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16

DESTINY

I ’m just about to give Baldur Siguresson some sort of answer on his plea to become one of my mates, though I’m not entirely sure what, when something hammers me from afar. It’s Mikkel, as I suddenly feel him struggle awake; he had been slumbering from whatever L?rke and Strom did to him with their united powers, plus the gargantuan magical drain Baldur’s portals put us through for most of the day.

He wakes like a hurricane now, however, all his power renewed, thanks to the fact that Bjorn and I have been, as well. Aesa’s power was not restored with us, though; it makes the stability of our bond shudder hard now, as Mikkel wakes in human form and remembers everything that’s happened to him, his empire, and his people.

His darkest wrath rushing back.

I feel him shift up and explode whatever containment L?rke and Strom put around him, like an atom bomb. As his seething wrath surges once more, I feel it hammer through my own Bone Magic, unhinged.

As pure, disastrous energy surges through me with cold, unadulterated hate, I don’t even know I’m Wraithing up into my own black dragon with none of my goodness left, until a strong, warm body coils all around me.

Blue and calm as glacial lakes, Baldur has me, as I breathe hard as my black dragon, caught in his coils. Rather than hammer him to get away, or struggle to get my talons in him and rip my way free, instead, I feel his ancient serenity cool me now.

He hasn’t even poured his power into mine; we’re not life-mated and he’s not trying to seal the deal right now. Only hold me, and calm me, and give me the one thing that even with all my drakes in the mix now, I can never seem to find.

Balance.

It works, as I feel the black madness of Mikkel’s and my Wraith recede. I can hardly feel Mikkel at all now as Baldur’s power envelops me; like a black tide, Mikkel’s terrible fury has been pushed back from me by Baldur’s blue serenity, and the power that lives within him.

Because although he holds me tight in his coils and breathes calmly, using his entire body to soothe mine, I feel the vast power in him. Power like suns being born, power like super-combusting stars, Baldur has it, in perfect opposition to the sheer madness of Mikkel.

But at just the same depth.

Slowly, I come back to myself. Gradually, I calm as my heart stops beating like a thundercloud and a dark madness clears from my mind.

It’s then that I see the drake who has me caught in his coils. Baldur is gargantuan, like Mikkel, as his drake; he engulfs me with his beautiful, sky-blue and midnight body, dazzling fire opal lines of sigildric script with flashes of gold running through his scales, everywhere.

His form is lean and mean, lithe and deliciously decorated with the most artful serrations and spines. His lungs are like bellows as he heaves deep breaths, rhythmic, his strangely intoxicating scent hot on my cheek where his scaled mouth lingers near mine.

His spines are viciously serrated, however, as are his scales, despite his cooling blue color. Power radiates from him as his furious mantle of dark blue spikes flares and moves with his breath in a rhythmic pulse meant to soothe me further, his long, midnight blue wings enveloping me.

It’s only then that I recognize his vivid, opalescent markings aren’t those of a natural Blood Dragon. That he’s inscribed within his dragon flesh somehow, ancient sigildric art that contains and amplifies his power.

Like Strom’s tattoos, this is ancestral magic, which doesn’t exist anymore among our people. But Baldur learned at the feet of someone who was practically an ancient.

And is ancient himself—vastly learned in the sigildric binding arts.

Baldur does nothing to me now, however, except use his own ornately tattooed dragon body to calm me. He feels me come back from my dark near-Wraith; adjusting his position, he moves his elegant head so I can see deep into his drowning midnight blue eyes, a ring of stunning diamond white around them now.

I’ve never seen eyes that color on a Blood Dragon; I fall into them now as everything inside me is mesmerized by this ancient conundrum of a creature.

Baldur takes the moment to shift down—commanding me back from my shift at the same time. I’ve never felt someone command me from my shift so effortlessly, even my own King; a talent only the strongest Royal Blood Dragons possess.

I realize then that Baldur could give our King a run for his money, if he ever challenged Huttr for the throne. He’s not destined for that, though; I see knowledge of his fate shine in his eyes now as we return to human form in the much-disturbed hot springs, which has lost most of its water thanks to our huge dragon-bodies roiling around in it.

Baldur has only one destiny, as he cups my stunned face in his hands and gazes deep into my eyes, searching for my answer.

Me—though I’m not certain I should go there.

Even though I need to.

Conflict sears through me now, and it’s not Mikkel anymore, as Baldur stares into my eyes. He’s a hair’s breadth from kissing me, and me him, when something inside me roars not to.

Though I know I have to take Baldur as my Fourth Bloodmate to save Bjorn and Mikkel, Strom and my King, and everyone else now in danger from the Black Dragon’s rise, something inside me hesitates.

