Berserker god

CHAPTER SEVEN

Skallagrim

My little star looked unhappy. Its pink mouth thi

“Whatever you are,” I rasped, sliding my claws out of its hair, “you are important to me. You will remain with me until I can figure out why.” And until I can figure out how to remain in the light without you.

I realized that I had essentially trapped this creature. It was not a mere animal to be trained or taken. Like me, it was conscious and competent, a sentient being. I had no name for its kind, but it was intelligent and emotive and starkly beautiful with its wide, wet eyes and moon-river hair. I was doing something terrible, maybe even unforgivable, by capturing it like this. Dimly, I remembered seeing a few others like it before we’d come here.

I took it from its people.

“There was no choice,” I said forcefully, as if trying to convince both myself and the little star of that fact. The sudden vehemence of my tone sent a wave of tension through the creature, and it flinched in my hold. The movement made the covered swells of its chest bounce, its cushiony abdomen sucking inward with a tight breath.

Everything about this creature seemed so starkly in opposition to myself. Small where I was large. Soft where I was hard. Delicate. Silken. Sweet.

There was a word for it. An important one.

I almost seized it before it was lost to the river. I snapped my jaws in irritation, and the little star gasped again and tried to shrink away from me.

I was scaring it.

“I don’t mean to,” I growled. “I am not trying to frighten you.”

I breathed out slowly and jerked my head away from the little star. I turned my attention to the river’s edge, studying it. The moonlight was bright tonight and I caught sight of my own reflection in the still water.

I nearly reared back with the shock of it.

I’d forgotten what I looked like, but even so I knew I did not look like myself.

I forced myself to confront the creature staring back at me. One blazing, maddened eye glowed like an ember in the water. The place where the other eye should have been, where I was convinced I’d had another eye before, was a mangled, dug-out mess of tissue. My hair was a harsh tangle about my shoulders, and somehow I knew that was all wrong, that I did not usually wear my hair that way.

A braid. It should have been fragrant with oil, shining and combed and arranged into a long braid, then tied at the end with a sleek metal clasp.

That was how a Bohnebregg male of my standing wore his hair.

A Bohnebregg male...

I tried to hold onto that thought, to follow it through the murk to some sort of conclusion, to co

The little star said nothing, but I registered a tension in its hand as it tried to pull away from me. With a growl, I turned to face it once more.

“I will not hurt you,” I ground out. “I know I have done wrong by you. But I ca

The little star stared back at me, mute and guarded. I forced myself to loosen my hold on its hand. Just slightly. Enough to indicate I did not wish to squeeze too hard.

But not enough to let it go.

“I will take care of you,” I rasped. “I will protect you, honour you, put your life above my own. You are my salvation and I will let no harm befall you. But make no mistake...”

A deep, primitive instinct spread dark wings inside me. An instinct that whispered, take, treasure, hoard. My spine prickled and my blood heated.

“Make no mistake. I will keep you. No matter the cost.”