All Things Devour

fifteen

The walk from the Jarl’s house was steeped in silence.

Anton turned his face to the wind, and the cold air blanched his already fair features into a stark, sickly white. He’d yet to lose the green tinge in his cheeks, and Sonya touched his arm, drawing his attention.

“Are you all right?” she asked. “Do you need to sit down?”

“No, I’m fine, Sonya,” he said, though the words lacked conviction. He came to an abrupt stop at a fork in the road, staring blankly into the distance. “I—would you come with me somewhere? I do not wish to return home just yet.”

Sonya wished she could see his face, but he kept it from her, looking away. “Of course.”

Anton turned their course in a direction Sonya had not ventured. The path here wended in tight curves toward the forest where the mist lived like the breath of dragons among trees as twisted as bitter old crones. Here resided the sole mountain of Vidarheim, a mere hill compared to the great ridges in the Scottish highlands, but it loomed above them now, silent and gray. Lightning snarled through the clouds.

“He had no right to speak to you in that manner.”

Sonya lifted her eyes from the rocky path to Anton’s. “You heard?”

“Yes.” He ground his teeth. “I would not have you think for a moment that I would use you in such a disgusting manner. My sole interest is in you, and there is not thought in my head to toss you aside like a wench when it suits me. That is not who I am.”

“I didn’t believe you were.”

Now Anton bore an expression of sickness and anger, though it faded the farther they walked, and his hand found hers in time. The homes of Vidarheim dwindled in the distance, leaving them with the forest and the mist and its many frightening sounds. The rain drummed on their heads, increasing in tempo.

“He was not always as he is now,” Anton said. “When we were boys, still human boys, we used to venture into these trees—and they go much, much farther than you think.”

“Wouldn’t you eventually hit the coast?”

“No. The trees simply continue into the mist.”

Sonya turned her speculative gaze to the blurred horizon before them, seeing nothing. “How is that possible?”

“No one is sure. The Gods will it to be so.” He shrugged, a small smile escaping in light of her rampant fascination. “Don’t go running off now, little English fairy. Wouldn’t want you to get lost.”

“Oh, ha,” she grumbled, though she kept her feet on the path, a bit leerier of the inimitable foliage. “What were you saying about Calder?”

“That he did not use to be as he is. He was good . He is—he was my brother . We spent years and years together, learning, growing. We became draugar together. We were in wars together, and I always trusted him at my back. Always . And then….” Anton trailed off, hand raised as if to wave away the thought. “And then he started to change .”

Sonya squeezed his fingers with her own. “I don’t think he believes in the nonsense he says.”

“But does it matter? He still says it. He still spews that garbage for the rest of us to suffer hearing.” Anton spat on a rock. “Radu used to be like that, a traditionalist, and Calder hated him then. He despised Radu all the more when he became Calder’s v?rdr, leaving him little choice in the matter. The old voivode treated us like vermin, and I would have never guessed Calder would follow in his footsteps.”

A frown marred Sonya’s face as she ducked a branch, deep in thought. It was a bizarre thing indeed for Calder to change his views in such a radical fashion. She’d witnessed pity in him, fleeting and brief, but it had been there. Pity for a human. “Is it…could it be possible he’s been pressured into it by someone?”

Anton looked thoughtful and eventually nodded, a line furrowing between his brows. “Maybe. But the damage has already been done. It continues to be done.” His expression hardened, his eyes glassy and pained. “There is only so much that can be forgiven.”

They kept on through the woods, the rain relentless now, and Sonya knew she had herself to blame for the oncoming, rage-driven deluge. She really wanted to call her unwilling v?rdr a right bastard as she slopped her soaked hood off her head with an irritated sigh. Anton did the same.

“This way. There’s shelter just here.”

They ascended a flight of stone steps made slippery by the mud—though it was Anton who slipped, not Sonya, and he cursed his brother colorfully once he regained his feet. Ahead, they discovered the shelter he’d mentioned, a stone enclosure open to the elements, overgrown with clover, lupine, and mountain avens. It at least had a solid roof, which Sonya most appreciated as she stepped under the cover.

At the enclosure’s center stood a miniature dolmen— an altar, Sonya decided upon closer inspection. The top stone bore several suspicious stains, but they had long dried, and an unlit candle was left stuck to its middle. The rune kaunan had been carved along the edge in many places.

“It’s a shrine to Loki,” Anton explained, crouching to run a finger along a rune, his sickness and anger bleeding into sorrow. “Calder and I came upon it, long, long ago. We showed it to my master.” He exhaled, eyes closed. “She was pleased.”

