Page 44 of The Kraken Bride

“I did, but I appreciate the confirmation. He doesn’t think it will work.” A muscle jumped in his jaw. “He thinks I’ll be drained as my mother was. But I will not.” Not one ounce of question or doubt, just a statement of fact.

I really, really wanted to lean into his confidence rather than the other man’s doubt. But I couldn’t. Not fully. “Jokull also—” I winced “—snacked on my pinky.” Speaking of, I checked my hand and heaved a sigh. Almost completely regrown.

The promised storm arrived, rage detonating across Sebastian’s entire face. “What. Else?” He shoved the question through clenched teeth. Then he gave another grated, “Please.”

“Honestly, I’m not sure. I raged-out and killed everyone but the primordial. I… I’ve never done anything like that, but I must have been a sight, because he didn’t stick around to try for seconds.”

The king expelled a harsh breath. “Jokull will pay double for every pain you endured.” His hands curled, shadows flicking out and slicing into the heels of his palms. “I give you my blood oath.”

Air crackled, his words hitting like lightning. When a kraken made a blood oath, it could only be broken by death.

“I vow the same to you,” I said, and meant it. I’d never been a vengeful person, but I planned to make an exception for the kraken primordial.

“Gunnar described the carnage you left in your wake.” His tension lessened. “I do not think Jokull expected such rage from the Swan of Ashmorra.”

Giving my hair a fluff, I bragged, “I might be a dancer, but I’m also a dragon.”

A faint lift at the corner of his mouth. “Já, a species almost as strong as the kraken.”

Ha! “Kraken wish they were as strong as dragons.”

The teasing helped us both. We relaxed into the moment. Until he remembered his new “accounting.”

He worked his jaw and drummed his fingers against the chair arms, holding my gaze. “You did well, Brona. You are perfectly able to protect yourself.”

I shivered under the colossal weight of his praise. “Thank you. But it’s your turn,” I said, quieter now. “Explain what happened to you.” I required specifics.

“What Gunnar told you is true. I went to the dome. To its place of injury. The dome isn’t just one layer but three, each visible on a different plane. Think spirit, soul and body. I’m bound to each, and that is why my blood is blue.” He tapped the rune on his chest. “The mers broke a section of the first. The body. When it broke, it pulled me to the breach. I remained there until it repaired itself.”

Bound. That one word chilled me to the bone. “Say more, please.” I drew my legs into a crisscross. “That symbol etched into your chest acts as a bond between you and the dome?”

“Já. Exactly. The dome lives within me, and I live within it.”

So, if the dome fell, he fell? I did not like that. For now, I focused on the positive. “Show it to me again, please.” I batted my lashes at him. “For science.”

His lip quirked. “For science.” He gripped the neckline of his shirt and pulled it over his head.

My mind short-circuited just long enough to be dangerous. There they are. The muscles I would see in every fantasy for the rest of time.

“I do love when you leer at me,” he said, amused and smoldery at once. He tapped the rune we discussed. “When you’re done, look here.”

So he’d called me out. So what? Who wouldn’t leer at him?

I swallowed hard and forced my attention to the mark he’d referenced. Inked into his skin, faintly azure, glimmering in sync with the water stirring outside the kingdom, as if the sea itself answered to him.

“I took this bond, and the kraken crown, at thirteen.” His thumb traced the rune’s edge, the light beneath it dimming at his touch. “Too young to command berserkers who worship strength. But they believed I’d driven out the primordial with the convergence rune, doing what they couldn’t, so I was the only candidate worth considering.”

“Even still, soldiers challenged you for it,” I guessed.

He sighed. “At every turn.”

Berserkers attacked any perceived weakness. I’d watched it happen after Olyssa first began her reign.

“I always won,” he continued, “but it was often by the slimmest margin. To put an end to it, I found a way to make myself invaluable to the kingdom as a whole while also protecting the people, my people, from threats.”

“And that’s why you decided to merge your life with the dome,” I said.

“My grandmother performed the ceremony. Jokull wanted her for his own. When she refused him, he took my parents and me. By the end, I was all she had left, and the losses... changed her. She would have done anything to stop the primordial. Even risk my life for a bonding we weren’t sure would hold.”