Page 62 of Storm of Fury
Bryn bared her caged teeth. “That’s my business. Mine and Marduk’s. Did Haakon put you up to this?”
The innocent look in his eyes didn’t fool her. “Up to what?”
“Questioning me.”
“Of course he did.” Tormund shrugged, water sluicing over his shoulders.
Of course he did. She swam backward, her gut twisting in knots. “You’re a terrible questioner.”
“Why lie? You know he did. I know he did. Haakon’s not the type of man who lets his guard down very easily. Of course he wants to know more about you. And his interests currently align with my own.”
“I’m not very interesting.”
That smile. Her heart fluttered as he swam after her. “You keep saying that. In my experience, that means you’re very interesting. The more I don’t know, the more I want to know. Tell me something about you. Something important. Where do you come from? Are your parents alive? Do you have siblings? What is your favorite color?”
He was never going to give up. “My mother is dead. My father is dead. I was born far to the north in one of the border forts along the Norwegian border, though it was never my home. My father made sure of that. I have no siblings. And my favorite color is black.”
“As black as your heart?”
“Something like that.”
“How old are you?”
“Older than you,” she replied.By about two hundred years.
“You don’t know that.”
“Oh, I do.”Remember that völva? I met her when she was a wee lass of two-and-twenty.Though I definitely aged better.
“I’m seven-and-twenty.”
“I’m older.” She held a stalling finger to his lips. “And you would be wise to stop asking this lady her age. You may not like the answer.”
Perhaps it was her touch, but he subsided with a simple kiss to her finger that lingered even after she clenched her hand into a fist.
It felt like it had been branded into her skin—except she could remember the pain of hot irons stealing away her sacred runes. That wretched flash of bone-searing pain felt nothing like this, though she suspected she’d remember both for long years to come.
You shouldn’t be here.
You should leave.
And yet she lingered, because she simply couldn’t help herself.
Tormund’s gaze dropped to her mouth. “I don’t care how old you are, Bryn. Your answer would never have bothered me.” But he shrugged when she glared at him. “Fine, then. Your father was not a kindly person?”
“Straight to the heart.” She tipped her chin up proudly. She owed him this, at least. “My mother…. She couldn’t raise me as her own, so she left me on his doorstep. My father became a religious man shortly after my birth, though I was never quite certain whether I was the catalyst for that or not. He took me in because it was his religious duty to pay penance for straying outside the bounds of his mortal marriage. And then he spent the next nine years trying to beat the devil out of me.”
Tormund stilled as thunder rumbled in the distance. “I’m sorry.”
She shrugged as if she could pretend that even after all this time it didn’t hurt. “He’s dead and buried and his name is lost to the sands of time. I made sure of that. But I am still here.”
“I’m still sorry. No child should ever have to endure such a thing.”
“No, they shouldn’t. But it made me strong.”
There was a hint of sympathy in his eyes, as if he thought otherwise. “It does explain a few things.”
Bryn sighed and sank beneath the water, washing away the itch of anger that trembled over her skin.You have no idea, big man. But she let the water wash away her fury, still unabated after all these years.
