Page 81 of Captured in Love
Tinna’s gasp is the first sound to break the silence that descends on the entryway.
Then Dana pats my bald scalp and asks, “What did you do with your hair? Your head looks funny.”
I close my eyes for a second, then pluck the little girl from my shoulders and set her on the floor. “Listen, you two can put on cartoons. Klara, do you remember which buttons to press on the remote?”
“Yes,” Klara says, then takes her sister’s hand and leads her away toward the living room.
Tinna stands in front of me, visibly shaken. She puts her hand up to cover her mouth, and her fingers tremble slightly at the sight of me.
“Whathappened?” she whispers.
I scrub my head with my palm, wincing as my fingers tangle in the remaining strands of hair. “I look like shit, huh?”
She steps forward. “Who did this to you?”
I stare down on her, choosing my words carefully. She’s a tall woman, but right now, she seems to shrink as she assesses the damage. When she raises her hand and guides my head to the side to inspect one of the still-visible scars on my neck, I let her.
“It was the witches,” she says quietly. “Right?”
I don’t deny it. Of course it was the witches. Who else?
“But how…?” she insists.
I nudge her toward the kitchen. “Come on. If you want the full story, you better sit down.”
Twenty minutes later, Tinna wipes her eyes with the back of her hand and sniffs angrily. “I’m going to kill them all.”
It’s gratifying to hear she cares about me after all. But I lean back against the kitchen counter and calmly ask, “How? By shifting into your dragon form and storming their castle?”
She gives me a nasty glare. “Don’t joke about this. How the fuck did you even survive? And how did those assholes find out about Sjávarborg?”
“Their library must hold records of the old civilizations’ locations,” I say, avoiding the first part of the question. So far, I’ve neglected to mention my…collaboration with Nora, Levi, and Raphaël. Not that I’m ashamed of them or anything, but Tinna’s opinion of witches has been terrible even before she learned about what happened to me. I’m not sure she would take it well if she heard I’d formed a sort of alliance with two of them. And a vampire on top.
“Do we need to put an alert out to the clans?” She visibly pulls herself together. “If we have murderous witches crawling all over Iceland, we need to be more careful.”
I shrug, uncomfortable. “It wouldn’t hurt. I don’t think any more will be coming here, now that the three tokens in the volcano were taken, but warn them just in case.”
“So you weren’t exposed to any of them?” Tinna asks. “You’re sure?”
I put on my best poker face. “I killed one. He saw me in my dragon form in that underwater tunnel, so I took care of him.”
Tinna grabs my arm above my elbow. “Good.”
It’s a strange reaction. I mean, I’m happy I prevented the exposure of our race, of course, but I also just confessed to murdering a person. Shouldn’t she be…shocked? Concerned? Or maybe she doesn’t view witches as people—so that guy’s death doesn’t really count.
I swallow down the knot in my throat. It sure as fuck counts for me. I ended a life, and I can’t take that back, ever.
Tinna starts to say something else, but someone knocks on the front door. She fixes me with a look. “Are you expecting anyone?”
“No,” I grumble. “Are you?”
She shakes her head and slides off the kitchen stool. I move for the front door, replacing the knit hat. I don’t want to deal with any more questions tonight, and whichever clan member this is, I want to get rid of them quickly.
I pull open the door.
And find Nora staring up at me.
Thirty-Two
