At the sight of their Prince, the warriors became quieter and more alert. They stopped chatting and joking with each other, turning their own snouts upward to stare at the starless night.
But there was nothing. No sign of Skalla, none I could see or hear, at least. And, minute after minute, Joleb’s fingers got harder on me, until I was on the verge of tears, and it was as if he blamed me for Skalla’s absence.
“He’ll come,” I said again, the words barely above a sob, and I wasn’t sure if I was saying it more to Joleb or myself. Joleb’s huge fingers slanted inwards, spanning my collarbones, claws prodding at the tender artery of my throat.
He’ll come.
That time, I only said it inside my own head.
But no matter how quiet the words had been, it was as if that silent vow had fucking conjured him.
Because there he was.
I didn’t actually see him at first. Nobody did. He was too far away, too high up. But when lightning suddenly blistered the sky, illuminating everything, bright as daylight, it illuminated him, too. Just for a second. Not even a second. A fractional glimpse of a spearing shadow with a wingspan that made me dizzy. And then, in the dark that followed, he sped like an arrow, now close enough for me to see the miniscule glowing points among his scales.
Thunder boomed so frightfully loudly I would have slammed my hands over my ears had Joleb not been holding onto me. The murderous explosion of it went on and on and on, only now it wasn’t thunder, it was Skalla, and he was roaring like he’d brought down the very storm himself. The skies opened at that exact moment, rain pouring down in sheets of pure black, obscuring Skalla’s golden, glimmering form until he hit the ground with the force of something that could end the fucking world.
The quake he created slammed all the way into the house, shaking the walls. Directly behind Joleb and me, the great piles of weapons shivered, then fell with a lethal clatter, a landslide that would no doubt have killed me if I’d still been in the room.
Skalla rose in the rain, terrible and terrifying, an avenging alien angel with stars strewn across his wings and murder in his eye. Joleb’s warriors bellowed. They tossed their snouts, stamped their feet, and drew blades. Maybe it was some trick of the rain splattering off of them, but they seemed to get bigger. Like every cell in their bodies was growing, stretching their scales along limbs newly swollen with power for battle.
“Ah. My loyal berserkers. See how they rage for me?” Joleb said. “But Skallagrim rages, too. Let us see what your man can do.”
He was right. Skalla was not anything like himself. He looked the way I’d seen him in his mate madness, like every nerve in his body stood on painful end and wouldn’t lie flat again until it was bathed in blood. He howled. The sound was inhuman, and yes, he’d never technically been human, but this was the ripped-throat call of a monster.
“He cuts through them like a blade through water,” Joleb breathed in amazement, and he was right. There had to be more than fifty men launching themselves at my mate, but one after the other, they fell and fell and fell before the molten weapon of his rage. I watched him kill and kill again, but I couldn’t fear him. He was Skalla. My Skalla.
He’d come for me. He was killing for me.
And I was not afraid.
“I suppose it is time that I go and join the fray,” Joleb said. “Earn my new title of god-killer.”
He finally released me, and it was very hard not to show him how much of a physical relief that was. He stepped in front of me and took two blades from his belt. He must have activated something on their handles, because the edges of the blades began to glow white-hot.
“Stay in here, female,” Joleb called back at me as he stalked out into the storm. “If you die when I kill your mate, I don’t want to have to drag your corpse through the mud and make all that shiny hair dull.”
I didn’t get a chance to answer him, or even really process what he’d said, because a moment later something flew by me, smashing into a nearby wall and creating a massive hole. Turned out that something was an entire, gigantic adult male, dead now, his body tossed by Skalla like it was nothing but a pebble.
Now that Joleb wasn’t holding me in place, I scrambled back into the hoard room, not wanting the next flung corpse to land on my head. It was much harder to get through the room now – there was no longer a path through the mountainous piles. All the treasure had toppled together into one huge mess of metal. I went slowly, sometimes crawling, sometimes wading, careful not to slice anything open on the swords and knives and scimitars strewn this way and that.
The metal had spilled all the way out into the hallway and, losing my balance slightly, I slid down the incline until I’d landed on my butt right in front of Koltar.
He was on his feet in an instant. At the same time, our eyes fell on the axe on the floor between us. Choking in a gasp, I lunged for it, but Koltar’s arms were longer. His claws seized it and then swung. I braced for the blow that I knew I wouldn’t be able to dodge in time.
The blow landed with a metallic clang, and I had a second to think that was very odd before the burst of pain came.
But it didn’t come.
I opened my eyes just as a second clang split the air. Koltar was bringing the axe down in sharp movements against the chain that bound his other hand.
“He should have killed you when he had the chance,” Koltar hissed between blows. The chain began to weaken and warp. “Then we would all be safe.”
“Oh, please. You don’t think Joleb would have killed you, too? He’s got you chained to a fucking wall!”
“Not for long,” Koltar said. “And even if he had decided to kill me, I do not fear death. It just means I will be carried in cotton to the Mother’s fields all the sooner.”
“Yeah, right, like she’d want you in her fields after everything you’ve done,” I spat. God, talking this much was making my head pound with hot misery.
With a hard yank, Koltar wrenched the chain apart. His hand came away from the wall, the metal cuff still locked around it.
I assumed he’d drop the axe then.
But, alarmingly, he didn’t.
He straightened, his grip tightening on the handle. My heart crawled all the way up to my throat when he turned to face me with that weapon in his hand. I stumbled back into the mess of the hoard room and grabbed the first sharp thing I could find – a short, pointed sword. As Koltar advanced on me, I knew with chilling certainty that if I had to kill him I would do it.
“The Mother knows that all I do, I do for her,” Koltar said, his voice hard and rising, like he was delivering a sermon. “If I have to kill one to preserve her path, surely she will not turn from me for that.”
He raised the axe. I tightened my hold on my blade.
The brave man gets his soup and the brave woman gets to see her mate again.
She gets to live to tell him his father’s name. And to tell him that he’s a father now, too.
I would never be willing to give up that moment with Skalla. I screamed and swung the blade.
Without actually knowing I’d done it, I activated the same white light on the sword that I’d seen on Joleb’s blades. Maybe it was heat or electricity or some other alien form of energy, but whatever it was, it sliced through Koltar’s wrist like the man was made of butter. There was no way, even with a sharp sword, I’d normally be strong enough to drive it right through his scales like that. But there I was, severing his hand like it was nothing at all. The hand and the axe both fell to the floor with a sick thump. Blood spewed from the stump, and even as I held my sword aloft between us, ready to strike again, I found myself stammering out a frantic, “Sorry!”