“You... you what?!”

I reared back from Skallagrim in shock. I couldn’t tell if I was more surprised by what he’d just announced, or the blasé way he’d said it. I broke his leg. He said it like he’d done nothing but spill water on the other man’s lap. No – he said it like it was even less than that! Most people would at least have the decency to look the tiniest bit embarrassed to spill something on someone else.

But I didn’t see embarrassment in Skallagrim, or remorse, or really any care in the world at all for the man he’d injured so badly. It had been weeks, and the other male was still using a crutch and looked like he could barely walk!

He did say he didn’t follow the way of cotton...

“Why?” I demanded. It had obviously happened recently, since we’d arrived here, so it wasn’t like he could blame the mate madness. He would have had a clear mind at that point.

A storm of emotion, or maybe a memory, darkened his one eye.

“He refused me entry to Callabarra when you were injured. So I destroyed the gate into this city and while using my power I broke the bones of several Mother’s Claws in the process.”

“Several?! You mean you hurt more people?”

Every emotion Skallagrim didn’t feel about the situation hit me double. I was absolutely mortified and nauseous with guilt that people – multiple people! – had been injured. And in a way, it was because of me.

“You look unhappy,” Skallagrim noted, bending until his snout was level with my face.

I swatted it away.

“Of course I’m unhappy! I just found out that I wasn’t brought here in a peaceful way, but that you battered your way in! I can’t believe they even agreed to help us at all after that!”

“I can,” he said without missing a beat, “because I promised to kill them all otherwise.”

My blood went cold. I physically felt it – an icy pour through my veins.

“I don’t know you at all,” I whispered. Weeks on end of being with nobody but him – talking, eating together, even laughing – and I’d had no idea.

For the first time, Skallagrim sneered at me in a way that looked like contempt or disgust. It was such a disturbing shift from his usual grin that the feeling of him being a stranger became so intense I was nearly dizzy with it.

“Well, then I suppose we are even. Because I largely do not know myself these days. I could not even remember my own name until Jolakaia said it to me.”

I crossed my arms, trying to will away the goosebumps gathered on my skin.

Skallagrim said nothing for a short while, then muttered, “Does it help at all that I did not precisely intend to break any bones? It just sort of... happened. In the heat of the moment.”

I lifted my chin, looked him square in the eye, and said, “No.”

Then I turned on my heel and strode over towards the Mother’s Claw in the shadows.

“Suvi,” Skallagrim growled. There were a thousand unspoken demands and desires beneath the sound of my name. A warning not to go any further. A question about what I had planned. And maybe even a thin note of pleading for forgiveness.

But it wasn’t my forgiveness Skallagrim needed to earn.

The guard’s glare faded pretty quickly once he realized I, closely followed by Skallagrim, approached. His eyes wheeled around in his head, as if trying to find exits from the situation.

“Hi! Hi, it’s alright!” I came to a stop before the guard.

He stared at me in confusion. Of course, I’d spoken to him in Finnish like an idiot. I plastered what I hoped was a calm smile on my face and did my best to greet him in Bohnebregg. His scaly brows bunched in surprise – he’d clearly understood me. But he said nothing in return.

Kind of fair, considering the glowering giant behind me had literally broken his leg and then threatened to kill him and everyone here. For fuck’s sake.

“Skallagrim,” I said firmly. “I want you to translate. Please tell him I’m so sorry for what happened.”

Skallagrim looked as if I’d just asked him to eat his own shit.

“Absolutely not,” he hissed. “You could have died because of this fool and the other guards! If I had been a weaker male, if I had not been able to subdue them and bend them to my will so quickly, who knows what would have happened to you!”

“Jolakaia said that they’re obliged to help those who ask! If you’d simply asked for help, they would have!”

“I did,” he snapped, “and they took too long opening the gate. You were so sick, Suvi! You were dying and every moment counted! Forgive me for caring more about you than the snapping of a few inconsequential bones.”

“Inconsequential?! Skallagrim, he can barely walk!”

This wasn’t going well. The poor guard looked like he didn’t know how to extricate himself from the situation without calling attention to himself. I’d wanted to come apologize to him, but now I was just holding him hostage to our bickering.

“Tell him,” I said, suffusing my voice with as much of a commanding air as I could. I wouldn’t back down on this. Elvi would be proud. “Tell him that I’m so sorry he was hurt and that if there’s anything I can do to help, I will.”

Skallagrim’s eye roiled like magma. He looked over my head at the other male.

“Suvi regrets the circumstances of our arrival,” he said in a huff. And then, with another sneer – how many times was he going to make that new, alarming expression today? – he added, “She hopes you heal just as quickly as one such as you deserves.”

“OK. Enough out of you!” I rolled my eyes and stepped between the two males. Skallagrim obviously wasn’t going to translate properly for me, so I’d have to get by with my garbage Bohnebregg. I made the sentences as short as I could to avoid pronunciation errors and managed to ask the guard for his name.

“My name is Nakib,” he said cautiously, as if even telling me something as simple as his own name was going to get his other leg snapped.

“Nakib. My name is Suvi.” I cringed my way through a poorly pronounced and nowhere near eloquent apology. It wasn’t anywhere near enough, but maybe Nakib registered some kind of sincerity on my face, because he relaxed a little bit.

“Now I understand the talk about you. Jolakaia has told the other Mother’s Hands, and so it has passed to us Claws, that you follow the way of cotton. I believe it now.” Then, more quietly, leaning slightly forward, he added, “Once that other male moves on, you are welcome to stay.”

A pair of huge hands settled on my shoulders and yanked me back so quickly I didn’t even have time to suck in a gasp of surprise. Skallagrim’s broad back was suddenly before me, muscles bunching beneath cotton and pulsing green wings filling my range of vision.

“I do not like the way you speak to my mate,” he growled. “Another word about keeping her here without me, and having her alone, and you’ll end up with a broken neck instead of just a-”

“Skallagrim!”

He angled his head back over a tense shoulder so he could see me.

I stood, shaking, my words stopped up in my throat. Knowing that Skallagrim had hurt people, even killed people, before meeting me had felt real only in a blurry, distant sort of way. Like someone else had done those things instead of the man I thought I’d come to know. But now, here, faced with Nakib’s broken body and listening to Skallagrim make actual death threats right in front of me, reality crystalized.

Then shattered outward with a stabbing vengeance.

I shook my head, swallowing tears, and walked past them both into the temple.

“Suvi!”

Skallagrim abandoned Nakib immediately, stalking behind me.

“I can’t right now, Skallagrim. I just... I can’t.”

“Can’t what? Suvi, look at me!”

The hall flew by me, like it was moving instead of my feet.

“I can’t, Skallagrim! I can’t look at you right now because I’m scared that all I’ll see is a mask. All the times you’ve helped me, the kindness you’ve shown me, the care and gentleness – it all feels so fake now. So inconsequential. Like it wasn’t even real at all. I’m learning who you are beyond the walls of our little room, who you really are, and I don’t like-”