“And then came after me.” She searched his eyes, trying to understand why he was asking her this, what difference it made to him. “He called me a Malstrom bitch and tried to drown me, so I cut his throat.” Saying the words took her back. There was blood on her hands, on her face, the retreating tide stained red.
Evenon’s hands were around her shoulders, and without her permission, her hands gripped his waist, pulling him closer. Her head was swimming again, with ale or lust she couldn't say. It didn’t matter. What she wanted more than anything was to get rid of the image of Gabel that had forced its way to the front of her mind. Gripping her face, he tilted her chin up and she clumsily smashed her lips to his, squeezing her eyes shut. It felt…
Wrong.
It wasn't Evenon's hands that she wanted on her face and tangled in her hair. It wasn't Evenon's lips that she wanted brushing against the sensitive skin at the base of her ear, sending tingles up her spine. When she opened her eyes, it wasn't Evenon she saw at all. It wasn't even Estrid, with her bright eyes and long, dark lashes that nearly brushed the apples of her cheeks.
It was Tola, with green eyes made dark by kohl. With the smattering of freckles over her pale skin. With her red hair falling in thin, matted braids over her face.
“Tola,” she muttered, the words a nearly silent prayer into the night.
It felt wrong, and she knew it was wrong when she felt his hands around her wrists. When she tried to pull away, his grip tightened and he twisted her around so that he was pressed against her back and her stomach was to the closed door. His hands groped at her belt and he pulled out her own ax, the one that had just killed two men and was hungry for more, and held it next to her ear.
“Where is it?” he asked.
She blinked rapidly. Her head was still trying to catch up with what was happening. Wooden splinters scratched her cheek. She pushed back against him but he was as solid and unmoving as a wall, and the ax was sharp against her face. “Where's what?” she asked, her words muffled against the door. The anger she had been working to keep at bay since her mother's death was back, rising in her chest as her head cleared, though this time it felt more like fear.
“The crown. I know you have it. It wasn't on the boat unless it was lost to the sea in the storm. I checked the wreckage.”
Not the crown again. Why did everyone want the circlet? Part of her wanted to give it up, but the other part of her—the part that had killed Gabel to survive, killed Vyion to protect her friend—screamed at her to fight back. “I don't know—”
He dug the very tip of the ax blade into the side of her face beside her ear. “Liar.” Then he dragged the ax from her ear along the line of her cheek. Sibba kept the blade sharpened to a fine point and it easily opened the skin there. Warm blood dripped down her face and neck and into the collar of her tunic.
“Are you going to kill me?” The question came out before she could think about it, her voice muffled against the wall. She thought that maybe knowing would lessen her fear, like a warrior going into battle, knowing he might die but fighting anyway.
“It would be my right,” he said, his voice dangerous and low. “You killed my brother, after all.”
Blood on her mother's knife. A gash on his cheek.
An arrow in her mother's neck. A quiver at his hip.
Of course. It was why she had never found the bow on Ey Island. Why she had never felt quite alone after her mother's death.
Gabel hadn't killed Darcey.
It had been Evenon all along.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Sibba
“You lied,” Sibba grumbled.
“I'm not lying,” he said, jerking her back and slamming her again into the door as if to punctuate his point. Her face hit the door and bounced off, fresh blood erupting from her tongue as her teeth clamped down on it.
“Not now. In Tryggr. You said you were here to help me. But you're here to kill me, just like you killed my mother.” She spat out a mouthful of blood. “I get to chop off one of your fingers first, and then I'm going to cut out your heart.”
He grunted, unconcerned. “It's just a stupid game,” he said, his breath hot on her ear. “The next blood this ax tastes will be yours.”
He pressed a knee into the small of her back, sending sharp pains down her legs. Then she felt something rough around her wrists—a length of rope binding them together. He pulled the knot tight until it felt like her shoulders might snap out of their sockets. Then he turned her around and groped again in her cloak. She felt the anger coming off of him in waves. It was both familiar and terrifying because she knew what it meant he was capable of.
“Your brother died fighting,” she said to the top of his head as he stuffed his hands into the pockets at her waist. “It was a noble death.”
He pulled away and looked at her. She made no move for the ax he had dropped at their feet, no move to escape. His eyebrows gathered together. “That is no comfort to me,” he said. “We do not believe in your false gods. There is only one god, Enos, the Bloody God, and he does not reward needless death.”
His hands found the right pocket at last and he pulled out the delicate circlet, holding it in the dull light that seeped through the cracks in the barn door. His eyes never leaving it, he said, “This is it. All I need to be able to return home a hero.”
“To prove yourself to your Crowheart girl,” Sibba said, her voice high and mocking.
A hand wrapped around her throat. She remembered Gabel—his brother—and the way his thumbs had pressed into her airway, but his grip was not so severe. “To prove to my king that the Malstrom queen is finished, once and for all.”
Bound and helpless, visibly marked by her enemy—it was her worst nightmare. The scar on her face would be a permanent reminder of the time she let herself forget how dangerous it was to let other people in. A lesson she would not soon forget. She wanted to rage against him, to exact her revenge. Maybe she was Fielding after all. She kicked out desperately and one of her feet connected with his leg just above the knee. His grip slackened and he staggered back, grimacing. He massaged his thigh and then stood straight again, studying her.
“Your mother also fought. Until her very last breath. Until the arrow took her in the throat. I will likely carry her mark for the rest of my life.” Evenon reached out and traced a line from her eye to her lips. “Just as you will carry Enos’s to your grave.”
Her heart raced, her blood running cold and sending a chill down her spine. It was that same feeling she had felt when she had drawn the ax across Gabel’s neck. When she had challenged Vyion to a duel. She wanted to kill him. Sibba lunged at him, her hands still bound behind her back, the move desperate and foolish since he was the only one with a weapon. He raised his arms instinctively, but Sibba saw too late the gleam of the ax blade still in his hands.