Page 69 of Master of Storms
“I stabbed you when you tried to kiss me?” She arched a brow. “Yes.”
“I was offering her comfort. Not romance. She was upset because she knew I didn’t have any feelings for her. Not the way she wished them to advance. I told her there was someone out there just for her, and she shouldn’t settle upon the first handsome stranger who came along. Or something like that.”
“You were being kind,” Solveig said, drawing her knees up to her chest. She could see it now, in a way she hadn’t been able to at the time.
He was letting Aslaug down gently and trying to assuage her tears. Her sister had been laughing, even as she dashed them from her cheeks, but back then, all Solveig had been able to see was the way he made Aslaug happy.
And then he had tried to kissher.
And she’d erupted with into a jealous rage because she hadn’t understood any of it, least of all her own feelings.
The heat drained from her cheeks as realization struck her like an arrow to the heart. It had always been easy to hate him. If she hated him, then she did not have to confront the truth in her heart. If she hated him, then she could lash out at him with impunity. She could protect herself. Her pride. Her name. But most of all, her heart.
That fledgling beast that had broken upon her mother’s death and never truly healed.
It was a bitter pill to swallow. “I forgive you,” she whispered.
“What?” His gaze tore back to hers.
“I forgive you.”
His jaw fell open. Hot amber light burned to life in his eyes. “Why?”
Solveig slipped from the wall, and then paused as she straightened her shirt. “I forgive you because it hurts me to continue carrying the weight of it all these years. And because…. I think I understand now. Why you are who you are. And why I am the way I am. And I think I’m starting to understand what happened between us all those years ago.”
13
They spent the afternoon touring the castle, though one of Draco’s guards seemed to be following them.
Never overtly. Simply there every time Marduk paused in a new area of the castle. That might be a problem.
“Can you sense anything?” Solveig murmured as she slipped through the gardens, as cool and serene as a glacier, despite that moment earlier this morning. “I swear you’re leading us in circles.”
“I am.” He paused by a fountain in a walled courtyard and plucked a rose from a nearby bush. “Here you are, my love.”
“I forgive you.”
Those words hammered within his chest with every beat of his heart, but she’d simply closed herself off again, as if she’d bared her heart for a moment and found it too unbearable to continue. Her walls were back in place, her castle ramparts firmly guarded, and she’d hauled up the drawbridge behind those words, as if to pretend they’d never existed.
I won’t forget, Solveig.
You yielded for a second. You let me in. And you can lock me out all you like, but I know your heart is vulnerable now.
She looked distinctly unimpressed as she accepted the rose.
“I left the thorns on,” he teased.
Solveig brought the red flower to her nose and breathed it in, watching him over the top of those petals as if she was waiting for the trap to spring shut around her. Her fingertip stroked one of the thorns thoughtfully, and the muscle in his jaw flexed as he met her dark eyes.
He wanted, quite desperately, to kiss her.
But the others were relying on him to find the key. He couldn’t let them down. Not again.
“There are tunnels beneath the castle,” he told her, trying to focus.
One of her eyebrows rose. “How do you know?”
“Because I can feel Chaos magic beneath us in three different locations. One beneath the northern tower, where Draco and Andromeda reside. One beneath the heart of the keep. And one beneath us here. This is where I sense it the strongest. There’s just one little problem.”
