The Beast of Salt (Saga of the Gods #1)

38. Avina

38

AVINA

November 25th, Year 100, 9th Era

Blackwood Inn, Salt Province

A vina lay on her back, staring into the high-beamed ceiling of one of the guestrooms in Blackwood. Her body aches from the tension of the previous night. She squirms under the thin comforter, recalling the unfathomable terror that gripped her heart and soul as he sank himself into her core. How aroused and how horrified she had felt.

What if it had not been Sigvid?

Gods, she shivers at the notion.

Before dusk graced the tundra, Avina was vaguely aware of Sigvid bundling her body and carrying her into the forest and to his bed. She recalls the gentleness as he covered her in blankets and fur before slumbering at her side.

Still, she could not settle her mind. His peaceful breathing throughout the morning was a constant reminder of this endless game he seemed content to play with her heart like she is a mere toy for his whims.

Is this all for vengeance because of the war and the Arena ?

“Avina?” Sigvid’s gruff voice booms through Blackwood.

She ignores his summons.

Instead, she interlaces her fingers over her stomach, grinding her teeth. Meanwhile, his heavy footfalls pound along the floorboards with the occasional command of her name. Judging by the waver in his voice, his fury is growing.

Finally, the steps cease outside her guestroom. It's the only one in this wing closed off. Sigvid bursts inside, the door slamming against the wall.

“What do you think you are doing?” Sigvid stands in only a pair of black trousers with his arms crossed over his bare chest, showcasing his ink canvas. His piercing blue eyes narrow to slits.

He speaks as if I am a piece of furniture in Blackwood that has shifted rooms.

Avina exhales slowly and swings her bare legs over the bed, placing her feet on the cold wooden floor slats.

“Where was I supposed to be?” she coldly asks as she shrugs out of bed, digging through the dusty chest in the corner to find a nightgown. She shimmies the green fabric over her head, avoiding his eye contact.

“You should have stayed in bed. I did not permit you to run about Blackwood.” His tone is wound tighter than she has seen him before.

She crosses her arms and leans against the wall beside a window overlooking the dirt road and the city in the distance. “I thought you would not care where I ventured off.”

Sigvid marches over, grabbing her arm and jerking her closer until the heat from his body envelopes her. “It is not safe for you to wander without me. I care too much about you to lose you now.” His expression remains unwavering as he glowers as if she has caused some great harm.

“Bend over, Avina, you are owed a lesson.”

Instinctively, her hand cuts through the air, striking him across the face. The sound seems to grow in the small space as the strength of her pent-up ire forces his entire head to recoil. While he does not shift his footing, surprise splashes across his features. Ever so slowly, Sigvid pivots toward her with a storm brewing behind his gaze.

“You cannot expect me to hold you in such high regard. To be owned by you. And then to hunt me down and defile me as a mere stranger. Concealing your identity, leaving me terrified of the man behind the mask.”

She straightens her back, lifting her chin. “I did everything to remain loyal to you last night. Your actions broke me. I did not think you could anymore, seeing as you have done a wonderful job of shattering my world since capturing me from the Arena.”

She inhales to steady herself. “How could I have lived knowing the man behind the skull mask was anyone other than you, Sigvid?”

He drags a hand through his chestnut braid. “I would never allow anything to happen to you. Everything you encounter is in my control. I know your location at all times. If someone had tried to come for you last night, I would have ripped his fucking head off with my bare hands.”

“But did I know you were in the mask?” She shrieks, spraying his face with her exacerbated spittle, feeling the emotions of the previous night boil over. “You often forget that I am not a toy for you to use! I am a person, Sigvid! And dammit, my emotions matter!”

His face softens further. He raises his hands as if he will grab her shoulders but thinks better of it. “You are a person, but you are my person. No one else’s. Avina, you matter more to me than anything or anyone on this godsforsaken land.” His stroking of his braid turns more feverish.

Is he flustered?

“There is… a part of me that believed you would… enjoy the chase.” He is now almost pacing across the room.

“But it does not alter the uncertainty that it might not have been you.”

“My beautiful little Queen,” he ceases his movements and turns the full force of his attention on her. Sigvid grips her upper arms and leans down so they are at eye level. “I am so incredibly sorry for putting you through that horror. I should have thought about what it would do to you.”

She blinks and notices a pain reflected in his eyes.

Sigvid Thordsson feels guilty for harming her.

And he actually apologized.

