Page 60 of The Kraken Bride

A muscle jumped in his jaw. “That, I will learn when I am the weapon.”

“So you don’t know, can’t be sure, and are relying on rumors or legends?”

“I may not know the semantics, but I’ve seen the rune in action, and I know it will work.” His focus returned to the dome. “My mother loved my father. He was her firebrand. Her everything.” His words came slower now, as if reliving those moments rather than simply retelling them. “But he’d just died, and her heart was as broken as her body. Perhaps more so.”

My throat tightened.

His shoulders lifted with a heavy breath. “As the convergence began, Jokull taunted us with the rune. He’d taken it from its former host upon their death, and he was so confident of his power, he even unlocked her cage. Put the rune in her hand. Dared her to use it. She did.”

The overconfident monster who’d eaten my pinky would absolutely allow a broken woman to activate a power rumored to kill him. Just for the fun of it.

“And my mother… she wasn’t the same woman after she gave her heart to the rune. She drove Jokull out of the kingdom, all that she had the capacity to do at the time, and used the last of her strength before she died to close the dome behind him and keep him out.”

The room expanded and contracted in a blink as facts crystallized. “Oh, Sebastian.” I could imagine what happened next. He was forced to cut the rune from her chest. The rune, and the dome, became all that remained of her. Perhaps the very reason he’d been willing to bond himself to the dome. And then Jon had dared to steal the rune. My heart broke for young Sebastian.

And really, this explained so much about today’s Sebastian. Why he had tried to keep me at a distance; he hadn’t wanted me to feel what he’d felt when his mother died. Why he’d been so certain of the cost; he’d seen it firsthand. Why he’d do whatever it took to succeed. Victory would be his final gift to her.

He fortified and marched on. “During her crusade against Jokull, my mother thought only about his death. She did not care about me. I was nothing to her. And the same will be true of me, with you.” A muscle jumped in his jaw. “Immediately after convergence, you’ll be escorted home to Ashmorra. It’s all arranged.”

The floor dropped out from under me. “You won’t even let me stay and help you?”

“It will be better for us both if you leave.” His voice cracked.

“Nein, you’re wrong,” I burst out. Forever nein. “I will stay. I will help you. And you will not sacrifice your heart.”

Up went his chin. “It must be this way. Jokull will not stop. My people won’t survive him. And I refuse—” his hands closed into fists at his sides “—I refuse to let the kingdom fall when I have a heart to spend.”

I fisted his shirt, clinging to him. “So you’ll sacrifice our future?”

“Not yours.” He said it gently, as if gentleness could make it bearable. “You will have your sisters. Your dance. You’ll enjoy a long, bright future. That is the kindest ending I can give you, and I have thought of nothing else since the moment I understood what you were to me.”

“That isn’t kindness.” I was shaking now, fury and heartbreak stirring together. “That is you deciding my ending for me. Again. You bought the manticore’s absence. You engineered the vote. You arranged my passage and my rooms and my dresses and my whole life here, and now you’ve arranged my broken heart too.”

“Do you think I haven’t searched for another way to save my people?” For the first time, he raised his voice to me.

I gentled my tone. If he brought the fire, it was my turn to bring the water. “I’m sure you exhausted every avenue. But you didn’t have me yet. Of course you didn’t find an answer.” I lifted my chin, too, like I did before every performance, when I became the character I portrayed.

Today I wasn’t a fictional queen but a princess standing at the edge of a cliff, desperate to hold on to her anchor. “By your own admission, your heart is not yours to give. It’s mine, and I won’t release it.” I could not. “I’m your firebrand. A partner. We must find a different path.”

He closed his eyes. “You were not supposed to be this stubborn,” he said, as if, for the first time, he wasn’t sure of his next move.

“What was the plan in the beginning?” I asked, softening my hold on him. “Outline it for me.”

A wry grin, there and gone. “I was supposed to resist your appeal, and you were supposed to realize a dragon and a kraken cannot mix long term. You would have been eager to return home and gladly given my heart to the rune. But you walked into my throne room, and what was supposed to be stopped being possible. I wanted only to give us the life we couldn’t have, if only for a little while. So I arranged our arrangement.”

“Sebastian the schemer,” I said and tsked. Stepping into him, I once again flattened my palm over the thundering runes on his chest. Over the heart he was so ready to give away to that rune. “I’m done letting your certainty write my ending. We have two days, Sebastian. Give me both. Not to enjoy what time is left, but to find another path. And if I fail—” my voice wavered, but I steadied it “—if I fail, I will stand on that stone beside you and make sure the rune gets the heart it wants.” Even if I had to offer my own.

His eyes narrowed. “My heart, Brona. Mine.”

Oh, this man knew me too well.

Ja, but what was his was mine, and what was mine, well, that was his. He owned my heart now, and not even an ancient rune could argue with that logic. I could exchange one heart for the other. So, without a shred of shame, I offered him the truth without giving him the truth. Exactly as he’d done to me in the beginning. “Ja, Sebastian. I’ll give the rune your heart.”

He studied me for a long, terrible moment, and I gave nothing away. I would replace him without hesitation if necessary. But it was my fervent hope we would not come to that.

I expected him to retreat behind that flat, still calm and shut the door on this the same way I’d shut it on him last night. Instead, he lifted his hand and settled it over mine, where my palm rested against his heart. “Two days?” he echoed roughly.

“Ja. Two days for me to find a path while you run the primordial ragged.” Not too much to ask.