“I. Can’t.” Marduk strained to move.
“Get to your feet,” she insisted, grabbing his arm and hauling him up. “And fight.”
“It’s not that… easy….” Each word came through strained teeth, and she felt Marduk’s fist curl in her shirt as he half made his feet.
“Stay,” the newcomer commanded, and even she felt the weight of those words. “Both of you.”
The most gorgeous man she’d ever seen turned his entire focus upon her, and Solveig froze as though a fist had slammed into her midriff. She couldn’t speak. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move.
All she could do was feel the vast noose of overwhelming love flooding through her. This man…. This amazing, stunning man was looking at her, and she wanted to go to her knees—
What the hell?
“Aren’t you beautiful,” said the creature, and the words screamed through her ears. “Aren’t you magnificent?” He smiled, and the sun rose and set in that smile, and her heart began to pound even as her dreki shrieked within her chest. “Come here, my love. Come here and let me see you.”
Solveig nearly screamed as she fought the lure of that call.
But it was Marduk who stepped forward, moving as if he was ensorcelled. Marduk who went toward the creature with a smile on his face and blank, bland eyes.
Of course he did, the idiot.
And the stranger’s smile deepened as his hand went to the hilt of his knife, one hand reaching for Marduk—
“These children have forgotten the old ways,” the creature said, and another one of them laughed in the background.
More of them. Five in all.
But she couldn’t escape, couldn’t make herself move, couldn’t even look beyond him.
“Marduk,” she managed to grate out.
The stranger smiled at her as if he found this oh-so-hilarious, and he drew Marduk into his arms, grabbing the dreki prince by the chin and spinning him until Marduk leant back into his embrace, barely cognizant of the knife the creature held to his throat.
“Is this one yours?”
A thin line of red slid down Marduk’s throat, but he didn’t fight. The stranger kissed the blood away, but he didn’t drop his gaze from hers. “Oh, look at you fight it. I’m going to enjoy cutting the heart out of his chest—"
“His heart is mine,” she managed to hiss, but still her feet carried her forward.
“Maybe I’ll make you eat it.”
Her dreki went mad.
Its wings were pushing at her skin, its claws tearing at her from the inside. Solveig found herself screaming, but with the scream came some sort of clarity. The fog that bound her will in chains slipped from her mind, and she focused on the knife in the creature’s hand.
“Come to me, you pathetic wyrm,” the stranger demanded, his voice shivering through her and wrapping its tendrils around her heart. “Crawl toward me and kiss my boots…. Beg for mercy. Beg for pain. Beg for my knife. Crawl, you bitch.”
Solveig felt her feet drag her across the floor toward certain death, and she couldn’t stop her lips from curling in a smile.
Please. Please love me. Please hold me. Please end this misery.
But just as the stranger beckoned her toward him, Solveig could smell the blood.
And somehow it broke the spell. Somehow, she could move her eyes, see the blood pooling in the hollow of Marduk’s collarbone.
It wasn’t right. It wasn’t right, and everything inside her was being torn in two.
Crawl to me. Crawl to me. Crawl.
But she was Solveig the Fierce and she’d never crawled for anyone in her life.
“If anyone is going to… cut his heart out of his chest,” she screamed, “it’s going to be… me.”
Solveig stopped fighting the call.
Her feet carried her forward, and suddenly she was almost lunging toward him. Solveig’s fingers curled into a fist and then her knuckles were lashing toward that bastard’s nose, and she drove every inch of her weight and fury through the blow.
Blood spurted and the stranger’s head snapped back.
Metal shifted as five other sets of hands dropped to their swords, but she couldn’t worry about the others. Instead, she hooked her left fist around and drove it into the creature’s jaw. The knife slipped free from Marduk’s throat, and Solveig kicked Marduk in the chest, which slammed the pair of them back into the wall.
Marduk blinked as if he was coming awake from a thousand-year sleep. Grabbing a fistful of his shirt, she spun him toward the bar of the inn.
“Wake up, Sleeping Beauty.” She slapped him across the face.
Hard.
And damn her if it didn’t feel good.
“You bitch.” The stranger hauled himself upright, wiping blood from his mouth. His eyes glinted murder, but whatever she’d done, she’d managed to break his hold over her. “I’ll have you on your knees—”
Solveig grabbed the nearest barstool and whipped it across his face. Timber shattered over his shoulders, and the slicing edge of his voice died a short death.
Steel crashed behind her. A hard body staggered into her. Marduk gave a grunt.
“Get off me!” she yelled.
“I’m trying to,” he said, and then he was lunging away from her, steel flashing in his hands as he stabbed one of the creatures through the eye. It went down with a scream, kicking and scrabbling on the floor as steam hissed from its wound.
Steel.
Iron.
Her gaze met Marduk’s, and she saw her own fears echoed in his eyes.
The alfar.
This wasn’t possible.
Solveig kicked another stool up into her hand and then tossed it at a pair of warriors who ran at her. Yanking Marduk’s knife from the warrior’s eye, she threw it at the stranger who’d sought to charm her with his voice.
He slapped it aside with the strange blade he wielded, and that was when Solveig knew they were outmanned and outmatched.
She couldn’t allow him to speak again.
Not when her ears were already blistered and she could still hear “crawl, crawl, crawl” echoing through her veins.
Clearly Marduk had the same idea. “This way!” he yelled, grabbing her arm and wrenching her toward the nearest window.
“Now you want to run?” Incredible.
The pair of them leapt through the window, spraying glass all across the cobbles below. She hit the ground with a grunt, tumbling forward into a roll before Marduk hauled her to her feet.
“Elves,” Solveig hissed, pacing in front of the fire she’d made and scratching at her arms. Every hair on her body remained on end. “What in the name of Tiamat are they doing here?”
Thousands of years ago, the dreki and the elves had fought a monstrous war, and although the dreki won the right to rule this world, exiling the elves back to their home world, the threat always remained that they might return.
Marduk shivered as he stared into the flames. They’d stolen a shirt and a pair of trousers off some poor washerwoman’s line, and he’d taken the trousers, courteously giving her his back while she buttoned herself into the itchy shirt. “’They came through the gates, laughing so brightly it pierced the ears; armed with voice and face and the desire to please….’ I’ve never understood that line of the saga until now.”