Page 46 of Between Broomsticks and Beating Wings
“What do you say we find a room for the night, hmm?” I cooed, knowing she wouldn’t make it much longer if we stayed in this tavern.
“But we didn’t even get to dance!” she gargled, the alcohol hitting her hard, making me fear what the rest of the night was going to look like.
“You’re right,” I said, my grip loosening on her. “How about you show me your favorite move? This song is beautiful. It’d be a shame if we wasted it.”
“I’m not dancingforyou,” she said. “I want to dancewithyou!”
“Alright, alright,” I chuckled, and it probably was for the best that I stood beside her in case she went down like a sack of potatoes.
Kari leapt off the stool and crashed into a nearby dwarf. He didn’t even seem to notice, because while shorter, dwarves were sturdy, and it would take a lot more than a wand-wed mortal with below average muscle mass to knock one over.
Kari mumbled her apologies, righting herself on our makeshift dance floor. She started off strong with a few sways of her hips, but when she attempted a spin, I grabbed her hand and pulled her close to me. Her feet were tangled, and all that held her up were my arms.
“Careful, seeress,” I spoke into her hair. “I’d hate to see a perfect apple bruise.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
A VALKYRIE IN MY BED
Kari
“But how does it glow?” I said, poking at the moss growing out of the cracks in the wall. I could barely hear the music now, but this moss seemed like it was still enjoying the celebration.
Is this moss blushing at me?
Rune grabbed my hand and held my fingers up. They had faded to their usual color after taking a break from practicing the last few days. That’d been weird. Charcoal-dipped fingers. It’d never happened to me on Midgard, but then again, my spells sucked there, and the spells on the scroll Rune gave to me spoke to the seidr that lived within me.
“How can you cast spells?” Rune asked, still holding my fingers in the air.
I shrugged as she led me up the stone steps of the inn, bidding farewell to that flirty moss. “I have seidr. I’m fancy like that, I suppose.”
An odd sound came from Rune, and when I looked at her, she pressed her lips together to silence it. “The moss is fancy too,” she said with a smile.
“That makes sense.” I nodded in response, seeing more moss ahead as it lit our path up the stairs. I quickened my step to meet it.
Hello, fancy, flirty moss.
Rune pulled me away from this one too, and I felt a pout on my lips as she did. The shiny valkyrie held a brass key in the hand that didn’t hold mine, and she tapped in on the stone next to her as we went.
When we reached the next floor, there was a circular room with a cluster of chairs. On the outskirts of the room were doors embedded into the rock. Rune moved me four doors down and began wiggling the key into a hole next to the knob.
The next thing I knew, we were in the room, and she was dragging two beds together. They were wide beds, big enough for two people, but they were too short for either one of us. Once pushed together, we had one standard sized bed, big enough for a seeress and a valkyrie.
“Where’s my cat?” I asked, my head swinging around.
“He’s with Epli and Gunhild, remember?”
“Oh yeah,” I sighed, sinking down onto the bed. It was quite soft; I’d assumed they’d be made of stone. We were under a mountain, after all. As my back hit the bed, my heart ached for my sinister boy. “I’ve never slept alone.”
“You won’t be alone,” Rune said as she began unlacing my boots. I didn’t stop her; my feet were sore and my belly was so full, if I folded to take them off myself, I wasn’t sure what would come out of me.
“But you’re not going to curl up by my head and purr all cute,” I sighed. She really couldn’t compare. “You’re very hard and shiny. That’s not very cuddly of you.”
“I won’t purr, but maybe if you’re lucky enough, I’ll snore,” she said. “And I’m not hard once my armor comes off.”
“Yes, you are.”
Rune cocked her head, and I rolled my eyes. Didn’t she know what she looked like?