It’s not my inner dragons anymore, but a part of my soul that calls me back from the brink, some ineffable, deep part of the warrior that I am, which I cannot take back.

Because I’ve always made my own fate, dammit—and I’ll be fucked if I back off from that now. Baldur sees it in me, in my eyes, as I hesitate. I watch his tremendous hope die as he pulls back from me.

His hands dropping away from my face, lifeless, as shock fills him.

“You don’t want me,” he says, tunelessly, as he stares at me.

“I never said that,” I argue, though I hold my own in the water, and do not reach for him.

“You didn’t have to say it.” His smile is beyond dreadful now, the saddest, most heartbroken thing I have ever seen, as he gazes up at the sky. He watches the setting sun for a long moment, as I see his long lashes close. He heaves a huge, ragged breath.

And I see two tears track down his perfect face.

I feel his heartbreak with those tears. It’s the most awful thing, because I know I caused it. I can’t move in my own stubborn battle against fate and destiny, though I’m only sitting here in the hot springs with a potential Bloodmate.

Even as I curse myself a thousand times and a thousand times more for my pig-headed stupidity and having just ruined all this for us, Baldur heaves a sigh. The saddest smile lifts his lips as he opens his eyes.

And he looks at me, kind and bereft, beautiful and broken, all at once.

“Come. We should go back to the house. Night is cold here when the sun sets, and we still need to figure out what to do with that curse the Knight’s False Council have put on you.”

“You still want to help me?” I blink then, feeling wretched, yet still unable to say that I’ll take him. Within me, both my dragons gnash their teeth and wail, though my Blood Magic drakaina does it far louder. As she roils inside me, I know I’ve just ruined it with this potential drake, which could have been so good for her.

A chance I’ll never get back, now that he knows I’m just that stubborn against fate.

“Of course I still want to help you,” Baldur says as he gives me a complicated look, then steps over the rim of the hot pool and brisks off with his hands, beginning to dress. I don’t miss the way he’s not making eye contact with me anymore, however, as I follow him out of the pool and similarly brisk off, though I have nothing to get dressed in.

In fact, he’s avoiding looking at me altogether now, as he laces up his soft leather and fur-lined boots, then gestures us back down the stone path. As he takes the lead, I curse myself for the worst kind of fool, as I try to find words to make this better and fail.

I know I should take him as a mate, that I’m supposed to take him as a mate to give us any chance at all against the Black Dragon, but some part of me can’t.

It’s that part of me I hate now, as I follow him back down to the house in the settling darkness, a shadow devouring us from the western cliffs.

Everything inside me knows I’m beyond idiotic to reject him; yet, the deepest part of me just can’t accept any predetermined fate. If I do, then I know my life is just a matter of odds. And the odds of us surviving anything having to do with the Black Dragon are beyond frightening; they’re the blackest kind of cancer.

Which makes even the hardiest warrior’s blood run cold.

I know I can’t succumb to that inner darkness. I simply can’t accept my fate, of how likely it is that I’ll fail facing off with the Black Dragon. And if I accept Baldur right now, thanks to fate , then I accept those odds his sister saw in her visions. And I just don’t, because a warrior can’t live that way.

We would only die .

Baldur is quiet now as we head back inside the house. Bjorn still hasn’t woken; even with Mikkel’s surge, roaring back up into his terrible black Wraith, Bjorn is still out cold, snoring to beat the band.

It leaves Baldur and I in an odd, jilted dance now as I fetch black leggings, boots, and a dark plum camisole with a slouchy sweater from my fly-bag so I can get dressed, and he finally dons a shirt. It makes me sad he feels he needs to cover up now around me; although his covering up is minimal, because he leaves the front of his soft lambswool shirt unbuttoned.

Perhaps it’s better this way, though, I think as he heads out of the main room to what I can see are vast kitchens beyond.

He fetches two big bowls of stew and two pints of ale, then returns. We eat in silence at a carved table of white birch. Sitting on opposite sides of the long trestle table on the benches, we eyeball each other as we eat, and the silence stretches. The meal is good, delicious even; but I can hardly taste it, as ashes fill my mouth at what I’ve done.

At last, we finish, and Baldur cleans up. It leaves me with nothing to do as I quietly check on Bjorn.

Before Baldur returns, looking directly at me at last.

“We should head to my artist’s solar so we don’t wake him with what we do next,” Baldur says, as he nods at Bjorn, then gestures to a room I can just see through an ornately arched doorway at the back of the house.

“What are we doing?” I have to ask, though I genuinely have no clue now, as Baldur leads the way.

