Master of Storms: Dragon Shifter Romance (Legends of the Storm Book 5)

by Bec McMaster

  Solveig spun low beneath a counter blow, taking the bastard’s feet out from under him.

  He collapsed with her sword still buried in her gut, both hands clutched around it. Shock painted itself across his face in delicious strokes.

  She’d think of him like this in the aftermath. Scrabbling in the dirt like a turtle on its back as he gasped and tried to wrench the steel of her blade from his body’s embrace, even as his hands burned at its touch.

  Solveig reached out and jerked her sword free of him. “There’s something you should know about me. I learn quickly. And I never make the same mistake twice. Get up.”

  Gritting his teeth, he moved to push to his feet, and she kicked him right in the face.

  He flipped backwards, scrabbling to roll away from the blow that never came. “You said—”

  “I didn’t say I was going to let you make your feet.” Solveig laughed. “When you fight wyrms, you don’t grant them honor. Honor is for a worthy foe, and you’re a piece of shit beneath my boot. Crawl.”

  Tyndyr growled at her through bloodstained teeth. “I will make you—”

  She drove the heel of her boot down on his fingers, smiling viciously as he screamed. The crunch his bones made was the best sound she’d ever heard. “Beg me,” she whispered. “Beg me for your life.”

  Tyndyr scrabbled toward his fallen sword, and she let him go, stalking forward slowly. His broken hand clutched his gut wound, and he hissed at her through bloodied teeth.

  “Not so pretty now,” she taunted.

  He drove toward her in a desperate attack and Solveig dodged the swing of his sword and brought her clenched hand up. Tyndyr was swept off his feet in a gust of air and flung into a mini whirlwind. His scream sounded like music.

  “You thought I was going to be an easy throat to slit. You mocked me. You tried to make me crawl. You forget who you’re fighting,” she hissed. “I am a dreki queen, and I will make you beg for my mercy.”

  Bringing her hand back down, she slammed him into the ground.

  He lay there, gasping.

  Around him, the sounds of fighting dwindled. Most of his cohort were bleeding, and some fled.

  Grabbing a fistful of Tyndyr’s hair, she hauled his face up and set her sword to his throat. “Look at them run. You’ve spent a thousand years waiting for this moment, and it crumbles before you. I want you to see it. I want you to know it. You are defeated before you are even begun.”

  A broken laugh wheezed through his lungs. “You think we’ve lost? Have you ever played chess? This was all a gambit. Capture the queen and you have won the war.”

  “You’ll have to be more specific,” she mocked. “At last count we had three of them here, and all are accounted for.”

  “Are they? We’ve won. We’ve won, and you don’t even know it yet. They’re in Álfheimr now. Both of them.”

  She went still. “Both?”

  Andromeda was nearby, fussing with Draco’s face. The skin around his eyes looked burned, and while he snarled, he obliged her.

  Where was Freyja?

  She should have been right there by her husband…. But even as Solveig looked, the image of the queen dissolved into a handful of leaves. And Marduk was curled over Rurik as if he sobbed on his chest.

  Rurik…. She could see the franticness in the Blackfrost’s actions as he tried to shift Marduk off his brother.

  And a very real fear filled her: The king must be dead.

  It would break Marduk’s heart.

  But she couldn’t let herself give into emotion, not now.

  She forced herself to focus on the elf. “Who is ‘both’?”

  “The Chaos bitch and the queen. My king doesn’t need your pathetic little key. He has Ishtar now. He can open the portal and return at the head of an army.”

  Solveig punched him in the mouth.

  And then she forced herself to look past him.

  To Árdís, her teeth bared as she wielded a spirit-form of glowing green magic. To Andromeda, casting cyclones of Chaos from her fingertips as if she was spinning children’s tops as an elf slowly stalked her. To Bryn, driving her metal-gauntleted fist into an alfar jaw. To Malin, fierce in her dreki form as she lashed her tail and sent one of the alfar flying. To Viveka, fighting her way toward her brother.

