White Stag (Permafrost #1)(54)

“No,” he growled, his body shifting back to his regular form. “She is mine.” He pulled his sword from the roof of the dragon’s mouth and thrust the dead body aside.

“Janneka,” he said, voice cracking as he used my real name. “Janneka, can you move?”

The grip of the blue power was releasing me little by little. “I think so.”

One of his arms went around my body, and he picked me up as easily as a mother would a babe. “Your arm,” I said, touching the oozing wound. “It’s—”

“Never mind it,” he said. “Just never mind it.”

Lydian stood by, grinning from ear to pointed ear. “It’s a pity,” he said, taking slow steps toward us. “I was mistaken to believe you’d last longer than this. Though I suppose it’s only a pity for you two. I am saddened—I could’ve had great use for you, dear nephew. But I guess fate likes to fool all of us.” He shook his head. “It would be a kindness to kill you both now. Don’t you think that would be kind of me?”

Soren bared his teeth. “Go ahead and try.” But his breath was already sour with sickness, and his arm was green where the fang had punctured it.

If we die, we die fighting. We die together. The blade Seppo had given me shook in my hand. Overhead, the stone dome surrounding us crackled like thunder. There had to be millions more layers of stone and ice lying above it.

A sharp, eerie whistle echoed through the dome, growing louder as it bounced off the rocks. Cracks grew like searching fingers across a section of stone and a mass of boulders fell down to us below. I squeezed my eyes shut as they came crashing to the ground.

When I opened my eyes again, blinking away the grit, a massive barrier of fallen rock blocked Lydian’s way. Through the cracks, his face was reddened with rage.

“Seppo! You little bastard!” he screamed. “Where are you?”

The dark-haired goblin was gone. “I don’t know, where are you?” His voice came from somewhere, laughing. Lydian answered with a snarl. Unlike most goblins, Seppo’s laugh wasn’t a cackle but came from deep in his belly. “I’d leave if I were you, my lord. You’re standing on the wrong side of the barrier. When those beautiful eggs begin to freeze—which they will shortly—the babies will come out early to devour as much as they can before they die. You really wouldn’t want your reign to end before it began, would you?”

Lydian snarled one last time, and then he ran, feet pounding against the earth. Pushing his way out of the mix of stone, Seppo gave Soren and me a bow. “Seppo Satunpoika,” he said. “At your service.”





13


DEAREST WISH


SOREN STRAIGHTENED UP, grasping his wounded arm in one hand. The power from the red lindworm was absorbing into his body much faster than the blue had into mine. Every so often he hissed in pain, but his eyes were clear and he moved without effort.

“Satunpoika? Your mother is Satu?” Soren asked.

Seppo nodded. “Yes, she is.”

Satu. Satu. I’d heard the name before. I was always brought along to Soren’s council meetings as a cupbearer, though my real job was to listen and look for anything that would be of use to us. One night when one of the goblins had too much to drink, he complained about a rejected marriage proposal. Soren had laughed in his face and asked what he expected from Satu; she was the fiercest she-goblin in the realm, after all, and she wasn’t about to give that up for some brute seeking her claim.

“You’re not a goblin,” Soren accused. “Not a human either.”

“No,” Seppo said, “I’m both.”

Both? He wasn’t like me. Somehow, I could tell that.

He sighed. “You see, when a female and a male love each other very much—and one of them masters the self-control needed to not ravage their sexual partner—sometimes that results in something known as a baby.”

“A halfling,” Soren snorted with contempt. “Figures Satu would have such an unconventional son.”

Seppo raised his eyebrows. “My mother is an unconventional woman.”

I looked closer at the halfling. He had sharp eyes and a long nose, ears tapered to tips, but his build was lean and lanky, more like a human’s, and when he smiled, he bore no fangs. In all my years in the Permafrost, I’d never seen anyone like him.

“Unconventional” was the word Soren used, but I had a feeling he was trying to be polite to our savior. I had a feeling the word he wanted to use was “taboo.”

Seppo’s sapphire eyes latched onto me. “Close your mouth. You’ll swallow a bug. Besides, I’d like to think this is nothing new to you at all, sweetheart. Considering…” He motioned between me and Soren with his little finger.

A choked sound came from Soren, whose hand was still clutching his arm. The puncture wound went deep into his nerves and muscles. His face didn’t betray an ounce of pain, but his eyes grew wide at Seppo’s words. “Let’s talk about my choice of sexual partner another time, shall we?” he grunted. “I don’t know if it escaped your notice, but the damn lindworm bit me and the venom usually is fatal.”

This time the choked noise came from me. Soren’s arm was a nasty shade of yellow and green. Lindworm venom wasn’t usually fatal; it was always fatal. It hit me with the force of a tempest, and the pain from the fight turned into a much deeper, less physical pain. It could’ve been me clutching my arm, dying slowly. It should’ve been me. The newfound feelings inside of me that had taken root during my time with the svartelves churned into a mixture of rage and pain. I could only stare at Soren, who turned paler by the second.