30. Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty

T he first thing I felt as I began to wake up—and some little part of me was incredibly pleased to be feeling anything , I remembered enough to be sure of that—was a hard slap across the cheek. Not quite hard enough to make my head turn on the pillow, but it definitely wasn’t a friendly caress. I groaned and slowly blinked my eyes open.

“Ah good, you’re awake. You fucking fool .”

That wasn’t S?ren’s voice. That was—“Jakob?” I asked hoarsely.

“Correct.”

“Where’s S?ren?”

He laughed, but it was an ugly, angry sound. “He’s out communing with nature. Both of them were rather upset after the frankly ridiculous stunt you just pulled. I thought you had a plan .”

“I did!” I weakly tapped my chest with my own hand and then ran my fingers up to my neck where I remembered stabbing myself. The skin was smooth, completely healed. “I’m here, you’re here, yay, we’re alive. Hooray for plans.”

“No thanks to you trying to make yourself into the sacrifice. What the hell do you think would have happened if S?ren hadn’t transferred his intent to you?”

Transferred his intent? I’d have to figure out what that meant in a second, but first things first. “I assume I’d have died.”

“ Everyone here might have died if the battle between ólafur and the landv?ttir had continued. You got extremely lucky,” Jakob snapped. “ólafur destroyed one of the v?ttir’s trees when the madness took him. That went directly against the contract between them and gave the v?ttir room to maneuver.”

He sighed. “When you killed yourself, S?ren—and I’m referring to my brother here—was apparently so distressed that he took his opportunity as your second to change his allegiance. He altered the nature of his sacrifice so that instead of giving himself for the sake of our family, he made his intent solely about you . Because my father had already broken the rules, the v?ttir allowed it.”

My blood went cold for a second. This was not what I’d been expecting. Sure, S?ren had told me a few times that I wasn’t expendable, that I needed to be careful in picking my sacrifice, but I’d taken it as a caution, not a rule. I’d thought the v?ttir would accept me as a sacrifice and come share my body. I hadn’t been looking forward to it, exactly, but it had been worth it to free S?ren. Instead…

“So now I’m responsible for keeping S?ren and the v?ttir tied together.”

“Exactly.” Jakob smiled thinly. “Congratulations, my brother’s enslavement is now partially your responsibility. Thankfully, after the v?ttir managed to subdue ólafur, I had the authority necessary to negotiate on the spot for its continued assistance with our geas. Now there are two sacrifices.”

“Wait―you sacrificed your own father to the landv?ttir?”

“What did you think my plan was all along?” Jakob said. “Did you think I was hoping that the frankly disturbing codependency between you and S?ren would somehow manifest in a boon for the rest of us? Magic doesn’t work like that. There is always a price to pay, and ólafur was meant to be my coin. I don’t leave things like the survival of my family to chance, unlike some of us.”

“It wasn’t chance.”

Jakob scoffed. “Oh, please, spare me your—”

“It wasn’t chance.” I knew that as strongly as I knew anything. “It’s Fate. However this worked out, that’s how it was meant to work out. I can’t see my own future, but I wouldn’t be here right now if I wasn’t meant to be.”

“Forgive me if I find your argument for fatalism less than compelling.”

“Look, you think I liked killing myself?” I asked, my energy finally risen enough to give me a bit of a boost. “You think that was fun for me? I came into this figuring I was going to die, and that if things worked out, S?ren and the v?ttir would save me. I didn’t offer up another sacrifice because I’m not an asshole, and it wouldn’t have worked anyway. Honestly, whether or not I was the sacrifice, do you think your own cards would have played out the way they did if S?ren and the v?ttir didn’t think I was worth their time?” Now it was my turn to scoff.

“Maybe you did have your own fallback plans in place, ways of getting ólafur out of the way, but that man craved complete control. I’m betting he’d have hung onto his power any way he possibly could have. At least one of your brothers would have probably sided with him, so you were looking at a possibly failed coup.

“Am I an asshole? Absolutely.” I completely agreed with that assessment. “Could I have figured this out better? Almost certainly. But did I do everything I could to make it work, with a considerable amount of trouble from you and your goddamn family? I sure as hell did, so you can take your attitude and fucking shove it, because from where I’m sitting, things aren’t perfect, but they’re not completely shit either.” We stared at each other in complete silence for a long moment.

“Well,” Jakob said at last. “I suppose it could be worse. Although S?ren is furious at you. You’re going to have a considerable amount of groveling to do. And your friend Andre is still hanging around, so I suggest you deal with him first.”

“What? I told him to run.”

