From Thorin’s perspective, I saw myself, crowned in my fur cap and robed in blue. Through his eyes, I looked less ridiculous than I had felt. A candlelight glow radiated from my skin. My eyes burned as fiery orbs. I sat on the stool, still and silent as a statue.
I screamed.
My body locked into a rigid pose, joints stiff, teeth bared, and all of Thorin’s emotions burned, hot and stinging like touching a live wire. His heart jackhammered against his ribs. He yelled my name and grabbed for me, but Gróa threw herself in his path. They argued. Skyla tried to reason with him. Thorin shoved Gróa, and Skyla punched him, her fist slamming into his jaw. Her hit rattled him and cleared the panic from his head.
“Get out!” Gróa had demanded and pointed at the door.
Thorin had glanced at me. By then, I had fallen silent but seemed insensible. He growled, gritted his teeth, and stomped outside. Overhead, the clouds had gathered into an impenetrable black wall. Shards of lighting rent the sky. Rain fell like shrapnel.
The vision dissolved. I exhaled, slumping against Thorin, and rubbed my eyes until the RV’s interior came into focus. Gróa had disappeared, leaving us alone. He folded his arms around me and drew me close. His breath fell in warm puffs over my temple. My bones felt raw and brittle, like spun sugar stretched into thin, fragile strands.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have done that,” he said, his voice low and soft. “But I needed you to know. Whatever you have to tell me, whatever happens next, I wanted you to know.”
“You were afraid for me. You felt helpless. You hate feeling that way.”
He grimaced. “It’s more than that.”
“I know. I felt it. All of it.”
At the least, Hugh had understated. At the most, the raven had outright lied. What Thorin felt for me was a hell of a lot more than want. What I felt for Thorin was a lot more, too. Maybe the time had come to stop denying it. Maybe it was time to go after the things I’d realized I wanted when I left Mani at the well, the things that made living worth the pain.
Thorin pushed a tendril of damp hair from my forehead. His eyes glinted darkly, and I returned his stare without hesitancy, resistance, or fear. Before I could talk myself out of it, before I could change my mind or give in to doubt, or acknowledge all the reasons why I shouldn’t, I leaned in and closed the distance between us. My lips pressed against his, and I might as well have touched a match to gunpowder.
Reality popped like the cork on a champagne bottle. Whatever I had expected, whatever I thought might happen...
Yeah... no. None of that happened.
Words failed. So did my thoughts. The world dissolved into sensation and perception. My nerve endings ignited with starlight.
There was velvet and silk and sandpaper and heat.
Lips, teeth, tongues.
Fire and rain.
Sunshine and lightning.
“You’re glowing,” Thorin said later, his voice low and gruff. He had pulled me across his lap, and his forehead rested against mine. One hand was knotted in my hair at the nape of my neck. His other stroked the skin at the base of my spine. My hands were similarly occupied, and his hair felt like strands of sunlight in my fists.
I swallowed, cleared my throat, and doubted I could form coherent words. My lips had gone mostly numb. At least I wasn’t drooling. “Don’t let it go to your head. A good cup of coffee can make me glow like this, too.”
He chuckled. “Is that so?”
“And chocolate. That really good, very rich, dark chocolate.”
He darted forward, capturing my lips. He kissed me until my brain melted and dribbled from my ears.
“Chocolate who?” I mumbled when he let me come up for air. Not that I cared about breathing ever again. “Coffee what?”
Thorin laughed, and it vibrated through me. And, oh, how I didn’t want to tell him what I had seen in the well. Let me have more of his joy, more of his happiness and none of his pain.
“What is it?” His expression turned grim. “Why so serious?”
“It’s your brother.” I spat out the words like bitter seeds. Do it quickly. Get through the worst part fast. “Val has turned him into a wolf somehow, and he’s keeping him in a cage. He’s reenacting parts of Loki’s punishment. Val’s using something like venom, acid or something. He’s burning Grim.”
Thorin stiffened. His mask fell in place, and the light in his dark eyes dimmed. The door to the RV swung open, and Skyla and Gróa’s faces popped into view. Skyla studied me perched in Thorin’s lap, my face inches from his, him sitting rigid, fist bunched in the hem of my T-shirt. Her mouth fell open.
Gróa elbowed Skyla aside and climbed the steps into the Honeywagon. Her eyes twinkled. “I gather you told him that bad news you had. Softened the blow a little first, though, didn’t you? Smart girl.”
I wrinkled my nose at her and slid into my seat beside Thorin. He let me go but held fiercely tight to my hand. Skyla climbed into the RV and folded herself into the seat across from us, moving carefully as if taking a seat before a growling tiger. “What is it, Boss Man? What’s the damage?”
He scrubbed a hand over his face. “It doesn’t matter,” he said, his voice rough and hoarse. “Until Skoll is dead, nothing else matters.”
“You know there’s no love lost between your brother and me,” I said. “But what Grim did to me wasn’t personal. There was logic at the foundation of his actions. And he had a point. My death would have resolved things quickly and neatly.”
Thorin’s eyes flashed, and his voice rumbled. “What are you saying?”
“I can’t completely understand what you must be feeling right now, but I know if I were in your shoes, and if Val had my brother and was hurting him like that, I’d have to go. I’d have to try to save him. I don’t like Grim, and maybe I hate him, but he’s your brother, the only one you have left, and that’s something I do understand.”
“Grim’s not my priority.” His voice wavered.
“No. He’s not my priority,” I said. “But I’ll be damned if you think I’m going to stand in your way if you need to find him. And I do think you need to find him and very soon. If there’s anything of your brother that was ever worth saving, what Val is doing to him will quickly destroy it. I won’t be the reason you couldn’t save Grim.”
Whatever Thorin and I had just created was tentative and fragile. A million other things could go wrong that would tear us apart, but Grim was a problem I could foresee and act on—something I could prevent. If Val broke Grim, the guilt of not saving him would break Thorin, and that, in return, would break us. I wouldn’t let that happen if I could help it.
The muscle in his jaw worked. He released my hand, fisted his own together, and bunched his shoulders. “I promised you.”
I rubbed his big, strong back and leaned into him. “I can’t hold you to it. It wouldn’t be fair.”
