by Gwen Rivers
Aiden swore. “How is this a happy memory?”
My eyebrows pull together. “Because, the aunts let me hunt. Knew I needed to do it, accepted the world would be better off without a man that preyed on intoxicated women. It was Chloe’s birthday, but she gave me the gift and Addy helped hide the evidence. That was before…” I swallow, my throat tight.
“Before what?”
I close my eyes, lulled by his warmth, the strong cedar and sage scent of him. “Tired.”
“No, Nic. Stay awake.” Aiden jostles me hard. Fatigue overwhelms me, and I don’t protest his rough handling. “Damn it, you can’t succumb to the poison.”
He sets me down on the ground and leans over me, his hands on my shoulders, shaking me. “Nic, please. Fight it. If you go to sleep now, I don’t know if I can wake you in your lifetime. You could die without ever regaining consciousness.”
My eyelids flutter. I want to stand, to move but my limbs are ungainly and out of my control. I utter two words I’ve never said before. “Help me.”
“I will,” Aiden insists but I can tell from the edge in his voice he doesn’t know how.
“Burn me,” I curl onto my side.
“What?” his hands fall away. “I can’t.”
“You have to,” a yawn breaks me away from the thought, so wide it makes my jaw pop. “Pain is the only way to keep me from falling asleep.”
There is no sound for a moment. The damp ground of the swamp seeps into my clothing, rocks and sticks poke at me but even the discomfort isn’t enough to fight back the wave of sleep coming for me.
Aiden’s hand wraps around my forearm in a tight grip. “Forgive me.”
At first his hand is just warm, then hot. I try to shift away as the heat expands. Smoke curls away from the point of contact. A scream tears from my throat as agony rips through my arm. I jerk, but he holds on tight. The smell of cooked meat wafts up, making the experience that much more surreal. Tears pour down my face, my wordless scream making my throat hoarse.
Then, right before I am about to pass out, Aiden lets go. I fall back, cradling my throbbing arm. The pain is worse than any I’ve ever felt. I can’t stop the flow of tears.
Behind me, Aiden has his head in his hands and is rocking back and forth. In my head I hear him chanting, I’m sorry, I’m sorry I’m sorry.
The urge to comfort him wells up in me. He’s suffering now, the anguish in his mental voice is evident. The desire to help him is…odd and I do want to give into it, but it’s not strong enough to overcome the pain of the burn. Nerves are singing out all over my body, the sense of wrongness setting off every alarm bell in my brain. I can’t touch the wound directly, but visual inspection shows a hand print seared into my skin, somewhere between a first and second-degree burn.
“Well, what do we have here?” A new voice asks.
Through my tears, I see a new pair of feet and a mud-spattered skirt hem.
A reed basket is deposited on the ground beside me, as well as a rusty lantern and then the owner of the feet crouches down to inspect my arm. I try to pull away, to protect the damaged flesh, but her grip is like iron.
“This looks painful. Were the two of you fighting?”
“He had to,” I gasp, my voice like a puff of smoke. “To keep me awake.”
“You came through the deadwood, didn’t you? Foolish child.” From her tone I can’t tell if she means me or Aiden. She reaches into the basket, rummages and snaps off something green and holds it out to me. “Aloe Vera. Probably better that you apply it.”
I hold out a shaking hand and she squeezes the plant until a cool gel oozes out of it. I am slow bringing the clear substance up to my arm, afraid it’ll make the pain worse. But the first touch soothes the damaged skin, cooling the overheated flesh. I use up what she gave me and reach out for more. She obliges, then gets up and carrying her lantern, steps over me to check Aiden.
“I don’t see any sign of a wound.” She says, placing her long white fingers against his forehead. “No blood or bruising.”
I sit up. Dizziness and nausea well up, but I fight them back, focusing on the slim figure crouched by Aiden’s side. Her hair is long and falls in red-gold curls, her clothes plain and unadorned. Like Aiden her feet are bare. “I don’t think he is hurt, at least not physically.”