The specter of Jarl Eerika came upon them to sit and overhang at Anton’s back like a physical, crushing mantle. Sonya heard Jarl Asger’s words rattle about her mind, and she could not push the horror of Anton’s expression from her eyes. The betrayal had lanced him as a spear would, and here he knelt in the cold with her, not wanting to go home, not wanting to sit among friends and bring with him this new, terrible burden.

The woman he’d trusted with his very soul had deceived him.

“Would you like to send him a prayer?”

“What?” Sonya questioned, shaken from her thoughts.

“To Loki.” Anton tipped his head toward the altar, strands of his dark hair dripping over his face, his eyes suspiciously red-rimmed. Had he cried with the rain as cover for his tears? Sonya would not ask. She didn’t think there was shame in men crying, especially not after learning something so world-altering, but Anton was old-fashioned. It might make him uncomfortable. “It is supposed to be good luck.”

Bewildered, she nonetheless agreed, and he directed her to kneel next to him before the altar.

“We have to offer something. A sacrifice.” He simpered at Sonya’s dubious look. “Oh, others have given blood or a horse or two in the past, but I believe we can be more modern in our approach.”

Sonya didn’t have anything to give; she patted her pockets and came up empty. Then, Anton gently loosed the ribbon from the end of the braid he’d made in her hair, and he took it, wrapping it about a gold coin he fished from his trousers. Both were set on the altar. Lightning crackled and lanced a tree a dozen or so meters away, the bang frightening Sonya enough for her to shuffle closer into Anton’s side. He snapped his fingers, and seidr wavered in the air, lighting the candle.

“Now, we offer Loki our prayers.”

“What am I supposed to pray about?”

“Whatever you wish,” Anton said, his gaze on the coin and the little coil of white ribbon. “Whatever thoughts you would like for him to have.”

Sonya didn’t rightly know what he meant by that, but she remained quiet and respectful as Anton shut his eyes again. Whatever I wish? Her mouth pulled into a pinched moue as she studied the altar, resisting the curious, itchy need to touch it and examine the stone. Well, I guess not dying would be lovely. Is that an option?

No, Sonya did not have a death wish and mourned the life she lost in England—it was all she’d ever known. It hadn’t been exciting or exceptional or full of friends, and yet, it’d been hers, and change was inherently frightening. Still, she could not muster the kind of desperate fervor others might experience when faced with their possible end. She thought she’d probably rather be dead than trapped in Calder’s thrall, and she knew without having to voice the words aloud that he would separate her from Anton. He would ensure she never saw him again. She didn’t want that.

Maybe she was as mad as her peers used to say, but she wouldn’t lament her potential end if it meant taking back everything she’d seen and learned and experienced here on Vidarheim. If it meant dying, if it meant sacrificing everything just to get a taste of the truth beyond her understanding, to see a glimpse of the real world that scholars and academics had been chasing for their entire lives, Sonya had no regrets.

But Anton…she didn’t want Anton to lose anyone else.

Sonya peered at the draugr next to her, his dark lashes fanned across his cheekbones, brow still furrowed. The rain rapped like tiny hammers on the roof, filling the woods with the noise of their fury. Anton took no note of it. He appeared to be praying with everything he was worth.

I think I would like for him to be happy, Sonya decided, redirecting her gaze to the altar. For everything that he has done for me, for everything that he has lost. I would very much wish for Anton’s happiness, Loki, if you can hear me.

The candle flickered and burned.

They remained kneeling for some time, the minutes lost to Sonya’s introspection, the cold seeping into her knees where they’d been pressed too long into the earth. The odor of broken greenery mixed with the essence of ozone and pooled in her lungs, smelling mystical to her, the scent of old gods and old places one couldn’t find on a map.

“I spent so long in the dark,” Anton said, voice interrupting the humming static of water on the eaves. “Calder had to hurt me rather severally to take me off guard and spirit me away. The wards about the prison are designed to hold draugar like me—seidmadr, witches, mages. I could make fire for a time, but with nothing to burn….” Anton turned to Sonya. “I told myself it did not matter, that Jarl Eerika would come for me. She would come. Days passed, and I waited. We cannot die from hunger, but it set in all the same, and still, I waited. She would come. Calder could not hide me from her, not when she was my v?rdr, not when we share that bond that stretches oceans and space. She would come.”

