“Because King Huttr has lots of time to spare.” Ström chuckles as his green eyes flash in the brazier’s light, though his look is not amused. “He’s going to jump to answer a call from some random clan Captain, not even endorsed by his Jarl.”
“Olander will drop our names right away with whomever answers and say we’re in trouble, I know he will.” Bjorn argues back, as he drains his bowl. “He’s not an idiot.”
“Still.” Ström crosses his arms, scowling. “What now? Do we just sit tight while Jarl Magnussen stews? And what was all that about a sister who died, Bjorn?”
“And fighting your father in a dominance challenge over it—and winning? All the way back when you were still in your teens?” I ask now, because that’s a big deal. Most dragon dominance challenges happen as pissing matches over mates, territory, and the like, and leave the loser injured.
When it’s a dominance challenge over a prominent position, however, like moving up in rank from being a Jarl-Heir to becoming a Jarl, such things almost always end in death. Some clans have laws that such a major dominance challengemustend in death—in a final killing blow that secures the winner as the ultimate victor.
It sounds like Bjorn didn’t do that when he faced down his father over his youngest sister, long ago.
And it came back around to bite him—big time.
“We have some time while Captain Olander tries to get through to the King,” Ström says now as he finishes his meal and sets his tray aside, leaning back on his hands and stretching his long legs out towards the brazier. “Want to unburden yourself about everything between you and your father, Bjorn? It might help us.”
“Ström’s right.” I scoot in closer to Bjorn, setting my finished plate aside as I touch his thigh for support. I pour my drakaina’s heat into him as much as I can to bolster him, despite our manacles. “We need to know what happened between you and your father, if we’re ever going to figureout how to have any leverage here at the Magnussen court. Do you think you can fill us in?”
Bjorn gazes down at my hand, heaving a deep sigh. His eyes simmer pure gold as he looks up; through our bond, I feel the barest sliver of his dragon as it churns through his veins. Meeting my gaze, he caresses a stray lock of my hair back from my braid.
“Like I said about this entire trip: for you, I’ll do it—but for no one else in the world.”
Ström and I give Bjorn space now as he takes a moment to gather his thoughts. I feel his inner drake seethe inside his body like a smoldering blaze as we sit with him, waiting for him to figure out where to start.
All of us stretch our legs out to the fire now as Ström yanks blankets down from the cots, along with pelts, bundling the pelts behind us so we can lean back on them like pillows and cozying the blankets over us.
“My father and I weren’t always at odds,” Bjorn says now as he begins his tale, which starts with his birth nearly a hundred and thirty years ago, before shit with his father went down. “Back when I was a youngling, I looked up to him. He seemed so mighty; so calm and confident and able to make clear-headed decisions, when I was always such a hothead. I was his only son. My mother had no other sons, only daughters, all older than me. Most of whom are gone now, lost in battle over the centuries.”
“But you had a younger sister, too,” I say, stroking his leg beneath the blankets. “The one I saw in your vision during our Bloodbonding ceremony.”
“Astrid, yes,” Bjorn sighs, as I feel a deep sadness take him now, rather than rage. “She was ten years younger than me. She was such a little jewel… her hair so bright and golden, her eyes pure blue with a sparkling ring of gold around them that would glint in the sun.”
“What was wrong with her?” Ström asks, quiet as he listens.
“To me, nothing. Nor to my mother.” Bjorn watches the fire, his dragon churning within. “She was always slight as a child; as she grew, it became clear she had a bone abnormality. Though she never grew twistedor stunted, it was clear by her seventh birthday she would never become big and strong like the rest of our clan, no matter how much nourishment she ate. She was a light of laughter in this forbidding place, though. Nothing ever troubled her, and she had a massive talent for contacting the Ancestors. I was already studying with Maryse at the time; my mother petitioned my father to let Astrid study with Maryse also, and become a spirit shaman of our clan, rather than a battle shaman like others with her skill. But he wouldn’t have it. She couldn’t take part on the battlefield; she couldn’t train with the rest of her cohort because she broke bones over and over, her structure brittle. By her eighth birthday, he had decided. He was going to remove her from our family bloodline because she would never grow to have the strength as a warrior that our clan traditions required.”
“So he offed her.” My eyebrows rise, sickened at this horrible tale.
“He gave her a week to say her goodbyes.” A rageful heat fills Bjorn now, his voice bitter. “I argued with him all that week; I cajoled my mother. I spoke with clan sages and shamans to see if there were any loopholes we could use to save her. My mother supported me; she didn’t want her youngest daughter to die. When the time came, however, my father was adamant. He would hear nothing of the older precedents we had found, where others with Astrid’s rare condition were allowed to live and become tremendous shamans of our people. Those dragons had become leaders in spirit, massive with their magic in battle, though they couldn’t physically fight. My father didn’t care. When the day came, he summoned her to him and shifted into his dragon, ready to kill her.”
“Something happened, then,” Ström says quietly as he eyeballs Bjorn.
“My mother stepped in.” Bjorn nods as he watches the fire. “She couldn’t let our Jarl kill her little girl when there was so much history of such dragons becoming distinctly valuable to the clan. She fought with him over Astrid as their dragons, but she lost; he put her in a coma for a month, recovering from the extensive damage he caused.”
“Jesus.” I breathe, shaking my head.
“He killed Astrid with a single strike to the throat,” Bjorn growls, as true fury boils off him. “The second my mother was out of the way, before I could shift up to challenge him also, he ripped a talon across Astrid’s beautiful throat… and she died. I went Berserk, then. I shifted up… and took him on in a dominance battle, right then and there.”
“You won, didn’t you?” I say, as it all makes sense. “You won that battle, but you didn’t finish him with the final blow. The last mortal blow your clan requires… to become Jarl in his place.”
“I didn’t kill him, no.” Bjorn lifts his chin as he inhales deep. “Though I was furious, lost in the Berserk nature of my drake while we fought, something inside me still knew I was battling my own father. I stopped short of tearing his throat out when I cast him down, finished and unable to move. I showed him mercy, shifting down and ending the fight because I couldn’t kill him, even after everything he had just done. That was my undoing. He shifted down in the next moment and uttered one word:Outcast. Forever sealing my fate before he passed out.”
“Since you didn’t kill him, he was still the Jarl, even though you won the fight,” Ström says as he gives a tired sigh. “He still had the authority to Outcast you, making you forever ineligible to become Jarl of your clan. Though you had technically just won the right to the title and the station.”
“He did.” Bjorn rumbles with a deep anger now. “I made my way to Stockholm then, to serve our King. I hoped someday my father would hear of my honorable deeds and forgive me, and let me come home. Though my mother worked on him for decades, he never forgave me. And then she died at the Battle of Riksfold—when you were a youngling, Rikyava. There was no one left to argue my case, and I never got to return home.”
We sit in silence a long while then, as Bjorn’s story sinks in. It’s so sad that even though I can’t feel his emotions well right now with these manacles on, I feel my heart clench. My throat is tight, my drakaina keening inside my veins as I scoot close to him, cuddling in. Bjorn throws an armaround me and hugs me to him, even as Ström scooches close on his other side.
The two drakes just sitting together, with the close contact all shapeshifters enjoy.
