The Summer Siege (Viking Omegaverse, #3)

by Lyx Robinson

“Why do you burn your men?” The question is so simple, yet it throws me off-guard. Nobody asks such things. “Do you really want me to explain it to you?” I ask her warily. Surely it would only come across as more callousness, to start theorising at a time when a less heartless man might mourn. But she only nods. So I breathe in, mulling over a simple explanation. “Well… man’s shape is changeable,” I tell her. “In the form of ash, one may travel on the wind far further than one might on foot.”

“Those runes they painted on Hjor’s face, and the dead all around,” she says at length. “You wear the same. Your tattoos.” Astute girl. I touch the side of my head without thinking. “Some of these are protective spells,” I tell her quietly. “The Cathalain paint those runes to secure safe travels for the dead. This serves a similar function.” Her eyes roam over the spidery runes that climb up my neck and arch over my shaved skull. “What does it say?” “The gods are under me and over me,” I tell her. “It is part of a larger spell.” Still she stares. “I thought it was just decorative,” she mutters. “But it’s pagan magic, then, what you wear on your skin.” “Pagan magic,” I echo, amused. “We call it fjölkyngi, if you want to call it by its proper name. Protection is one of its main branches, and runes one of its many tools. That bind-rune you see there, on Hjor’s forehead – it is made of the runes raido and algiz, for protection on the long road to Odin’s hall.”

“… cattle die, and kinsmen die, And so one dies oneself; One thing now that never dies, The fame of a dead man’s deeds.”

He’s like a mirage, a glittering image that lures you in, and though you know it’s dangerous, you still want to try and reach it.

But when we’re like this, as close as this, it’s as though reality begins to trickle away until we both become translucent, blending into one another.

And now… she’s here, she’s alone with me; she is everything I ever wanted. To have her, to be wanted by her… it’s so immediate. Intoxicatingly so.

She’s biting and sighing into my mouth as though she could lay all her worries upon my tongue.

she belongs to me in the deepest way possible – but that is all poetry and ancient magic, that is the dream that gleams upon her, holding me transfixed when I let myself look at her.

I had shared only teasing caresses and stolen kisses – but this, this was something else, something far more profound. I’m still reeling from it, the aftertaste of her savage prayer lingering on my tongue.

There is sensual intimacy; then there is the intimacy of the threat, growled into your enemy’s ear; the intimacy of invading your enemy’s space so that he can do nothing but heed you.

She wants to redeem herself in their eyes.

“What will you do if I join them?” she asks. “I’ll come with you, of course,” Skaði says. “Someone must guard you appropriately. And I don’t trust any one of those men to be up to the task.” Eormen responds with a wry sort of smile. “They sedate themselves to keep their minds intact. They won’t take advantage of me.” “Princess, they are still men.”

I breathe in that scent of home, the one she’s wrapped all around me along with the warmth of her body.

whisper my vows against her mouth, because I can never say them enough, I love you, I love you so much, and when she whispers it back I buck within her, breaking into bliss. She tastes the silence of my open mouth as the cry of pleasure stays stuck in my throat.

I gaze at her, losing myself as always in her flesh and blood. Gods… if she only knew what a crack it made in my life, to meet her. There was the man who existed before that moment; and then the man who came afterward.

A measure of wisdom each man shall have, But never too much let him know; For the wise man’s heart is seldom happy, If wisdom too great he has won.

If there were words to say, we substitute them with bite-marks, weave them like cherry stalks between our tongues.

Wrathful was Freya, and fiercely she spoke, And the great dwelling of the gods was shaken.

I would rather know him and never touch him, than not know him at all.

Do you know what you’re doing to me? I want to growl the words against her, sink them into her skin with my teeth. Do you even know what I wouldn’t do for you?

The dissonance of being in her company is whirring around me. I’m still wearing all the spikes she planted in my chest; and now she acts like there is no hurt between us.

It is like touching the pulse point of the world, to be inside her; Odin, you would give your other eye just to know this once.

Her mouth is burnished with my blood; I can taste hers, wine-sweet on my lips, trickling down my chin.

There were so many scents in the belly of that fort today, and yet I was immune to them all. It makes a smile drift at the corner of my mouth, to think that Tamsin’s claim may be so brutal, so final and unapologetic. It has changed how the world smells, how it feels.

“Only you would stage your claiming ceremony in the middle of a full-blown siege,” he says, amusement in his tone.