Page 80 of The Kraken Bride

“Sebastian,” I gasped.

Fire and water went out of us together and caught Jokull mid-line. Water sheeted over his carving hand, and my flame followed it, and where the two met on his skin, they didn’t burn or drown but set, hardening into a gray crust that sealed his fingers to the wall. He wrenched away. Left the hand.

Then he came at us, a hundred whip-thin shadows opening out of him at once. They went through the table. Through the ceiling. Through Sebastian’s shoulder and my thigh. Pain exploded across the bond, the wound aching in two bodies. Still, we fought on.

We stopped being two people and a rune fighting a monster and started moving as one. Fire and water and stone.

Jokull could not keep up. His head snapped toward the cage. “Harpa,” he called out, almost a prayer.

“Nei, primmy,” she answered from behind the bars, filing her claws. “Not this time. Not any time.”

He turned back to us and threw everything he had left. Every shadow, every limb, every ounce of a creature that had eaten his own people for six hundred years, all of it in one final, screaming reach—and we let it come, closing around it, clinging tight.

The reaching stopped. Then the screaming. In seconds he was engulfed, throat to crown, arms flung wide in a shape that would outlast the manor, the dome, and probably the sea itself.

Encased. Melded. Still, at last.

“Is he trapped or dead inside the stone?” I asked. We stood in ruin and rain, my body throbbing with aches and pangs, but at least the collapse had ceased.

“Both. Finally.” A small, unmistakable clang came from the far end of the dining room. “And now, it’s my turn.” Lady Harpa gripped two iron bars and pushed them apart. She emerged from the cage, adjusted her leathers, and tucked one loose strand of hair back into place before crossing to the primordial.

She looked him over. “By the way. The cupcakes were dry,” she said. Then she put her fist through his chest, and Jokull shattered.

The pieces lay scattered apart, making no attempt to reunite.

Chapter

Twenty-Six

A kraken will give you everything you ask for. Be very careful what you ask for.

–An Incomplete Guide to Kraken Survival

We returned home from Jokull’s with our bodies battered and exhausted, but we were finally, finally free of the nightmare. Sebastian escorted me down the long hallway to our rooms in silence. Actually, the whole palace felt unnaturally quiet.

Why did Sebastian feel farther away than he had on the battlefield?

I stepped inside, expecting him to follow me. Wanting, needing to talk and to cuddle and to kiss, and to just be with him.

But he didn’t come inside. He remained in the hall, close enough that I felt the heat of him, but his shoulders were rigid, his hands fisted at his sides. His gaze traveled over my face, as if memorizing every detail before dropping to my mouth. For one agonizing heartbeat, naked longing broke through.

Then his jaw tightened, and he stepped back.

Oh. My breath lodged in my throat. What was happening? I’d spent a week fighting to get this man back. And now that I had, he was looking at me as if I was the living evidence of everything he regretted.

Guilt flashed in his stormy eyes. More than any one person could carry. Even him. And it was eating him alive.

I lifted my hand to cup his cheek. But he backed away as though he didn’t believe he deserved my touch. My heart constricted. How could I help him? Reach him?

“Bastian,” I whispered.

He turned on his heel, presenting me with his back. That more than anything told me how badly he was hurting. Sebastian Mórisi did not turn away from me. “I will let you rest,” he said. “Good night, Brona.”

He stalked off.

I squeezed my eyes shut. My heart knew the man who had fought beside me. The man who had tried to sacrifice himself rather than hurt me. The man whose rune now matched mine.

The worst part? This felt like a bigger battle than the one we’d just won.