32. Magnar

Isat at the rear of the cage and waited with my back to the golden bars which held me.

Erik Belvedere was watching me intently but I refused to acknowledge him. Of all the creatures on this planet, I couldn’t think of many I’d like to be stuck with less than him. Aside from Valentina of course.

I pulled my knees up to my chest and rested my elbows on them as I pushed my hands into my hair. This was torture of a specific kind. Valentina knew all about my vendetta with this parasite and she’d chosen to cage us alongside each other with the sole purpose of driving us insane with our proximity.

Of course she had no idea about the fragile alliance we’d recently formed. So instead of the seething desire to murder each other which she no doubt planned on, we were caught in the drawn out silence filled with all the things we hated about each other whilst not being able to voice them.

I ran my thumb over the dark tattoo on my left forearm which I’d gotten after my father’s death. When he’d been my mentor, my left hand had been marked with a star which joined us and after he’d been taken from me I’d had a replica of that mark etched permanently into my own skin to remind me of my eternal bond to him. Now I sat a few feet from the monster responsible for stealing him from us, who’d changed my mother irrevocably, who’d altered my life and forced me to lead my people before my time should have come. And yet I had sworn not to hurt him.

I thought of Callie, hoping she’d escaped the battle unscathed. For the first time since she’d broken her novice bond to me, I wished it was still intact. Just so I could see that star on my hand and know her heart was still beating somewhere.

“It might help us if we come up with some plan for escaping this place,” Erik muttered and I could tell he was growing tired of me ignoring him. But how could I simply start conversing with him like he hadn’t done the things he’d done? Callie had assured me that Andvari was the one who was truly responsible for my father’s death, but it wasn’t so simple for me to relinquish my anger towards the vampire he’d chosen to use as his tool. I’d felt the touch of Idun’s power many times and I’d also managed to throw it off on several occasions. Besides, being tricked by a deity was no excuse for what he’d done.

“I plan to kill Valentina as soon as she shows herself. I imagine escaping will become fairly simple after that,” I replied in a low voice.

“That isn’t a plan; it’s an idle threat. You’re stuck in a cage just as I am. Unless she decides to unlock the door for you, I highly doubt you’ll be able to kill her.”

“She’ll let me out eventually,” I said. “She won’t be able to resist.”

“To resist what? You can’t think that she is so obsessed with you that she’ll just open up the door if you flutter your eyelashes at her,” Erik said in exasperation.

I shook my head at his ridiculous assumption but didn’t bother to respond to it. I hadn’t meant she wouldn’t be able to resist me in that way, I meant she wouldn’t be able to resist the urge to flaunt her power over me. She’d want to bend me to her will in any way possible and to do so she’d have to let me out of this forsaken cage.

I could tell that my silence was really pissing him off and I smiled to myself.

“I mean, she spent the last thousand years crawling in and out of my bed so she was hardly that cut up after your supposed death,” Erik grumbled.

A surprised laugh fell from my lips at that admission and I looked up at him, finding I couldn’t stop.

“What?” he asked angrily, moving to lean against the bars of his own cage.

“You bedded her?” I asked, laughing again. “Was that before or after you made her immortal?”

His eyes narrowed as he answered. “The first time was before. What difference does it make?”

“By any chance, were you motivated by the fact that she was betrothed to me?”

Erik pursed his lips, seeming to consider whether or not to answer. “You cannot understand the hatred I felt for you-”

“I’m sure I can,” I growled in response.

I’d never murdered any of his family members so any hateful feelings he felt towards me couldn’t compare to what I thought of him.

“Well...if you can, then perhaps you would have understood why bedding a woman promised to you might have given me some satisfaction beyond any other motivations.”

I looked up at him with a smirk.

“What’s so funny?” he demanded. “Shouldn’t this just give you another reason to hate me?”

I got to my feet and walked towards the edge of my cage. I leaned against them as I looked at him, draping my arms between the bars. “When I was sixteen, I convinced a member of the Clan of Prophecies to look into my future so that I might take my vow early. He agreed and he foresaw my rise to power and all that I could offer the slayers. I became the youngest sworn clansman in the history of our people. My reward for that pledge was Valentina. Within weeks of me taking my vow, our betrothal was foreseen and I was forced to commit myself to marrying her.” I lifted my shirt and pointed out the tattoo which curled around my heart. “Idun was kind enough to stain my skin with that promise. And if I’d ever broken our betrothal then I would have been going against my vow and my life would have been forfeit.”