She has a sneaky suspicion that this is a rare event, perhaps unique.

Before she can accept his apology, he grabs her behind and pulls her close to his hard chest. His hand tangles through her curls and tugs her head back before shoving his tongue down her throat.

November 28th, Year 100, 9th Era

Blackwood Inn, Salt Province

B lackwood’s central room’s floor-to-ceiling windows frame Sigvid’s warrior build against the thick blackwood forest. Stretching far and wide at his back are the woodlands Avina had fled in last night.

Her desires have changed so drastically that she wonders what will happen when the time arises for her to walk away from him after the Solstice.

I know I set that looming deadline over us .

The more important question is if she wants to leave him. Numbness fills her gut at the mere notion of returning to Scarwood or the Sapphire Palace.

Life with Sigvid is more than violent sex. Before him, she had lived in an existence where no one considered her thoughts. He sees her for everything she is and embraces her for what she is not.

His hands alternate their frantic stroking between his auburn hair and beard. “You made her bed?”

“Yes.” She sighs, having already assuaged him of this worry several times.

“And Thora scrubbed the floors?”

She collapses into one of the leather-bound chairs around the hearth with a huff. “We both completed the tasks you dictated to us yesterday afternoon, as I told you before. You forget that I also grew up with Frida’s criticalness.”

The woman could sniff out a lie like a hound. She has a keen eye and didn’t suffer any bullshit.

He pauses to gape at her. “When was the last time you spoke with my mother?”

She has to think for a moment. They had communicated via letter, but she has not physically seen or talked with the dowager Salt Queen in over three winters. “Probably before my engagement to Rendel and Thord’s passing.”

He chuckles darkly. “Mother comforts herself with wine now. It’s like tossing an armful of leaves onto a fire. It’s going to keep burning, just brighter and more crackly.”

“You are exaggerating. She is wonderful.”

Sigvid is simply overreacting since his mother will stay between Blackwood and Thrain’s home until after the Winter Solstice. Perhaps Avina can leave with her instead of returning to her father or the Manchineels? Frida will be far comparable company to those waiting to force her into the arms of a random nobleman.

Her father has already arranged for her to marry, so it is odd that he has not yet sent troops to drag her back to the palace.

“Ha! We shall see if you feel the same after an hour in her presence.” He sweeps past Avina, glancing around. “Where is Thora?”

“Lod’s house. Something about wanting to spar, but she will return to tend the farm tonight while we are out.” Thora had seemed eager to leave this morning. She hardly touched her morning meal or spoke to them. Avina twirls a loose curl in her finger, beginning to worry if there might be some truth about Frida.

“Fuck, she is here.” Sigvid adjusts a newly lit candle in a wall sconce for the third time. “Up! I need you to be presentable.” He barks.

“I am nothing if not presentable!”

They emerge onto the deck to see a carriage rattling up the dirt road to Blackwood.

Sigvid is a tightly wound spring coiled at her side.

The fur-cloaked footman hops to the ground when the horses stop, striding toward the carriage door.

Queen Frida emerges in a lovely maroon Salt gown bearing intricately embroidered knots. A gorgeous white mink scarf encircles her neck. Her chestnut hair is woven in a braided circlet atop her head, casting her like a Goddess.

“My dear. It's so good to see you.” Frida’s friendly smile twinkles in her eyes. A silver goblet is clutched in her hand, sloshing around a white wine.

She ascends Blackwood Inn's steps and embraces a shocked Avina instead of her oldest son.

“Hello, Mother. Good to see you, too.” He tilts his head to the side, focused on her goblet. “You do realize it’s barely morning.”

“Shall we wait until late morning to begin our festivities, Sigvid?” Frida slowly pivots her long, graceful neck to assess him coolly. “If I recall correctly, that was the time you raped and kidnapped a Province Queen during your escape from the Arena.”

Her savage response struck Avina so off guard that she snorts.

“My dear Avie, you were naked outside his cell. Which marked the second time you chose to dangle yourself like a savory morsel.” Frida pats Avina on the back, with almost pity in her voice. After finishing the contents of her goblet, she sweeps through the front doors without another word.

Sigvid leans down to Avina’s ear. “Still find my mother delightful?”

“I believe I used the term ‘wonderful.’” She shakes her head, curls shuffling over her shoulders. She glimpses at the road and muses if they will miss her if she departs for Thrain’s far earlier than their invitation for mid-evening. The footman carries a massive chest between her and Sigvid, forcing them apart.

