Page 38

For hours, he tried to figure out any possible reason for why Maude would stop him, but he came up empty.

Pacing around the small space, he ignored every person who came down to check on him.

He'd bound up his bloody knuckles but had left the glass on the floor, the crunch of it under his restless boots becoming broken music to his cascading raging thoughts.

Only when the sun had set over the horizon and plunged them all in darkness did Maude finally seek him out.

The room was bathed in moonlight, the only source of light in the small cabin until she entered with a thick pillar candle that danced with her golden flames.

He ignored the flickering light as she burst through the door without knocking.

"Listen, beast, we need to—" Maude cut herself off as she looked around the room and found Herrick surrounded by crushed, bloody glass. "What in Odin's name happened here?"

Her fingers twitched around the handle of her dagger, her moss eyes flicking around the room to search for a threat that was not there. She would have to look no further than Herrick sitting on the bed, deflated in the wake of his outburst of rage.

Neither of them spoke but the longer they stewed, the more his anger swelled inside of him.

"Do you have any idea what you did when you protected that bastard?" he asked her, his eyes downcast as he ignored her question. He was afraid that if he looked at her, his anger would dissolve and he would never get her to understand why he felt so acutely about this.

"I can't explain it," she said softly, taking a few steps toward him. "I couldn't let him die. There is more to him than I think we know right now. The fates pushed me to protect him, it was all so instinctive."

He couldn't believe what he was hearing. Shaking his head slowly as if trying to make her words fit in his mind, Herrick looked up at Maude before he spoke again. He tried to swallow the shaking in his words, to hide the anger in them.

"No," he bit out angrily. "You don't just get to pick and choose when you follow the Norns and their plans. You don't get to spend a decade running from your fate just to follow it now and use it as an excuse for protecting that vile excuse of a human."

Herrick watched Maude's features started to harden the more he spoke.

She did this when she knew he was right but couldn't admit it.

Now would normally be when he would crack a joke and say that she was only angry because he was right.

But he was too furious to be anything but consumed by the outrage of her betrayal so he kept spewing his anger at her.

"You saw what they did to me in those dungeons, Maude. You've seen the burns but do you actually understand what it was like? You were dead and my family was scattered. I had nothing but my strength to hold on to and the memories of you— of us together— keeping me from falling apart."

She flinched at his words but he kept going, unable to stop now.

"And when you freed me, I swore to him that I would be the last thing he saw before death."

Maude stepped forward now, her legs between his knees as her hands moved to rest on either side of his face. He closed his eyes as her fingers wound through his hair and stroked the planes of his face, her short nails scratching against the growth there in a pleasant way.

"You of all people on this ship— in this world— know my word is all I really have. And today, you took that from me," he continued, smothering his love for this woman even as she clawed her way back into his heart.

Unbidden, his hands roamed up her thighs and over the swells of her hips until they rested on either side of her waist. He leaned forward now, his forehead resting against her soft stomach as he tried to hide the burning that had taken up in his throat.

His mind might have been angry with her, but his body was searching for solace in hers.

Herrick had never been at war with himself like this before.

"I need to understand why," he finished roughly, his throat closing around the nickname he had for her like he couldn't stand to get any closer to her until she answered. "I need to know why you didn't chose me today."

Beneath his touch, Herrick could feel Maude tremble as she tried to breathe evenly. They were coming up on a precipice where their relationship— their trust— would swing one way or the other.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, her voice cracking as her hands tightened around him and her body curled around him. "I wish I could explain better than I have, I don't know how to do this."

He could feel the shield he used to protect his loved ones start to wither away when he'd realized that Maude had chosen to protect Baldr instead of him.

Only, once the barrier was gone, he realized that the shield he'd created was not one of strength or love, but one made entirely of himself.

And now he hung in ribbons as the final blows shattered everything he was until there was nothing left of the honor bound and justice driven man he had made himself to be.

Herrick could not look at her. He knew himself too well to know that he would look at her stunning face and be lost in her, as he had been from the first day he knew her.

His anger was still so close to the surface and Herrick wanted to burn in it for a while longer.

He told himself that he didn't care what she had to say.

"I can't keep getting lost in you," Herrick said through his teeth as he pulled away from her and stood hastily. "And after today, after what just happened with Baldr, I'm not so sure I even want to."

Herrick tried to remain stone-faced as he watched the rejection wash over Maude's face at his words.

She ran a hand over her chest where her heart was almost like she was checking to make sure there wasn't a blade sticking out of her skin.

As quickly as the hurt crossed her face, Herrick watched her shut down.

"My apologies," Maude said shortly, the familiar bitterness that leaked into her words reminiscent of when they had first met. "I didn't realize my presence caused you such discomfort. I'll go."

She brushed past him, careful to avoid making contact with his skin, but she wasn't fast enough.

He wrapped a hand around her bicep, stopping her in her tracks.

Rather than allow herself to fall back into his grasp, she fought against his grip.

Whirling her around to face him, Maude stopped struggling when she saw how close he stood to her.

He released her, but pressed his body in around her until she had to take a step back. He couldn't help but be this close to her and he damned himself for it.

"Don't be a brat," he growled. "I have every reason to be frustrated with you. All you've done is lie to me since we met and I think I'm only just now starting to see it."

Maude tilted her chin up and bared her teeth at him, their noses almost touching with how close they were. "Anything I've lied about has been to protect you. I didn't ask for any of this. "

She motioned between the two of them with one hand, her frustration beginning to boil over. Herrick saw the moment her rage grabbed the reins of her control and braced himself for what she would say next.

" You jumped into that pit with me. You freed me from that cell and convinced me to find that weapon with you.

You lied about who you were just as much as I did.

