Page 131 of Master of Storms
And maybe that was the problem? She wanted him to fight for her. Even as she didn’t want to surrender. It was so damned confusing.
“And I think you’re lying to yourself,” Árdís continued.
“How so?”
“If it was a temporary alliance,” Árdís replied, “then you wouldn’t be struggling so much with the concept of it.”
The princess had her brother’s gift for seeing straight to the heart of a problem.
Solveig pushed her way out of bed. There was a bone-deep weariness in her body, but she was sick and tired of being confined here. Events transpired without her, and she needed to be in the heart of matters.
Not weakened and relying upon others.
“Careful now,” Árdís warned, slipping an arm under her shoulder.
“I’m fine.”
The princess laughed under her breath. “I’m not Marduk. I actually know what those two words mean from a female perspective.”
Solveig’s shoulders slumped. “He’s confusing. I hate him. I don’t hate him.” She breathed out a sigh as truth compelled her to admit, “I don’t hate him at all.”
And it was that one little fact that bothered her the most.
“You don’t hate him at all,” Árdís repeated, as if she’d known the truth all along. “Here. Let me brush your hair.”
Solveig allowed the princess to bring her a robe and seat her in a chair near the hearth. The first few strokes of the brush through her tangle of wild hair soothed her in a way she’d not expected.
“I always missed my brothers,” Árdís admitted, as she brushed. “But I worried about them more. Especially Marduk. He just… vanished. And when he came back, it was like nothing had ever happened at all. He still laughs. He still smiles. But his eyes always return to the horizon, and until I met you, I worried he would disappear again. TheZinicourt is not his home. Not the way it is for me.”
“Until you met me?”
“He’s not looking for the horizon,” Árdís admitted. “He looks at you as if you are the whole of his world. And when he carried you back here in his arms, he looked like you’d torn his heart out of his chest just by fainting. He worries about you. He cares for you.”
Solveig slowly closed her eyes.
“And you care for him,” the princess insisted.
“While I may admit to certain… feelings, it will never work between us.”
“Won’t it?”
She curled her fingers into a fist. “I am a queen. I was not made to surrender to—"
“Sometimes surrender is the greatest power we have,” Árdís said.
Solveig’s heart hardened. “Surrender means that one wins. And one loses.”
“I’m not talking about surrendering tohim.” Árdís reached out and pressed two fingers to Solveig’s heart. “I speak of surrendering to yourself. I’ve felt it, you know. I tried not to love my husband. I tried so hard it felt like I was cutting my own heart out of my chest. To love him meant to face my mother’s wrath, and I didn’t want to risk his life. Until he was dying, right in front of me, and the only way to save Haakon’s life was to accept what I felt for him and bond with him. The truth is I was hiding from myself. I wasn’t truly whole until I accepted that what I felt was worth fighting for. Worth riskingeverythingfor. And so I surrendered.”
What a breathless concept.
To be at one with herself, to give into the desires of her heart meant submitting to a piece of herself she’d spent her entire life fighting.
She had been born into a male world, and she’d spent the first cycle of her life fighting to find her place in it. Every inch of the way she’d had her father’s throne in her sights—not as conqueror, but as successor—and the beat of the wordsI will be worthyechoed in time with her heartbeat.
Losing her mother had forged that dream into an unbreakable vow. It was her mother’s dream, and she would honor it. She would be a queen that the world would bow before. She would take her throne, and she would hold it.
But it was only now she realized what that dream could cost her.
