All Things Devour

twenty

“Release her this instant, Calder.”

Calder, who’d been on the brink of letting Sonya go, redoubled his grip when Anton spoke and drew her in closer to his body. Sonya felt like a rather flimsy shield.

“I see Ylva’s let you go,” he drawled, eyes sweeping Anton’s drenched form from head to foot. “Or did she? It looks as if you had to swim for it.”

The coldness of Anton’s gaze didn’t relent until he looked to Sonya, and his eyes softened, and he lowered his voice. “Are you well, Sonya? He has not hurt you?”

“No,” she replied, ignoring the throb of bruises on her backside and elbows from Calder shoving her to the floor. She tried to pull free. “Let me go.”

“No.”

“ Calder ,” Anton said, loud and demanding. “Let her go .”

The draugr transferred his grip from her dress to her arm, his lip curling as he stared Anton down. Sonya yanked against him, half-hearted, already resigned to his pointless posturing. Ridiculous. “Tell him what you said about Ylva,” she said, and he grit his teeth. “Tell him, or I will—.”

“ Shut up .”

Sonya snapped her jaws shut against her will, and Anton looked irate. Before he could speak, Calder interrupted him.

“I do not know how you stand her constant talking,” he commented, ignoring the sharp, displeased slant of Sonya’s expression. “Tell me something, Anton. Tell me the truth, and I will play nice. Your…woman is under the misconception that it is not your intention to become head seidmadr.”

“It’s not much of a misconception if it’s true,” Anton replied testily. “Gods’ breath, should I write it in the clouds? Send out fliers? Stand on the rooftops and shout it? I have no desire for the bloody job. Guthram was a nightmare in and of itself; returning to that kind of managerial position holds no interest for me. What does this have to do with anything ? Is that really what this is all about? Why you had me imprisoned?! ”

His voice rose to an impressive bellow, rattling dust from the rafters as Calder winced.

“Swear it to me.”

“ What ?”

“Swear to me you will make no effort to usurp my power,” Calder instructed, mouth set in a firm rictus. “Swear on your honor, and I will let your irritating harpy-woman go.”

“You’ll be letting Sonya go regardless. I’m not feeling particularly generous after all you’ve put me through; I think you’ll be leaving here with a spear through your heart.”

“Attacking a servant of the Jarl in his own home? How criminal. Whatever your feelings on the matter, I am her v?rdr. She is in my keeping, by law. No one would oppose my treatment of her.”

“The law is shite, and you know it,” Anton snapped. “The law left you in Radu’s hands despite everyone knowing it was wrong.”

“As it left you with Eerika?”

Eyes narrowed, Anton stepped forward, and Calder reciprocated by drilling his fingers into Sonya’s arm. She grunted in discomfort, and Anton stopped.

“Swear it to me, bródir .”

“Do not call me that. We will never again be brothers.”

“Swear it then, óvinur . If we must be enemies.”

Anton swept a fuming hand through his dripping hair, dragging it from his face. “I swear it,” he said earnestly. “Let go of Sonya.”

Slowly, Calder’s fingers uncurled from Sonya’s arm, his attention never leaving Anton—but that did not spare him from the sudden lash of seidr that sent him crashing onto the outer battlements like a thrown ragdoll.

“Oh!” Sonya gasped, stumbling in the backlash. She might have fallen if not for the warm hands that suddenly grasped her, Anton appearing from across the room in an instant, his silver eyes glittering with relief.

“My sweet Sonya,” he breathed, soft as a summer breeze—and Sonya threw her arms around his neck, not caring a whit how the water in his clothes soaked into hers. He held her tight, his fingers playing over the planes of her back until he drew her away. He touched her mouth in mimicry of what Sonya had done when they first met, and she parted her lips, allowing him to see her new, terrifying teeth.

“Beautiful,” he pronounced with a smile, fingertips ghosting over her cheek and under one eye. She had not seen them yet, and wondered if they looked anything like his. “You brave, wonderful girl.”

His lips met hers, and Sonya kissed him soundly, feeling an outpouring of affection for this draugr who had not once in these long, wandering weeks given up on her. Her heart beat as fast as his did, the touch of it tangible against her own chest, and he clasped her close with the fervor of a man who had everything he’d wanted or needed right in his hands.

“You’re both revolting,” Calder said from the outer arch, leaning on the stone as he tried to adjust his dislocated shoulder. Anton pulled his mouth from Sonya’s, his eyes flashing, and another surge of crackling energy slammed Calder into the battlements again. The battered draugr cursed in his loud, aggravated manner as he dragged his face away from the cracked, wet flagstones.

“Wait,” Sonya said to Anton when he raised his glowing hand again. “Wait—you have to listen to him. It’s important.”

“I’d rather listen to his bones break for the nightmare he’s put us through.”

“Anton,” she said, sharp.

“Yes, dear.”

Calder staggered to his feet. “Disgusting,” he growled, but the word lacked heat, his posture slouched and dazed from two rather hard blows to the head. He made it inside again, and Anton allowed it, though his smile vanished, replaced instead by a cold, angry glare. “You’re going to fix my fucking arm before I say anything. I won’t have it heal like this.”

Anton released Sonya to do as Calder insisted, helping him lever his sagging arm upward. He took particular pleasure in shoving the bones back into alignment. Sonya flinched.

Calder slumped in a seething heap into his chair once more, blood from his nose mingling with the rainwater on his face. His tongue flashed out and licked at the crimson stain, running idly over his upper lip as he considered the pair of them.