“Try it, my little Queen. Abandon me with my mother, and I will see just how far we can fit the handle of my other axe up that sweet pussy of yours.” He rakes his knuckles over her cheek before following Frida inside.

Avina scrunches her nose in annoyance. When she returns to the entryway, she finds the dowager Queen already at the crates of Ridge wine that Sigvid brought up from his collection in the kitchen.

“Not a bad batch,” Frida says, quizzically holding the bottle. “I must know why you are still here, Avina. Don’t you have a marriage to that Manchineel fellow? After Rendel, I thought you’d had your fill of those weaselly men.”

“Mother,” Sigvid says, removing the bottle of sparkling wine from her hands. “I captured Samson, and he is imprisoned here in Toftlund should you wish to insult him further. The engagement was a trick, and she agreed to nothing. Let us talk about anything else.” A loud pop sounds from the bottle, and Sigvid pours more wine into her goblet.

Frida thanks him and then roams about the central hearth, examining every piece of furniture as if it might engage in a personal conversation with her. Just as Avina thinks she might be able to slip away to finish the book she has been reading, Frida turns back on them.

“Why?” Her deciphering orbs flit between Sigvid and Avina as if she cannot decide which one she wishes to target. “Why kidnap her? Surely, I am not that poor of a mother.”

“It has nothing to do with you, Mum. What has happened between us is our business.” He is firm, moving closer until he stands at Avina’s side. His hand slips along her lower back, teasing a faint blush across her cheeks.

Frida snatches up his motion like a raven with a field mouse. “Enlighten me, then, my son.”

“I begged him.” Avina feels the strength of their gazes like the burning of the sun’s rays. “I couldn’t go through with another marriage to a Manchineel and asked him to stage a kidnapping. Your son was marvelous enough to agree.” Avina’s lie comes so naturally that even she believes her words.

Sigvid remains impassive. She can sense his mind whirring over her sudden mistruth.

Frida relinquishes Avina from her focus, leaving her mind gasping for air.

“If this is true, Sig, then it’s time you and I discussed something important.” Frida settles into a seat beside the fire.

He nods to Avina while he massages his temples, releasing her from the strained situation.

She doesn’t need telling twice and nearly runs up to his bedroom, half wishing she would have lingered to eavesdrop on them and half rejoicing in leaving him to deal with Frida.

Growing up alone did little to prepare for the caged sensation of being someone’s captive, even if Sigvid’s temperament of late has been tender, almost like he might care about her well-being. Almost as if he may even like parts of her personality .

Do I reciprocate his affection?

After everything that man has done to her, can she look at him again as if he is the prince who would rescue her from her miserable existence?

Everything he has done? You loved his axe handle buried in your womanhood. Avina argues with herself. Her conscience versus whatever inferno desires he has created.

She slumps against the doorframe to his bedroom. Since leaving the arena, the tug-and-pull of her emotions has become exhausting.

A blur of orange fur tears from the study, sliding down the hallway toward her and into the bedroom.

“Carrot Chubbs?” She questions the fat cat, now perched on the bed panting.

A flash of black zooms under her legs, bouncing across the room. Chubbs watches it with narrowing unamusement in his eyes. Nellie reappears at the foot of the bed, crouched low. Chubbs growls in warning right as Nellie pounces. The cats roll in furious shrieks and hisses off the bed and across the floorboards.

She sighs, knowing the two needed to work out the tiff between the younger and older cat.

The bathtub nearly summons her for a hot bath. She is halfway across the bed chamber when a board underneath her feet creaks as if it’s loose. She kneels, peering between the boards, catching sight of a shiny object. Glancing over her shoulder at the open door, she decides to be nosey.

After removing the loose floorboard with a dagger she finds in the washroom, she sits back on her heels.

Oh. My. Goddess!

Squished into the cavity is every item she sent him throughout the war.

A silver compass embedded with rubies after the Drengr lost themselves in the Great Forest, an unopened bottle of dryer than the desert Ridge wine, and every letter she ever sent him include the many items inside.

Only two gifts are missing: the jars of her floral-scented bath soap and the lock of her hair. Joetta was vehemently against sending something so intimate as her hair. He must have burned the golden curl the second he withdrew it from her rambling message meant to distract him.

One of the letters sits open, revealing her curly handwriting. Since it is her letter, there would be no harm in re-reading her own words…

Her brow furrows as her eyes scan it. Of all the correspondences, why is this the one Sigvid last read?

