Page 52 of Clash of Storms
Because it would be very easy to love her.
She'd told him he wasn't a monster. She'd meant it too. And that made him even more breathless with panic, because it was one thing to know she would never look at him with fondness, quite another to see her eyes soften when she beheld him. He didn't dare hope, and yet it filled him, stealing through the cracks in his armor and pierced him right to the core.
He'd finally discovered his fatal weakness: A single smile from Malin's lips could bring him to his knees.
You wish to be courted?
Sirius stared down at her for a long moment, his stomach twisting in knots when he saw the way she'd tucked her curled up fists under her chin.
Princess or not, he needed to get Malin to Rurik's territory, where his cousin could protect her.
There was no future for her at thedrekicourt.
And no chance his cousin, the precious, perfect honorable Rurik, would ever accept someone like Sirius in his lands, even if hecouldmanage to rescue Andri from his father's clutches so there was no noose around his throat.
They had a matter of days together, at best.
And then?
He would have to forget her.
* * *
"We found him,"Lor said, as he shimmered and shrunk, transforming into mortal form.
Roar considered the enormousdrekiwarrior crouched at his feet. "It's strange. You don't appear to be carrying Sirius's head."
Florian straightened out of his crouch, his lip curling. "I enjoy mine sitting right where it is too much. He's the Blackfrost. He blew us out of the fucking skies. We couldn't even get close to him."
A curl of hate twisted through him.The Blackfrost.All his life Roar had hearddrekicoo and grovel at his half brother's boots as if he were more than myth, more than legend. A fucking god.
"He's not invincible," he snapped. "He has to have a weakness. And I will find it. The second I capture the princess."
Árdís was Roar's chance to finally get his hands on everything he'd ever hungered for. Nobody would ever dare sneer at him again. No,hisname would be the one spoken in reverent tones.
Prince Roar.
Prince-heir of theZinicourt. Merciless. Powerful. The only surviving son of the great Stellan Ironfist.
But first he had to find her.
"Where was he?" Roar demanded, a shiver of nerves trailing down his spine. If Sirius captured her first, then all was lost. "I haven't seen so much as a glimpse of him."
"That's because he's travelling on foot," Florian replied.
On... foot?"In mortal form?" he asked incredulously.
"Aye."
Why would Sirius do that? He had to know something Roar didn't. Roar had been all over this cursed island, and caught not a hint of the princess. He'd searched ships, hollowed out volcanoes and skimmed the edges of Rurik's territories.... He'd even turned his sights toward the north of Scotland and the West of the Norwegian fjords. It was as though Árdís had vanished into thin air, but how did a five-ton creature simply vanish?
"He had the drekling girl with her," Lor added.
Roar froze. "The drekling? The princess's handmaid?"
Bothdrekinodded at him.
Sirius hadn't slaughtered the girl. Roar paced across the outcrop of rock, glancing at the threedrekiwheeling through the skies above him. With Balder, Guthrum, Lor, Florian and Ylve at his side, he had the advantage of numbers.
