Page 19 of Master of Storms
Solveig sucked in a sharp breath. “Tyndyr was the king of Álfheimr’smost brutal warlord. They said he died in battle.”
“But nobody ever found his body,” Marduk pointed out. “And yes, I’m aware of the implications of that.”
Troubling.
And elves were reputed to wield illusion and glamor.
“So someone was either impersonating him, or the bloodthirsty elvish bastard is still out there.” She could see him slipping away from a battle, wounded and bloody and hungry for revenge. “It was over a thousand years ago, but elves are long-lived, and he must have been sharpening his instinct for revenge for a long time. He finds your sister and manipulates her into opening the gates. She’s proven she has the power to do so. But she’s locked them, and now I may presume she’s carefully guarded in your court.” Solveig looked up. “And here we are in Iceland, barely a handful of miles from theZinicourt within the Hekla volcano, and we’ve just run afoul of a handful of elves, which are admittedly scarce on this world.”
The color drained out of his face. “That son of a bitch. That’s who was in the inn. Tyndyr. He’s heading for Ishtar.” He took two steps and threw a look over his shoulder. “Are you coming?”
“Coming?” Her eyebrows shot up. “You think I’m coming withyou? To your court?”
“You are my mate.”
“A technicality I’ve been intending toamend.”
“Well, you can stay out here. Alone. With a pack of vengeful elves out there on your trail, baying to make you crawl toward them.” His eyes narrowed. “And don’t think I didn’t notice your knees weakening. You were fighting it with everything you had, sweetheart, but you were thinking about it.”
“Oh, don’t you talk. You were practically kissing his feet.”
Marduk dragged a hand over his face, but she could see the edge of frustration within him. “I wasn’t expecting the weight of that glamor. I couldn’t stop myself. How the hell did you manage to break through it? He was aiming twice as much of his glamor at you as he was at me.”
She didn’t want to think about it.
Herdrekihad been fighting and furious, but that wasn’t the moment.
No, it had been the knife to Marduk’s throat, the blood dripping down his neck….
But she couldn’t say that, so instead she loaded her voice with all the disgust she could. “Do you think I would evercrawl?Me?”
“Thank the gods for pure arrogance then.”
“Pure arrogance? I wasn’t the one who started simpering the second he said, ‘Aren’t you beautiful? Aren’t you magnificent?’” Solveig batted her lashes at him.
“Jealous?”
“He was talking to me, you idiot.”
Marduk laughed under his breath. “I wasn’t referring to you being jealous about me. You’re right. I would have gone to him and I would have done anything to get my hands on him, and I’ve never felt that way about a male before.” His eyes darted to hers, shockingly intense. “Were you jealous ofhim, Solveig? That I was so infatuated with him that I could barely breathe?”
Her lips trapped her tongue. It wasn’t often that she felt flustered, and yet when he looked at her like that, the world narrowed until only the pair of them existed.
She hated that feeling.
“Is it morning yet?” she asked instead, balling her fist. “Can I hit you yet?”
“You can try,” he offered with a teasing smile. “But I didn’t promise that I would let you.”
Goddess, that smirk. She tilted her face to the moon.If I kill him now, will you truly strike me down for breaking my word?
The moon—and the goddess—didn’t answer.
“I need to get back to Ishtar’s side as soon as possible. They need her if they’re going to open that portal for the rest of their armies, and I’m not inclined to let the world start swimming with those smarmy mincing bastards again. Do you agree?”
TheZinicourt was the last place she wanted to go.
But…
