposed to do with them?”

She shrugged, “I do not know. I only know that warmth is around me now, my child. Confirming my years of keeping it secret are done. That no other woman in our family will need to carry this burden.”

I gripped the candlestick and the coin, noticing a warm hum from the gold. Not knowing what it meant but understanding the finality of this moment. That it was this stern, quiet woman’s goodbye. Passing yet another thing to me, marking another part of my soul with a part of her.

“Tell me more,” she patted her shoulder. “Tell me of how you have changed.”

I returned to my spot by her, placing the candle and coin on the table before wrapping my hands around her cold grip.

I told her everything.

I told her of the dungeons, the clock room, the hallways. I told her of the parties and the openly, moving bodies.

She had gasped, begging for more details.

I told her of the Rite, of that horrible night when I had been a fool. Of the sacrifice I had unintentionally stopped.

I told her of Olen, my beastly, irritating companion.

But I told her no more of Ulrich. Not of his smile or his laugh. Not of his secluded beach or the maps I had drawn for him.

I did not tell her how he had brought his library back to life at my request, even if he had not admitted it. Even if he had only allowed me to silently notice the changes in the room I worked in each day.

No, I kept him locked inside of me while I attempted to wash those soft feelings I had with the hate still in my heart. I tried to re-write my memories of the man, reminding myself of the pain he inflicted for his own pleasure and gain.

When my voice had grown raw, and I was unable to speak any longer, we both fell asleep. With my head on her shoulder and her hand in mine.

The only mother I knew, repairing my broken heart with her touch. When I woke, hours later, her grip was no longer tight. Her hand, while cold when I’d fallen asleep, was now a temperature I could not describe.

A new kind of cold.

A lifeless one.

My wail echoed throughout my home. Adding to the cracks of the walls. Shattering through the air like the pain shattered through my heart.

She was gone, and I was left alone. With only memories, a candle, and an odd gold coin to accompany me.