Collide and Seek

by Sara C. Roethle

  “I’ll try to talk to her,” she offered finally. “Perhaps she’ll tell me how bad it really is.”

  Alaric laughed. “You might give her horrid flashbacks of when you were her social worker.”

  Sophie lifted her head to glare at him. “I was a damn good social worker, thank you very much.”

  He patted her shoulder. “If you say so.”

  They both laughed, then their conversation ebbed once again. Sophie knew better than to leave her brother alone while Madeline cozied up with the Viking. He would go barging in there eventually, unable to take it anymore. Sophie would simply have to wait it out with him until Madeline broke down Mikael’s shields and found what she needed.

  “You love her, don’t you?” she asked suddenly.

  The idea of her brother in love was a little jarring. Sure, he’d dated, but love was neither Sophie’s nor her brother’s strong suit. It wasn’t what they were made for.

  He leaned forward to rest his chin in his hands, bracing his elbows against his knees and shielding his face with his hair. “I have from the start.”

  Her jaw dropped. She hadn’t really expected him to admit it. “Why her?” she blurted out.

  Alaric turned to her, looking slightly offended.

  She bit her lip. “I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just, you’ve had plenty of opportunities to fall in love. What was different this time?” Her heart was racing, and she wasn’t sure why.

  Alaric shrugged, disappointing her. “It could be our similar natures,” he explained, “death and war go together nicely, and I’m sure that’s why she ended up pregnant. But—” he cut himself off, seeming deep in thought.

  “But what?” she pressed, feeling elated once more. She was quite sure what she’d previously felt for Maya was love . . . or was it just affection? Attachment from knowing someone for long enough? She wasn’t sure.

  Alaric sat up straight and flexed his hands in the air, as if grasping at the words that would not come. “She cares about everything,” he began hesitantly, but then the words began to tumble out of his mouth like a mudslide, just a few rocks at first, leading to an almost frantic downpour. “The Vaettir abandoned her with no knowledge of who she was, and our treatment after reclaiming her wasn’t much better, yet she still cares what happens to us. She forgave me for letting James haul her off to a cell, and for letting him stab her. It’s like she understands, even though she’s only been a part of our world for a short time. She balks at even killing one of her enemies, but can accept the fact that I’ve killed thousands. She wants to save us all, even though none of us deserve it.”

  Sophie stared at him, surprised by his outburst. “So you love her because she’s a martyr?” she asked skeptically.

  He grunted in frustration. “It’s more than that. How do you explain why you love someone? It’s not just their smile, or the way they laugh, or how they look when they sleep. It’s all of it. It’s seeing that burning humanity inside them, a single light that’s like no other. It’s irreplaceable.”

  If Sophie was surprised before, now she was completely dumbfounded. Jaw agape, she watched her brother, waiting to see if he’d say more, but he didn’t. He buried his face in his palms and sunk into a fugue.

  She placed a hand on his back. She might not know romantic love, but she knew familial love for her brother. She hated seeing the pain of worry on his face. “We’ll protect her,” she assured. “You’ll see.”

  He nodded, but not like he believed her.

  “I’ll talk to her,” Sophie offered again. “We’ll get to the bottom of her worries, then we’ll find a way to fix them.”

  Alaric nodded again, seeming slightly hopeful this time. Sophie took a deep breath, sincerely hoping there was a way to help Maddy. She didn’t like to think how her brother would be affected if there was not, and she had no doubt he’d do something stupid, even if he had no chance of coming out alive.

  She didn’t like the idea of living alone in such a painful world. It simply wasn’t an option.

  28

  The song did the trick. Eventually Mikael’s breathing slowed as he drifted off to sleep. I looked down at his passive face, illuminated only by the small amount of light given off by the bedside lamp. His dark lashes formed perfect crescents below his eyebrows. It was odd to see him in such a relaxed, almost helpless state.

  Really, I was shocked he’d managed to fall asleep at all with me in the room, though the alcohol had definitely helped him along. Still, you don’t survive for a thousand years by trusting people enough to fall asleep near them, especially people you’d only known for a little over a week.

