By the time my eyes had adjusted and I could open them fully, I found myself staring at the brawny chest of the largest pure-blood Bohnebregg male I’d ever seen. He was almost as big as Skalla, towering and broad-shouldered, his scales gleaming in shades of dull green and bright copper.

Wait, no.

Those weren’t scales. Much like Jolakaia with her single metal stud, Joleb appeared to have done the same thing to himself but with a much larger design. Scales all along his chest had been ripped out and replaced with metal studs. The glints of metal continued along his throat, leading my gaze up to a face that made me gasp and get dizzy all at once.

It was the face of a Bohnebregg male I’d never seen before. And for a horribly confusing moment, I thought it was Skalla’s. Because his eye was so much like my mate’s, golden and piercing.

And because he only had the one. Like my mate, somewhere in the thorny path of his past, he’d lost the other. But where Skalla had an unadorned knot of scar tissue, Joleb had instead shoved a perfectly smooth metal marble in the empty socket. Similar to a glass eye, but without any effort to actually make it look like an eye besides the spherical shape. His hair was long and black and braided, his snout so achingly familiar I had to hold myself back from reaching out and touching it.

“So, you are the god-mate,” Joleb said, his voice powerful and deep. “Fated bride of my ancient kin, Skallagrim, who apparently has returned to this world. Or so that one tells us.” He jerked his snout at Koltar’s unconscious form. “Is it so?”

I shook in silence, not knowing what to say, or if I should even speak at all. If I confirmed who I was, would he kill me instantly? If I kept him waiting, would he kill me instead for my insolence?

“Perhaps it does not understand our language. It doesn’t even have a snout!” said a voice from somewhere behind the Prince, and for the first time I became aware of more people – many more – warriors standing and lounging and sitting at benches throughout what seemed to be a feast hall. But no matter where they were in the room or what they were doing, they all had blades at their belts and their eyes fixed on me.

“Hmm,” Joleb growled thoughtfully. His eye narrowed. “Don’t look down.”

I only barely stopped myself from looking down. But I did react – a stuttering sort of blink that gave me away.

“She understands,” Joleb said.

Paska. He’s clever. I’d have to be very careful. But he hadn’t killed me yet and I was hoping that things might still work out in my favour. That I could stretch this out a little longer.

Please, Skalla, get here soon!

I thought of him, maybe fighting human forces right this very moment, trying to free my friends, but didn’t let myself despair. Not yet.

“You know my words,” Joleb said, dragging me back to the present. “Now answer them.” In a flash, his claws were wrapped around my throat, squeezing. There was silken malice in his voice when he leaned in and muttered, “Answer me before I rip your tongue out and you never speak again.”

He released me without warning, leaving me to stumble and choke, grasping at my neck.

“I am... Skallagrim’s,” I said, fighting through panic for Bohnebregg words to use.

“And where is your mate now?”

“He is...”

Fuck. What should I tell him? Should I lie?

I settled on mumbling, “He is not here.”

That earned me a vicious backhand across the face, so forceful it made lights dance in my eyes as I twisted and fell painfully onto my hands and knees. My head buzzed, the right side of my face feeling like it had been stung by a thousand angry bees. When I swallowed, I tasted blood.

“Do not take me for a fool, female. You think I do not see that your mate is not here? I did not ask you where he is not.” He crouched down then grabbed me by the hair, pulling me up so I was forced to look at him. “I asked you where he is.”

Koltar chose that moment to rouse himself slightly. He groaned from where he’d been dumped on the floor. As much as I hated the Honoured Eye, I was grateful to him then because he’d distracted Joleb. The Prince released my hair, letting me sink back down to the ground.

But Joleb wasn’t done with me yet. Because even though he’d stalked over to Koltar, it was me he addressed.

“Who is he?”

“He is... A man. I do not know. He took me.”

It was hard to talk. My lips felt like they’d already ballooned to twice their natural size, making my normally terrible Bohnebregg accent even worse. Joleb glowered down at Koltar, and he looked so much like Skalla I thought I might throw up. Even the studs of metal between his scales reminded me of the lights that glowed on my mate. Joleb had no wings, of course, but otherwise the resemblance was uncanny in the extreme. It was like I was glimpsing some kind of alternate universe version of the man I loved.

Or like I was seeing who he might have been if he had never found me.

“Put him over there until he wakes fully,” Joleb said, speaking to no one in particular, though several men jumped to obey his order, putting Koltar behind a bench in the corner.

Koltar apparently decided he’d made enough noise for now and lay still, which was just fucking dandy, because now Joleb was focused entirely on me again.

“They say,” he said slowly, like he was savouring each word, “that if you kill a stone sky god’s mate, you kill him, too.”

“They say... many things,” I hedged, hoping I wouldn’t get another slap. But, surprisingly, that made Joleb grin fiercely.

“That they do, female. That they do. But family history also tells me it is so. The great Princess Jolakaia died in battle, did you know that? And her stone sky mate Faerwyrth dropped like a rock to the bottom of the river at the exact same moment, though no weapon ever touched him.”

Faerwyrth. That was Skalla’s father’s name. A name he hadn’t been able to recall yet on his own.

I have to remember that. So I can tell him when I see him.

Yet another reason to get through this and survive. So I could tell the man I loved the name of his forgotten father.

Joleb came to crouch before me once more, sliding a razor-sharp claw beneath my chin. “I could be a god-killer, too. A legend among men.”

“You could,” I said, swallowing more blood and remembering something Jolakaia had once said about her brother and men like him. “But... no glory.”

Anger flared in his eye, and I winced, ready for another slap, but it didn’t come. He didn’t ask me to go on, but he was clearly waiting for me to explain myself. Hoping I wasn’t making the biggest mistake of my life, I raised my chin and held his gaze.

“No glory in that,” I said.

I cursed myself for relying so much on the webbing and not taking more time to learn more Bohnebregg so I could speak it better. But there was nothing I could do about it now. With the limited words I had, I pieced together what I hoped would be a net to snare Joleb and save myself all at the same time.

“I am weak and soft,” I said. “No claws.” I held up my hands to show him. “No knife. No scales. No fight. Just a soft female.”

The anger was gone from his eye now, replaced with something I wasn’t sure I liked, something that seemed to grow when I’d said soft female. I ignored it and forged on, praying that this Prince’s pride would doom him and be my ticket out of here.

“I am easy to kill. No battle, no glory. Yes, Skallagrim dies. But you do not really kill him.” One of my eyes was swelling, but I fought to hold Joleb’s gaze, speaking slowly and as clearly as I could. “You cannot be a god-killer if you do not kill the god.”

The room had already grown quiet since our arrival, but now it was hushed with thick dread, as if everyone knew I’d lobbed some grave insult at their leader’s head and they were waiting for him to explode. Which, to be fair, was kind of the whole point of what I’d just said. I wanted to insult his manhood, his prowess as a warrior, and give Skalla a chance to come back and get me before Joleb gutted me like a fish.