“Ylva is killing the seidr users,” he said at last, Anton stiffening as the words sunk in. “Not all of them. Only those who could, theoretically, attain enough ability to challenge me. Some managed to flee Vidarheim, but not many. She has sent me after those who have. I have allowed most to escape to the Romans, but a few…a few did not run far enough.”

Anton leaned against the table’s edge, his face paling further and further. “She’s killing the…?”

“The children? Yes.” He brought his calloused hand to his brow and rubbed. He let his gaze flick toward Sonya. “The little draugar, like you,” he clarified. “The children, as we say. So few and far between.”

“How?” Anton quietly raged. “Why? How could you let this happen ?!”

For once, Calder did not have a snide, gruff reply. When faced with someone like Anton, a person he could not intimidate, he could do nothing but tip his head away in shame, his gaze haunted, tired. “Ylva…Ylva did not like Radu. You remember, though they’re both traditionalists, Radu never liked to bow to her whims. Ylva came to me one day, and expressed interest in…removing Radu. I just had to stand aside.”

Anton’s lip curled. “But she made you an accessory. You knew someone meant to kill one of the drott , and if that was ever discovered—.”

Calder sighed. “Ylva and her coven moved on from Radu and incited rebellion against Eerika. She was never popular, and Ylva’s has a talent for making moves unseen in the shadows. Eerika and Radu never granted her the respect she wanted, the leeway she desired to do what she wished. She wanted them out of the way. Asger first appointed me because I assisted him in his bid to become Jarl. There was a dearth of seidr masters at the time, after I….”

“After you betrayed me and left me to rot? Do go on.”

Calder snorted and rubbed again at his face. “I did you a favor. She wanted you dead. Ylva approached me again with an offer; she would assist me in keeping my position and stay silent about what I’d allowed to happen, so long as…pushed her agenda.”

Anton rubbed at his brow, his frustration plain. “What is she even after? I don’t understand.”

“You wouldn’t. No, you wouldn’t, not after you went away. She’ll always kept herself moderated while people like you were around, Anton. But when you and the others were either dead or out of the way, she…. Her motivation isn’t complex. Not for an old vikingar . She likes violence. She hates humans. As the years pass, she grows less and less content for us to sit in Vidarheim behind the storms and never press out borders. She wants to kill people. She wants to devour the world.”

Anton lowered his hand, staring. “That’s madness . She’ll destroy the realm.”

Calder nodded once. “Aye.”

“And so you let her murder —?!”

“I didn’t know!” Calder snapped, rising to his feet, kicking his chair away. “I didn’t know. Not at first. And when I learned—when—.” He stopped, bloody tongue roving over his lip again in a stressed reaction. “She is not as she was before. She is much more powerful now and not averse to making the fact known. When I protested her actions and dared threaten her with the Jarl, it took weeks for the bones to heal.” He rested a hand on his side as if remembering the pain. “And the Jarl is not so strong. Not in this way. He’s not a warrior anymore. What could I do? She is not—not in her right mind. If I challenged her alone, if I lost…I knew she would not hesitate to expose Vidarheim. She can hide Gebo, after all, but I fear if she felt Vidarheim had fallen too far from her influence and would no longer serve her needs, she would kill me, and there is no one else to hide the realm. I have done everything in my power to keep her satisfied and sate her bloodlust. I am not strong enough.”

Anton’s face wrinkled with confusion. “A seidkona does not become more powerful . More talented, more controlled—certainly. But not more powerful. She is not stronger than you.”

“She is more powerful. I am not mistaken in this.”

“And you want me to do something about it.” Anton sighed, his expression tight. “Someone always wants something from me.” Sonya reached for his hand, and his fingers slid easily into hers, his thumb sweeping upward over her wrist. “Except for my Sonya.”

Calder made a noise halfway between a groan and a snarl. “Spare me your sickening display when we are speaking.”

“No, I don’t think I will.” Anton brushed his cool fingers under Sonya’s jaw, against her neck, grazing the place where Calder’s bite mark had finally healed over. He smelled heavily of ozone and the sea. Sonya could not help but lean into his touch despite their audience, the sensation of his fingertips ghosting over her skin somehow magnified by her change. “You may have a point about Ylva, though. She had me in the dungeons to ‘cool my head’ and resisted my seidr quite well. Remarkably well. Then, at the house, I noticed her display was more…plentiful than it’d been in the past. I do not think she truly cared if I escaped or not, else I think she would have tried harder to keep me where I was.” A frown tugged at his mouth. “She would have put me to sleep.”

Both men looked away from one another, Calder to the streaming rain, Anton to Sonya, both lost to introspection and neither inclined to speak first. Finally, Calder breathed out and turned to them again. “Help me rid Vidarheim of her poison, and I swear I will not issue your woman another order as her v?rdr.”

Judging his sincerity, Anton extended his arm slowly, and they grasped each other by the wrists. “We will stop Ylva—for Vidarheim. Not for you. Afterward, you get to hold your position on your own, if you can. I do not want it, so you will do better to ensure the Jarl does not come knocking on our door looking to replace you.”

“Aye.”

“And if you raise a hand to Sonya again,” Anton warned. “I will kill you.”

Calder met his eyes, still holding Anton’s wrist, and his attention wavered past him to Sonya, where it remained. He looked down, the gold of his hair falling across his brow. “Agreed.”