  I shook my head. Who was I kidding? If someone burst into the room to murder us, I had no doubt Mikael would be up in two seconds flat, skewering them with his sword.

  Thinking of the sword, I searched around the room for it, finding it resting against the wall near the closet. The ax he’d brought back from the past was nowhere to be seen.

  I took a deep, shaky breath. I was stalling. I really didn’t want to see inside Mikael’s head. I didn’t want to see inside anyone’s head. I looked back to Mikael’s still form. I had to do this, and it was now or never.

  I leaned forward in my seat, then placed my hands gently on either side of his face. His skin was soft and supple, not like what you’d expect after so many years of existence. I smoothed my hands up so they rested partially in his hair. It was an oddly intimate gesture, and I was glad he wasn’t conscious for it.

  As if sensing my thoughts, his eyelids began to flutter open.

  “No, no,” I soothed, my voice barely above a whisper. “It’s just me.”

  Not fully waking, he lifted one of his hands to cradle my palm against his face for a moment. Either realizing it was just me, or perhaps thinking it was someone else he wished was there, his arm fell back to his side as he drifted back into drunken sleep.

  I tried to focus on any emotions I might pick up on, but Mikael almost waking up had me panicked. It was well past midnight, and my thoughts were muddled with my need for sleep. My empathy wasn’t something I used on purpose, which made it difficult to hone in.

  With another shaky breath, I closed my eyes and thought back to my conversation with Erykah. It had been effortless, but then again, she had been purposefully projecting her thoughts for me. Mikael was projecting nothing but bourbon breath. I would have to take his thoughts, giving nothing in return.

  I scrunched my eyes tightly shut and focused, internally begging and wishing, but nothing happened. I opened my eyes and was about to pull away, but something stopped me.

  As if seeing a moment of weakness, the key came alive at my neck. Reading the key’s intent, I tried again to pull away from Mikael, but seemed unable to move. It was like a voice inside my head was saying, You want to see inside his head? Oh, I’ll show you inside his head, only there were no words.

  My outward sight went blind as scenes began to play inside my mind. I was powerless to stop them. I saw Erykah and the village we’d left behind, but felt none of the guilt Mikael felt in the present. It was a time before the key destroyed them all. His lovely wife was yet to be twisted into the hard, calculating woman she’d become. A woman that would climb inside his head without permission.

  I turned to the side in the vision, and it felt as if my actual body was turning. I turned from Erykah and saw Mikael’s sons, running in and out of the livestock huts, frightening the cattle, then laughing maniacally as adults tried to catch and chastise them.

  I felt my lips curve into a smile, and realized I was seeing through Mikael’s eyes, inhabiting his mind during the memory. There was something in my arms. I looked down to see a baby girl. She smiled up at me with bright, reddish brown eyes, her delicate skin alabaster perfection. I felt a tear come to my eye. The scene blurred, and changed.

  I was standing in the same spot, but was surrounded by corpses and ash. All the structures had been burned, and the people murdered. It was many years later. My dau
ghter had long since been killed, now Erykah had joined her. My sons were far from that place, safe for the time being, but they would want revenge.

  Fast forward again. Entire empires crumbling at my feet. I didn’t care. Let them grieve as I’d grieved. The world was not a kind place.

  I felt dizzy as Mikael woke. He’d realized what was happening, and was trying to force me out. I felt his shields raising, and the key fought them for control.

  The struggle seemed to last for ages, but its end was sudden. Mikael forced his shields up, shutting me out. It was like iron gates slamming into place. The impact rattled my teeth. Mikael’s eyes shot open, meeting mine as I still gripped the sides of his face. At some point I’d moved closer, my mouth was only inches from his.

  Words that were not mine trickled from my lips, “You are a more worthy adversary than we thought, Agnarsson. ”

  Then I fainted.

  I shot up in bed, panting as my breathing tried to catch up with my heart. The room was pitch black, and arms wrapped around me from behind. I screamed.