  “One queen is off the board,” she told him. “But the thing you have never understood is that true queens are not kings. We do not consider ourselves in absolutes, and we do not consider ourselves alone. There are many queens here. And if there is one thing queens do, it is to uphold other queens. You have taken one of ours, and we will get her back. We will get them both back. And then we will show your petty little king what we think of war.”

  “Do it,” he rasped, as her sword drew his blood.

  Solveig let him see her smile, knowing the gleam of the wolf filled it. Most of the time she kept the hunter within her contained, but this was not that moment. “Don’t think I don’t want to. But I have other plans in mind for you, you piece of filth. Your men stole my mate’s sister and sister-in-law. And the gates are currently closed. But you’re not the only one who’s been researching his enemy.” She leaned forward to whisper in his ear. “I know who you truly are. And if the King of Álfheimr wants his bastard son back in one piece, then he will ensure Ishtar and Freyja’s safety.”

  “He won’t offer them for me.”

  “Oh, I think he will.” She looked up as Haakon strode toward her, his burnished armor rusted with elvish blood. “Haakon. Do you have your manacles?”

  The dragon-slayer hauled Tyndyr’s hands behind his back and locked the dwarven iron around his wrists. They were unbreakable, and could only be removed if Haakon truly willed it. “You’re needed elsewhere. Go. I’ve got him.”

  Needed elsewhere….

  Solveig straightened and surveyed the battlefield, following the tilt of Haakon’s head to where Árdís and Andromeda were kneeling by Rurik.

  Or no, not so much Rurik.

  Marduk.

  Her heart sank like lead. Her veins filled with ice. “Marduk?”

  She’d hadn’t even noticed him fall.

  “What happened?”

  Haakon’s face twisted grimly. “We don’t know. He just collapsed. Go. Go to him.”

  Solveig started sprinting.

  29

  Solveig slid to her knees beside Marduk, her heart hammering in her chest. Rurik lay beside him, but he was awake and gasping, clutching at Sirius’s hand as the warlord knelt with his king’s head in his lap.

  Rurik looked fine, but Marduk….

  “What’s wrong with him?” Solveig demanded.

  Froth burst from Marduk’s lips, his spine arching and his heels drumming on the ground. He didn’t see her. He didn’t see anything. He was trapped in some silent scream of pain.

  There was no answer on Árdís’s face.

  Panic burst like a bubble in Solveig’s chest. “Tell me what happened! Did he get hit from behind? Was it poison? Or magic? Or—”

  “We don’t know!” Árdís tried to restrain him.

  If they didn’t know, then how could she fix him?

  Solveig’s throat thickened as she cupped the base of his skull in her hand. Of all the outcomes she’d expected today, this wasn’t one of them. Marduk managed to escape every trap, and he was incredibly wily when he was backed into a corner. She didn’t even know when she’d begun to worry about him, but to see him like this…. It was the loss of something she hadn’t even known was growing inside her.

  “Marduk?” she whispered.

  There was something very small and quiet within her; a little squeeze in her chest that felt like it could swallow her whole if she let it.

  She felt the way she had when she’d begged her mother to keep breathing—if she let it in, then she was going to drown on this emotion.

  No, no, no, please.

  “It’s not Chaos magic,” Andromeda said, laying a hand on Solveig’s shoulder. “Indeed, there’s
such an absence of Chaos within him, that he might as well have had any spark of the gift extinguished.”

  But it wasn’t Marduk’s gift.

  Solveig froze as she stared into the other queen’s dark eyes. “It was never his in the first place.”

  “He escaped the Abyss,” Andromeda corrected. “He had to have—”

  “He used Ishtar’s link to the magic.” Solveig crouched over him as her heart began to race in time with her thoughts. “He could access it. Sometimes. And when he used it in the Abyss, it nearly tore his mind apart. It was never meant for him, but it was meant for her. It’s Ishtar. She’s gone.”

  His sister was gone, and the bond they’d shared was obliterated.

  “What do you mean she’s gone?” Árdís demanded.

