by Bec McMaster
Sliding down the wall, he rested his elbows on his knees.
He couldn’t reach Solveig.
And he didn’t want Ishtar anywhere near this.
A sound echoed through the caves.
Marduk’s head snapped upward, his heart surging with relief. Goddess, I’m not alone. Someone is—
Screaming.
Marduk froze.
Because he knew the sound of that voice.
Knew that furious bellow, even if he’d never heard her sound like this before. Pained. Desperate. Helpless.
“Solveig?” He threw himself at the cliff, trying to find purchase in its sheer sides.
Pain screamed through the shoulder he’d shoved back into place, but it was no good. He wasn’t getting out of here. He wasn’t going to be able to help her.
“Fuck!” Marduk hammered the flat of his palm against the stone. “Damn you. Help!” he yelled. “Help!”
Another scream tore through the world.
What was his mother doing to her?
His dreki magic was muted. He couldn’t shift. He couldn’t escape this pit.
He couldn’t help her.
His dreki went mad inside him.
“Solveig! Solveig!” He screamed for her, tearing his fingers to the bones as he tried to scrabble at smooth rock.
There was no answer. Nothing but silence.
Silence and the edge of that bloody song that haunted him.
The one he should never have been able to hear.
Marduk fell still, his chest heaving as he slowly looked up.
The song.
Chaos.
His mother had said this was a well of Chaos.
And he was linked to such magic through Ishtar. Dreki magic wouldn’t work in here—the entire place was wrapped in chains of Chaos, intended to hold even the most powerful dreki.
What had Ishtar once said?
“It’s like looking through the fabric of the world. Seeing through the curtains of reality and finding the weft of the magic that binds the world together. There is Order—static and calm and unmalleable—and then there is Chaos, like a beautiful conflagration of wildfire that threatens to consume everything. When you take the weft of it, it’s like taking the reins on a bucking horse. There’s nothing you can’t create.”
Males couldn’t weave Chaos magic. But he was linked to Ishtar. And they’d been communicating for months, so that he barely even had to think the thought for her to hear it.
What if… he could use that conduit the other way?
What if he could somehow channel his sister’s link to Chaos magic in order to wield it himself?
Solveig screamed again.
Fuck it.
“Come on,” he whispered, placing his palms against the rock face and closing his eyes.
He’d tried to catch hints of that song when he was searching for Ishtar, but he’d never truly leaned into it. It wasn’t for him. He knew that instinctively. But it had become easier to both see and hear Chaos running through the world with every second he spent with his sister.
A light buzz of magic hummed through his palms. Marduk’s heart kicked into overdrive. It was like a jolt of energy directly into his veins.
He gave in to everything.
To the furious nature of the dreki inside him, desperate to save the woman he loved.
To the song of Chaos streaming through his veins so swiftly, it felt like his heart was going to smash its way out of his chest.
“Get me out of here.” He threw the thought desperately into the void, and as he flung his arms wide, Chaos finally caught him in its grip.
It wrenched him apart, and then the sort of pain he’d never felt before tore through every single molecule of his body.
A glance down revealed his mortal body, slack-jawed and gaping, as Marduk spread wings of green fire. A spirit form woven of pure Chaos.
He caught his mortal body in his claws—enormous wings soaring wide as he launched himself into the air and thrust toward the mouth of the pit—and even if someone was driving an iron spike right between his eyes, he could handle the pain.
He just had to get to Solveig….
Solveig scrambled back against an oak, trying to grind her teeth through the pain. Darkness threatened to haul her under, and suddenly there were three images of the elf stalking toward her with a sly little smile curling over his mouth.
“I’ve been waiting for this moment for many, many days,” Tyndyr said, and somehow the twisted delight in his voice made her stomach clench.
“Choke on iron, you little bitch,” Solveig gasped, capturing hold of the arrow in her chest and trying not to faint as she broke it in two.