  “Maddy, Maddy,” a voice soothed. “Shh.”

  Part of me recognized that voice, but I didn’t understand where I was.

  “Madeline,” the voice said again, then it clicked that it was Alaric. In my sleep I had been seeing images I never should have seen. They’d all happened long before I was born, in places far away.

  As reality set in, a new panic hit me. “Oh my god, Mikael. I practically raped his memories.”

  A light flipped on at the bedside. I noted a sliver of sunlight at the window, though the curtains were heavy enough to block most of it out. I turned around and was able to see Alaric’s face. It helped bring me the rest of the way into reality.

  “He carried you here after you fainted,” Alaric explained. “He would not say what happened.”

  I shook my head over and over again. “This is not good. He’s going to kill me. I shouldn’t have seen all of that.”

  Alaric scooted behind me and rubbed his hands up and down my arms. “If he was going to kill you, you wouldn’t be sitting here. Whatever it is, it’s okay.”

  I took a deep, shaky breath. “You don’t understand. He wouldn’t have wanted anyone to feel his emotions like that.”

  Alaric continued to rub my arms. “He knew the risks.”

  I nodded, but it didn’t make me feel any better.

  He hugged me against him. “Did you at least get what you needed?”

  I pulled away, only then remembering my initial intent in reading Mikael’s thoughts. I recalled the moment he shut me out, and how his shields felt going up. It was quite literally a physical barrier in his mind, created by sheer force of will, and a desperate desire to hide his emotions.

  “I think I did,” I whispered, feeling somewhat astonished by the notion.

  In my mind I thought, You didn’t expect that, did you? but there was no reply. The key had delved into Mikael’s memories, thinking he wouldn’t have the will to shut it out, but he did. Mikael had managed to catch the key off guard. I briefly wondered if he’d be able to do it again, now that the key knew what it was up against.

  “What are you thinking?” Alaric asked softly.

  I shook my head. “Ugly thoughts. I need to talk to Mikael.”

  “I’ll go with you,” he offered.

  I nodded. It was probably a bad idea to take Alaric with me, but I wasn’t sure I possessed the bravery needed to face the scary Viking on my own.

  We left the room and walked down the hall as the first hints of dawn chased us through the window. I did not want to do this. I remembered how Mikael had felt when I’d picked up on just an ounce of his grief. Now I’d seen his memories first hand, instead of just focusing on his shields. He was going to be pissed.

  We made our way to the room where I’d sat with Mikael. Maybe he would still be asleep and we could delay the inevitable conversation. I knocked on the closed door.

  No answer.

  With a deep, shaky breath, I turned the knob and peeked inside, with Alaric hovering over my shoulder. The room was perfectly clean, the bed made, with no sign of its inhabitant.

  I turned wide eyes to Alaric as I pulled the door shut, leaving us out in the hall. “Do you think—” I began.

  Alaric shook his head. “He wouldn’t be able to abandon you. It would be too close to a betrayal, which would break his oath to you.”

  My strength left me as I leaned against the wall. Alaric was right. Part of me would have liked to think we’d be better off without Mikael, but that part wasn’t very wise. Like it or not, we needed him, and we needed him not mad at me.

  Movement at the end of the hall caught my attention. Mikael became fully visible as he ascended the last few stairs. “I’m surprised to hear you speaking on my behalf,” he commented, eyeing Alaric as he approached us.

  Alaric glared. “I was speaking upon your oath to Madeline, nothing more.”

  Mikael smirked, though it was half-hearted. “Of course,” he said quietly.

  I stayed where I was standing, waiting for Mikael to address me, but he was yet to meet my eyes. As silence engulfed us, I leaned more heavily against the wall. I was exhausted, and felt like I might lose the bile in my stomach.

  Finally Mikael looked at me. “Are you well?” he asked, his eyes focused somewhere in the vicinity of my mouth rather than further up my face.

  “Are you?” I breathed. Yep, I was going to have to find the bathroom.