She puts two fingers against a spot on his neck, probably checking his pulse. “You said he had to hurt you. Is he the cause of that burn?”
I nod. She stares at me with eyes the same color as Aiden’s. “You’re Laufey?”
“No time for introductions, girl. Help me get him back to my house.”
I move so that my good side is propped against Aiden and drape his arm over my shoulder. He weighs about as much as the two of us combined “Do you know what’s wrong with him?”
“Mental trauma,” she grunts, hefting him with much more ease than I did, even stopping to collect her basket. “You ever hear the expression this will hurt me more than it hurts you?”
When I nod she goes on, “Well, for someone like Aiden, that is a literal statement. Hurting you damaged him and he wouldn’t have done it if there had been any other recourse.”
I want to ask more questions, about her and Aiden and our surroundings, but keeping in line with her sure quick steps drains my already low reserves.
Finally, we come to a dock. Tethered to the end is a small rowboat.
“Don’t just stand there girl, climb in.” Laufey shifts all of Aiden’s weight to herself, freeing me enough to step into the boat.
I do, taking my pack with me and settling it in the bow of the boat. Laufey hands over her basket, the lantern and then physically lifts Aiden and places him on the bottom of the boat, his head in my lap.
“How…?” I ask, awed by her strength.
“You forget, I’m a giant, girl. I could have carried both of you if I needed to. Better that you walk though, shake off the last of the thorn’s effects.”
“You don’t look like a giant.” Or a grandmother.
“And you don’t look like a fairy queen bloody and sweating, but here we are.” Her tone is light, breezy but I get the hint of bitterness lurking beneath the easy manner. “Keep him still while we row. Touch his skin. Let him hear your voice. Smell you.”
“Smell me?” I blink up at her.
“So that he knows you’re all right. It’s his worry over you that put him in this fugue. You’re the only one who can reassure him enough to come out of it.”
Though I don’t understand, Laufey appears deadly serious. I hold out a fistful of my hair and bend down, the blond waves trailing across Aiden’s face.
“Why does he care so much that he hurt me? He barely even knows me.”
Laufey’s green eyes, so like Aiden’s, pierce me to the spot. “Because you’re his mate.”
Chapter 14
The Needle of the Forest
“His mate?” I shake my head back and forth in incomprehension, sending even more hair across Aiden’s lower jaw so it sticks in the dark stubble growing there. “No.”
“Fool girl, why else would he have gone to the trouble of resurrecting your sorry carcass?” Laufey holds a stick about ten feet long and skinny as the handle of a rake. She plunges it into the water until it hits the bottom. I see it reverberate in her hand. She pushes off, our small craft leaving the safety of the shore.
“Aiden resurrected me? He told me only the giants have the knowledge to do that sort of magic.”
“The giants have the knowledge,” Laufey yanks on her pole until the muddy end breaks the surface, then thrusts it with a barely leashed violence back into the water. “That doesn’t mean any of us have the inclination to interfere. You, little Queen, had been betrayed and murdered. And no one cared, not one wretched soul in your entire court, save for my grandson.”
My gaze falls to Aiden’s still slack face, all the odd things he’s said to me clicking into place. My only wish is to protect you, Nicneven. I hate to see you in pain. As
my lady desires.
“What does that even mean?”
“To you? That you can order him about and he will have to obey your every command. That he will fight for you, carve off pieces of himself for you and even find a way to die for you if you will it. For him, it means nothing but endless suffering. Even now, I see it in your expression girl. The avarice for power, the desire to use this latest information to your advantage.”
Even despite the swampy air, my throat is completely dry. “I won’t—”
“You will.” She cuts me off with a steely glare that sees all the way to my blackened soul. “When you want something badly enough, you will use him and discard him, the way you did before.”
I want to know more about before, but it’s clear she doesn’t intend to elaborate. “You don’t like me very much.” I don’t phrase it as a question.
“No,” she agrees. “There’s not much there to like. What he sees in you is unique to him.”
I gesture to the burn on my arm. “Then why bother to help me?”
