by Bec McMaster
Marduk’s lower lip caught between his teeth, and he looked at her through his eyelashes. There was something about her this morning that drew all eyes. A certain kind of vivaciousness.
“You like power,” he continued, examining her expression. “You like being in control.”
“All true, but what I really like,” Solveig whispered, leaning over the table toward him with a wicked glint in her eyes, “is taking that power back.”
He stroked his thumb over the table barely an inch from her hand, wishing it was her skin. But she’d set the rules. He wasn’t to touch. Not until she allowed it. And he’d spent enough years flirting to know that she was going to allow him to touch her at some point.
Because he hadn’t been the only one suffering last night.
He could be patient.
But the past still needed to be dealt with. “You think I took your power away from you?”
Instantly, the playful flirtatiousness vanished from her eyes. “Nobody takes my power away from me.”
There were a dozen implications to that statement.
Marduk considered her, tapping his fingers on the table. From the very first moment he’d met her, she’d been on guard against him. At first, he’d assumed it was being forced into a mating contract by her father, but he’d seen their relationship—if Solveig truly wished to refuse such a thing, she would have.
Honor and a sense of duty to her clan might have forced her hand, but again, something told him her enmity had nothing to do with circumstances, and everything to do with him.
Power. In some twisted way, she thought he’d deprived her of it. It wasn’t the song. It wasn’t the mating contract. But….
He blinked as a shocking thought occurred.
She was attracted to him. He was male enough to know that. And when he’d kissed her after the mating ceremony, she’d kissed him back. And if Haakon, Tormund, and Bryn hadn’t burst into the room, it might have gone further than that.
His fingers slowed. It was the attraction that was the issue. It had to be. She knew she’d lost control when he’d kissed her, and she hated it.
But he’d never kissed her the first time they met.
She’d stabbed him before his lips made contact, and the fury in her eyes had been a storm of reckoning.
Don’t touch. Don’t touch. Don’t touch.
But maybe… maybe for the first time she’d wanted to, and for a female like her—with such grand intentions of claiming her father’s throne when he weakened—the idea of being distracted was intolerable.
“Are you a virgin?” He didn’t even know where the words came from.
Solveig choked on her tea, spluttering a mouthful of liquid across her plate. “Goddess’s mercy. What the hell kind of question is that?” She slapped her chest. And then both eyebrows rose incredulously. “Oh, I see. Clearly my glacial indifference to you has to have a cause.”
“Mmm. I don’t think you’re that indifferent.”
“Of course you don’t. No, Marduk. I took care of that long ago, and while it’s been a while, I have—on occasion—taken lovers when I cared to. Male. Female. Whoever pleased me.”
“Females?”
“Sometimes I prefer it,” she said, dipping a piece of toast into her egg. “I don’t have to deal with an entire armada of dreki arrogance trying to conquer me. It’s just about mutual pleasure and connection.” She laughed under her breath. “Did you think I was pining for you?”
Hardly. “I’m just trying to work out how to proceed.”
She shot him an evil look. “Carefully, I would recommend. Or not at all, if one is to have a preference. I will not be toyed with.”
“Considering you wound up in my arms this morning, I’m not entirely certain of that.”
“Do you know what I think?”
“What?”
She smiled. “I think you hate it when I flirt with you, because you know it’s not real, and it absolutely baffles you that there’s at least one female out there who won’t fall for your charm.”
Marduk reached forward and stabbed a piece of her toast with his fork, his eyes locked on her the whole while. “Oh no, my love. Toy with me. I like it when you flirt. And I even like it when you hold me at bay, because I know you won’t last forever.”
“You’re optimistic.”
Molten desire poured through him. “I’ve heard you beg, Solveig. And last night, the king’s presence wasn’t the only scent you were giving off. You want the truth? Last night in bed I ached, but I wasn’t the only one aching. My cock was as hard as your pussy was wet. And we both know it.”
And then he bit down on her toast.
Heat flashed through Solveig’s eyes. This was how he liked her best: irritable and raw with her own leashed desires. Needy and furiously frustrated about it. Fighting a war with her own urges.
“I’ll win, Solveig, because you’re not just fighting me; you’re also fighting yourself. And you can’t fight us both.”
She stole the remains of her toast from his fingers. “If you think I can’t rein myself in forever, then you barely know me. There is no game I can’t win out of sheer spite.”
“Mmm.” He licked the crumbs from his finger, taking the time to suckle them from his thumb. “We’ve barely spent three nights in bed together. Imagine what it’s going to feel like once those nights stretch into weeks?”
Oh, she was furious now, glaring at him through thin slits. “I might just murder you yet.”
“Not today,” he said with some enjoyment. “Today, we’re going to start searching for the key.”
“How?”
Marduk smiled. “Chaos magic leaves an imprint. An entire object crafted into being by that many Chaos-wielders can be hidden and warded, but its footprints remain. And luckily, our party has two Chaos-wielders and me.”
“You?” she asked dubiously, sipping her tea.
“Me.” He shrugged. “Ishtar bound herself to me in the womb. I’m sensitive to Chaos magic now. I can hear its song. I can see its weft sometimes. I just can’t use it myself.”