  Alaric reached for me, but I sprung from the wall and rushed past him. I really didn’t want to mess up Marie’s hallway carpeting. I made my way down the hall and burst into the vacant bathroom, slamming the door against the wall as I threw it open.

  I made it to the toilet and began heaving, though nothing came up. I hadn’t managed to turn on the bathroom light, but I was grateful for the darkness. It felt somehow safe as I huddled over the toilet. I heard Alaric and Mikael speaking in the hallway, then Sophie’s voice was added to the mix. A moment later someone was behind me, sweeping my hair back from my face just as another wave of nausea hit me.

  “It seems you’re still pregnant,” the man holding my hair mumbled once my dry heaving had stilled.

  I jumped when I realized it was Mikael.

  “Where’s Alaric?” I groaned, feeling like I might heave again.

  “I requested that he allow me to tend to you,” Mikael explained.

  I wanted badly to turn around and look at him, but I was afraid to move away from the toilet. “And he listened?” I asked skeptically, my voice barely above a croak.

  “No,” Mikael said, a hint of laughter in his voice, “but his sister intervened.”

  I shook my head, then instantly regretted it as my stomach did a little flip-flop. “No offense,” I began slowly, closing my eyes to still my dizziness, “but holding my hair while I heave really is a job for the father of my child.”

  Mikael was silent for a moment, but continued to hold my hair. Little tugs of movement let me know he was twining it around his fingers. “You stole your way into the memories I hold most dear. The least you can do is let me sit here with you.”

  I sighed. It was time to have that talk, apparently. I would rather have had it somewhere other than the bathroom, with me able bodied and ready to run away, but I wouldn’t deny him answers now.

  “I didn’t mean to,” I explained. “It was the key.”

  I expected a wash of anger, or an accusation that I was making excuses, but Mikael just silently kept playing with my hair while I hovered over the toilet. Feeling slightly more steady, I moved away from the bowl and sat back to lean against the wall. I tugged my hair out of Mikael’s grasp, then brought my knees to my chest.

  He took a seat beside me, mirroring my position. “How much control has it gained?”

  I turned my neck to look at him, feeling slightly stunned. “You’re never angry when I most expect it.”

  He picked up a lock of my hair and started playing with it again.
Not meeting my eyes, he explained, “I was angry, but my anger will do us no good now.”

  I sighed and slouched further down the wall, giving up on keeping my hair to myself. Not knowing what to say in response, I decided to answer his original question. “Even now, with the memory of how you build your shields in my head, I’m not sure I can fight it. At times, I’m not even sure I want to.”

  “What did Erykah really tell you that night, right before we shared our dance?” he asked softly.

  The bathroom darkened, letting me know that clouds were moving in outside to obscure the sun. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  His hand found its way to my knee, but it was more attention-getting than flirtatious. “Yes, Madeline, you do.”

  I placed my hand on my belly, wishing I could somehow feel the small life inside. I knew I shouldn’t tell anyone what Erykah had told me, or if I did, Alaric should be the first to know. It was his child too, after all.

  Still, the words began to tumble from my mouth. “I know how to destroy the key, and I think I might be able to shield from it,” I began, just as a tiny voice in my head argued both of those points, “but in all likelihood the effort would kill me . . . ” I trailed off, then patted my belly and added, “and it.”

  Mikael’s face went slack, the shadows in the room emphasizing the subtle change. “Why would you not say anything?”

  I shrugged, wondering where Alaric had gone, and hoping he wasn’t close enough to hear anything I was saying. “It would do little good.”

  “Then why tell me now?” Mikael pressed.

  I closed my eyes, suddenly feeling excruciatingly tired. “Because I can’t tell Alaric. Sometimes I consider Sophie a friend, but I can’t tell her either.”

  When Mikael didn’t reply, I opened one eye to see him smiling. “Does this mean that I’m your friend?” he teased.

  I smirked. “You don’t have friends.”

  “No,” he replied, “I don’t. Yet somehow you’re wiggling your way in.”