After everything that has happened, after all the loss and heartbreak, you don't suddenly get to decide that this is all my fault.

Not when you were right there at my side every step of the way, even when I tried to do this alone," Maude growled, her skin growing hotter with every word she spat.

"I left you in Dagsbrun to protect you. It was all in vain since you ended up a captive anyway. "

Herrick placed his hands beside either side of her head on the wall behind her, his chest slowly heaving with breath as he tried to control his growing fury. Every word she threw at him was true.

"Yes, there are things that I've kept from you since we rescued you.

I plan to tell you everything, but you have no idea what I am feeling or thinking about.

I don't have the words to tell you yet, and you just have to respect that," she finished, her hand inching toward the dagger on her thigh as her golden flames started to twirl around her fingers.

He wasn't even sure she was aware that her anger had sparked in her fire.

"And as for Baldr, I came down here to bring you back up to the deck where I was going to tell our friends who I suspect he is.

But since you don't trust me, it's clear you already disagree with whatever insight I have to offer. "

Herrick glanced down, only seeing the twisting fire and how it burned just as hot as Baldr's flames. Any anger that had been building left him as swiftly as it had arrived, smothered by the intensity of his need to get as far away from the golden fire as he could.

He inched backward slowly, controlling his movements and not giving Maude his back, until the length of the cabin separated them and crossed his arms over his chest. The flames seemed to burn brighter for a moment before they turned to smoke when she realized he was backing away from her not only to put emotional distance between them, but also because of her fire .

He needed the truth from her— any truth. Maybe if she could only tell him what she was trying to protect him from when she disappeared from the tavern that night, maybe he could start to trust her again, he reasoned with himself.

"Tell me why you left me in Dagsbrun that day this all went to Hel," he finally said once the air between them stilled.

"No."

Herrick was quiet for a moment before his face hardened. "Then I have nothing left to say to you."

Maude felt like she had been slapped the moment she saw Herrick back away from her without taking his eyes off the fire that had sparked in her palms. She hadn't summoned them, they responded to her flare of emotion too convoluted to name when he had cornered her against the wall.

The air in her lungs thinned as her heart stuttered, seeming to stop for a moment before kicking back up into a high-speed gallop.

The fire in her veins turned to ice, sharp and numbing until she felt her body vibrate with shivers.

Numbly, she turned to the door and let herself out of the smothering cabin.

A hollowness spread through her chest until she was sure that she was only a shell that held a cruel soul.

She couldn't tell him about her fate telling, the damning runes that now saturated her skin.

There would be no hiding once the truth was out there.

In a moment of weakness when Herrick had balanced their relationship on the truth of why she left him in Dagsbrun, she had chosen herself.

And gods how she loathed herself for it.

Already, Maude wished she could take the denial back, but her pride wouldn't allow it.

Instead, without another word, she closed the door to the cabin, sure that she had left the remnants of her shattered heart to bleed on the wooden floor behind her .

"Will you finally tell us what the Hel happened over there?" Liv shouted to Maude as she resurfaced onto the deck. "On the Flame ship?"

All at once, she shielded her heartbreak from showing on her face as she turned to answer the question on all her friends faces.

Hakon didn't stick around to listen to what she had to say as he headed below deck to find Herrick.

It seemed both the Kolbeck brothers were washing their hands of her filth.

The pieces of information that Maude was missing started clicking together as she truly began to process Herrick's reaction to seeing the new General of Flame.

There was a history there that she did not know of, memories that plagued him even in his regained freedom.

The burns on his skin, the utter focus on killing the new General, the betrayal when she took that kill from him.

"I—," Maude started to say, but her throat was bone dry despite the lingering water in the air from the storm. "I can't be sure, but I may have saved the life of Aeric's spy in the Kingdom of Flame who also happens to have been Herrick's torturer."

Liv reeled backward while Bryn stopped short next to her friend as she caught the end of Maude's statement, her own shock clear on her face. But Maude could not stop the waterfall of words that continued to pour from her mouth.

"He's the new General of Flame. He had the correct uniform and pins to indicate his position, but he was taking his own soldiers down while Herrick was trying to kill him.

I saw him shooting fire at his men. He never took a shot at Herrick, but I don't think he could tell because he was too busy trying to kill him.

More than that, he had every chance to kill me and Herrick if he wanted to, but didn't. Every move that man made was a benefit to us, not the Kingdom of Flame.

The corridors surrounding Herrick's cell was empty of guards, the path in and out of the palace so direct and free of patrols.

Why else would he have attacked his own men? He is a total stranger to us. "

"If you're right, this changes everything," Liv murmured, her eyes flaring with excitement. "The cells with the vitki were also surprisingly empty beyond a few men. Hakon didn't have to free Herrick from chains, he said that he was already released and attacking the General when he found him. "

"Did you tell Herrick?" Bryn asked as the suspicion grew smaller in her eyes the longer Maude and Liv reasoned over everything that had happened in Logi.

Maude shook her head numbly, the space where her heart used to be somehow crumpling more.

"Still," Bryn mused. "That is a tough role for someone to play. It won't be for very long that this man can keep his identity a secret from Father. He is in as much danger as everyone else."

"The new General of Flame is Aeric's spy inside the palace," Liv said, her grey eyes flaring.

Unable to partake in any of the conversation between Liv and her sister, Maude only shrunk into the growing shadows of her foul mood as she stared out over the dark line of the horizon.

"We need to find out who he is," Liv continued, turning to Bryn, who nodded once before they both walked away together to discuss the soldiers that had been working under Bryn during her time as Lieutenant General, leaving Maude alone at the bow of the ship to process the monumental wedge she just drove between her and the only man she ever trusted.