41

Ablaze

I was cold and wet, my hair dripping in my face. A thick, stiff robe of elk fur was wrapped around me, but aside from that I was naked. I was in an octagon made of stone, with wooden benches around the edge. In the center, a bin of burning coals slowly warmed the room.

I was alone, but I could hear water running nearby. Somehow, I knew this was our weekly bath, when Noomi and our captors let us use the bathtubs and the sauna, assuming we behaved in the days between.

And I’d behaved, but I was here alone.

Until the door opened, and Pan came in. His dark curls were wet, and his robe was snug across his broad shoulders.

“Ulla,” he gasped when he saw me, and he rushed over. When he held me and we kissed, I knew from the way my skin trembled that it had been so long since we last touched.

“How are you here?” I whispered, and I held his face in my hands.

“I don’t know. They left me alone to bathe, and when I finished, I came in here,” he said breathily. “Maybe they forgot about me.” He put his hands over mine, but his thumbs brushed the raw skin of my wrists, and I winced.

“Sorry,” I said as I pulled my hands away. “The cuffs they use burn my skin.”

“My god, Ulla.” He sounded horrified as he gingerly took my hand to get a look at the red, swollen skin. “What are they doing to you?”

“I’ve been translating old documents from ancient Tryllic, but it doesn’t make any sense. It’s like a recipe for blood pudding but written in the style of a limerick. I’ve been stuck on several words that I can only translate into literal gibberish, but they’ve been bringing me these documents in Old Norse and Irytakki for reference.”

“They’re torturing you just to get you to work in the archives again?” Pan asked.

“Yeah, it seems that way,” I said with a thin smile.

His eyes were pained and his voice was husky. “I’m sorry.” He put his hand on my face, caressing my cheek gently with his thumb. “I wish I knew how to save you.”

“I wish I knew how to save us all,” I replied softly.

He bent down and kissed me, gently at first. His lips were soft, pressing against mine, until I pushed on my tiptoes, leaned deeper into his kiss. His arms went around my waist, holding me tightly against him. I buried my fingers in his thick curls, letting them wind around my fingers.

Heat rolled over me, and it wasn’t from the steam coming from the heater bumping up against me. And then I slid my hands down and under the robe. It wasn’t so much a sexual thing—and I didn’t want to have sex with Pan in the sauna of the dungeon we were held captive in—but I suddenly needed skin-to-skin contact. It had gone far beyond craving, and it was an impatient need to feel his flesh warm against mine. To feel something soft and safe and warm in a place so cold and unforgiving.

“What are you doing?” he asked thickly.

“I just need to feel you, nothing more.” I paused—his robe half open with my hands on his chest. “Please.”

In response, he kissed me again, and his hand moved down, untying my robe so it fell open. His hand found my hips, pulling me toward him, and then there was this wonderful relief of warmth enveloping me.

We were kissing again, hungrily, greedily. Then Pan’s mouth trailed along my jawbone, down to my neck, and in a low voice, he murmured, “I love you, Ulla.”

“I love you too, Pan,” I said without hesitation, because I knew it was true, the same way I knew my heart was pounding in my chest.

He kissed me again, on the top of my head, and hugged me to him. I looked over his shoulder, and on the wall behind me, I spotted a big spider crawling along it.

“Pan.”

“I know, but . . .” Pan said, his voice nearly lost in my hair as he held me. “I’ve wanted to say it for so long. I’m so glad I finally did.”

“No, Pan, I’m saying there’s a huge spider.” I detangled myself from him enough that I could point at the fat black spider with a jagged green stripe, but he didn’t turn back to look.

“I know,” he said gravely. “Me and Elof have been doing everything we can.”

“Wait. What?” I stepped back from him and refastened my robe tightly. “You know about the spiders?”

And by now it was spiders. I spotted another even larger one creeping along the ceiling, and a few smaller ones crept out from under the benches.

“Well, what does Indu want?” Pan asked.

I looked sharply at him. “What? Are you saying Indu wants the spiders?”

There was hardly any steam in the room anymore, but the heat kept rising. I could already feel the beads of sweat forming on my back.

“What have you translated so far?” Pan asked.

“Nothing about infestations, so I don’t think it really matters right now.” I was nearly shouting by now, because I could see more spiders sliding through the cracks between the bricks in the wall. I grabbed Pan’s hand. “We have to go!”

He frowned. “Blood pudding? Is that what they’re using your blood for?”

“Pan, I don’t know what’s going on with you, but we’ve got to—”

“Yeah, I’d say that is cannibalism,” he interrupted me.

He was looking straight at me, but it was like he couldn’t see me. I let go of his hand and waved in front of his face, but he only stared blankly forward.

“Pan?” I said plaintively as the room rapidly became a furnace. The once-cold stone floor tiles scorched the bottoms of my feet.

“An elk heart?” Pan asked, and he was backing up, toward the bench overflowing with arachnids.

“Pan!” I shrieked, but he just sat back on the bench. His expression never changed, not even as dozens of spiders crawled over him.

“Sorry, a white elk heart,” he said, as a spider languidly crawled across his eyeball. “Is the heart white or is it the heart of a white elk?”

It was so hot, the spiders started to burst into flames. The tinier arthropods on the floor were popping like popcorn all around me, and all I could do was scream.