Page 27

Hakon leaned his elbows over the stern of the ship, his eyes tracing the intricate threads of sea foam in the wake that was being pushed out from under them.

The water in his blood, the galder that coursed through him, thrummed to life the longer he watched until the only thing he could hear was the crashing of the ocean.

The sun was nearly touching the horizon, the long day finally coming to an end and bringing knee-shaking relief as he realized they had been successful.

Herrick was freed, asleep below deck with Maude in his arms. He had just checked in on them, his brother's words pounding in his head relentlessly these last few hours since he had stormed out of the confined space. They had not landed easy on his soul.

You're angry.

Herrick didn't understand the half of it.

He felt like a live wire, always ready to snap at any provocation.

The alcohol had become a balm to his furious temper, the only way to soothe that raging tides in his soul.

He couldn't allow himself to be close to anyone again, he'd realized in his drunken stupor these last few weeks.

Losing Eydis had carved out an essential part of his soul that he couldn't access anymore.

He wasn't sure he would even want to if he had the chance to retrieve it.

When she had died, she had taken everything good about him with her.

There had been a moment in Dagsbrun when they had all sat at a table, their collective grief knitting together a bond that he had felt deep in his bones, where Hakon had felt the most at ease.

Despite his grief, Hakon thought that he would be okay with his friends and his brother at his side.

He had seen a better future laid out before him.

Then, Maude left them behind and permanently shattered that illusion.

Her abandonment showed him just how fleeting their lives were.

Hakon couldn't depend on anyone else to bring him comfort.

Herrick may have been the one in love with Maude and may have felt her absence more keenly than the rest of them, but that hadn't stopped Hakon from feeling the poisonous sting of her betrayal.

He thought they had been friends, had thought she felt the same rightness he had felt in that tavern.

Liv had been hurt by Maude's actions as well, even if she had forgiven her for it already.

The haziness of alcohol clouded the memory before Hakon could grip it again, and he was left only with the residual hurt from those early days.

Yes, he was angry with Maude. Yes, he was angry with Herrick for stupidly sacrificing himself.

But those emotions paled in comparison to the disappointment he felt in himself for pushing them all away even as they tried to amend for their mistakes. Hakon had already forgiven them— he just couldn't forgive himself.

He had fallen into a toxic spiral of hatred and self loathing, not allowing himself to feel the love and support his friends were trying to give him. He was unable to allow himself close to them again.

He could not visit Gunnar if he was still going to die.

He could not let Maude back in if she was going to change her mind and leave them again.

He could not accept Liv's truth in the face of all her lies even as he knew she only lied to protect her people.

But mostly, he couldn't let himself feel anything else because his anger was the only thing fending off the grief.

As the horizon swallowed up the sun, the orange and red beams painted the sky with a gorgeous blur of color. Before, Hakon would have taken a moment to appreciate the view of the sunset from the water they sailed on.

Now, he could only continue to stare into the depths of the dark ocean and wonder if his soul now matched the inky darkness that expanded before him. He wondered what it meant that he felt his disappearing into the abyss would be the greatest gift he could give his friends.

Maude became aware of a few things when she finally roused enough to realize she had not burnt herself out to the brink of death.

She was wrapped in a tight embrace, the hold familiar and comfortable, while her legs were tangled up between theirs.

It was soft where she lay, the gentle rocking making her feel weightless, telling her she was back on the longship.

Her eyes flew open as she remembered the last thing she did before darkness swelled. She had created an opening in the ground separating her friends from the oncoming Flame Soldiers and used earth galder to do it, something she had never done before.

As her eyes adjusted to the darkness of the cabin below the deck of the longboat, Maude realized her cheek was resting on the bare skin of someone’s chest, her head rising and falling in a steady cadence.

Her hand rested a few inches from her nose, her light-bronze skin mingling in the shadows against Herrick’s familiar golden pigment.