“Trying to get that False Knight’s curse out of you, of course.” His smile is wry as he steps to the doorway in question, then motions me in.

I enter—into the most beautiful artist’s studio. Though part of what Baldur does for his clan is act as their island healer, creating tinctures and salves and such for their flesh, it’s clear that most of what he practices is his sigildric shamanic art, as I see paintings devouring every wall and timber now.

They’re haunting, beautiful, done in dawn colors and fantastic whorls like light, midnight blues giving way to bright dawn skies full of white sigils and gold, and a stunning, electric blue that seems to leap off the canvases.

Those canvases are just everywhere; stacked twenty deep, I can hardly see the walls of the studio at all, as Baldur leads me over to an enormous white birch table in the center of the space, next to a towering easel.

Paint is all over the place; speckled on the floors, spattered across the walls and even the ceiling, drop canvases are coated with luscious, vibrant color, and pots of paint and brushes in various stages of use are everywhere.

Though modern oil paint would smell atrocious, acrid and full of chemicals, the entire solar here is filled with the smell of Baldur—a buttery, rich scent that is still somehow fresh and breezy, cool and calming, all at once.

There’s fire beneath it, for sure, but now that I’m in his studio, I catch hints of wintermint, chamomile, and heal-all. It’s a beautiful, intoxicating scent, aromatic and heady.

It makes my head swim, as I feel like I might just get high in this space and lift off, floating up into the air.

“What’s that smell?” I have to ask now, wondering if it’s Baldur’s own scent or something he puts in his paints.

“Wild Icelandic herbs, crushed natural stone and dragonscale pigments, dragonscale oil. Everything I use to create my paints.” He’s casual now as he turns, shutting the door to the large studio. There’s still natural light from a set of ornate skylights high above in the vaults of the arched timber and sod roof, just like out in the main hall, and the river runs through the center of the space here, beneath the massive white table set in the middle of the room.

Since it’s heading towards evening now, Baldur moves around, turning up old-fashioned oil lamps set into beautiful white stone sconces on the walls.

Creating a warming glow in the lovely, intoxicating space .

“Where do you get dragonscale for your pigments, and scale-oil for your paints?” I ask now, my eyebrows rising as I watch him move around in his studio space. Clearing drying canvases from the large, ornately carved table, he likewise makes a space all around the table on the floor, scooting jars full of paints and brushes away.

“Icelandic dragons recycle our dead.” He glances at me frankly as he finishes clearing up, until the table is clean, as well as the floor all around—as clean as it can be. “We don’t burn them on pyres or send them out to sea aflame, or bury them. We use what can be used, giving great thanks to our dead for their life, and how it will nurture many lives to come. Scales become housing material and decoration, skin becomes clothing or sail cloth. Bone is powdered into medicine or made into ceremonial and household items, and meat is fed to the fish around the island to increase their numbers so we can eat them. Fat is rendered into soaps and lamps, and scale-oil is scraped to become things like oil-based paint. I make all my paints and brushes out of our sacred dead, and resurrect my kin upon these canvases, before I paint them into the skies.”

“You practice on canvas before you truly use your power to paint with your magic into the air, like I saw you do at The Vault,” I say now, understanding.

“Yes. Painting with my power in the way you’ve seen me do is complicated. It takes great forethought, practice, and concentration. All of which I pre-render on canvas. Not to mention, they sell well at my live events, which brings money back to the island for my people.” Baldur looks at me deeply now as he comes to stand beside the table. I move forward to join him, feeling pulled there now by his strong, magnetic presence, despite how I rejected him earlier.

“You have all this skill and talent, yet you live like a wild hermit,” I observe as I come to him now, standing beside him at the table. We’re so close we could touch, but he doesn’t reach out to me.

And, curse me, I don’t reach out to him.

Though I want to .

“I have to.” His dark blue eyes are frank now as he watches me under the waning natural light and the warm glow of the lamps. “To hone and concentrate my power in the way I do requires isolation. I enjoy my people; every few weeks, I emerge to bring medicines to town, and have a meal or do some dancing with my kin. I would not be the powerful drake I am today, however, without everything I have done to isolate myself, concentrate my power, meditate to clear my energy, and funnel my passion like a laser into what I must one day become. I have been restraining and honing myself for ages, Rikyava, centuries… all to be the strongest I could be, for you, when you at last came calling.”

His last statement creates a renewed awkwardness between us. Tension fills the space as he pins me with an almost accusatory gaze now—and damitall, I have to drop my eyes.

As a flaming embarrassment fills my cheeks.

“Do not hide from me.” I startle as I feel Baldur’s fingertips touch my chin and cheek. It makes me look up, to find he’s closed the distance between us.

