Sorrow's Peak (Serpent of Time Book 2) (31 page)

Bunching the grass beneath his thigh into a tight fist, he pulled it free from the ground. Releasing his fist, the blades stuck to the sweat of his palm even after he released it back to the earth.

Lifting his hand up to study that which remained, the connection he felt to the grass was more startling than he could have ever guessed. The Light of Madra reached in and plucked him away from death, only to cast him back into life, still clinging to the shadows of an ending that never came. For years he carried the hope she left with him, only to discover he had no chance at a future with her. He clung to the very idea of her the way that lifeless grass clung to his hand.

Shaking his head, he wiped his hands clean while turning over his shoulder to look in the direction of the tent she’d been sharing with Finn. He heard only the barest mutter of voices, but he did not tune into them. He didn’t want to be a part of what was supposed to happen between them. He just wanted to see her where she needed to go, make sure Finn didn’t die along the way, and then he wanted to move on. Head back out into the world and get as far away from prophecy and broken hearts as possible.

Finally, he stood, stretching the ache from his back before wandering to his tent across camp and slipping inside. It wouldn’t be easy, sleeping alone; he probably wouldn’t even sleep at all, but the more distance he put between himself and his companions, the better they would all be.

Because he didn’t know how many times he would be able to push her in Finn’s direction before his need for her overpowered his common sense.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Finn pretended to be asleep when she shuffled into the tent and sat down on the bedroll behind him. For a long time she didn’t say anything, didn’t move, but he felt the nervous fluctuation of her heart and emotions as she battled with herself over choosing the right words. It felt like hours passed, though he knew it wasn’t that long at all, before she finally reached a hand out, rested it against his shoulder and gently shook him.

“Finn,” she murmured his name, heart rate increasing as she waited for him to respond. The stubborn part of him refused to answer at first, and though she claimed the bond between them wasn’t compelling enough for her to commit herself to him, he knew she felt those rhythms. She knew he wasn’t sleeping, and that awareness increased the force of her nudge. “Finn, please. I want to talk.”

He rolled onto his back, allowed his eyes to adjust and distinguish the outline of her silhouette among night’s shadows. The fire’s light beyond the tent mingled with the moons’ beams spilling through the treetops, providing just enough illumination he could see the gleam of her eyes, the curve of her nose when she turned her head and the rogue strands of hair still mussed from sparring with him.

“About what?” He’d heard her and the mage talking, though he hadn’t been paying attention to what they said. Probably more foolishness about harboring guilt over killing an enemy, more idiocy that would make her hesitate when she needed to act.

“We have to stop this. We can’t keep playing this game with each other.”

“I’m not playing games, Princess.” His voice was gruff, throat slightly raw from the damp air. It sounded fierce and husky, even to him. “I’ve been straight with you from the…”

“If you’re going to say from the start, I’m going to stop you right there, because that’s a lie.”

He actually wasn’t going to say that. He was going to say he’d been straight with her since she learned the truth, but she didn’t give him the chance to point that out.

“You weren’t straight with me about the connection between us at all. You denied it when I asked you what was wrong with my heart in Drekne, in fact, and then let me discover we were meant to be mated from strangers.”

“I’ve already told you I was sorry for that.” He huffed and dug his elbows into the ground to edge himself upward. “And I still don’t think it would have been the best way to break the ice between us. ‘Hi, I’m Finn. We’re quite possibly going to be together for the rest of our lives, most likely the afterlife too, and there’s not really much I can do to change that. Should I take off my clothes so you can see what you’ll be getting?’”

“No, but you could have said… something. Anything would have been better than not knowing what was going on at all. And besides, that isn’t the point I’m trying to make with all of this. We need to stop the games. The bickering and the brooding silences, it’s all so ridiculous. And there are far more important things…”

“Not to me,” he muttered. “Nothing is more important to me than you are.”

“Finn…” She sighed his name, an amalgam of confused emotions tangling with her breath. Leaning back, she positioned her hand behind her and dropped her head along her shoulders in a slow roll. “I know you feel things for me, and I won’t lie to you. I have feelings for you too, but right now those feelings can’t be the most important thing in my life. All that matters right now is getting to Great Sorrow’s Peak and finding the Horns of Llorveth so the spirits of the people of Dunvarak can be free. So my own spirit will be free.”

The thought of freeing her spirit terrified her. She didn’t have to say it. He could feel the fear.

He was quiet, trying to find the right way to phrase the blast of thoughts exploding through his mind without sounding selfish or stupid to her. He felt like he came off that way with her all the time, and he didn’t mean to. It was just his nature to say what was on his mind, no matter how unnerving his words tended to be. How was he to help it if the things on his mind were the types of things most other people hesitated over before spilling them into the wind?

Finally, his chest expanded with an inhale and sighed out the words, “And if one of us dies before it matters?”

“Is that what this is about?” She answered too quickly, the hitch in her voice conveying her chagrin. “You’re still worried you’re going to die?”

“No, it’s not like that.” It really was like that, but he wasn’t about to admit it.

“What if it is me?” She shot the question back at him too quickly, disguising her trepidation as best she could by taking the thought itself one step further. “What if the only way I can do the things my brother said I did, what Yovenna claims I did for the people of Dunvarak, was because I have to die?”

“No.”

“No? What do you mean, no?”

“You have to face the serpent thing. You can’t very well do that if you’re dead.”

“What if that’s the only way to face it?”

“It’s not,” he countered. “If you really are the one who’s supposed to fight it, and you die before it’s summoned, the whole thing will just start over again. And maybe that is how you saved all those people, I don’t know, but I do know you’re not supposed to die.”

“What are you talking about? How do you know that?”

“I’ve been reading through that book the mage gave you before we left Dunvarak,” he confessed sheepishly.

