My shudder abruptly stops, like every muscle in my body just pumped full of mortar.
The ball in Kaan’s throat rolls, and he breaks from Hock, holding my stare. He stalks toward me, his eyes taking on an empathetic softness as he pulls his málmr off.
My blood turns to ice.
He falls to his knees before me and lowers his head between his shoulders, bowing so deep his back is bared—his cupped hands outstretched, cradling his beautiful málmr …
Silence.
Even the wind stills its frantic stir.
My heart lodges so far up my throat it’s hard to breathe past.
I look at the piece—at the dark Sabersythe and silver Moonplume tucked in their forever embrace—admiring the exquisite workmanship. The love he’s poured into every dip and curve of the carving.
A vision saddles me with such intensity my breath snags:
Kaan’s málmr resting between my naked breasts, my body slicked with sweat as I writhe in rippling pleasure, looking past my navel. Down between my split thighs that are gripped by large, powerful hands …
Down to where Kaan’s ember eyes are blazing for me, his tongue laving at my—
I pop the hallucination like a bubble, gasping for a rush of air that only succeeds in making my head spin. Making it throb with a deeper, more painful hurt. No matter how hard I scrub the specter from my mind, I’m left with this oily residue of possession that slicks my insides.
A single surety stakes my heart like the roots of a mountain range—impossible to shift.
I want to accept that beautiful, dangerous object.
Hold it.
Cradle it close.
If even for a little while.
Fueled by that single blade of knowledge—ignoring its problematic implications I’ll battle another dae once we’re past this treacherous hurdle—I reach out, fingers wrapping around the málmr and bringing it close to my chest.
Something settles inside me like a key notched into place, though I don’t look too close. Don’t assess it.
This isn’t real.
It’s survival.
Kaan remains crouched before me, hands empty, holding the stance for so long the crowd begins to murmur. A few even gasp.
“What’s he doing?”
“He is asking for you to place your print upon his réidi,” Saiza rasps, her voice hitched with awe. “He is saying that he respects you above himself and, most importantly, above his honor.”
My heart stills, eyes widen.
“I—” I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve that. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“He is announcing you as his roskr. His greater. Should you accept this honor, his title will be passed to you should he fall this dae.”
Should he fall—
A strange piercing pain lances through my chest like a dagger plunged deep. “Wh—” My voice cracks, and I look at Saiza, a question in my eyes that I hope she can see, certain that if I try to speak, everything will come out in strangled bits.
What does it mean?
Saiza’s eyes soften, and she places her hand upon my cheek, cupping it. “It means that if Kaan loses, any decision you make will not be challenged. You can leave despite being claimed and receive no dishonor because you will be considered Hock’s greater.”
Every cell in my body charges with a current of thick, primal understanding, my next breath shuddered.
He’s ensuring I get out …
No matter what.
My gaze drops to the male before me, something swelling in the back of my throat that’s hard to swallow past, and I realize just how right I was to run.
To leave.
He’s much, much too easy to care about.
Saiza sweeps some of my own blood off my collarbone and uses it to paint my hand. “You may choose to print upon him and accept this great honor.”
I crunch my hand into a fist, release, looking at my blood slicked across it, then at the málmr caught in my other palm.
I don’t deserve this. Not one bit. But I also don’t want to disrespect him by refusing his beautiful gesture that weighs so much more than I’m now certain this magnificent male thinks I’m worth.
Silence reigns, and I battle to stuff those feelings down, wrestling them beneath my ribs while I look at the mural painted across his back. At the wonky moon half the size of my fist—like I could sweep it into my palms and cradle it.
I fall toward it heartfirst, pressing my hand upon the moon I love so much.
Kaan trembles all over, the motion vibrating up my arm and into my heavy heart, making my breath hitch.
He stands—too fast.
Too slow.
Some strange, unfamiliar part of me wants to reach forward and grab him. Scream for him to stay.
Beg him to live.
He keeps his stare to the ground and raises his fist, strikes his chest six times, then spins—stalking toward the weapon rack to the tune of the gasping, murmuring crowd.
Tension cuts the air, hundreds of stares scraping across my skin.
Delving beneath it.
I scan the leering crowd, then look to Saiza, her complexion pale, eyes bulging as she watches the King’s retreat. “Why six?”
“I am not certain,” she says. “Five for Oah. Six is unheard of.”
I swallow, tightening my hand around Kaan’s málmr.
He rummages through the weapons stacked upon a nearby rack, clunking things to the side, finally gripping the small knife I noticed earlier—the one with a maw’s worth of tapered teeth mounted around the fringe of the flat blade.
He passes it from hand to hand, grunts, then rips his boots off and tosses them aside. “Hach te nei, Rygun,” he growls, pointing to his beast, his stern words echoing off the crater’s sheer walls. “Hach te nei, ack gutchen!”
I lean into Saiza. “What’s he saying?”
“He is ordering Rygun to stand down … whatever the battle’s outcome.”
The last four words land like boulders upon my chest.
Blazing eyes still pinned on Kaan, the beast fills his chest with a breath he rumbles free, the sound so abrasive it packs the crater with a thick promise of fiery violence I understand perfectly.
Too perfectly.
Kaan bellows another order. “Hach te nei, Rygun. Ack!”
Rygun stretches his wings, turns his face to the sky, and releases a searing screech—the sound accompanied by a mushroom of red flames that scorch and lick and flick at the powdery blue.
Folk scream, crouching over their younglings to shelter them from the heat. Others dive upon the ground, as if that could save them if the massive dragon decided to tip his head and pour his flames into the crater.
I also crouch, but for different reasons … binding myself into a ball as my skin illuminates with the remnants of a million wilted runes. Turning such a stark shade, the light emitting from the old etchings rivals one of the Moonplume moons perched within The Shade’s otherwise gloomy depths.
I’m so crouched over myself, trying not to look too close at the residue of runes sketched across my skin—at the layers upon layers of tiny etchings used to stitch me together more times than there are moons in the sky to count—that I forget Saiza’s beside me. At least until my eyes open and I catch her bulging perusal.
Her gaze drifts up my body, meeting mine. My heart leaps into my throat, and I open my mouth to speak—
“No wonder you laughed,” she says, then reaches behind me, flicking a blanket over my back and easing it around my shoulders. “The unbreakable always do.”
I don’t correct her. Don’t tell her I’ve broken too many times to count. That I laughed because the pain I’ve felt in my heart eclipses any damage that could ever be inflicted upon my flesh and bones.
Instead, I give her a dozy smile of thanks, tucking deep into the corded fabric as Rygun throws his fiery tantrum toward the sky, like he’s trying to sizzle the moons.
Seems he’s more than displeased about being told what to do. To be fair, if I could rip off this iron cuff, I’d be taking fate into my own fucking hands.