  “Tyndyr kidnapped the queen and forced your sister to open a portal to Álfheimr,” Andromeda said. “They’re both gone.”

  “That’s impossible. Freyja was right here two seconds ago,” Árdís argued.

  “It was an illusion,” Solveig replied.

  Árdís’s face drained of color. “Rurik,” she whispered.

  Solveig shot the king a glance. “She’s gone. He’ll have felt the bond between them break.”

  “Then why is he awake and Marduk… like this?”

  “A broken mating bond sometimes takes years to kill the one who remains behind,” Andromeda said, “but Marduk has lost more than that. If he was somehow channeling Ishtar’s magic, then to have it ripped from him like that…. It creates a vacuum within him.”

  “Marduk was bonded with Ishtar,” she whispered, easing Marduk’s head back down on the moss and bending to kiss his temples. It all made so much sense.

  She’d been able to feel the mating bond, but he never could.

  Because he was already bound.

  “If he was truly bound to her, then he was bound to her magic too.” Andromeda shoved forward and slid her knees under his head.

  “What does that mean?” The frustration made her want to scream. “How do we fix this? Can’t you use your magic to put more… Chaos inside him?”

  “It means he’s dying,” Andromeda warned. “There’s nothing I can do. Chaos magic doesn’t work like that. His spark is gone. And while he couldn’t use it, the magic was threaded all through him.”

  “I bound myself to Haakon when he was dying,” Árdís said suddenly. She looked at Solveig. “Is there… any chance?” She looked desperately toward Andromeda. “If he was linked to Ishtar’s magic, then maybe he could survive if he’s linked to Solveig’s.”

  The pair of them stared at her.

  “It’s possible,” Andromeda said.

  Possible. Solveig’s breath came raggedly as she clutched his hand. Never, she had sworn. Ever.

  But this was not capitulation to a stranger. This was not surrender. This was… Marduk. To save his life, she needed to be able to share some of her life force.

  She tried.

  “Please,” she whispered, reaching for him psychically. Harsh wings stirred within her. Fury at the cage closing around it. A tear rolled down her cheek. Don’t fight me, don’t fight me, don’t fight me. Just this once, please don’t fight me.

  She was one with the dreki, and it was one with her.

  And she could feel its rage and denial.

  “I don’t know what I’m doing,” she blurted.

  “It just happened for me,” Árdís whispered.

  “Can you… link us?” Solveig whispered.

  Both of the other women looked at her sharply.

  “Not a bond. Just a tether,” she added. “Enough for him to use me as his link, until he’s recovered.”

  Andromeda shook her head. “If you can’t hold him, then he will take you with him when he—"

  “I will hold him,” she said fiercely. “I will hold him here, no matter what I must do.”

  Andromeda exchanged a look with Árdís.

  “She can do it,” Árdís whispered, reaching over and giving Solveig’s hand a squeeze. “Please try.”

  There were some moments Solveig would remember forever.

  She winged through the air, light flashing off the polar caps ahead of them as she threw a glance over her shoulder to tell Siv to hurry up, only to see an enormous chain lash towards her sister’s form. Wings tore. Siv screamed, and then she was falling, falling… plummeting toward the earth, and there was nothing Solveig could do to stop her, no matter how fast she swooped….

  She stood alone on a rocky mountain, covered in blood and crawling toward her fallen mother even as Siv sobbed.

  “Kill me,” her mother whispered, her breath rasping through her torn lungs as she tried to twist the knife in her own chest. “It’s the only way to… stop him.”

  And she sobbed as her mother’s hands guided her own to the hilt of the knife.

  “No, no, no, please no, please no….”

  But menacing footsteps crunched through the snow behind her, and as she met her mother’s eyes one last time, she saw the truth in them.

  The only way to protect her sister was to twist that knife and finish what her mother had started.

  She sobbed on the floor of her bathing chambers as her mother’s body was burned. Siv was safe, and she would heal, but something inside Solveig would never recover. And she couldn’t let her father know, she couldn’t let anyone know how much it hurt, but then Aslaug was there, her little arms circling Solveig’s neck as they cried together, and this one time she wasn’t alone….

