“If we are to keep looking for what you’re after, then we come to the issue of an additional payment.” The woman in black coughs discreetly now, though I see her full, red lips smile beneath the shadowed cowl of her thieves’ hood. “Your previous retainer for our services has run out, I’m afraid.”
You shall have all the gold and silver you need to keep looking, and more.The enemy drakaina snorts, as her blazing red eyes pin the femalethief.Until then, you will search the places I tell you. No matter who you have to kill to do it.
“Oh, don’t mind.” The thief woman in her shadowy gear smiles as she glances at Ström. “We have an ace in the hole where killing is concerned. We’ll find the items you need. Just give us time…. and money. Continued funds are what gets this all done. Agreed?”
The Bone Mage drakaina doesn’t even spare the thief woman a glance now, however, as her burning red eyes find Ström’s. I feel him shiver to his very bones as her power sweeps through him, as if searching for something in him, deep inside.
Your brother was supposed to be mine, you know.I feel her tell Ström directly now, as she stares him down.But he refused me when I came to take him as a Bloodmate. He was stubborn, as are you—he will pay the price for that, eventually. I feel how you will throw off your bonds to this unworthy drakaina soon. When you do, look for me. We could rule over the ashes of this world together… but not until I’m done with what I must accomplish.
With that, our enemy Bone Mage drakaina takes off, streaking fast up into the cloudy skies. As Ström blinks, freed from her sudden mind-sending, the thief woman turns to him, throwing down her shadowed cowl.
Now, for the first time in the memory, we see the thief woman’s face. Beautiful, she’s the woman every man stops for, and stares.
With regal poise and a renegade glint in her vibrant green eyes, her hair is wild and red, curling with abandon around her perfectly sculpted features and daring emerald eyes. She’s the picture of an ancient Viking shield-maiden, as she stands in her black thieves’ leathers in the sea wind. Her long cloak ruffles around her, her hair a luminous froth of wild waves as it tumbles around her by the meagre light of the red pendants she and Ström wear.
I feel Ström fall in love with her as she looks at him—all over again.
We lose the memory then, as she opens her lips to speak. It’s as if a terrible shroud of Bone Magic draws down over Ström’s mind tenfold, roaring through his entire body like ocean waves as he gasps.
I feel blitzing pain devour him now, from the Bone Magic curse upon his mind. As a tirade of ugly black-violet and charred crimson sigils pour from him, constricting in a halo around him, Ström is down, on his hands and knees as he falls to his side in the dirt.
He convulses into a ball, screaming in agony. As Ström twists tortuously onto his back, Bjorn and I rush to him. We pour our Blood Magic inside him until we blaze that terrible, cursed Bone Magic back.
Even Aesa’s stone joins us, as we use all the brightness inside us now to heave back whatever’s still inside Ström, cursing him and keeping him away from his own rightful memories. We’re finally able to calm it, though it’s taken the mickey out of Ström. He heaves heard breaths, sobbing, as tears roll from his eyes.
Bjorn and I take him into our arms—holding him until he quiets. I feel Ström’s emotions, then, and his memories as they cascade through him in a tumble.
Because along with an actual, useful memory of our enemy Bone Mage, he’s retrieved the first real impression of the Bone Mage thief who caught him and ensnared his mind so long ago in Denmark.
I feel how his body still leaps to her, to her impossible beauty that no other drakaina could ever match. No one I know is that incredibly beautiful, save perhaps my bestie Layla Price, though this woman was beautiful in a wild, Viking way rather than Layla’s polished charm.
It’s clear how Ström fell for her and got caught by her unfathomable charms, however. It’s all too clear how he got ensnared to her artifact thief ring in Copenhagen, as his body leaps to this woman yet again, with all her unmentionable charms.
His cock ramrod straight—despite his pain.
Ström snarls hard now, even as I feel what’s happening inside him. He’s furious that his love of women got him caught in the worst hell of his life, which continues to this day. His body isn’t shutting up; it still wants this drakaina, still desires her despite loving me now and everything shedid to him, way back when. The curse on him is locked in place because of his libido, and his continued desire for her.
Something he never even knew until we saw this memory.
It seems opening this up inside him has brought all his old memories roaring back. I feel them hit him in a jumble now, as they crash around inside him—unintelligible, just like they were before.
Bjorn and I hold him, grip him tight both physically and metaphysically now from losing his shit and shifting up. He finally calms, but I hear the low groan that issues from his lips.
Of utter misery—unable to escape what his body wants.
“Fucking hells…!” Ström pushes up from the dirt and we help him. All of us stand inside the shallow hole now as we contemplate these new developments and their repercussions.
Bjorn vaults up out of the hole and offers down a hand to help Ström and me up. Exhausted from yet more magical shenanigans, we take what’s offered, allowing Bjorn to haul us up.
Bjorn’s energy suddenly wavers, however, deep inside. Yet again, he’s spent too much of his dragon’s power, keeping Ström and I steady from everything that’s going on between us.
Not to mention keeping himself back from his own shift—wanting to blaze off after his father and fight.
“I think I need a break,” Bjorn says now as we stand at the edge of the hole, shaking off all this crazy energy from what we’ve just experienced. “Uppsala’s not far. I say we head there and find a bar and a bed. Help us get connected to ourselves again and rest for the night before we head down to Copenhagen.”
“I’m in,” Ström says without hesitation. He gives a wry smile, planting exhausted hands on his hips. “I need a night to process everything I’ve seen. Because now, wehaveto go to Copenhagen, to find Mikkel and Lærke?—”
“We need to see if they can tell us anything about that thief womanyou saw in your memories, not just the ciphers we have fromUnhaemmerten.” I nod alertly.
