Nadine’s stomach tightened at the bittersweet memory of her friend’s infectious laughter. “Even so, when she died, I fell into a blackness that lasted for months. There was irony in that because I’d only known her for a few weeks. Then I realized why I couldn’t shake her death.”
She stared hard at Magnus. “Because though I didn’t know her well, I believed her to be the better woman. Like Arvid, she had a family, people to live for that would mourn her. I had none of those things. All I had was a name and an inheritance I scorned. Yet there I was. Alive. While she was buried in the sand.”
Magnus listened, and all the while he hardly seemed to breathe. When Nadine hesitated, his voice came out in a rasp. “And, did you reconcile it?”
Nadine thought about her answer before speaking. “Nothing changed. Her life is still worth more than mine. But at the end of that day, I was the one drawing breath. And, so long as that was true, I figured I might as well actually live.” Nadine ignored the dark memories of that time with a little shake of her head. “Otherwise those bastards we were fighting might as well have taken us both.”
I’m glad The Soul Thieves didn’t take you, barbarian. She spoke the words clearly in her mind, could hear the tenor of her own voice as they formed. But her tongue wouldn’t move to make them.
Magnus sat quietly with his own thoughts for a little while as tension ratcheted in Nadine’s soul. New words formed in the back of her throat. Words she’d been battling for hours. A question she’d been asking herself since the moment Magnus had revealed Arvid to her. Nadine shifted and ripped up a handful of moss on the ground next to her bedroll.
She shouldn’t ask him. Why bother? Why did it matter? What would it change? Why was it so damned important to her, anyway?
Though her body was weary from the day’s battle and flight, though her mind was strewn out with the emotional turmoil of Magnus’s inner demons, Nadine suddenly craved a physical battle with the savage next to her. She wanted to put her hands on him and force him into violence with her until there was nothing driving them but instinct. Until she had no chance, no hope to think anymore. Until these thoughts that plagued her were strangled in the mire of sweat and strain.
Or perhaps that was only lust.
“Kandiri?”
Nadine squeezed her eyes shut at the endearing term. Little one. No one had called her that since she was a child. No one had ever thought to. No one until the savage, this giant of a man who made a child of everyone around him simply by being what he was: indomitable. She bit hard on the inside of her cheek and then whipped around toward him.
“Arvid is the reason you claimed me.” She couldn’t say it like a question, even as she ached to. Stating the truth was safer. It left no room for the possibility that she was wrong. The impossibility.
Magnus’s face slackened before drawing slightly in confusion. “What?”
Nadine was already nodding. “You said as much that day at the vault. It’s the reason you’ve done everything you’ve done. Why you’re in such a hurry. You needed to get down here as quickly as possible for the chance that you could save him. But you needed the Eye most especially.” Needed me. “And once you had that, it was only a matter of getting here fast. That’s why you fought Azolirum. You wanted to resolve the conflict quickly and make sure we didn’t lose the alliance or the Eye.”
It made perfect sense. Now that the words were out of her head and into the world, some of the tension eased from Nadine’s body, and she slid back on her palms for support. There was no relief in the sensation, only weariness, and a horrid sense of finality that she couldn’t take back. Like a beautiful sculpture of handblown glass, shattered upon a floor of marble. She tried to swallow but couldn’t past the jagged shards in her throat. So instead, she gritted her teeth. This was for the best. Nadine had never had a use for niceties like blown glass. And she had no use for pretty illusions this barbarian might offer her.
But why? Why did you let me want it?
The urge to commit violence was back, and this time, there was no heat of passion behind it. Nadine took her pain and used it to sharpen the blade of her anger, that familiar, gleaming weapon that had kept her alive for so long.
Magnus turned on his hips so that he leaned toward her, his weight supported on one hand. The other, he kept propped up on his knee so that he half hovered over her reclining form. The expression on his face was intense. Not quite beseeching, for there was nothing close to beggary in his eyes. No hint of supplication. All Nadine saw there was earnestness. Hot, pure, conviction.
“That’s not why I fought Azolirum.” His voice matched his eyes. Playful and light this giant may be, but at the moment? He was all barbarian as he spoke to her in low tones that were not unkind, but took no care to be gentle. “I knew you wouldn’t back down. And neither would they.” He leveled her with his gaze. “I wasn’t going to watch that scene play out.”
Nadine sat up. They were in each other’s faces now, though they kept their voices soft. “What are you saying? How do you think that scene would’ve played out, savage?”
Magnus huffed, and the look he gave her was a mixture of pity and indignation that had Nadine ready to kill him. “Maybe your men would’ve fought. Maybe not.”
“Oh, and what? You think I would’ve lost the Eye? That I would have let my own men take it from me? Fuck you.”
Her words didn’t even make him blink. “As I said, I wasn’t going to watch.”
The fact that he didn’t argue enraged her. It was as though he’d won the battle simply by virtue of abstaining. But he wouldn’t have the last word. She shoved an open palm into his chest just hard enough to push him back until he was sitting on his rear instead of his hip.
“And what about claiming me in the first place? Why you? Why not one of your clansmen? Hmm?”
He hesitated, and whether it was from the hostility in her voice or because he had no ready answer, it didn’t matter to Nadine. She’d already decided the truth. “You’d have claimed anyone so long as they held the Eye.”
Magnus flinched.
At once, Nadine remembered what had brought them to this point of the conversation. She steadied herself, only just realizing that she was slightly out of breath, practically on the verge of shaking. When she spoke again, she had put herself in check. “You would do anything to save your friend.”
None of it was because of her. Nadine let it sink into her pores and grind deep into her bones. How had things come to this? How had she come to give a single damn about what this barbarian wanted, and more, why he wanted it? She looked at him, studied the way his wet hair clung to his muscled shoulders. She took note of the thickness of the beard he kept closely trimmed to the edge of his jaw that was strong and proud as the rest of him. The flecks of green in his hazel eyes stood out brilliantly in the glow of the mushroom forest around them. His nose was slightly crooked, one of many imperfections that made him exactly who he was. Magnus the Vast. The only man she’d ever wanted.
But what did any of it matter? There was no future for them anyway. The intimacy of this mission was distorting her view of reality. When this was all over, if they survived, they’d go their separate ways. Her world was nothing like his. She had a duty, a purpose, a reason for all the pain and horror she’d suffered for the past twelve years. It all served one goal. And that goal was not to be the lover of this man. No matter what he made her think she wanted.