“So you never even wanted her?” Erik asked with a frown. “You were forced to be with her?”

“No. I wasn’t forced to be with her. I was forced to honour my promise. So our betrothal stood but it was up to the Earl to set a date for our marriage. My father knew how much I resented being forced into wedlock with her and so he held off on marrying us. After he died, I became Earl and that choice was mine. And I never chose to set a date either. I never wanted her. And despite her best efforts to seduce me, I never even bedded her.” I started laughing again as Erik’s face fell.

“That’s not what she told me,” he growled.

“No doubt she made you think I loved her dearly. I’m sure you were mightily impressed with yourself for stealing her from me.”

“She told me you were cruel to her, that you beat her-”

“I would never do such a thing,” I growled. “Besides I didn’t care about her enough to waste time abusing her. I spent most of my time avoiding her.”

“So you never raised a hand to her?” he demanded and I could tell he’d really believed I had.

“I never even sparred with her,” I replied. “She refused to fight using anything other than the elements and I saw no need to waste my time trying to learn how to battle the wind. Besides it would have meant spending time in her company which I worked hard never to do.”

“So she lied to me?” Erik frowned and I could tell the realisation bothered him. “She made me believe you were worse than cruel. A cold hearted murderer with no regard for the lives of others.”

“I am all of those things,” I replied darkly. “But never to my own kind. Only to yours.”

The silence stretched again while Erik fought the temptation to bite back at me for that remark.

“So you decided to take my bride for yourself and I suppose that made you feel as though you’d won some victory over me?” I asked, turning the subject back to our mutual enemy.

“At first, yes. But then she told me she loved me and I found it hard to believe that someone of your blood could ever feel such a thing for one of us. The lust I could understand; the way we look has always drawn mortals to us-”

“No true slayer would covet your unnatural beauty,” I growled. “We find it repulsive, not attractive.”

“Are you saying I repulse you?” he scoffed like he couldn’t imagine anyone not loving his statuesque features.

“More than you can know,” I replied evenly.

I didn’t care if he believed me or not. Nothing about the way they looked had ever drawn me in. It was just camouflage; a beautiful lie to disguise the ugliness of the rotten souls their bodies housed.

Erik’s jaw ticked and I got the feeling he didn’t like to be called repulsive. The idea of him being vain amused me though and I was fairly sure he’d regret letting me realise that.

“So you started to wonder about Valentina’s intentions?” I prompted, interested in the rest of his story despite myself.

I still didn’t understand how my brother and I had come to sleep so much longer than we’d intended and any information about the things that had happened around that time might lead me to fill in the gaps.

“I suspected some trap. I thought perhaps you’d sent her to me, hoping to win my trust so that she might murder me or something of the like. So I asked her to prove herself to me. And do you know what she offered to do?” he asked.

I shrugged, nothing about her would surprise me.

“She offered to kill you and your brother.”

I frowned at him. Valentina had never been foolish enough to make any attempt on my life before I’d slept. When my mother had put me into the unageing slumber which had led to me awakening in the present, I’d left Valentina back in our camp without even offering her a farewell. I’d expected to wake a hundred years later knowing she was dead and having the freedom to find love for myself.

“Well obviously she didn’t,” I said, unsure what else I could offer.

“No. But I believed she had. That was why I rewarded her with immortality. She came to me coated in slayer blood and I recognised the scent of it. I could have sworn it was yours and your brother’s. I knew your blood from the times we’d collided and even if I’d doubted it at all, you were never seen again after that day.”

“Because we were sleeping, not dead. We should have woken a hundred years later, ready to lead an army to annihilate you. A prophet saw it. But instead I awoke now...” My eyebrows pinched in confusion as something pricked at the edge of my thoughts. Like there was an answer here that I just wasn’t seeing.

“Valentina told us about the prophet who had foreseen the reunion of my family. We were ready for your army when it came,” Erik replied darkly.

“And my kind were wiped from the Earth because I wasn’t there to lead them,” I muttered, turning away from him.

The silence grew once more and I folded my arms as I looked up at the red ceiling above us. There was something here. Something important that I just couldn’t see. And it came down to Valentina.

“It was war,” Erik murmured and I was almost sure I detected a hint of regret in his tone.