“Mmm.”
“So you and I are going to explore the castle grounds,” he said, buttering another piece of toast, “while my sisters greet the Chaos-wielders here. If anyone is watching—and I daresay they will be—they’ll be focusing on my sisters. Not me. Here.”
He held the piece of toast toward her—a quiet challenge. To eat from his hand said a thousand things in dreki culture, and was often a sign of intimacy between mates.
Solveig never took her eyes off him as she bit into it.
On a hilltop overlooking the castle stood a timber palisade, and within it, a little village.
Chickens ran amuck, clucking hysterically as children tried to catch them. There were small vegetable gardens everywhere—even sprawling into the street that wended its way between thatched houses—and right in the heart of the village spread the roots of an enormous oak.
Little bundles of sticks and offerings to the goddess had been hung in its branches, including the skeletons of smaller animals, and Marduk wasn’t entirely certain as to whether it was a warning toward other dreki—or perhaps something to ward away evil spirits.
“Well met,” called Andromeda as she waited beneath the oak.
Queen she might be, but her feet were bare and her pale blue gown was simple. One didn’t need to see a crown to know she ruled here, because everything about her was regal, from her square-set shoulders to the straightness of her spine.
“Sisters,” she said, greeting Árdís and then Ishtar and clasping their forearms.
He was watching Ishtar’s face when she said it, and realized he’d never seen his twin look like this before. There was a radiance about her in that moment, as if she had finally found her place in the world.
He forced himself to look at the village again.
They were women.
All women.
And they moved about their day, ignoring the four intruders as if they had a thousand
better things to be doing. A group of young girls sat cross-legged in a field, threading Chaos magic between them. The song caught his ear from several directions, but there was a harmony to it here that he’d never felt before.
The children were singing the magic into harmony.
And Ishtar looked at them as if she wanted to join. A little arrow of sadness went through him at the thought. She’d been called monster in the past, and locked away from a world that was frightened of her power, but here, she was merely one among many.
It felt strange to know this clan was one his people had always reviled. The Zilittu were savage, untrustworthy, and ambitious. But there was a beauty and acceptance here that he hadn’t expected to find. One that almost tempted him too.
Unless that was exactly what this show was designed to do.
“Come,” Andromeda said, linking arms with Ishtar. “I have been doing some asking around. You have relatives here, through your mother’s side.”
Árdís met his gaze.
“If they’re hiding anything, I can’t sense it,” she told him psychically. “There’s so much magic being woven here that I can’t focus on it all.”
“The perfect place to hide the key,” he replied.
“Indeed.”
“This way,” Andromeda called, leading them toward a small hut near the back of the village.
It felt surreal to know this was where his mother had grown up. Marduk couldn’t help trailing his fingers over the nearest fence, wondering if this place would give him the missing piece of himself that he’d spent a lifetime looking for.
Inside, the cottage was spotlessly clean. A tall young woman ladled soup into a bowl, and as her gray eyes flashed to his, he realized it was Viveka.
To find Draco’s sister handing soup to one of the oldest dreki he’d ever seen was a shock. He’d heard rumors of Viveka of the Northern Mists. She’d fought at Draco’s side when he overthrew his father, and they said her sword had wept with blood for days.
“It’s a good morning,” Viveka murmured to Andromeda, though her eyes were neutral as she looked them over. “Don’t irritate her.”
“We won’t,” Árdís assured her.
“This is Klara,” Andromeda said, picking up a shawl and settling it over the shoulders of the old lady sitting by the hearth. “I believe she is your great-aunt.”
Marduk searched the old woman’s face. His father’s parents had been a mated pair who passed into the winds together before he was born, and King Reynar had been their only son.
He’d never known grandparents or aunts or uncles. Only his uncle Stellan, and he and his sons had been the bane of Marduk’s earlier life.
“Klara, this is Árdís, Marduk, and Ishtar,” Andromeda said gently. “They are blood of your blood.”
The wizened old lady turned her face toward him. Her eyes were completely white, and it was clear she was blind. “Marduk?” She reached for him, most likely because he was closest. “A powerful name.”
Marduk’s hand shook as he touched hers.
A gentle wind scoured his hair back from his face, caressing his cheeks, as if she was learning him with her magic.
And then Klara hissed and drew her hand back as if scalded. “You,” she spat. “You’re one of hers.”
“Hers?”
“My niece.” The way she said the word sounded like a curse. “Amadea killed my sister. Her own mother. I know she did!”
Andromeda’s jaw gaped open, and she tried to settle the old woman. “Klara, your sister died from heart failure. It was years ago—”
“It was Amadea!” She shoved Andromeda’s hands away from her. “I know it was her. That writhing little snake. She got her throne and her crown, didn’t she? By ending my sister’s life.”
“Easy, now,” Viveka murmured, trying to grab the older woman’s arm. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”
Klara sobbed. “I can sense her all over you. She’s a stain on your soul. Her wickedness fills you.”
“She’s dead,” Marduk tried to say. “My mother’s dead. And she was no kinder to us than she was to you.”