He could tell by the look on her shadowed face she’d forgotten about the book after tucking it neatly into her pack, buried under clothes and provisions. Sometimes when he couldn’t sleep at night, he’d dig it out of her pack, slip out by the fire and thumb through the pages while she slept. He wanted to make sense out of what she was really up against, but it felt impossible. The text was old, translated by a scribe into the common written verse from Old Alvarii centuries before, and though the words were all words he knew, the language was archaic and sometimes made his brain feel numb inside his skull.

“You?” she marveled. “You’ve been reading the book Bren gave me?”

“Don’t act so surprised,” he snipped. “I do know how to read, you know.”

“I wasn’t implying that you didn’t know how to read, Finn, I’m just…” She shook her head and then went on, “I can’t imagine when you’ve had time to read, that’s all. I’ve been carrying that book since before we left, and I barely cracked the spine. And besides, it doesn’t exactly seem like material that would catch your interest. Gods and elves and prophecies and…”

“Of course I’m interested in it. It’s
your
future.” Exasperated, he bolted upright, towering over her, even as they were both sitting. She shrank back a little, stunned by his sudden movement. “A future I want to be there to see, to be a part of.”

“So this
is
about you dying?”

“No,” he huffed. “Yes. I don’t know. I just know I need to be a part of it, Lore. I know you might never feel the way I feel about you, but so long as there’s a chance, I want to be there to take it.”

“You’re not going to die.” She lowered her head to stare at the shadow hands wringing in her lap. “I won’t let that happen, Finn, I promise.”

“How in the hell are you going to stop it, Princess?”

“I don’t know.” There was more than just frustration in her exhale. There was a hopeless sense of desperation, too, and it made him feel instantly guilty. “It shouldn’t matter how I’m going to stop it, just that I’m not going to let it happen. I’ve accepted this, Finn. I’ve committed myself to what the seers say I have to do, though I don’t even know why. But I’m not going to give up the things I care about just to see it done.”

Finn didn’t say anything. He just watched her shadow hands in her lap, thumbs stroking the insides of her palms. He tried to will the pace of her heart by slowing down his own with calming breaths.

“So, you do care about me then?”

She brought a half-clenched fist up and punched him in the shoulder, surprising him not only with the force of the hit, but brushing her knuckles against the healing wound in his shoulder. He gasped, bringing a hand up to rub the throbbing muscle beneath the skin.

“Ow, hey! Llorveth’s horns, what was that for?”

“Because you’re such an idiot. I should have hit you in the head to knock some bloody sense into it.”

“I didn’t do…”

“Obviously I care about you, you stupid, withering…” Withdrawing her hand into her lap, she was rubbing her throbbing knuckles almost furiously. “You’re so… Ugh! What is it going to take? And if you even think about saying a single word about mating, I swear to every one of the gods I will punch you in the mouth.”

“I wasn’t going to…” The words faded into silence, the two of them facing each other in the dark for a long time before she finally spoke again.

“In my heart I think I’ve already chosen you, Finn, though sometimes I don’t even know why. You’re exasperating and obnoxious and…” Shaking her head, she tilted her head back again and blew the hair off her forehead. “And despite that, I already know how I feel about you. Since the day you saved me, a part of me has known, and one day, when the time is right, we will be together. But right now it has to be enough that I am committed to that future, no matter the cost.”

Lifting her hand again, he actually flinched, expecting another collision with her knuckles, but instead her soft fingertips met with his cheek. Stroking them downward through the patchy hair of his beard, they lingered beneath his chin.

“I don’t have to give my body to you completely to know we have a future,” she whispered, and then she leaned forward and touched her soft lips against his in a lingering kiss meant to reassure all those nerves inside him that frayed constantly with jealous thoughts and worries she would never be his.

The gesture took him by surprise. She’d never kissed him before without his initiation, and though the beast within stirred immediately, pressing against his skin and raising the level of his want for her, the man pushed it away.

She drew back again, lingering close enough he could feel the strands of her hair tickling his face. “Say it’s enough, Finn.”

It wasn’t enough, not for the wolf that wanted to possess her in her entirety, but for the man it was more than he hoped for.

“So you aren’t in love with the mage?” His voice sounded small, even to him, laden with enough pettiness to make her sigh again. “What? I think that’s a legitimate question.”

“Finn.”

“Sorry.” He hung his head again, the tendrils falling in splits to curtain his face. “I just… I don’t know why, but sometimes the way he looks at you gives me the creeps.”

“I think you’re imagining things that aren’t there. Bren is my friend, and he’s put his life on the line to see this done, just like us. I hate the way you two bicker. Can’t you just try to get along?”

“I can try, but I can’t make any promises.”

“Of course you can’t.”

“Look, I said I’d try. Give me credit for that, Princess.”

The silence that followed was filled with so many unspoken things, but there was a part of Finn that felt triumphant inside. Her revelation, her commitment to their future together lifted his spirits.

“Though I might be more inclined to try a little harder if you kissed me again,” he tried.

She did hit him then, though not as hard. And that night when she laid down beside him, curling her body close to his and resting her head on his shoulder, he was able to shut out the urgency of the beast that wanted her in ways she wasn’t willing to give. For the first time since he’d met her, it was enough to hold her, to know one day she would be his and his alone.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Vilnjar was hot. Hotter than he’d been in weeks, quite possibly his entire life. The under tunic he wore beneath his armor was crafted from thick-spun wool well-suited to Dunvarak’s frigid temperatures, and it clung to his back like a second skin. A dripping, itchy, uncomfortable second skin. Peeling away from time to time, the feel of it made him grimace. His mind was an overwhelming swarm of childish complaints that reminded him far too much of his little brother, so he kept them to himself and tried to ignore the beads of sweat rolling down his prickling back.