A wave of pain swept over her. Mother. Goddess. She’d been stabbed before, but this… this was a new level of hell.
Tyndyr nocked another arrow to his bow and drew it easily. “I wonder how many arrows it will take to kill you. Careful now, this one’s going to hurt.”
“Just kill her, Tyndyr,” Amadea snapped. “We need to get out of here with that key before they realize something is amiss with Elin.”
“Nobody’s going to realize anything.”
“She did,” Amadea snapped.
“Trust me,” he purred. “Consider her lips sealed.”
And then Solveig screamed as the second arrow slammed into her abdomen.
The world vanished. She blinked and came to, her fingers curled into the leafy loam beneath her and her cheek pressed into moss. Shoving to her knees felt like a hot poker was dragging through her gut. One of her hands curled around the arrow there. Gritting her teeth, she broke it in two, shaking with sweat and trying not to vomit.
Just needed to… push it… through….
If she could shift shapes, she’d be able to heal herself to some degree.
But the dreki within her was elusive, and every time she reached for her heart, her soul, it was like trying to capture mist in her hands.
It had to be the arrows. Something… on them. Goddess, had he painted them with leviathan blood?
A boot came out of nowhere, driving hard into her abdomen.
Solveig flipped and landed flat on her back, screaming again as the two arrows ground against bone. She saw stars and tried to… roll….
A foot ground into the side of her face, shoving her cheek into the dirt again. “Can’t reach your dreki, can you?” Tyndyr crooned as he set another arrow to his bow. “I’d love to stay and play a little longer, but alas, my friend does plead a good case. Goodbye, my sweet, sweet morsel.”
And then he drew the bow back again, and Solveig could see the point of that arrow, barely a foot from her temple.
No. No. Not like this.
She grabbed his boot, but trying to move it was like trying to shift solid rock. “Get… off…”
Tyndyr ground his boot down harder, and Solveig screamed in rage and impotent fury—
And then the world exploded in a clash of raging green fire that filled her with a lightness of being she’d never expected.
Tyndyr was gone.
The bow was gone.
Solveig managed to make it back to her knees, freezing when she saw an insubstantial dreki carved of pure green fire tearing at the elf.
Chaos magic.
Her heart leapt. Ishtar? Or Árdís?
And then she froze as she saw the curve of those familiar wings. It was superimposed over Marduk’s mortal body, moving him as though he was a puppet.
Amadea’s eyes widened, and she bolted into the trees. Tyndyr scrambled through the undergrowth after her.
Marduk bellowed, the sound so high-pitched, it echoed as if the earth was tearing apart.
And then the dreki spirit-form collapsed in upon itself, dumping his mortal body on the ground in a dispersing cloud of green vapor.
“Marduk?” She hauled herself toward him, but he was screaming, his ragged fingers torn and bloody as he pressed them to his eyes. “Marduk!”
They weren’t safe out
here.
What was wrong with him?
She couldn’t see any obvious signs of injury, though her own vision was blinking in and out of blackness.
A branch broke somewhere to her left. Solveig froze. Not alone. Tyndyr and Elin might have run for cover, but that didn’t mean they weren’t still dangerous.
Hauling him toward the cave, she used her last ounce of physical energy to create a shield of pure Air over the cave mouth.
And then she collapsed back against the walls, Marduk in her lap.
He’d stopped screaming, but the sobs that wracked him almost made her shudder. Solveig tipped her head back. He’d come for her. She didn’t know how he’d done it, but just when she’d been thinking this life was over, he’d come for her.
A single tear slid down her cheek as she brushed his hair off his brow. “Thank you,” she whispered, because no one had ever rescued her.
And suddenly she wanted to cry, because it felt like that moment she’d begged her mother to start breathing all over again. But this time she’d arrived in time. This time she’d managed to get to him before it was too late.
Even if that smug prick had put two arrows in her.
Breathing hard, Solveig looked down at the front of her blood-stained shirt. The broken shafts of both arrows still stuck out of her. She didn’t think she even had the strength to push them through her skin.
