Page 69 of Heart of Fire
“Then you can start now.” She gestured to the south. “If Rurik dies, then you’ll never find out what happened to yourwife.”
And she would never get to tell Rurik the truth—that she’d been such a fearful fool she’d run away from the best thing that had ever happened toher....
Oh, Rurik.Heat slid through her eyes, but Freyja was determined. She was not going to lose him, nor her chance to tell him the truth she nursed deep in herheart.
“What can we do?” Haakon demanded, bringing her back into the present. “They’re indrekiform, Freyja. Immortal, powerful, and impervious to harm. We are but human, and they could crush us likegnats.”
“Almost impervious,” she said darkly, picturing Magnus’s face in her mind. “You have aballista....”
“A crippled ballista,” hecountered.
“Then put it on a wagon. I only destroyed thewheels.”
Haakon dwelled on the thought. “Andyou?”
“Well, you’ve caught a glimpse of what I can do, but that’s not important. What I have is a burning desire to save the man I love,” she said grimly, turning toward the stables to fetch Hanna. “Go and fetch your ballista, and I will meet you at Krafla. We don’t have muchtime.”
Eighteen
RURIK SOAREDIN slow circles around Krafla’s smoldering peak, riding the thermals and the heated edge of hisfury.
There was no sign of the otherdreki, but he’d expectedthat.
“Come out, you cowards.”He bellowed a challenge into the air, and it echoed like the thunder that was brewing on the horizon. Weakness stole through his veins, a little whisper that wore away at his confidence. Healing Freyja’s father had taken more out of him than he’d expected, but the heaviness in his heart was the trueweakness.
I should have told her how I feel abouther.
Maybe then she wouldn’t have run fromhim.
Rurik poured all of his world-weary pain into another bellow.“You want your throne? Then come out and take it fromme!”
This entire plot had Stellan’s hand all over it. His uncle, thedrekiqueen's brother, always liked to tie up any loose ends, and while Rurik and his brother were still alive, the queen’s control over her throne was not complete. Amadea could keep Árdís in check, but not her maleprogeny.
As if exiling him for a crime he didn’t commit hadn’t been badenough.
Pain bled through him. He’d lost everydrekihe ever loved by choosing exile over a challenge to his uncle and mother, but he’d made that choice to protect them. Challenging Stellan would have dragged his younger brother and sister into the war, and they hadn’t been strong enough then to survive. He had little doubt his mother and uncle would cut their own blood down in aheartbeat.
After all, his uncle had murdered his father and his mother hadn’t blinked at blamingRurik.
He let the rage of his loss fuel his strength.“Come out!”he roared as he overshot Krafla and went south in a swoop over theglaciers.
“You’re not fit to rule these lands,”came Magnus’s thought-whisper.“And who are you to call us cowards? You, who tucked tail and fled when your mother took thethrone?”
“When your father stole it for her,”he shot back.“By plotting to murder hisking.”
“My father didn’t kill yours.”It echoed with truth, and Rurik gritted his teethtogether.
“Maybe it wasn’t his hand that ripped my father’s heart out of his chest,”Rurik shot back,“but his was the hand behind themurder.”
“You stupid fool.”Magnus’s laugh echoed through the link.“My father had nothing to do with the death of yours. You did thatyourself.”
Truth again.The rage that filled Rurik almost threatened to obliterate rational thought, but he couldn’t afford to lose his mind now. Not when there was so much atstake.
But the answer still ached within him. All he could remember was blood slick on his hands, and his father’s ribs spread wide, the heart torn from within. And the thought he’d pushed this death upon his king, because he hadn’t known enough to back down when he overheard his mother and uncle plotting a coup. In an act of mercy, an attempt to reach thedrekiwho’d birthed him, he’d actually warned her he knew what she was up to.No.“Come out, you coward! Where areyou?”
“Here.”
Rurik wheeled in a fury, sighting his opponent rising from a valley near Krafla. Bat-like black wings thrust Magnus into the skies, and his lip was drawn back from his fierce fangs. Twenty tons of fury struck through the air toward him, but Rurik was fueled by vengeance andrage.
