Page 35 of Vow of the Undead
Every breath I dragged into my stiff throat became more shallow until I met his gaze once again. His icy eye, the color of melted fjords in the summer, held mine. He released my chin and brushed his thumb over my wound that had since become a scar.
It’d only been three days since I’d seen him last, but for the majority of the time we had been together, he’d been sitting at my back where I couldn’t see him. Now, I took all of him in again, noticing the details my distracted mind had left out before.
His wicked grin was as dark as his sleek hair and beard, and held my thoughts captive, rendering me senseless, foolish, like a young shieldmaiden enchanted by a battle-weary warrior from old tales. The longer I looked at him, the more I wanted to look. Everything about King Drakkar was the living vision of a man from the sagas my mother had dared to share with me. A manI’ddared to dream of, and he’d even stopped my execution. He’d saved my life just like a warrior would do.
He’d unknowingly given me the chance to pass a God’s trial and shirk off the shameful parts of me once and for all. That was the true rescue, whether he knew it or not.
Humming low in his chest, he dropped to one knee and leaned in to me. “Silver, I’ve missed you.” His gaze raked over me, and I expected another one of his unbidden questions. “I have a proposal for you.”
King Drakkar’s thick arm wrapped around my lower back while he held my other hand. My heart flipped as he guided me to my feet. The memory of him lifting me from my knees was an echo of my stopped execution.
Just like the moment he interrupted my execution, what might come next was impossible to predict.
“I plan to marry you,” he said, his voice low but cutting with confidence.
Marry me? How could I become the wife of the king who exiled people like me? My stomach revolted with a pulse of bile pressing up into my throat. I swallowed it and lightly palmed my throat to feel the ripple of my swallow. The action grounded me enough to process his words.
It wasn’t even a question, or the proposal he’d promised, but neither was it a punishment nor servitude. At least not in the way I expected.
He tilted his head, eyes scanning every inch of my face before he held my gaze. “Silver?”
I sucked in a tight breath, but relief didn’t come. If I accepted, I might share in the secrets he held asking. As his wife, how much easier would it be to find the lost history? Or to convince him to free my mother?
“This isn’t what I thought I came here for.” It was all I could think to say.
“Do you deny the heat between us?”
Heat? That was just the burn of hate.
I said nothing.
If I bound myself to him, this would be my sacrifice. This would help me pass Freya’s trial. Who better to see the king at his most vulnerable than his wife? Despite all this logic, I couldn’t bring myself to accept. Which was another one of my selfish choices.
Now the tingle of nerves fluttered in my chest. They buzzed in my fingertips and I slipped my hand deeper into his steady hold.
A slight smirk curved at the edge of his lips.
How could he want me after I’d killed his courtiers? Standing before him, we were surrounded by people who must have been friends with the man and woman I stuck like suckling pigs and left in the forest to rot in blood-stained snow. They were dead by the very hand the king now held in his.
“Say you’re mine,” he said as he dropped to one knee before me. It wasn’t a question. He didn’t ask me to marry him as was tradition for most couples in Vylheim. He spoke it into existence as if I didn’t have a choice. And, of course, I didn’t, though something about the way he waited for me to respond told me he wanted me to at least give me the illusion of choice.
He gripped my hand, staring up at me like I was fowl waiting to be shot out of the sky with an arrow and then devoured alongside a plate of potatoes. “With me, you’ll want for nothing. But I need you to say it. Say you’re mine, Silver. Or shall I call you my wife?”
“But I’m not your wife.” The words slipped out before Icould swallow them, my natural inclination for the independence that Freya spoke of in her sagas.
King Drakkar stood, still gripping my hands as he stepped toward me and lightly tugged me into him. His voice dropped to a volume only I could hear. “Perhaps you shouldn’t announce that in front of inquiring ears. Your father informs me you need safety, as you have…” he paused to lift the back of his finger to the scar Sten had left across my cheek, tracing it with the slightest touch as he seemed to search for the right word. “Persistent admirers. When I say you’ll want for nothing as my wife, I mean there is no admirer who’ll be allowed within reach of you ever again. No human, or monster.”
My heart thudded in my throat. Did he know I still spoke of the old tales, spreading the sagas of monsters and Gods?
When had my father told him this? I’d suffered nightmares my entire life, but I never breathed a word of it, nor of the gods I still prayed to and the monsters my mother taught me to fear.
My gaze slid to my father only a few steps away. He beamed, seemingly proud that they’d finally, truly made a deep connection with the wealthiest ruler in Vylheim. I flinched at the sight of his smile, so unnatural on my father’s cruel face.
Turning my attention to King Drakkar, I conjured my voice. “What do you know of monsters?”
He grinned. “Everything.”
Did the records show glimpses of giants and the undead? “There’s rumors about lost history here?—”