“How generous of you,” Jakob drawled. “What he did instead, thanks to your little trick with the charm unlocking his handcuffs, was incapacitate one of our men, take his gun, and proceed to shoot my brother Art?r in the leg. Which―” Jakob shrugged. “―I can’t really blame him for. Art?r was tasked with his keeping and was rather impolite about it. S?ren has declined to heal him, so he’s out of the picture for the moment. Rolf is looking after him.”

“Oh. Nice. And―you said your dad was accepted as a sacrifice. Is he possessed now too?” Because that would be awkward.

Jakob chuckled. “No, Cillian. He’s dead. His corpse is lying at the bottom of the v?ttir’s lake, and long may it rest there.” Jakob got to his feet and then hauled me up as well. “I’ll send in Andre.”

He left through the gaping, splintered entrance where a door had been, and a minute later, Andre entered. He still had the pistol he’d stolen in one hand, but his face had been cleaned up some. He looked at me, shut his eyes, and sighed before he came the rest of the way in and punched me on the shoulder.

“Ow!”

“You deserve worse, you big baby.” He stared at my neck disbelievingly. “I don’t know how your guy managed to get you back, Cillian, there was―I’ve seen people die in the field, and you were way bloodier than most of them.”

“Magic.”

“Fuck your magic.”

“Hey, my magic got you released!” I pointed out.

“With this thing?” He held up the little Buddha figurine. “I was close to getting out of those cuffs myself.”

“Yep, that’s the story your black eye is telling for sure.”

“Forget my eye, man. Tell me what the hell happened to my car .”

“Um.” It was hard to know what to say to that, actually. “It died a noble death?”

“God damn it!”

“I’m sorry.” I really was, too. I was sorry for dragging Andre into all this in the first place. “Look, I’ll replace it, I promise.” I’d been making a lot of promises lately, but I planned to follow through on all of them.

Andre sighed. “It’s already a done deal, man. The guy in charge—Jakob—he gave me more than enough money to replace the car, called it ‘reparations.’ He’s paying to fix up my house, too.”

“Oh.” That was a little surprising. “Good.”

“And S?ren already told me the score on my wife and little girl, so thanks for taking care of them.”

“Jesus, don’t thank me,” I said, appalled. “Look what I dragged you into.”

Andre ducked his head for a moment. “Yeah. Foreign cartels, crazy magic, and gunfights. It’s the best story of my life and I can’t even report on it.” When he looked up, he was smiling, just a little. “But the hell with it. I was kind of bored anyway.”

“Glad I could help you with that.”

“Yeah, but…if it’s all the same? Don’t call me again, Cillian.” There was some gentle humor in Andre’s voice, but beneath it was a layer of steel. He pressed the spent Buddha charm into my unresisting hand. “Because I won’t answer.”

Aaand bridge officially burned. “Got it,” I said, and if my voice was a little subdued, well, this was the price of doing business. I was a bad deal in a lot of ways. “Take care of yourself, then.”

“You too, man.” We shook hands and he left. Finally, I roused myself to go and look for S?ren.

He was alone at the far end of his land, where the grove was situated. He sat in front of the broken tree, his hands on its ruined stump, purple eyes trained on the water before him. To his right, the base of the larger tree still glistened with my blood.

I looked away from the gore and sat down next to him. “Hey.”

“S?ren is very distressed.” There was more than a hint of blame in the landv?ttir’s voice. “You caused him much pain.”

“I’m very sorry for that.”

“As you should be. He is not sure he can trust you anymore. He doesn’t want to speak to you.”

The pang those words sent through my heart was so sharp I was surprised my chest didn’t simply start bleeding. “Okay.” I’d have to be patient. I could do that.

“Personally, I applaud you. That was a bold plan, Cillian.” His cloudy eyes turned my way. “You knew S?ren would choose you if at all possible. You used his love for you to manipulate both of us into doing your will.”

“Things fell out all right for me in the end.”

“But you don’t believe in chance.”

“Maybe not,” I said. “But that doesn’t mean I’m some sort of strategic mastermind either, or completely careless with my own life. I didn’t want to hurt S?ren, and I’ll spend forever making it up to him, but…” I shrugged. “We’re still all here.”

“Indeed we are.” S?ren looked back at the lake. “And so is he.”

I knew who he meant. “ólafur.”

“His blood shall nourish my roots, and my grove will grow strong again.”

“Oookay.”

“But I need to be settled in my new home.” The undertone there was fast, faster, RIGHT NOW . I got up again.

“I’ll go make some calls.” This promise, at least, I could start to fulfill immediately.