He drew in a shuddering breath and reached for Sonya’s cold, small hands, his own dwarfing them further. “I think I knew the truth in my heart, but I blamed it on tricks of the mind, on the darkness closing in. She would come, I told myself. And when I felt our bond snap and knew she had died, I thought, that is why she is not here , but that was not true, my Sonya. So many years had passed. She knew. She knew, she knew, and she did not come, so I slept as our kind do, like the dead, and I prayed I would not wake.”

His hands rose to frame her face, thumbs tender as they caressed her. “But you came. You came, and you brought with you the light.” He exhaled, his voice hoarse. “By gods, you were gorgeous .”

Sonya’s cheeks heated under his palms, and she smiled. “A silly English girl with her torch app, at your service.”

“ My silly English girl,” he breathed, bringing his face close to her, brow resting on Sonya’s. “My Valkyrie , come to choose me from among the fallen and give me home in Valhalla.”

“Now who’s being silly?” Sonya touched his chest, hand over his heart. She wanted to comfort him, bring him out of this darkened reverie. “You saved my life, you know.”

“I would very much like to kiss you. I would very much like to do many things that would probably frighten my poor maiden savior.”

Sonya gave his chest a light push. “I think your god Loki might be upset with you for profaning his holy place.”

A laugh left Anton, bright and short, his eyes smoldering with a hunger that had nothing to do with blood. Sonya leaned closer to him, kissing his cheek. “No, I think he would very much approve of the mischief of it all.”

He tucked her into his arms, and they rolled once, placing Sonya on her back in the tangled clover and broken lupine flowers under Anton.

“Would you care to see a sample of what I’d like to do, hmm?” he asked. His fingers trailed up her side, and Sonya shivered. She was hyper-aware of his weight, his heat, the tempered need in his grip. Her mouth was suddenly dry, and she needed to swallow twice before she could uttered a soft—.

“Yes, please.”

His knee pressed between her legs and he dragged his thigh against her center, Sonya gasping at the resulting friction. His mouth trailed hot, open-mouthed kisses from her cheek to her neck, and he inhaled. The hard edge of his teeth ghosted against her skin, and it sent a thrill through Sonya.

She reached and ran her fingers through his wet hair, the feel of it like liquid silk pooling in her hands. She should be cold, pinned on the damp ground while the wind whistled and the storm raged, but Sonya had never been warmer than she was within Anton’s embrace.

“What do you think?” he said against her skin, his hands running over her cloak to the clasp, pulling it open so it lay underneath her. “Could I make an offering of you, Sonya? Hmm?”

Her hands moved to his shoulders, dipping under his own cloak, feeling the straining pull of muscles and flesh. One leg hooked over his hip, wanting him closer, and Anton obliged by grinding his thigh into her, setting off sparks behind Sonya’s eyelids. “I—I don’t know how much you’d get,” she answered on a faint breath.

“Everything,” he whispered, teeth balanced against her throat again as if ready to pounce—and when she felt the tiniest sting of pain, his hot tongue chased the sensation away. Pleasure curled in her belly. “You are without equal. The Gods could give me a kingdom, could place the whole of the world in my pocket, and it would not be enough.” Then, in the feeble candlelight, his brows gave a devilish wag. “To have the Gods in my debt is a heady thing, but I find having you writhing beneath me more to my taste.”

Sonya moaned—not sure what she wanted more, his teeth nipping her again, sending those delight shivers through her, or the delectable heat brought on by his sweet words. “Don’t tease.”

“No? I do so enjoy teasing you, though, sweet girl.”

“P-please.” This kind of intimacy was so new to her, and Sonya found it challenging to vocalize her needs. Words came to her with ease normally, but her mind fumbled when he touched her like this. “ Please .”

“You needn’t beg,” he told her, hands moving from the swells of her breasts to her trousers. “I am already yours.”

His nimble fingers made quick work of the snap and zipper, and in one swoop, he fisted the fabric at her hips and yanked it down, taking her knickers with it. The burst of cold air against her bare skin cut through the haze of lust, and Sonya clutched at Anton’s shoulders, burying her face in his neck. He did nothing for several moments aside from running his warm hands along her thighs, thumbs kneading at the tense muscles.

When Sonya’s nails stopped digging into his flesh, Anton’s hands roved higher until his knuckles grazed her sensitive folds, and she clutched at him again.

“Do you want me to continue?” he asked, mouth against hers, the motion of his lips like smooth satin. Sonya could barely hear him over her own raging heartbeat and the cracking thunder.

Her voice failed her at first, and Sonya had to clear her throat, heartbeat thrumming in her veins—before answering. “Yes.”

