6. Maddy

Chapter 6

Maddy

H e sweeps from the room, and I slump back onto the pallet with a shaking sigh.

Odin's fucking raven, that fae is dangerous. How the fates can he make me abandon sense so infernally easily?

My hand is moving down toward the aching heat that is now pounding between my legs. One fucking sentence, and I'm desperate.

With a snarl, I force myself to stand. No. He can't control me this easily—I won't allow it.

He's dangerous. He wants to use me to get into the vault, find a powerful magic, and use it to hurt people.

"That is not arousing, Maddy," I tell myself, aloud and as firmly as I can. "It's deranged."

I stamp around the room, gathering my things, then lacing my boots, trying to ignore the barrage of images of Kain, naked and glorious, filling my head, and instead channeling my anger with him .

He's right, though. We are bound somehow, and if I wasn't sure before, then hurling myself across the sand toward a fucking Frost Giant has confirmed it. And it's confirmed it to him, too.

"You will help me get into that vault. Whatever it takes."

That's what he had said. But if he lied to me when he was tied to that post, I'd already be helping him—so apparently to him, "whatever it takes" doesn't involve lying. So, I'm dealing with an insanely arousing, unhinged, and detrimentally honest villain?

I shake my head as I check my boots are tied.

He doesn't know I'm the one with the precious "secret" that he's owed by my family. And he doesn't know about my memory magic. He can't know about it. One thing I have learned from my years of being hidden away by my parents is that it is too dangerous for others to know about.

I leave the Snake Wing, making my way to Odin's High Hall and the rook chambers, where I can get washed and changed. I'm barely looking where I'm going, I'm so lost in thought.

There's a part of me that wants to look up every fae in here, their families, who they are, and whether they've crossed paths with the Ice Court royals—and, therefore, whether there's any information on them in my gallery.

But years and years of warnings repeated to me by my parents and sister stop me.

It is safer for me not to know.

I'm too impulsive, too careless.That's what I've been told, and the truth is, they're right. If I looked up Orgid's family and found something out that I could use against him, how long do I really think I could keep it a secret? Could I wait for the perfect time to hold it over him? Could I be a blackmailer?

I almost snort aloud at the thought. The first time he treated me like shit, I'd let it slip in anger. And then he really would come after me. He wouldn't just bully or mock me. He'd try to remove me as a threat.

I need to concentrate on becoming a Valkyrie, on my training. Not putting my life in further danger.

"Hey, Madivia!" Eldith's voice snaps me back to my surroundings. She's hammering nails into the repaired wooden steps in front of the High Hall, and I was about to walk straight past her. She takes in my bloodstained clothes and her expression sharpens."Shit, are you okay?"

"It's not my blood," I tell her quickly. "I'mglad you're okay. Did you have to fight one of those things?"

"No, but I saw them. How the fates did they get in here?" I wasn't about to share that the Valkyrie suspected the only way they could have gotten in was through being betrayed by one of their own, so I shrug instead.

"I don't know, but at least the Valkyrie made short work of them."

"Not before Hans and Alice were killed," she says quietly. There's no fear in her face, but there's an unease that I haven't seen on her before.

"I heard."

She frowns at me. "From who? Where have you been? "

"The healing chambers."

"Were you hurt?"

I shake my head. "No. I'm fine.I need to go and get cleaned up."

"Sure. There's no training today. Just repairs and"—she takes a small breath—"a memorial at the temple later for the four rooks we lost."

My skin crawls. Four dead in a day."Okay. I'll see you there."

I make my way up the stairs, avoiding any eye contact with other rooks I pass along the way.I get washed and changed as fast as I can, relieved not to bump into Navi in our room, and then race off downstairs to Sarra's workshop.

She's there when I arrive, sitting in the large armchair with her arms wrapped around her knees. She leaps up as soon as she sees me, and instead of the hug I am hoping for, I'm surprised to see fury on her face.

"Sarra, I'm so glad you're?—"

"Where in the name of all the fucking fates have you been?" she shouts. "I have been so worried! I knew you weren't one of the dead rooks, but I also know that you don't fit in with any of them, and I couldn't trust anything they said, and I've spent all night worrying, and I am starving because I haven't left this room because you might come back here, and I can't believe you've just strolled in like everything is okay!" The words come out in a loud, messy tumble, and my heart swells that she cares about me this much, even as guilt assails me.

I step into her, wrapping my arms around her and pulling her close. "Sarra, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I should have come to tell you I was okay straight away. It's just that Kain was injured, and we were in the healing chambers, and some stuff happened, and?—"

She pushes me back. "Kain! You were with Kain!" There's both fear and anger in her eyes. "Maddy, they're saying it was him who let them in."

I let out a long breath. "It wasn't Kain."

She shakes her head, eyes filled with concern. "He's cast some sort of spell over you, Maddy. Why? Why do you believe him? He's not to be trusted. You know that."

"I have a connection to him," I say, and as the words leave my lips, I know that they're true, even though I can't explain it.

"What connection? How can you be connected to him? You've never been here before. You've never met him before." She squeezes my arm in frustration. "Maddy, seriously, I'm worried about you, and I hate to say this, but… you're lying to yourself." She half whispers the last few words.

If I hadn't already been sure that I wanted to tell her everything, then I would have decided to at this moment. Nobody but Freydis has ever been so worried about me, and I can hear how hard it is for Sarra to tell me I'm making a mistake. She has no need to put herself through this if she doesn't care. Fates, she wouldn't have stayed up all night and forgone dinner if she didn't truly care for me.

