Page 36 of A Light So Blinding
He shook his head. “That is understandable.”
“It’s nothing to do with who you are or what you stand for, Bjorn. You seem like a good man?—”
“I am not,” he interrupted. “You should not be bound to a creature like me. My life has not made me a good man, nor do I expect you to wish to remain locked together with me when you did not choose this. It is an unfortunate circumstance that we will need to remedy as soon as possible.”
She swallowed hard. Bound to a troll. That wasn’t something she thought she’d ever have to endure. “So it is... reversible?”
That was good. That made things perhaps a little less scary. She wasn’t locked into her relationship with him or into the knowledge that at some point, she was going to be so tied up in him that her magic wasn’t even hers anymore.
But then he hesitated, and all the anxiety bubbled up again. Why was he hesitating? Why wasn’t hetalkingto her?
Finally he said, “It may be. But it will require us to change course.”
“Change course?”
“Your sister has been the object of your desires. You wish to see her more than anything. It was why you risked your life and ended up in the labyrinth. But if we wish to undo this, then we cannot see your sister first.”
He had to be wrong. She needed to get to Rose. “I’m afraid that won’t be possible. Rose is being held captive by your people. They made it very clear in their note that they were not going to keep her for long before they disposed of her.”
He shook his head. The dim light in this hut played across the edges of his horns, revealing ripples that she hadn’t been able tosee in the darkness of the labyrinth. “My people will not hurt her. They may have lied to get your attention on them, but she is as safe in Trollveggen as she would be anywhere else.”
“She was kidnapped out of her ‘safe’ bed, brought to that labyrinth, and gifted to men who did god knows what to her,” Astrid snarled. “She was never safe, so those are not words that reassure me.”
She still remembered waking up that night and seeing that her sister’s bed was empty. She’d run throughout the entire building that housed the acolytes. That building was supposed to be impenetrable. No one was allowed to get in or out without the knowledge of the king himself. So she had thought that it would be impossible for anyone to grab Rose right out from under her nose.
Nerves made her hands shake again. She’d only just gotten them to stop doing that, and now they were back to it. She tucked them into her lap harder than before, and took a deep, steadying breath. “I need to see that Rose is all right.”
“We don’t have that kind of time.” He gestured between the two of them with a clawed hand. “What just happened between the two of us is binding, like I said. There is very little time to undo it if it was a mistake. Blood witches don’t make mistakes like that. Therefore, it is unusual to have to unravel the ties that just happened.”
“Then why was it so easy to do?” She almost shouted the words before clearing her throat.
She should never have raised her voice like that. Astrid knew how to keep control of herself. She knew how to be better than this.
He looked at her with pity in his gaze. “Most people cannot perform the spell unless they are blood witches themselves. But those with magic that could be one of our own priestesses, likeyou, certainly possess the ability to cast the spell. You read the words on the claw.”
She had read them out loud. Astrid wasn’t even certain why she had done so. After all, she knew that magic was dangerous. Something in her heart had whispered that it was meant to be read aloud, and so she had. The words had flowed off her tongue as if she’d said them a thousand times.
She hadn’t known what they meant. She hadn’t known what it would do if she read them aloud.
Her stomach twisted, and she swore she was going to vomit. But they hadn’t eaten anything in a very long time, and she knew that if she threw up, all that would come out of her was thin, meager bile.
So she clamped her mouth shut, turned her face to the side, and tried to get herself under control.
A sharp whistle filled the hut. She flinched, and Bjorn cursed as he rushed back to the stove and pulled the tea kettle off the top. The steam wheezed out a dying breath, and then there was just the two of them alone with the sound of their ragged, angry breaths. She heard him pour water into two cups that were likely dirty, and then the soft sound of metal clinking as he added pinches of tea into metal tea balls.
What was she supposed to say? That she was going to give up on her sister’s well-being just because she’d made a mistake? It wasn’t going to happen. She’d sacrifice herself if that was what it took, but she was getting her sister back.
But then he handed her the handmade mug and sat down on the sofa to her right, while she was still leaning against the back of it. Back to back, they both sipped their tea while staring off into the distance, mulling over their predicament.
She swallowed far too much of the boiling water, feeling it burn on its way down to her stomach. “How do you know so much about this?”
Some part of her hoped it was all rumor. Then she could point out that this was a fool’s mission, and he knew nothing. The logical thing would be for them to go wherever Rose was and find an expert.
“I was raised by people like you,” he murmured. “My mother is a smoke breather. She inhales the future through smoke and breathes it out like a dragon while telling prophecies. People like her only have children rarely, but when they do, they are raised among all those with gifts their children might not have.”
Her heart squeezed in her chest. Such a childhood must have been hard for him. “Why do you not share her gifts?”
“The goddess only blesses women with such things. I was born to protect people like you. That is the only reason my mother kept me.” His hand clenched around the mug so hard she heard the ceramic creak. “But my father was born to do the same, and he renounced those ways. I was brought to Trollveggen more than I was trained to protect my mother and her sisters of power. My brutality comes from him.”