Shadows moved to the left of her.
Tyndyr paced in front of her shield of air like a wolf eyeing a den full of baby rabbits.
He leaned on his bow. “I can’t come in. But you can’t come out. How are those wounds feeling, little dreki? Do they itch? Just a little?”
She hadn’t really noticed until he said the words.
Solveig wrapped her arm around Marduk and ground her teeth together. “When I get out of here… you smarmy little frogfucker, I’m going to tear your… head… from your shoulders.”
Tyndyr blew her a kiss as he backed away. “Darling, by the time an hour has passed, you’ll be scratching the flesh from your bones. Think of me when you claw your own throat out.”
22
“Damn you, wake up,” a voice hissed.
Something struck his face.
Marduk winced. It wasn’t as painful as the hole someone had slowly drilled between his eyes, but it was more immediate.
He tried to blink his eyes open, but he didn’t have the energy.
“Please” came a soft whisper. “Please wake up. I need you.” A gentle hand cupped his cheek. “I’m not proud to admit this, but I need you to wake up, because I don’t think I have much more… time.”
Time.
Goddess. Solveig.
He swam through levels of consciousness, urged on by the pain ravaging her voice. The ache in his temples felt like someone had put a pistol to his forehead and pulled the trigger, but he forced it aside.
She needed him.
She, who never begged. She, who never surrendered.
Marduk surfaced with a gasp. Pain flooded away. The dizziness sloughed off. She needed him, and that was all that mattered.
“Solveig,” he rasped. “What’s wrong?”
Solveig leaned back against the wall beside him, her entire body shaking as she shoved at something in her abdomen. Sweat dripped down her face, and she ground her teeth together before finally slumping back against the wall with a choked scream.
“One,” she whispered hoarsely.
Blood. He could smell blood.
Marduk scrambled to his hands and knees as she slowly toppled toward him. “Goddess’s mercy!” He caught her in his arms as an arrow head hit the cave floor with a metallic chink. Hot blood washed over his hands. She’d pushed the arrow through her flesh. “Are you all right?” What a stupid question. “How badly are you hurt?”
She shuddered and looked up at him with wide, strangely innocent eyes that made her look years younger. It was as though pain stripped away the hard layers she guarded herself with. “One to… go.”
He propped her against the wall and tugged the edges of her shirt apart, finding two bloody holes in her. The abdomen wound was probably the worst, though she’d managed to get the arrow out.
As for her chest…. The tip of an arrow breeched her skin an inch above her nipple, but he could see where the rest of it was caught against her ribs. A breath hissed through his teeth. “What happened?”
“That bastard shot me. Twice.” She dug her fingers into her palm. “There was something on the arrows. It…. It feels like it’s burning me… from the inside out.”
A tear slid down her face, and it nearly broke him because he knew what it cost her to allow him to see it.
“I can’t push this one through,” he told her, trying to be gentle as he examined it. “We’ll have to cut your ribs open. Can you wait until I get you back to the Zilittu castle?”
There was something small about her voice. “He said I’d tear my own throat out before the hour was up.”
Every inch of him knotted in two. “How bad is it?”
Solveig met his gaze with haunted eyes. “It’s been ten minutes. And I w-want to… scratch every inch of skin off already.”
She was shaking. Badly.
He didn’t have time to get her back to the castle.
“You’re not going to like my suggestion.”
“I’ll take a-anything.”
He held his hands up, summoning strands of Fire between his fingertips. “If I knock you unconscious, I can cut the arrow out and then use my magic to burn the poison out of your blood.” He swallowed. “It’s going to hurt, and it will take days to recover.”
And she would be entirely vulnerable.
“I can… handle the pain. Take me back… to the castle.”
“Solveig.” He reached down and brushed a kiss to her forehead, feeling as though his own chest was torn open. “Stop being so brave. Trust me. Trust me. I can heal you. I promise I won’t let anything happen to you while you’re unconscious.”
