The seething hate that had roiled inside Aldrik as long as he could remember flared. The feeling that he was not like anyone else in his family, his village, his country, had isolated him, made him question his sanity. This knowledge of his true origins could have granted Aldrik peace, or at least acceptance of his own peculiarities, yet his father had kept it secret, allowing Aldrik to suffer.
“This is not my home,” Aldrik said. “It never was.”
“It could’ve been.” Lagor regarded Aldrik with his stony gaze. “But there’s too much of her in you. Even as a boy, you were quick to anger. You hurt the other children when they only wanted to play. You hurt your brother.”
Aldrik hadn’t understood his own strength at first, and even after he did, he hadn’t always held back. He’d sent the other village boys home with bruises and broken bones, his brother included. Some were accidents. Some were not. He should have been repentant for the harm he’d caused.
He wasn’t. “Poor Reyker. Wouldn’t want your precious heir to be damaged.”
Lagor stood up straighter, shifting his body in front of the cottage door. “Reyker has always been loyal to you. No matter what you’ve done to him, he has always loved you.”
Aldrik’s hands squeezed into fists. “Curse his loyalty. Curse his love. I don’t need him, or any of you. Where do I find my mother?”
“She lives in the belly of the Mountain of Fire, in the center of Iseneld.”
Aldrik headed for the stables.
He was on the outskirts of his father’s lands when he heard another horse coming up fast behind him. Aldrik didn’t glance back, but he let his horse slow to a canter.
Reyker’s mount, already lathered and spent, pulled abreast of Aldrik’s. The boy hadn’t stopped to saddle his horse or even to pull on a coat. “Father told me you are leaving to join Gudmund’s army,” Reyker said. “I want to come with you.”
“No.” Aldrik saw no point in correcting his father’s lie. “Go home.”
“Don’t leave, Aldrik. Not without me.”
It hit Aldrik again, that feeling he’d had when the warriors had attacked Reyker—a gut-deep revulsion at the thought of the boy coming to harm by any hand besides his own. Lagor was right. Reyker was the only one who had ever looked past Aldrik’s unearthly eyes and cold demeanor and saw someone worth admiring. Some part of Aldrik enjoyed the boy’s admiration.
No more.
“What use is a sniveling brat in a war between men? You are worse than useless. You are a liability. A cursed priest killer. Why would I take you along?”
Reyker jerked back like a chastened dog. “Because I—I killed him for you. Because we are brothers.”
“In name only.” A dog. That was what Reyker looked like—a beaten pup, begging its abusive master for attention. “There is no place in my world for weak little lordlings. You are nothing to me.”
Aldrik kicked his horse hard and it surged ahead, leaving Vaknavangur in its dust. He was bound for the bright fire that burned in the heart of the island, for a mother who would welcome him and make him the strongest warrior alive, a destiny greater than he’d ever dreamed.
Maybe the prophecy was wrong. Maybe he could become a legend and lead his country without transforming into a monster. And if he could not, well . . . being a monster was a small price to pay for glory, for kinfolk who shared his blood and his mien and didn’t expect virtue where there was none.
He did not look back, but he felt Reyker’s eyes on him, watching him until he was out of sight.
CHAPTER 1
LIRA
“I love you.”
It was a whisper, a breath, caressing my skin like a breeze. The whisper became a kiss. I closed my eyes and leaned into it, into him, his chest pressing against my spine, his arms encircling me. His mouth started at my ear, wandering leisurely down my neck.
I sighed, my bones turning to liquid. “Do you think you’ll ever get tired of saying it?”
“Perhaps in a thousand years.” He took hold of my chin, turning my head so he could reach my lips with his own. They were warm and soft.
For a moment, I’d thought they might be cold. I wasn’t sure why.
I pulled back. “I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of hearing it.”
“Then I’ll say it a thousand more times.” And he did, his voice deep and quiet, like a placid river meandering through a canyon. He undressed me slowly, trailing kisses up and down my body, repeating those three lovely words in both our languages.
Then it was my turn to undress him, to pour those words over every inch of him, to unleash that promise of devotion into the wind, where it would be carried across the world. The next time I said it, for perhaps the thousandth time, he pulled me against him, his fingers tangling in my hair as mine dug into his back. He said the words with me—a breathless moan that became a roar, and he followed it with my name, a battle cry telling all who heard it how we belonged to each other, that nothing could come between us.
It was a dire warning to any who dared try.
We lay beside each other on a bed of clovers, and I hummed a tune under my breath—an old sea ballad. His body was a warm mass of muscle and flesh. Solid. Unwavering. His chest rose and fell beneath my cheek with each breath he took.
Because he was breathing—his lungs filling with air, not water.
No, he did not drown. That’s what happened to the woman’s lover in the sea ballad, when his ship sank in a storm. That man was not Reyker.
I was getting confused. I stopped humming.
We’d been talking for hours, sharing stories about our families, our childhoods. Confessing our deepest hopes and fears and desires. No matter how much of ourselves we bared, no matter how much I learned about him, I always wanted more.
“What will you do when you go back to Iseneld?” I did not add after you kill Draki, but it hung in the air between us, regardless. Above us crimson branches stretched out like gnarled arms. Aillira’s thorntree, the one she’d planted in honor of Veronis. It seemed to be watching us, listening to every word.
Reyker smiled sadly, staring into the distance. “I want to go back to Vaknavangur.” The village where he was born. The village Reyker would have become lord over had Draki not destroyed it, executing every last man. “To rebuild and restore it to what it once was. To find the survivors who were forced to flee and help them return to their own lands. They deserve to have a true home. I want to give that to them. I want to look after my people, to be the kind of leader my parents believed I could be. After everything I’ve seen, and done, and survived . . . it can’t all have been for nothing. I must be alive for a reason. I have to do something that matters.”