“Aiden was bringing you here for some reason. He won’t understand if I leave you to rot, the way I want to. Foolish child.” This time there isn’t any doubt that she means Aiden, the harsh words softened by the fond way she looks upon him.
I look down at Aiden. Maybe it’s my imagination, but the tightness of his jaw appears to relax a little and his breathing seems more even than before. His eyes remain closed but at least he looks like he’s sleeping, not dead.
Caretaking isn’t my strong suit. I’ve never had to comfort another person. The Fates never get sick and injuries from animal bites or farm work are patched up and then ignored. Sarah when her romances inevitably went south came to me, but she liked to bitch about all the reasons she was better off without the bastard. My role involved nodding and making sympathetic noises while spooning out ice cream.
With Aiden, I don’t know where to put my hands. Finally, I settle for one on his shoulder and the other stroking his hair, the way I would pet an affectionate animal from Addy’s clinic. There’s no evidence it helps, but neither Aiden nor Laufey protest so I keep up a steady rhythm.
“Up ahead,” Laufey says. It’s the longest sentence she’s uttered in half an hour.
I glance up, but full dark has set in and my eyes can’t make out anything beyond the glow of the small lantern.
“Listen,” Laufey stills, lifting her pole out of the water and setting it down inside the small vessel.
Without the sound of rowing, the night becomes uncomfortably still. There are no frogs, I realize with some surprise. No buzzing of insects, or chirping of birds. Just a steady lap of water against stone and my own ragged breaths.
“What—?” I begin but she holds up a hand to silence me. Then, over the quiet water comes a mournful tune. The sound is difficult to pinpoint, and I strain my ears as the music creeps inside me. Some sort of stringed instrument, possibly a violin, in the hands of a master musician. In the swamp? It makes no sense.
Though I have no ear for music, the haunting melody invades me, seems to caress my frazzled nerves. The stinging pain in my arm is forgotten, Aiden and Laufey vanish from my thoughts as the music fills my mind, my soul. So lonely, whoever is playing must be so lonely, a kindred spirit, lost with only the violin for solace.
I don’t realize I’m standing until I am yanked back down by a hand that covers my mouth. I struggle, needing to get to the musician, to find out who it is and why they play such sad notes but the iron grip on my mouth won’t budge.
Then there is a splash. The music cuts off abruptly and my struggles cease.
“Look,” Laufey loosens her grip and leans to peer into the black depths of the swamp. I mimic her, seeing ripples from whatever it was she threw overboard. And then about two feet away, a hideous head emerges. Hair the texture of seaweed, skin the color of dying moss and yellow eyes that glow brighter than our lantern. Eyes that devour. One three-fingered hand appears, holding a small, thin object aloft. It glints in a shaft of moonlight. A needle.
The yellow-eyed creature watches us go, its unnerving stare following us around the next bend. Only when it is completely out of sight, does Laufey exhale audibly.
“What was that?”
“Nøkken.”
At my blank look, she frowns. “A water horse, if you prefer.”
That didn’t look like any horse I’d ever seen. “That was what was playing the music?”
When she nods, I voice my next question. “Why did you throw a needle to it?”
“Metal objects buy passage from the Nøkken. Any bits of iron or steel will do. Think of it like a toll.”
“You mean if we hadn’t paid it wouldn’t have let us continue?”
Laufey cast me a withering stare. “If we hadn’t paid, it would be digesting you right now.”
“Is there anything in this place that doesn’t want to eat me?”
A soft chuckle escapes her. “Girl, you’re human. Even the creatures that won’t actually eat you crave a taste of your flesh.”
A shudder racks my body. “Aiden told me about the division between the courts, the fey that want to eat humans and those that don’t. Why are we such a delicacy?”
“Having never eaten a human, I couldn’t say. Vegetarian.”
“Me too.”
She blinks at me in surprise, then tips back her head and laughs. “Oh, that is good. The Unseelie queen is a born-again vegetarian. The Norns are not without a sense of irony.”
