Brokk read the thoughts Reyker could not bear to speak aloud. “You couldn’t have stopped him, Lagorsson.”
But he’d not even tried. He’d not rushed to the knarr’s helm or jumped in to swim after the longship, because even a wolf could not defeat a dragon. Draki would only have laughed and beaten him bloody, left his body as wounded as his heart.
Lira had sacrificed her freedom to save his people.
He should have done something.
Reyker had sought her in his dreams, in the ruins. He could feel her there, like she was standing right in front of him, but a veil was clouding his eyes, keeping him from seeing her. He’d wandered to the edges of their shared dreamworld and screamed her name, carved messages into the thorntree for her to wait for him there, but she hadn’t come.
“I won’t leave her in Dragon’s Lair. How can I be of any use to the Renegades, my people, my country, when all I can think about is what he’s doing to her right now, what he’ll do to her tomorrow? I have been his prisoner, and I would not wish it on my worst enemy. How can I sit back and do nothing as it happens to the woman I love?”
Brokk watched him carefully, weighing his words. “Well. I suppose it’s time we start planning an assault on the most secure fortress in Iseneld in order to take down the most dangerous bastard in the whole gods-damned world.”
A foolish hope sparked in Reyker’s chest. He reached out to grip Brokk’s shoulder. “Have I ever told you that I love you like a brother?”
“No. And judging by your ill luck with brothers, you probably shouldn’t start now.”
A few hours later Reyker stood on Fjullthorp’s pier with his back to the fjord, certain Solvei was about to shove him into it. “You want to do what?” she asked.
She’d granted him a private audience, agreed to hear him out. Now all he had to do was convince her they could achieve the impossible.
He repeated himself calmly. “I want to attack Dragon’s Lair.”
“Ah.” She squeezed her fist around the hilt of her sword. “I suppose you have a plan for this idiotic endeavor?”
“Yes. It must be a joint effort, attacking from two fronts. I will be inside the fortress. You will be outside the lava field with a legion of Mountain Renegades.” Reyker told her the details, what he and Brokk had come up with on their ride from the mead house.
When he was done, the jarl laughed in his face, and the sound echoed over the water and across the mountains. “You’re joking.”
“I’m not.”
“You want to risk losing the war, losing our entire army, to win a single battle? All to save your woman?”
“This is not just about Lira, and it is not just a battle.” Reyker slapped his palm against the hull of the longship floating beside him. “This is the war. It is where we make our stand. Where we end his reign.”
“Or where we all die.”
“Then at least we die fighting instead of waiting for Draki to slit our throats while we sleep.”
She snorted. “Brave declarations from the man who has failed to foil the Dragon over, and over, and over again.”
Though it was late, the sun still hung above them, a dimming circle of gold dripping honey-tinted light across the waves. It gilded the pier and the mountains, a deception that made the world feel kind and full of promise.
“You aren’t wrong,” Reyker said. “But my failures have taught me a great deal about how the Dragon plots. If we wait much longer, he will come here. You will lose this.” Reyker gestured to the fjord and the village beyond. “All of it will burn. With every other threat to him dead, his focus will turn toward the Renegades. Toward all of the Fjordlands. I know him better than anyone. What drives him, what distracts him, what stays his hand and what forces it.”
“Knowledge is good, but it is not enough,” she said. “Can you kill the Dragon?”
He considered lying, but Reyker had spent a great deal of time with the jarl, and had grown to respect her. He would not let her risk herself, her people, on false assurances.
“I don’t know,” he said. “With his dying breath, my father told me I was the only one who could. Mystics and priestesses and fallen gods have prophesized that I would. If there is a way, I will find it. If I must, I will give my life to end his.”
Solvei chewed the inside of her cheek, glaring at him. Finally, she said, “I curse the day I found you on that ship in Glasnith, Lagorsson. I hope you know that.”
Reyker reached his hand out. “Are you with me, my jarl?”
She gripped his hand, her mouth stretching into a half-mad grin. “Let’s wage a war, Wolf Lord. Let’s bring the walls of Dragon’s Lair down on Draki’s head.”
CHAPTER 40
LIRA
The knife I threw was aimed at Draki’s eye.
Draki plucked the blade out of the air and hurled it back at me, so fast I had to drop to the ground to avoid it. There was sand in my clothes, my hair, under my nails. This was all I lived for these days—the moments when I could release the anguish pent up inside me. On him.
The Blood Ring spread out around us, but we could have been anywhere—on the beach, in the snow, floating in a void. All I saw was him. All that mattered was unleashing the beast curled around my heart. The hate that kept me alive, the rage that wouldn’t let me give up.
All of it. All for him.
Draki had fortified Dragon’s Lair, surrounding me with guards and locks. He had moved me to a larger bedroom in the fortress, right beside his own, with a door leading from his quarters to mine. He hadn’t used it yet, but it was only a matter of time.
In less than a fortnight, he would parade me before his commanders and emissaries, officially declaring me his consort. I’d held my tongue when he showed me the invitation, when he’d had servants take my measurements for a gown, because this—as he never ceased to remind me—was the choice I’d made.
There was a phrase Reyker used to describe Draki’s manipulations, the torment of unbearable decisions: A choice that is not a choice.
I pulled a sword from the wall and rushed at Draki. In these last weeks, I’d grown stronger, swifter—from practice, from the gods I’d pledged myself to, from sheer fury, I didn’t know. Stalking the Dragon, I slashed and stabbed, enough to keep a strong warrior on his toes, running for his life.
But Draki wasn’t a strong warrior. He was the strongest. He never tripped, was never winded, never even sweat. And he never, ever bled.
Though he didn’t seem to move, my blade missed again and again.