Very near now, as I stare up into his incredible, dark blue eyes.

“You owe me no apology, Hog Skjaldm?r.” His voice is soft as a sad smile takes his lips, hauntingly beautiful, enigmatic, and wry. “You owe me nothing, not even embarrassment. It was my choice to follow my life-path as I have done, waiting for you. I have had centuries to come to terms with my fate. You’ve only had an hour to come to terms with yours. Learning that you have so little hope facing off with the Black Dragon… it would make any true warrior roar in the face of fate. You have to—and I understand. I know what that feels like, and why you cannot take me as a mate now.”

“I can’t accept that we have so little hope.” I gaze up at him, feeling beyond terrible. “I can’t accept that all my actions, my entire life, everything I do to face the Black Dragon… that it’s just all beyond my control somehow, and I have no free will or choice to affect the outcome.”

“There is always free will and choice,” Baldur says. “Though my sister saw countless futures, what she always knew is that those futures depend on our choices. Fate isn’t predestined; it can change. What I have practiced through the eons is how to change a person’s fate through our most ancient Blood Dragon magic. I aim to increase your odds of beating the Black Dragon, with or without me, when you come to it. If you would let me, now.”

“What are you going to do?” I ask then, because I know he’s brought me into this private space for a reason, his innermost sanctuary of artistic expression, and where he uses sigils to rework fate.

“I’m going to change what’s been done to you,” Baldur says, as his dark blue eyes get that strange, faraway look. As his gaze roves not just my face and body now, but also my aura, I can feel him looking into the Void, to see what the dark curse the Black Dragon Knights Excommunicated me with has done to my Bloodwalker dragon.

“I can feel the holes inside you, Rikyava. I can see them with my waking eyes,” Baldur says now as he gradually returns, pinning me with his incredible gaze again. “I’m unsure if I can fix them, per se, without becoming your drake… but what I can do is fill them with my power to help you stabilize in your quest. Whether or not you decide to bond me, I will gift you with my energy, to take over where Aesa’s wanes… a new creation, to make you something new, and regain what you have lost. If you accept, it will give you far more than you could have ever dreamed. Far more to fight the black Dragon of All Souls with when it comes for you, at last.”

“Whether I bond you or not, you can do this?” I have a moment of hope now, though some deep part of me is crushed that he has an alternative to being mine.

“Yes.” He nods, though as his gaze intensifies, he lifts his hand back up to my face. Touching me with his fingertips, he skates them over my jaw, then trails them down my neck. As he brushes them like the softest paintbrush over my collarbones, it makes my breath catch.

Everything inside me coiling up into a delicious, desirous clench .

“Bonding me is up to you,” he says now, as his eyes follow his touch. I feel the deepest sensation, like the brushes of his fingertips curl and flow all through me now, whispering over things unseen. It makes my bright Blood Magic drakaina race through my veins as I heave hard breaths and my heart thunders now, deeply aroused at the impossibly sensual feeling.

In a way none of my other drakes have ever done for me.

“But I cannot help it if I won’t do everything I can to seduce you, right here—right now,” Baldur murmurs as his gaze pins mine again—scalding and full of power. The opaline ring around his deep blue irises has gone a searing diamond-white, on fire with passion, the eyes of his drake.

As he watches me now like I’m something he’d very much like to eat, to devour and win as his prize, a shiver rushes through me. My inner drakaina trumpets in triumph, as she wings all through my veins towards the skies.

Even my inner black dragon likes that look very much. I’m about to say something when Baldur leans in, brushing the softest kiss over my lips. It’s almost nothing, just a wisp of touch.

But it makes everything inside me roar now—to take him and never look back.

“My dragon wants you, Rikyava—and I can feel how yours wants me,” Baldur murmurs at my ear as his nose touches my cheek. Tracing little circles with his nose, he brushes his lips over my jaw, then bites just a bit.

And it makes everything inside me thunder.

“Resist if you must,” he says, sexual and beautifully clever.

It’s then that I realize the next however long is not just going to be some kind of healing session for me, to undo whatever the Black Dragon Knights did to me, but also a sensual torment. Because Baldur Siguresson is going to do his best to make me take him as my Fourth Bloodmate.

And it’s up to me whether I resist .

“I can’t give in to fate.” I’m stubborn now, though even I know how breathy my voice sounds, as everything inside me grips, shivers, and shakes.

“Then succumb to destiny instead,” Baldur whispers in my ear.

He’s pulling away, watching me with a hot look from his scalding blue gaze.

As he gestures to the table.

“Climb up. And let’s begin.”