In it, she chastised him for restraining her favorite wandering merchants, particularly the woman from whom she purchased her signature lavender and rose bath soap.

“Wait,” she says aloud, realizing she had sent him an entire set of her jarred bath necessities as a jest.

Her curls fly over her shoulder as she sprints into the washroom, re-examining the jars she has been using.

How did she not realize these are the same ones sold by her merchant? Did he keep these in his washroom?

Such a minute gesture shakes everything she thought she knew of Sigvid. She can finally see through her own frustration and hatred for him to the complicated mess at his center.

What if fate has woven a tapestry of our lives? What if the gods have always destined the Keeper and the Guardian to unite for the stones?

B y mid-afternoon, Frida releases Sigvid from whatever forced discussion she insists on having with him. Avina watches through his study windows as he stomps outside with his axes to cut firewood.

Since they arrived, he has added six more piles of stacked wood running the length of the inn. Judging by his earlier gait, he is about to slew enough logs for a seventh row.

Avina takes up residence in one of the spare rooms as the sun dips into the western corner of the sky, painting the cloudless blue in brushstrokes of deep orange. She has readied herself alongside Sigvid once or twice, but this evening soiree with Thrain has her anxious. Especially when her only allies–Grim and Thora–will not be present .

“Is that the dress you are wearing, Avie?” Frida knocks on the door. Behind her stands a footman bearing a medium-sized chest in his arms.

“Sigvid found one that is close to my size.” She glares at the burnt orange gown, which will fit far too tight on her thick, squishy curves. “Not that I enjoyed wearing the awful flowing Timber monstrosities back home.”

Frida chuckles while gesturing to her man, who drops the chest on the bed before leaving. “Home? Do you wish to return home?”

“I-” Where is her home?

The Sapphire Palace is like existing as a doll on a shelf in a darkened cupboard. Her father or his top advisor, Lord Byron, will expect her to be courteous and smiling at any moment, no matter how sad and lonely she feels.

Scarwood Citadel is a fishbowl she can not escape. The Council of Nobles and the Manchineels have their thumb on her as if she might burst at any moment.

If she is being honest, the closest home she has ever had is…

“Blackwood Inn is cozy, and my son purchased it quite stocked.” Frida strides to the bed, where the hideous gown lies across the quilt. She runs her fingers over the rough, cheap material, a grimace forming on her lips. “My son is many things. Adorning a beautiful Queen with this,” she crumbles the material and tosses it into a heap in the corner. “Is one of his flaws.”

Avina looks between the orange mass and Frida, not following.

“You are a Queen and the heir of another province. He is dressing you for an intimate gathering with his King, his mother—the Dowager Queen—and the top-ranking generals of the kingdom in an unflattering gown. Either Sigvid has no sense of decorum or purposefully sets you up for failure.”

“There’s little I can do either way.” Avina throws up her hands in defeat.

In the past, she cared little about how she dressed. Servants, her father, or Rendel dictated how she should present herself in public.

Frida takes her shoulders in her hands. “You are too clever to have allowed such ignorant, foolish men to restrain you for so long.” She unlocks the chest and withdraws a dress in a unique style that turns the corners of Avina’s lips into a smile.

She steps forward. “This gown is gorgeous.”

The satin fabric is the same shade of blue as her eyes, while intricate Salt knots embellish the fabric around her waist, shoulders, and trumpet sleeves' tips. The sleeves and flowy skirt are popular Timber styles, while the tight-fitting decorative bodice resembles many Ridge gowns.

“You made a dress of Treland.”

“I made one fit for the Queen of Treland almost four winters ago. Special sewists crafted the gown to fit you and only you. The jewels,” she waves her hand at the various jewelry still in the chest, “have been set in silver to reflect all styles of the provinces. I had the ensemble crafted for you, Avie.”

“I can’t tell you how much this means to me.” Avina's response is gushing, still unsure where the Queen of Treland part fits.

She is modest enough to respect her place in the country right now, yet not enough to truly see herself as the one to unify Treland. Once, Rendel had cryptically mentioned such a prophecy. However, she dismissed him for his regular brand of outlandish.

Frida’s soft eyes well with a pride that Avina does not feel she deserves. Tears are not permitted in the Dowager Queen’s presence, meaning Avina sucks up her emotion and allows her to help her ready for the party.