It took a long, breathless moment for her to speak.
“Have you ever done this before?” she whispered.
“Partly. I spent months in Morocco with a dreki clan there. One of their healers had the gift of Fire, and when a puff adder bit one of their children, he burned the venom from her blood. He showed me how it was done.”
Solveig shuddered, as if a new wave of pain wracked her. And then she finally nodded. “Don’t let anything happen to me.”
“On my life,” he whispered, kissing her lips and then pressing his fingertips to her temples.
Even as she shuddered, she lowered her psychic shields, and as he tried to tell her how much she meant to him with his kiss, he knocked her unconscious.
Marduk slid into the cool silk sheets behind Solveig and curled his body around her. He’d managed to carry her back to court, and the healers had seen to her.
He could barely remember snarling something at Draco when the king strode to intercept them, like, “Get out of my way or I’ll rip your throat out.”
Draco had demanded to know what had happened.
“Elin,” he’d gasped. “My mother’s spirit has overtaken Elin. She’s the one killing your Chaos-wielders, and she’s working with Tyndyr.”
And then the rest of the night was a blur.
Solveig still hadn’t woken.
Black, sluggish tar seeped from the wounds in her chest, as if poison was welling up from deep within her. Dark shadows smudged beneath her eyes, and it was disconcerting to realize that the force of nature he knew was still and quiet and surprisingly small beneath the blankets.
Her scream had been the worst sound he’d ever heard in his life.
Seeing her in so much pain tore something inside him.
But this…. Having her lie so vulnerable in his arms roused a protective side of him that he’d never known.
Marduk snuggled into her, wrapping his arms around her and pressing his face into the slope of her nape.
; “Get better,” he whispered, for he hated seeing her so undone. “Please get better, Solveig.” The words caught in his throat. “I hate seeing you like this. You were born to be a storm. Please wake up.”
23
A rap came at the door.
Solveig stirred with a whimper, but Marduk set his fingertips to her temple and whispered, “Sleep.”
She surrendered to his suggestion, and as he slipped from the bed and tucked the blankets carefully over her shoulders, Marduk felt the dreki within him rise.
Nobody had dared bother them all night.
Solveig was safe in his rooms, in his bed, and in his arms, and if anyone thought they were going to disturb her then he’d—
“Marduk,” Árdís called. “Open the bloody door. We need to talk.”
His temper eased. Árdís. Árdís was welcome. She liked Solveig and wouldn’t dare try to take her from his rooms.
Hauling on a pair of trousers, he ripped the door open. “What?”
His sister arched a brow, then poked him in the chest. “You look like someone struck you with a bolt of lightning.” Peering over his shoulder, her thoughtful gaze returned to his. “Hmm.”
“Hmm, what?”
“Are you going to let me in or simply stand there like some sort of overbearing dreki male in the first flushes of true mating?”
The words shocked him enough to force him to stand aside. “I’m not—”
Árdís made a rude, snorting sound as she ducked under his arm. “Of course not, Marduk. I’d never dare suggest you were starting to get all overprotective and growly. You’re absolutely not hovering over Solveig’s bed like you’d rip someone’s arm off just for looking at her. That would be ridiculous. It would mean admitting you had feelings for her. And if she overheard you say that, she’d be horrified.”
Sisters. The bane of his existence.
Or no, only one of them was a bane.
The other was a delight.
“Why are you here?”
Árdís set her hands on her hips. “Because Draco seemed to think that sending anyone else might end in bloodshed.”
“He set you free?”
“He allowed one of us to go free. I volunteered. Haakon took that about as well as a bear with a sore tooth, but I assured him that if the Zilittu king tried to hurt me, I’d rip his soul clean out of his body.” A wicked smile curved her lips. “Draco actually turned a little green.” Her smile faded. “Now tell me what happened? Is Solveig all right? What did you say? Draco wants to know about Tyndyr.”
