Page 66 of The Kraken Bride

The shifters were shouting while Sebastian and Harpa remained unbothered.

Heads turned as I entered with Gunnar behind me. Sudden quiet fell, the incoherent rants ending. Something about… the risk?

The brand on my chest heated, glowing through my gown. Everyone stared at me with varying degrees of astonishment.

Sebastian raised his chin, stood, and motioned me over. “I suggest you do not raise your voice in front of my queen, Jon. Truce or no truce, I will gut you.” There was no missing the menace he radiated. “Bronwyn, my treasure. The shifters have decided to return to the grotto rather than bleed on our table.”

“I appreciate the kindness, gentlemen. I prefer my honeymoon gut free.” I moved to Sebastian’s side.

Jon and his men also stood. He adjusted the retracted spear sheathed at his side, glancing between us. “If you fail⁠—”

“And now you insult our ability after your failure?” the king snapped.

Jon gave a clipped nod before striding from the room, his men right behind him. Gunnar followed him out.

Sebastian looked to me and smiled, his mask flawless, but I’d learned him. Knew him. There was no hiding the meeting’s lingering effects: a low simmer of anger.

He sat and pulled me onto his lap. I pressed my fingers to his palm, speaking without words as taught by our tutor. I choose you above the tide. My way of saying all was well.

He rewarded me with a press of his own.

“What did I miss?” I asked.

“The truth, for one thing.” Lady Harpa rose to her full height. For the first time, she appeared utterly put together, not a single strand of hair out of place.

Rather than a gown, she wore a tunic and battle leathers. Even her eyes were sharp, and the sight threw me. Where was chaos walking?

“There is no other means of killing Jokull,” she snapped. “Accept what is to come and help me reclaim the rune.”

My blood flashed cold. “What happened to the rune?”

Her gaze slid to Sebastian, who had stiffened. “Tell her what happened while you were playing happy family.”

Resolve and fury frothed inside him, flowing into me until my own hands curled. He stood, standing me up with him.

“Sebastian.” I searched his face. Found nothing, which told me everything. “What happened?”

He didn’t answer. He crossed to the glass wall, pressed his palm against it, and the surface darkened, sharpening into an image the same way the cave walls had. A rocky shelf. Torn tents. Bodies in shifter armor, arranged with a care that made my stomach turn—laid in a circle, feet inward, like the spokes of a wheel.

At the center of the wheel sat an empty stone plinth.

The floor tilted beneath me. “What am I seeing?” I whispered.

“Jon and a hundred of his best men were on their way here with the rune. Jokull intercepted them just before their arrival.” Sebastian’s voice held nothing at all, which was how I knew what it cost him. “He killed all but a handful. That handful were spared in exchange for the rune.”

Horror hollowed my stomach, and I went cold all over. That monster had the rune?

“Or Jon colluded with the primordial all along,” Harpa pointed out.

The details landed and kept landing, each pass carving deeper. No rune, no weapon. No weapon, no dead primordial. No dead primordial, and every soul under this dome—Sebastian, Soley, Freyja, the boy from Blodholm, the woman kneeling in the wreckage with her dead in her arms, me—became a potential dish for his table.

Harpa rotated in her seat, looking straight at me. “Jokull has invited us–you and me–to dinner. Our attendance in exchange for the rune. Sebastian is forbidden. Jokull has offered a blood oath that he cannot break, vowing that if we accept, we will leave alive, whole with what we came for.”

“The answer is nei,” Sebastian snapped, something terrible moving behind his eyes. “There will be no discussion. It’s a trap. Obviously.”

Ja. Jokull must believe he could gain something from us, despite the vow. “My answer is ja,” I said, already nodding. “I accept.”

“You are not⁠—”