Serpent's Kiss by Deborah Cooke

Author:Deborah Cooke
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Deborah A. Cooke
Published: 2014-04-16T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

The Avenger of the Aesir was a long and heavy sword, so massive that only a man of Thorolf’s large stature could wield it. The blade was forged true and etched with runes to bless and protect whoever carried it. The hilt was bronze, simply designed, for it stole no attention from the pommel. That disk had been impressed with the most powerful rune known to Erik and his kind, the Helm of Awe.

The Helm of Awe was an insigil, a composite of individual runes resulting in an amulet. The Helm of Awe was a circle, with eight lines inside it, two intersecting crosses. In that, it looked like the points of a compass. Each arm terminated in a fork, and each had three crossbars halfway down its length. Erik found his fingertip tracing the incised line of the insigil, as if to draw protection and strength from it himself.

There was a dent in the pommel and several deep scratches in the hilt. They were all the evidence that remained of Thorolf’s rejection of this duty. They’d been buffed out by a master swordsmith but had been impossible to completely remove. Erik supposed the blade had to carry the mark of Thorolf’s refusal to be his father’s son. He hadn’t been surprised that after Thorolf and Thorvald parted, Thorvald had hunted the world for the missing blade.

He certainly wasn’t surprised that Thorvald had found it.

Although Erik had taken the blade in trust, and though he’d known the location of Thorolf for centuries, he’d never thought Thorolf ready for the responsibility of this blade and its burden. In a way it made sense that Thorolf had refused the task: he seemed incapable of fulfilling it, and no Pyr courted failure. Even when Thorolf had reappeared during Erik’s own firestorm, Erik had been disappointed by the other Pyr’s state. In fact, he’d been annoyed that Thorolf could have wasted so many centuries so frivolously, but Thorolf had shown little sign of changing his ways.

Or learning much of anything. Niall had tried and made some progress, but there was always another party—or another woman—to distract Thorolf from any serious study.

Finally, Erik had hoped to provoke the other Pyr into becoming the dragon his father would have wanted him to be. He’d rejected Thorolf and dismissed him. He’d hoped that the other Pyr’s newfound connection with his fellows and his hatred of Chen would have motivated him to work for a reconciliation. He had hoped that if nothing else, Thorolf’s firestorm would have prepared him for this duty.

Instead, Erik’s tough love had made the other Pyr vulnerable. Thorolf had been trapped and enchanted by Chen, turned against his kind when the Pyr hadn’t been there to defend him. Now, Erik’s promise to Thorvald could never be fulfilled.

Worse, the prophecy would never be fulfilled.

And the Pyr would be exterminated.

Erik had failed spectacularly.

“You never showed me that one before,” Eileen murmured from behind him. Erik barely glanced over his shoulder. She shouldn’t have entered his hoard without express invitation, but he supposed none of those old rules mattered much any more.

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