  She hated being alone.

  Not again, and not like this.

  Because she knew she would remember this too, one day, and it almost felt like she was hovering over her body and watching herself cry.

  The room was dark and warm.

  She could barely remember being brought back to the Zilittu court, but someone must have carried them. Haakon, perhaps? She vaguely recalled snarling at him when he tried to lift her to her feet.

  Hours slipped by. Maybe days.

  And Marduk barely stirred.

  “She’s losing him,” someone whispered, and Solveig shut them out, shut it all out as she curled her arms around him and rested her head on his shoulder.

  She held him in her arms and stroked his hair in the dark, humming an old lullaby under her breath. The candles burned low, and whoever was standing guard finally left, but Solveig didn’t falter.

  “Please come back,” she whispered, biting her lip hard enough to stop the tears. “I don’t want to be alone again.”

  She’d spent so many years thinking no one could ever hurt her again if she didn’t let them get close enough to her.

  But it was a lie.

  Because somehow, he’d slipped beneath her skin while she wasn’t looking, and now he was wedged deep into her heart.

  He’d promised to chase her forever.

  But she was the one who couldn’t surrender.

  And it was going to kill him.

  She closed her eyes and pictured them winging through the skies together, racing each other through fierce chasms. “Let me explore forever at your side. Please.”

  In her mind’s eye, Marduk shot a glance back over his shoulder, his golden scales gleaming. He shrieked with delight when he saw her chasing him, and then he shot into the skies, his enormous wings thrusting hard.

  Solveig chased him until she was almost close enough to catch his tail.

  Down and down they went, circling each other in a languid spiral until they were practically body-to-body, soul-to-soul.

  A tug snatched at her temples.

  “Solveig?” came a whisper on a thought-thread.

  “Mmmm.” She breathed in, digging her claws into his skin. At some stage during the night, she’d partially shifted, and now her teeth and claws were razor sharp. “Fly with me. Forever.”

  She was back in the skies, soaring wingtip to wingtip with him. Still circling each other. Dew claws touched. A horrifically dangerous spiral, unless you were in perfect harmony
with the other dreki.

  “Solveig?” He was meshed with her, until their thoughts bled into each other.

  She wanted to keep flying, but he was weighing her down, his shock and grief knotted around his throat like an anchor. Ishtar was gone, and there was a gaping hole inside him, and she wanted to patch that hole.

  And then they were plummeting down, her wings feeling like lead as she slammed to the ground in his arms—

  And suddenly she was lying there, naked against him, torn from the mental plane and breathless with the shock of landing.

  They were in bed in the warm dark room, but it seemed like a different world.

  Marduk blinked at her, one of his hands caressing her spine.

  She barely dared breathe. Because she was no longer alone. He filled her from the inside out, and it was difficult to work out where she began and he ended.

  “Did you just… mate with me?” he demanded.

  “What?” Solveig sat up in the bed, staring down at her claws in astonishment.

  Marduk came up onto his elbows.

  He was naked and they were… in their room at the Zilittu court. And Solveig looked like some monster-fused version of her mortal form. Her eyes were cat-slit and burned like amber flame, and he was fairly certain actual claws were digging into his arms.

  He didn’t know who was more surprised.

  “My, my.” His surprise bypassed his brain and blurted straight out of his mouth. “What big teeth you have, my love.”

  Clapping a hand over her mouth, she clearly realized her teeth had lengthened into fangs. Faint golden light rippled over her skin, and then she was naked and mortal once more.

  “You didn’t have to get rid of them,” he protested, brushing her hair off her shoulder. “I quite liked them.”

  The overwhelming urge to take her almost choked him.

  He could have died smiling in this moment.

  She was his. Now and forever.

  And years of thwarted frustration welled within him as his dreki rose. It was almost as though it sensed this too; the mating bond between them had been smothered by his link to his sister, but now it roared back into being like a wildfire racing through a hot, dry forest.