He was on his back, and Maude was cradled up against his chest, his arm wrapped around her waist, gripping her hip tightly as if she might disappear.

She relaxed for a moment, closing her eyes and taking the time to enjoy this moment of quiet calm between the two of them.

They were headed back to Nida, and Maude knew she would need to tell Herrick everything he had missed, including why she wasn’t actually dead like he thought she was.

The shock on his face when she had gotten to him during his escape had almost leveled her.

It was like he had seen a ghost, and Maude knew she couldn’t blame him for the reaction.

He would likely begin to spiral after they all had a moment to calm down, so Maude took these few moments of peace and savored them.

Tentatively, she ran her fingers over the sculpted muscles of his chest, tracing the head of the dragon that scaled his arm by memory.

When her fingers tripped over new divots and overly smooth skin, Maude paused.

She ran her fingers again over the scarred skin and opened her eyes again, dread filling her.

Maude lifted her head slowly so she did not wake Herrick and found the horrible truth permanently branded into his skin.

In neat, even lines the length of someone’s finger on each side of his chest were burns that descended from Herrick’s collar bones down to the lowest ribs.

The deep purple of freshly healing burn marks screamed at her, the puckered wounds cutting through the beautiful artwork and runes that had once been inked into his chest.

Some of the scars were older and healed more than the others closer to his stomach, but the newer ones looked like they had been treated with some sort of salve.

She sniffed and detected aloe vera still saturating his skin despite the obvious signs that he had cleaned up a bit.

They were almost completely healed— to the naked eye, they wouldn't see anything amiss with the flow of his skin.

But Maude knew his skin better than her own.

The marks that disturbed her the most, though, were the long, thin scars that had been seemingly healed multiple times.

The location of these wounds ranged from his wrists to the side of his neck and down to the tops of his thighs.

She wasn't sure what they indicated, but they had certainly not existed before his imprisonment.

He flinched at her fire, she remembered.

When they had been in the servant's halls, Herrick had reeled away from her flames as absolute terror gripped his features.

She felt like the air had been stolen from her lungs when she saw the dread and the crippling fear that shadowed his usually glowing golden irises.

From his jaw all the way down to where his trousers hung low on his hips, Herrick's skin had been permanently branded by the things he had endured in those cells just as much as his soul had. At the order of her father—

No. She would never claim that monster as her kin again after what he did to her beast. Nausea roiled in her gut for a second before all-consuming wrath burned in its place, chasing the sick away.

She was going to kill him. She would destroy him for what he did to Herrick.

Her skin began to heat, the blood in her veins boiling with outrage toward Helvig. Maude hastily untangled herself from Herrick’s grip and leaped for the door. She needed to be in the open air; she was too close to erupting.

Barely sparing a moment to check that Herrick still lay asleep on the bed, Maude sprinted toward the stairs that would bring her up to the deck.

A few curious eyes followed her movements, but they all let her go, probably seeing the crazed look in her eyes as she ascended the narrow stairs.

The salt from the ocean hit her first, then the starlight from the night sky above her.

A few shouted her name as she surfaced, but Maude ignored them all as her eyes found the tall mainsail in the center of the longboat.

She quickly climbed to the top, not stopping for a moment to look out over the pitch black water or see who had been calling for her.

It wasn't until she perched herself on top of the sail that she finally took deep, gasping breaths and tried to center herself.Her galder was threatening to explode out of her, but she couldn’t be sure that she wouldn’t burn the ship down in her rage.

Maude tried to focus her fury into the shadows around her and found a soothing sense of peace in the void that exploded out of her.

Too disturbed by the feel of burnt skin under her fingertips, she couldn’t feel impressed by how she managed to wrangle the shadows around her. Instead, the sight of the even burn marks on Herrick’s chest flashed behind her closed eyes.

It was her fault. He had gotten close to her and had gotten hurt because of it. He had been tortured because he followed her into the palace. It always came back to her.