Page 123 of Clash of Storms
And her earlier creations had been jealous.
Jörmungandr despised alldreki. As long as they left him alone, there was no cause for concern, but if the enormous serpent realized they were there....
Sirius took a limping step forward, and Malin scurried at his side, prepared to catch him if he fell—even though such an act would probably flatten her.
"I'm not going to fall on my bloody face. Stop hovering over me like—"
"A newly mated maledreki?" she challenged.
The look on his face held aeons of masculine pride.
Circles of nervous virgins would have withered beneath it.
Warriors would have dropped their eyes and looked away, yielding to his supremacy.
Luckily, she'd spent ten years toying with this brutish, arrogantdrekiprince.
"Malin."
Clearly, maledrekiwere the only ones allowed to hover. Malin tipped her chin up. "I promise when we get out of this, I will allow you to hover to your heart's content."
"Allowme?"
"It's because I came to rescue you, isn't it?" She couldn't resist goading him. He didn't want her pity; he was already struggling under the weight of his loss, and the revelation of what he'd done to the king. He wanted to rebuild himself, and so she swallowed her ungainly emotions. "You're struggling with all your masculine pride right now. Aren't I allowed to worry about you?"
He seemed to swallow said pride. Indeed, he looked like he was choking upon it. "Damn it, Malin. You can worry. I'm just not... used to it."
The rigid slant of her shoulders softened.Oh.
He'd spent years protecting Andri. Years fighting to hold his own against Magnus and his father; creating a myth out of himself to unnerve any who dared stand against him. Sirius had made himself so hard and aloof nothing could ever touch him. Nothing except this.
Nobody had ever wanted to protect him in return.
Nobody had ever come forhim.
Malin's heart melted. "You had best get used to it. I'm not going anywhere. You are mine, my lord Blackfrost. Scowls and all."
He shot her a smoky look, made even more dangerous by the makeshift eye patch. Somewhere out there a pirate wished he had half the Blackfrost's swagger. "When we get out of this, I see I'm going to have to reassert my dominance."
"I might just let you."
"Let me indeed...."
But he was hiding a smile as he said it.
Straightening, he strode to the mirror and wrenched it way from the wall. It swung open like a door, revealing smooth stone behind it. But there were a pair of rectangles carved into the stone, one inside the other. Ancient runes tracked between both rectangles, and although they looked faintly familiar, they weren't Younger or Older Futhark. Similar, yes. But the mere sight of them made her vision waver and her eyes strain as if she was looking at something she shouldn't be.
Where was her father when she needed him? Sigurd knew every myth ever spoken; he could decipher a glyph or a rune at a glance.
"Any time you would care to open the portal!" Freyja yelled.
Something slammed against the walls, as if Roar and the others had thrown something at her barrier spell.
Rune magic was a different sort of beast to elementaldrekimagic, but Sirius seemingly knew it. Or how to activate it anyway.
Reaching out, he traced first one rune. Then another, much lower down. Again and again, until the runes glowed gold.
A portal suddenly opened in the stone, revealing the same scene she'd seen in the spelled mirror.