"Sarra, it's not an adolescent crush, or some sort of Valkyrie spell, I swear." My cheeks heat a little. It is sort of a lie—there is no question at all that the fire-fae has inspired a hundred lustful thoughts since I met him—but that is not what I need to tell her.

"What is it, then?"

"Food first. Then I'll explain everything."

We go to the thrall quarters together, and Sarra sweet-talks the girl working at the stoves into letting us load up two plates with bread and cured ham before heading back to her workshop.

Slowly and deliberately, I go through everything, right up to the conversation I just had with Kain. I tell her all of it, only omitting my heated reaction to seeing Kain with no clothes on in the glade. But everything else, including my memory magic and the three statues I started with—and the now-melting wolf—I tell her. It feels strange telling someone else about the memory gallery. I've never had to describe or explain it to anybody since I was a small child, telling my parents.

Sarra interrupts me frequently, but only to ask for clarity on things, or for extra information on small points. She offers no opinions whatsoever during the very long conversation, until I finish the very last word.

"Maddy, I don't know how to say this, but the gods were right."

I frown. It's not what I expected her to say. To be honest, I don't know what I expected her to say. "The gods?" I ask.

"Your sister was never supposed to be here. You were. I have only studied a little bit about Featherblade and val-tivars , and inherent magic, but you are defying every single rule. There is nothing about you that is standard or normal. You were meant to be where all of these powers could evolve and thrive."

I stare at her, her words making me uncomfortable, but also resonating. I've never fit in. I've never been normal, ever. Even without the fainting and the memory magic, I know I'm different.

I remember Kain's word. Special .

I take a breath. "Sarra, why did my bear leave? I wish you could have seen her. She was… something else."

"How do you know she was your val-tivar ?" she asks gently.

"I know it as surely as anyone could know anything," I tell her. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind whatsoever now that she is my power animal.

Sarra nods. "Okay, then let's assume that she definitely is. She must be some new kind of val-tivar that Featherblade's given you."She shrugs."This is a new generation of Valkyrie, so why not?"

I absent-mindedly stuff more bread in my mouth, chewing slowly while I consider her words. I had a similar thought. Could it be true?

"You know you're going to have to talk to the Valkyrie about it."

"They won't believe me," I say. "They've got no reason to believe me, and I can't prove she was ever there."

"But Kain believed you?"

"Yeah," I sigh. "But Kain's different."

The warning look enters Sarra's eyes again, and I can see my story has done nothing to convince her that I should trust him. "He's dangerous, Maddy."

"So everybody keeps telling me, but I don't see why he's any more dangerous than anyone else here. He has no magic or wings. And at least he's honest."

"He has literally told you he wants to kill people." She says the words slowly, like I'm not hearing them properly, and for a moment I wonder if she's right.

"Have you never wanted revenge for anything?" I ask quietly.

She shrugs. "Nobody's wronged me enough to want revenge, and I'm grateful for that," she answers.

"I believe I could be driven to wanting revenge," I say.

"I'm sure we all can, but that doesn't mean that we will. And that doesn't mean that it's right. Don't create excuses for him."

Explaining the connection between us, explaining the fascination—the obsession , as Kain called it—to her isn't going to impress upon her the depth of the feeling. It's inexplicable, to anyone except him. "We are bound somehow." I swallow. I can't tell Sarra he said that.

"Sarra, what if I promise you that I will be careful and that I believe you? I understand everything you're saying regarding the fire-fae, but that I know I can't reach my own fate without working out what my connection to him and the wolf statue is?" I grip her hand as I speak, and I try to inject as much sincerity into the words as I can, because they're true. I'm omitting the fierce attraction I feel toward him and the intense fear of what I might be capable of under his influence—and the unmitigated thrill that also causes. But the words are true. "Would that be enough to stop you worrying?"

Sarra squeezes my hand back. "Not really," she says, then gives me a rueful smile. "But I know you're willful enough that it won't matter, so I may as well support you."

I smile back. "Thank you. And thank you for listening."

She gives a laugh, then picks up the last piece of ham. "As if you could stop me listening. Maddy, I really mean what I said. You're destined for something exciting. Featherblade likes you." She grins at me, and I pull a face.

"But I'm the weakest here!"

"By warrior standards, maybe. Though you won't be for much longer if you have a giant fucking bear to help out."

This time I grin. "Can you picture Inga or Orgid, or even Navi's face, if she turns up in training?"

"Do you think they'll be able to see her? Or will a massive invisible animal just knock them on their arses?"

"I don't know," I say, then sigh. "There's a lot I don't know."

"Talk to Erik. Or Harald?"

"One of them let the Frost Giants in," I say.

She shoots me a look. "Erik or Harald? I doubt it."

"Who, then? I can't imagine any of them doing it."

"Maybe they didn't. Maybe there's another force out there in the canopy that can let them in. Maybe Featherblade did it for some reason. Maybe a hundred other possibilities. Sigrun will be able to work it out."

I draw comfort from her matter-of-fact words. She's right—there are many possibilities beyond the most obvious, especially where gods and magic are involved. And Sigrun will likely be finding out what happened as we speak.

"You're right," I say, then change the subject."I think I know what I want to put in the middle of the shield."

Sarra smiles at me. "Let me guess."

"A bear," we say together.