Norns. The three sister goddesses charged with guarding the Well of Fate. I’d always thought of them as a Germanic version of the Fates. Although maybe they weren’t just a similar myth, but the same three women. Sure, their names were different, but many cultures had different names for things. Could it be possible that Chloe and Addy were the Norns charged with guarding the Well? “Do you know what happened to the third sister?” I ask Laufey.
“She was executed long ago.” Leaf green eyes grow hard.
“Executed? Why?”
“For tampering with destiny. It is really their only crime. The Norns are a law unto themselves, they go where they wish, do what they wish, but they must uphold the will of the cosmos. Humans can change their own fate, gods can change their own fate, but the Norns cannot.”
“But they are like super goddesses, aren’t they? Who could kill one of the Fates—err…Norns?”
A small smile curves her lips. “Why, the other two of course.”
After what feels like an age, the boat finally pulls up to a crooked dock. I look up to see a massive water wheel churning slowly and beyond it, what looks like an abandoned house with a tree growing out of its roof. Not any sort of tree I recognize. It’s massive, the trunk is visible through the open windows, the bark a gray-brown that blends seamlessly into the dim lighting of the swamp. Branches as thick as my thighs stretch out to cover the remaining bits of the roof.
“Home sweet home,” Laufey steps easily from the boat to the rickety dock. I watch as she bends down and ties an expert knot around one rotting post, tethering the rowboat in place. Then she steps back in and helps me pull Aiden to his feet.
His eyes are open now, I can see them reflecting the lantern light, but he doesn’t appear to be tracking us or anything else.
The air is cool and damp and smells of green and growing things. It seeps through my clothes and down to my marrow even as sweat beads my brow. I struggle beneath Aiden’s weight, taking one shambling step and then another toward the literal treehouse.
“I’m home!” Laufey calls out in greeting as we cross the threshold.
At first, I wonder whom she is addressing, but am too bogged down by Aiden and my own saturated clothing to care.
Then I see dozens of little brown creatures, no larger than my thumb, scuttling together to form a larger shape. Like the way that Aiden’s sparks can pull apart and come together, yet I get the impression that each of these beings is an individual, even as they solidify into a short, stout wo
man.
“Was wondering when ye’d be home.” The woman kisses Laufey affectionately on the cheek, then moves to help us with Aiden. “And what’s happened to your youngen this time, pet?”
“Life,” Laufey grunts. “Let’s get him to the table.”
Between the three of us, we manage to hoist Aiden onto a large flat table made of stone.
“Get him out of those rags. I need to make sure he isn’t otherwise damaged. Laufey barks and it takes me a moment to realize she’s addressing me.
“Um,” I slide a look to the remains of the muddy tattered sweats. “I’m not really comfortable—”
Laufey talks over me. “Fern, stoke the fire, put on a kettle of hot water, get some clean linens and my medicine chest.”
Fern nods once and then scatters, or at least the bits of her scatter in different directions. I see a few of the twig-like creatures carrying wood to the fire, others struggling with a cauldron of water as still others flit up into the tree.
“What are you waiting for, an engraved invitation?” Laufey turns to a water pump and begins scrubbing her hands like a surgeon. “Undress him.”
Can I really protest when Fern, who appears to be the ultimate multitasker, is doing everything else? My insistence that Aiden burn me was what got him into this. I need to help.
“Sorry about this,” I say to Aiden and reach for the band of the sweats on either side of his narrow hips. “Your grandmother is insisting I strip you. She’s a real peach by the way.”
Behind me, Laufey barks out a laugh but stifles it quickly.
Taking a deep breath, I tug the fabric down. It’s not a gentle or painless process, especially with his body inert. There is much tugging and lifting, rolling him to one side and then the other. Heat scalds my face as more and more skin is uncovered and I force my gaze away from between his legs, concentrating on the task and feeling like a grade A perv.
Finally, the fabric is free. No sooner is he naked than Fern—at least one-fifth of Fern—drapes a blanket over him, preserving his modesty.