Cool fingertips dipped into her folds and gathered the moisture accumulating there, making a slow, languorous stroke upward to the bundle of nerves at the top of her sex. Sonya squirmed, whether to get closer or away, she wasn’t sure, and Anton chuckled. She stared into his half-closed eyes so close to her own and felt more than saw his lips curl into a smile, his touch more insistent, thumb pressing down, circling, and Sonya panted.

She tossed her head to the side, broken flowers twisted in her pale hair, Anton’s mouth near her ear, whispering her name. His fingers sought her entrance, and Sonya tried to breathe, her body trembling, hands scrambling for purchase on his clothes, gripping for everything she was worth. She was terrified he’d stop.

“Your passion sings for me,” Anton rumbled, pleased with himself, his chest expanding against her own with his deep inhale. “It reaches for mine. I can feel it. I can almost taste it.”

He curled two fingers within her, repeating the motion over and over, and Sonya surrendered to the sensation, reveling in the sound of his breath and voice, the smell of his skin. Her orgasm snuck up on her so quickly, Sonya’s eyes shot wide, and her heels dug into the earth as her muscles twitched and spasmed around Anton’s questing digits.

“Anton— God! ”

“Not quite.”

When she collapsed, gasping and buzzing from the aftershocks, Anton sat up. His eyes stayed on Sonya’s as he brought his hand out from between her legs and deliberately licked his wet fingers.

“Hmm. Sweet girl indeed .”

Sonya flushed scarlet and covered her face with her arms, her heart still racing, limbs deliciously languid. For a moment, all her worries receded into the distance, and her mind was blissfully empty.

She froze when she heard the jangle of a belt buckle and a zipper’s whine. Anton bent forward to press his lips to her brow, Sonya moving her arms to peer at him with nervous trepidation.

“Not that,” he said, sighing, lips still on her skin. Sonya couldn’t help how her shoulders slumped in relief. “Not yet. I promise. Just let me feel you….”

“You can continue,” she whispered. “It’s okay. I’m ready.”

“No. Have patience, lovely girl. There is no rush.”

Sonya nodded, her eyes sliding shut, and Anton’s kiss moved to her mouth, just the corner of it, and then her jaw, nose trailing delicately along the column of her throat. She could feel soft skin against her thigh, his member hot and assertive, his hand wrapped about its length. His hips flexed, and she could feel the motion of his wrist urgently moving. Sonya carded her fingers through his hair, tucking it behind his ears as she watched the intent look on his handsome face.

He looked beautiful like that, seeking his pleasure, and Sonya touched the furrow forming between his brows as he concentrated. Before she could second guess herself in her inexperience, she snuck a hand down between their bodies and folded her hand around his, her fingertips brushing his cock. Anton groaned, his hips stuttering.

“ Fuck , Sonya….”

He adjusted his grip so Sonya’s hand was under his own, guiding her fingers around his length. She could feel the tackiness of her own fluids still on his hand, and the heat of him in her palm felt shocking. Anton showed her how he best liked to be touched, directing how her hand slid over his cock.

“ Fráliga ,” he breathed against her throat, tongue tasting her pulse, eyelashes fluttering over her cheek. “ Fráliga, fráliga …” He moaned, voice trailing off in Old Norse. Sonya bit her lip as she quickened her pace.

Anton shuddered and growled, his body quaking like the earth along its fault lines, invoking the names of gods with a blasphemous earnestness considering where they were. When he finally found his end, his issue spent on the ground, he slumped forward, and Sonya huffed under the full weight of a draugr.

“Good lord, you’re heavy,” she wheezed.

“Mmm, can’t hear you. Far too comfortable.” There he remained for several minutes, Sonya wriggling her arm free to run her fingers along his back until he moved and sat up, adjusting his own trousers before swiftly pulling Sonya’s back into place. When she shivered from the cold, she found herself in Anton’s lap, enveloped by his cloak and his warmth. Around them, the storm raged.

“I promise you will not go to him,” Anton whispered into her hair, still dotted with broken flowers and wet from the rain. His arms held her tight to his chest. “I promise you, I will see that he relents, and you are given your life and your freedom. I will see it done, Sonya.”

She rested her ear against him and listened to the words, listened to his heart. “It’s okay, Anton,” she told him. “I’m so glad you’re with me.” Until the end. It’ll be okay.

“I intend to keep you for always, my fairy,” he murmured, his embrace tightening as if to keep her there with him by dint of his own strength. “Always.”

The candle at their backs had gone out. The altar beneath it was bare.