“She’s not dead,” she hissed. “I can smell her magic all over you—"
“You should go,” Viveka murmured, her eyes on the older woman. “You’re only upsetting her.”
Marduk turned for the doorway, nearly knocking Solveig over. He burst into the light.
His chest felt tight.
His lungs wouldn’t open.
He’d been wrong. There was nothing here for him. Nothing at all.
Solveig found him sitting on the top of the hill, staring down at the castle. The chime of bones echoed through the oak tree behind them, but up here, by an old stone wall, they could have been miles away from both the Chaos-wielders’ village and the castle.
“I’m sorry you had to see that,” he said, staring at nothing as she approached.
For once, she wasn’t entirely certain what to say.
Marduk radiated calmness again, but she’d seen the flash of panic in his eyes when the old woman started screaming at him. Another shocking realization: for all his laughing manner, he had his own share of ghosts.
She took a seat on the stone wall beside him. Here was his weakness. Here was his destruction, right in front of her. The pressure point to push. The means to destroy him.
And to know it was to reveal her own weakness.
For this Marduk—the one who’d fled from an old woman’s scathing anger—was the one that intrigued her. Not the laughing scoundrel who teased her with sex and sin. She might have withstood that Marduk. But this one, the one with scars she couldn’t see, scars he hid behind a smile and a laugh, was the one who tempted her.
Her anger toward him sat like a hot coal in her chest. Years’ worth of resentment and fury. She’d carried that anger throughout the storm of her entire adult life, using it to fuel her determination whenever she was backed into a corner.
And Solveig let it go, breathing through the flood of release as she closed her eyes and merely sat beside him.
The wind whipped through her hair. In this moment, he was so far away from her that she might not have even existed.
A murdered father.
A villainous mother.
A sister he’d never known.
All the pieces were coming together.
And there was a breathless feeling within her, as she thought of everything he’d tried to say to her. “It was a bad time in your life, you said,” she repeated softly, hearkening back to their argument that night in the inn. “Why?”
Marduk’s tortured gaze caught hers. Anger drowned his irises in dreki gold. But it wasn’t anger at her. “Now you want to talk?”
“Tell me a secret,” she said.
The words caught him, as she knew they would.
“You first.”
Solveig sighed and slung her legs over the stone wall. The village hovered far below, and nobody could hear them here. “I hate being here.”
“What?” That shocked him. “Why?”
She took a deep breath and stared over the mountains. “What do you see when you look into Draco’s eyes?”
“Really?” His voice roughened. “I’m fairly certain I made my feelings about him clear last night, when I made a fool of myself in our rooms.”
She turned her head to look at him. “I see the eyes of my mother’s killer.”
Her words cut through his anger. He flinched.
“Draco looks like his uncle, Fornax. It makes me feel uneasy.”
His silence was a pointed thing. He waited for her to tell him more, but she’d said enough. This one small concession would have to be enough.
“Your mother was evil,” she said instead.
Marduk took a deep breath. “Evil is the wrong word, I think. It’s too easy a word to use for her. It’s an excuse, as if to say, oh, well, she was evil, she couldn’t help herself. And she could.” Pain shadowed his eyes. “My mother was cunning and spiteful and amb
itious. She could be cruel or she could be playful. She could love. She loved her twin brother, Stellan, with all her heart. He was everything to her and nothing else could penetrate the bond they shared.”
Solveig’s lip curled.
“Not like that. They were bound together the way Ishtar and I are. And… I don’t know what her life was like before she mated with my father, but sometimes… sometimes she would have nightmares. She’d wake screaming, saying she couldn’t breathe, that ‘they’ were burying her alive. I don’t who she meant, but my uncle would always rush into her room and haul her into his arms. ‘You’re safe now,’ he would say. ‘You’re safe.’ And he would rub her back and hold her while she sobbed.” Marduk swallowed as if he tasted something bitter. “I’m not trying to excuse her, but… there were pieces to her that weren’t all bad.”
Solveig could see the truth in his eyes. “You loved her. Once.”
“I… don’t know what I felt. I was younger than the others, and it always seemed as if there was something missing in my life. It turns out there was. Ishtar. But in their absence, my mother filled that void. I could make her smile. I could make her laugh. She loved me best, I think. As much as she could have loved any of us.” And he wore the shame of that on his face. “But her attention was never absolute. I was a moment of respite for her. A moment of joy. A performing dog. And I’m ashamed to say that when her attention wasn’t upon me, I sought ways to earn it.”
He wore that cutting smile he often wore. A flash of tight lips, his teeth smothered behind them. “I was reckless and childish. I got into fights and did everything I wasn’t supposed to do. I was spoiled and spiteful, and if it wasn’t for Árdís, I probably would have turned into a vile little creature, much like my cousin Roar.”
“No.” Solveig studied his face. “I met your cousin. Roar was born hungry, and it wouldn’t have mattered how much he had, he would always want more. You… don’t yearn for anything.”
“That’s not true.” His voice roughened, and he looked at her. “I want a lot of things I can’t have.”
Solveig’s breath caught.
There were numerous ways she could take that statement. Desire for something purely because he was told he couldn’t have it. A sexual innuendo. Nothing to do with her at all.
