Iron Seas 03 - Riveted

I believe Mr. James stumbled close to the truth when he said that the stories of trolls and witches were spread for a reason. But you’re not from Heimaey. What is the secret? Do they steal children? Seduce men?”
    He was too clever by far. Annika shook her head.
    “Please don’t pursue this.”
    “I must.”
    “Didn’t we get along well before this?” In four years, she’d never been so immediately comfortable with a person. Now Annika could hardly bear to look at him, but she did, her chest aching. “Please let it be.”
    “I can’t.” The resolve in his tone echoed his statement, but his expression said that he didn’t take any pleasure in forcing the issue. “I won’t hurt you or them, Annika. I swear it.”
    Just as he’d promised not to expose her secret—but it wasn’t Annika’s secret to keep.
    Telling him the truth would be far more dangerous than lighting a fire. The women of Hannasvik weren’t just stealing babies. They weren’t just seducing men. They no longer worried about the prince’s son they’d killed. They didn’t worry about the children they’d taken, because those children had already been abandoned.
    But Annika had seen what would happen to her people if the New World descended on them. She’d seen men hanged for lessthan what the women had done for years. She would never expose them to the ugliest part of the New World, the part that transformed love into sickness and sin.
    Not everyone in the New World believed the same; perhaps David Kentewess wouldn’t, either. If she told him about the love shared between her mother and his aunt, about so many of the others who’d made their lives together in her village, maybe he wouldn’t show the same disgust. But Annika couldn’t know how he would react. She couldn’t even risk asking him without endangering her own position, her own life.
    She couldn’t manage more than a whisper. “Please don’t.”
    “Annika—”
    “I will hate you if you pursue this!”
    “Fulfilling this promise is more important to me than your good opinion.” As if pained, he closed his eye. His gloved fist tightened. “So you will hate me.”
    And so that was it. Annika pushed away her plate, stood. She couldn’t swallow any more, anyway.
    David followed her out. “Annika.”
    She didn’t answer, increasing her pace. He moved faster. His large frame stopped in front of her. Annika sidestepped. His arm shot up, hand flat against the bulkhead, barring her way.
    She could feel him staring down at her. She refused to look up. “Let me pass.”
    If he didn’t, she’d kick him. Given the circumstances, Vashon would forgive her for it. The captain never tolerated men who used their strength against women.
    “When I was a boy, my mother told me stories about Brunhild. How she was canny to Sigurd’s deception and took her revenge, even though it meant her own death. I imagine you’ve heard the same stories, but I’m not him. I don’t want to deceive you in any way—and I never meant to. I didn’t want you to run from me.”
    “I’m not running.” She’d been walking until he blocked her way. “Let me through now.”
    He didn’t. “She used to sing to me at night, a lullaby in Norse. I never knew the words, though she told me what they meant—the song was about a girl who held a bird in her hands as it died, and then flew away to the heavens with it. Do you know it?”
    Yes. Her mother had sung that lullaby to her, too. Annika would sing it to her daughter, one day. Eyes stinging, she shook her head.
    “We were in our home when the explosions started at the mountain. I could see it through the window in my bedroom, lighting up the sky with orange. But I couldn’t hear it. Only her, as she screamed for me to stand away.” He faltered before continuing, the words hoarse. “The shock blast shattered the glass. She caught me, held her hand over my eye and my face, tried to stop the bleeding. And when she saw the mountain fall down on top of us, she covered my body with hers. The beam that crushed my legs cut her in half.”
    God. Annika couldn’t bear the raw pain in his voice, the images he painted. Some words were even stronger than a man’s arm, and he used them without mercy. Closing her eyes, she tried to hold back the tears.
    “With her last breaths, she told me to be a good man, a strong one, and that she loved me and my father. She asked me to put my blood on her beads and bury them, so she could sit with her mother