Page 24 of Viking

The tip of her tongue darts out and sweeps the sugar into her mouth.

Odin, you low-down dirty dick. Why give me a gift from the sea and make her a fucked-up cult bitch who’s only seventeen?

Arie takes a tentative bite and chews. I can actually pinpoint the second her endorphins kick into gear, her serotonin levels now fucked forever. Her eyes light up, her pupils dilate, and her gaze softens. Her free hand clenches and releases in her lap. She closes her eyes as she chews, and I’ve lost her.

Sugar is her god now.

I grab the cuffs from the nightstand, and her lids shoot open. Her panic is back. It’s written all over her face, but she sets the donut in her lap and offers me her fucking wrists, as if this is something she does every goddamn day.

I place the cuffs in the top drawer of the nightstand and remove the chain with the key on it from around my neck. “Do your people tell stories, Arie?”

She nods, but her confusion is written all over her face in the slight pout of her lips and her creased brow.

“I didn’t grow up here, in America. I came from a small village on an island, just like you. My father was a drunk fisherman, and his wife a poor battered woman. They’re both dead now.” I pause and sit beside her on the bed. She flinches, but doesn’t move away. “My people tell stories of the Faroe Islands, myths and legends, mostly, about the sea surrounding our islands, and how we weren’t the only species to inhabit either.”

“Have you ever heard of Kópakonan, the seal woman who lost her skin?”

She shakes her head.

“It is said that the seals around the Faroe Islands were once people—lost souls who had thrown themselves into the sea. Once a year only, they may come ashore, take off their sealskin and recover their human forms until the sun rises.

“In the village of Mikladalur, on the island of Kalsoy, a young farmer had heard whispers of a cave where the seals gathered for their night as humans.

As night fell, the farmer hid and waited and watched. One by one, the seals came ashore, shed their sealskin, and exposed their human bodies. The farmer saw a young seal approaching the rock he was hiding behind. She slipped free of her sealskin. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

When she walked away to be with the others, he snatched up the sealskin she had left on the rocks.

‘Mine’, he thought. ‘She will be mine’.

When the sun rose, all the seals hurried back into the ocean, but the young woman couldn’t find her skin. Without it, she was trapped on land.

The farmer came out from his hiding place with her sealskin in his arms and the woman realized that she had no other choice but to follow him. He led her to the village and into his house, where the farmer immediately locked her skin in a wooden chest. From that day on, he carried the key to the chest in his belt.

Years went by, and every day, she looked upon the chest while she cleaned his house, prepared his food, and bore his babies. Her freedom within reach, but forever out of her grasp.”

Arie hangs on every word, leaning forward on the mattress, her mouth softened.So fucking beautiful. Fuck. The sooner this bitch talks, the sooner I can figure out what the hell to do with her.

“I’m not that farmer, Arie. I don’t want to keep you here, but I can’t let you go until you talk to me. I can’t help you kill those sons of bitches who hurt you unless you tell me where the island is.”

She shakes her head solemnly. I don’t know if that means she won’t tell me, or she doesn’t know.

“Can you at least tell me what they did to you?”

Another fucking shake of her head, and we’re back to goddamn square one. I place the keys to the cuffs in her open palm and then head to the couch to get a little shuteye. I don’t bother turning off the light, but before I can sit down, she grabs one of the books CJ left on the coffee table and hands it to me. When she’s not at work, CJ’s been reading to her, allowing Arie to follow along like a fucking kindergarten teacher. I may have to turn on the subtitles on my TV, so this kid can get an education while it rots her brain.

I study the cover. “Welcome to Sugartown”. I raise a brow and try to give it back to her, but she pushes it toward me again, this time her hand touches mine.

“Thanks, darlin’, but I don’t read much.”

She points to the book.

I roll my eyes. “I gotta read to you now like CJ does?”

She nods and a tentative smile flashes across that fucking gorgeous face. Arie sits on the couch beside me. She steals my pillow and drags my blanket into her lap, curling into a ball, as if she’s making herself as small as humanly possible. This is the closest she’s voluntarily been to me since she woke in my bed three days ago. She nods to the book, and I roll my eyes.

“Alright, alright. This better be good, though.” I turn over the paperback in my hand and read the blurb.

Odin, you dirty, rotten bastard.