There was no point in discussing the eradication of my kind. It was ancient history now, even if it still felt fresh to me. In my mind, only a few months had passed since I’d been among my people. I had just recently been laughing around the fire pit with my warriors. My tent had been pitched beside Aelfric and Elissa’s as usual and I’d heard their latest babe wailing in the night. Baltian was still the most fearsome war horse ever to have existed. And I’d just held my mother in my arms, saying farewell for the final time.

I’d known I’d never see any of them again when the sleep had claimed me. I’d given it all up for my cause. But I’d expected to rise a hundred years later, surrounded by the great grandchildren of my friends. The older generations may have remembered some of the people I’d once loved. Life wouldn’t have been so very different.

But instead, I’d been trapped in that sleep for so long that the world had changed and changed, being reborn so many times that it was impossible for me to recognise it.

If it hadn’t been for Callie, I wasn’t sure where I’d be now. I’d been so lost before I’d found her. So confused by everything I came across. And there must have been a reason for my mother’s gift to have gone so wrong. She’d never made a mistake like that. Idun had promised to help us so that we wouldn’t age or starve, but surely she’d have noticed the time scale being off. So what was I missing?

“Did Valentina ever tell you we were due to rise again? Did she warn you about our slumber?” I asked slowly.

“No. Like I said, I believed she’d killed you,” Erik said. “I...well I suppose I was a fool. It seemed like she’d given me everything I’d ever wanted. You were dead. Your people were gone, never to haunt us again. She even kept her powers after I turned her so she could aid us against the sun-”

“And you were fucking her too, just to top it off,” I replied. “You must have thought she was a gift from the gods themselves.”

“I did,” he admitted. “For a while at least. I believed that her coming to us was a sign that Andvari had decided to lessen our curse. To let us live peacefully. Eternally. And that perhaps in time we would be able to solve the prophecy and die a mortal death too.”

“So how long did it take for the shine to wear off of her?” I asked.

“It didn’t. Not really. Just...she wanted me to love her. But I didn’t think I was capable of love while I was in this form. So I kept her at a distance, not wanting to see too much of the hurt in her eyes when she tried to make me fall for her. But I couldn’t get rid of her either, we needed her help with the weather so I told her that I would try to love her. And maybe one day it would happen. She seemed content with that, at least until recently.”

“Until Montana came along you mean,” I said.

“I suppose so. I knew she was jealous, but I’ve taken other lovers over the years and it never bothered her that much. I didn’t expect her to turn against me like this.”

“Well it seems as though she’s good at turning against men who don’t fulfil their promises to her,” I replied. “But I still don’t understand why she lied to you about our slumber. If she’d told you, you could have been waiting to kill us when we rose again. If she was loyal to you, then why hide it?”

“Because she wanted me to be grateful to her for killing you?” he offered but I shook my head; he’d have been just as grateful of the truth. While we slept, we were no burden to them and they could have dealt with us easily if they’d been warned that we would rise.

“She must have known that the lie would come out. It’s something else. She’s hiding something more.” I turned back to look at Erik and he tilted his head as he thought about it.

“Whose blood was she covered in?” he asked me slowly. “It must have been someone related to you. I recognised your scent and if she didn’t kill you then-”

“My mother,” I whispered as horror speared through my heart. She was the only family member I’d had left alive. There was no one else. Leaving her behind had been the biggest sacrifice of all. I’d known that once we were gone that she would be broken. Alone. But she’d insisted. She wanted us to exact vengeance for our father’s death and in the end I’d agreed because I could see that refusing her was worse than leaving her.

Erik’s mouth opened but no words came out. He didn’t know what to say to me and I preferred that he didn’t utter anything anyway. What consolation could my father’s murderer offer me on the death of my mother?

I released a cry of rage and kicked the door to my cage as hard as I could. But the bars Idun had provided to hold me didn’t so much as tremble. I glared at them as every inch of my body ached with a thirst for Valentina’s blood.

“I’m going to make her suffer more than any living being has suffered before,” I growled once I was finally able to speak again. “Valentina made a mistake in turning on me and if she laid so much as a finger on my mother then her pain will be insurmountable. I will rip her limb from limb and tear her black heart from her chest.”

“Does this mean you’re ready to make a plan then?” Erik asked as my rage simmered into a cold sense of purpose.

I turned back to look at him and prowled across the cage to stand opposite him again.

“If it will help me to kill that bitch any sooner, then fine. What’s your plan, monster?” I snarled.

Erik’s face lit with a savage grin. “I’m sure we can come up with something, barbarian.”