“Vali you don’t—”
But he was already out of his chair and rummaging through his discarded cloak in the hall outside her cell. He pulled a small package from within one of the pockets and brought it back to her, placing the rolled leather into her hands.
“Would lavender count?”
Ailsa shot him a confused look before untying the package and unrolling it a few inches to peek inside. She discovered pouches of dried herbs, the same ones she kept stocked in her bag. The same ones she was running out of. She bound the roll with the leather fastenings. “Where did you… How?” she asked, shaking her head in disbelief.
“Idun’s garden in Asgard grows every plant in creation. I had the goddess point me toward the herbs.”
“These are herbs fromAsgard?” she asked, regarding the contents of his gift like they were made of gold. “Vali, this is… You don’t understand what this means to me.”
“I just wanted to make sure you had enough until we reached Alfheim.”
The feelings flooding her heart quickly dried up with understanding. “You mean, until you give me to Odin.” She took a deliberate step back, hoping her heart would follow.
Vali winced. “No, Ailsa, that is not—”
“You are only good to me because of what I carry.” Her fist tightened around the herbs, but her eyes were locked on something outside the cell, refusing to look at him.
“Stiarna,” he spoke her name like a prayer, pleading. “Do not twist my words and distort their meaning. I want this shirt more than anything.”
“But?” her voice sighed the word.
“But nothing! I want your gift. I want you, Ailsa. And I don’t know what to do about the Tether or Odin or the dark forces that seek what is inside you. But I vow I will do everything in my power to keep you safe and to protect you from all of it.”
“What if they cannot make a new Tether?” she asked with tears festering in her eyes. “What if Odin takes me away… or worse. Accepting my gift will make things more complicated for you, Vali. Acknowledging this connection we have could ruin the lives of everyone in your realm.”
“Then why did you make me this in the first place? You have taken away my choice as quickly as you gave it to me.” He was about to take off the shirt until he saw the hurt in her eyes, the way she blanched from his rejection. He dropped his hands, defeated on every side. “I have never once chosen anything in my life. But I would choose you, Ailsa, if you let me. There are no strands of time where I would not choose you, no matter how they unraveled in the end.”
“I am dying, Vali.” Her words cracked. “Wherever this thread unwinds, it will not go far. You must know that.”
“I thought I knew many things before I met you.” He stepped closer to her, no more space between their chests, her thighs brushed his knees. She let him put his hands on her jaw to study the flush crawling down her neck, the way her skin raised beneath his feather-light touch and spread like a wildfire down her spine. “But now all my principles have been reduced to this single truth: that not even the fates themselves know what tomorrow will hold. So I will choose what makes me happy today, and that is you.”
“Why?” she asked. It was then, with that question, she finally saw him. The same determined man that stood on her shores that dark night in Drakame. The one who would stop at nothing, give anything, to get what he wanted. “What can I possibly offer besides a massive headache?”
“What do I offer you besides danger and dungeons?” he challenged.
The air was thin, barely tangible enough to carry her words. “What a pair we make, ruining each other’s lives.”
He laughed a hoarse sound, shaking his head and sending small drops of rain across her cheek. His lashes lowered as he stared at her lips. “Please, keep ruining me, Ailsa.”
She lost her breath as his head dipped. He pinched her lower lip between his, the gentlest of kisses that moved mountains from their pillars in the earth and burned new stars in the sky with its heat.
The testing weight of this kiss was enough to wreck her. His lips were softer than the silk she snatched between her fingers, than the skin she explored all those nights ago. Her hands crumbled the delicate fabric of his new shirt as she pulled him down from where he staggered above her, his body tensed before melting, filling the spaces between her curves. The distance between them disappearing. He molded against her like another half, a piece of her she didn’t realize was missing until it had been found.
Ailsa snatched his lip with her teeth, eliciting from him a delicious hiss. She pulled away slightly. Her teeth raked slowly across the thin flesh as she watched as the elfin smirked, pulling the rest of his lip from the snag of her canines.
“Is this one of those scandalous advances you warned me about?” His breath was warm against her cheek as his nose trailed her hairline.
“Oh, sweet Vali,” she murmured. In one fluid motion she flung him hard against the wall behind her and pulled the blade from her waist. The unexpected shove sucked a grunt from his still parted lips. She ran the edge of his jaw with the knife’s edge, following the curve of his neck and over the vein in his neck. A month ago, she would have bled him out, he certainly deserved it. But as he looked down at her with hooded eyes dark with desire, any lingering malice was pushed away. “If we weren’t in a dungeon next to a shit-bucket I would pin you against the wall by your hideous shirt and show you all the bad things I can do.”
“You arenot allowedto ruin this shirt.”
“Oh, but it will be fun. I promise you will like it.”
He leaned his head forward despite the blade at his throat to catch her lips. With a whisper of pressure, he parted her mouth, slipping a hot tongue along her teeth and stealing her resolve with each vanquishing stroke. The knife slipped from her grasp to pull him close by his wet hair.
Gone was sweet Vali, his gentleness burned away with the brazen longing of their kiss. His fingers smoothed around her stomach to pull her close by her waist, shoving his knee between her legs. Vali rose like the tide, and she fell into him like a shipwreck, drowned by his lips and the hands that gutted her with every devastating blow.