I reached across the table and touched her hand. “What was her name?”
She offered a soft, sad smile that wrung my heart. “Njála.”
We finished our meal in silence, and I got up to add turf to the fire. She rose too, walking to the bed, and after a moment returned and handed me a sheet of paper.
After reading the brief missive, I said, “From Doro?”
She nodded. “He left it in my chamber. Treig brought it to me.”
“He has not accepted defeat,” I said, crumpling the paper and tossing it into the fire. “But he is nearly defeated.”
The page flared yellow, and then suddenly the fire burst to life, roaring like the ocean in a storm, flames licking the chimney stones and reaching out for us. I jumped back, shielding my bride, just as the flames took the form of a rearing horse, hooves tearing at the air as it screamed.
Koli’s furies swept into the inferno, attacking the beast and themselves bursting into flame. I’d filled a bucket from the stream when we first arrived, and I ran to grab it from beside the door. As I flung the water, I shouted a spell of amplification. The airborne wave crashed against the fire beast, dousing it with a hiss and flooding the fireplace. Steam rose and fogged the room.
Koli coughed and waved a hand in front of her face. “You were saying, Your Majesty?”
A laugh burst from my belly, and without thinking I spun around and caught her up in my arms.
She let out a yelp, and her hands came to my shoulders. For the first time, I heard her laugh—it was a sensual sound, sweet and thick like molasses. I wanted to swim in that sound. To breathe it in and let it drown me.
Our laughter died away all too soon, but I stood frozen, smiling into her bright eyes, feeling her body pressing against mine.
“You had agreed to call me Finvara,” I reminded her. My voice had gone to gravel.
She dipped her head slightly, and her full lips parted. “Finvara.”
While I was studying the ruby curves of her mouth, my arms crushing her waist against my abdomen, she pressed her lips to mine.
Suddenly the fire horse was racing in my veins—or at least I felt like it was. I held her tighter, hoping the right amount of pressure might soothe the throbbing at my groin—at the same time knowing it would only make matters worse.
Her tongue glided along my bottom lip. A hard groan rumbled out of me, vibrating to the core, and I moved my hand down to stroke the curve of her backside.
She released my mouth, and the tips of our noses touched. “I have done this before, husband,” she said.
I hoisted her higher, and she had to bend her head down over me to hold my gaze. “By choice, I hope,” I said, searching her eyes.
She nodded. “By choice. Should I have told you earlier?”
Letting her slip partway down, I pressed my cheek to hers and whispered in her ear, “I’m sure it was none of my business, but I’m desperately hoping that you will tell me more about it later.”
She laughed, and her mouth came again to mine, greedy and insistent. I carried her toward the table. Recalling the recent changes to her body, instead of pushing her back onto it, I shoved our dishes out of the way and pulled her on top of me. Her wings drooped forward over her arms, covering our bodies like a feathery bower.
She started working at the buttons of my shirt, and I reached down to grip the skirt of her dress.
Then the door to the cottage banged open.
Koli
Before a single thought came into my head I snatched Finvara’s knife from where it rested on the table, rose to a crouch, and threw it at whatever had just ducked through the doorway. The blade struck with a satisfying thunk—and only afterward did my focus broaden enough to realize I had nearly assassinated a friend.
“Ulf!” I shouted. My knife had lodged in his leather chest armor.
He was a great hulking beast of an elf with a wolfish glower, a mass of coarse, plaited hair hanging from both head and chin, and dark paint masking the top half of his face, making his light-amber eyes glitter in the dim light of the cottage. Both ears were pierced with iron rings all the way from lobe to pointed tip.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded.
His gaze shifted from me to the king, who’d sat up but was still positioned behind me. The elf warrior stepped to one side and raised a bow with an arrow already knocked.
I flexed my back muscles hard, lifting my wings and blocking his aim. “Ulf, no.”
“You’ll hide behind a woman, then?” my father’s man shouted in English.
“Gladly,” replied Finvara, “as it appears you don’t mean to assassinate her.”
“Ulf!” I snapped, and continued in English, “Lower your weapon. This man is my husband.”
He turned his glare on me without lowering the bow. “Husband!” he barked.
“Who is this, Koli?” asked the king.
“My guardian,” I answered without taking my eyes off Ulf. “My former guardian. He is my father’s captain. What I don’t understand is what he is doing here.”
“You mean to tell me that you’ve married this argr Irishman against your father’s will?”
“I have married him, and that’s the last question I’ll answer until you answer mine.”
His eyes rolled back toward the king. “I’ve been sent to dispatch him.”
“Sent by who?”
“By your king,” he growled. “Your father.”
“He sent you all the way from Iceland to assassinate Finvara? Is that not what he sent me to do?”
“He knows that you’ve refused. And he is here.”
He is here. My blood went cold, and my heart flapped against my ribs like a small bird trying to escape. I glanced over my shoulder at Finvara.
“The tree mark?” muttered the king.
Of course. I had long suspected that if I acted in a way that betrayed my father’s interests, not only would yggdrasil punish me, but the king would know it.
“He’s too late, Ulf,” I said, and I felt the king’s steadying hand at the small of my back. “And he’s broken the treaty by coming here. His ally has lost his power. If my father has business, he can bring it to me, but it’s better that he goes home.”
It was the first time I had ever dared to speak against my father, and I caught a flicker of alarm in Ulf’s gaze.
What I was attempting was risky. If Doro was correct about the nature of the old magic that bound him, he was still a threat to us—though we had been on the brink of addressing that concern before Ulf burst in.
“If I kill this man, hrafn,” began Ulf, “you will be queen. Your father would forgive much were you to come to him now in possession of an Irish crown, and Faery lords be damned.”
“I am queen already, my friend,” I said, standing and fully extending my wings. “If you try to kill my husband, I will kill you.”
Ulf’s amber eyes went wide. Then he lowered the bow a few inches and grumbled, “Loki’s sack.”
Digging my wings hard against the air, I leapt from the table. My feet met the floor softly, like bird feet. I reached out and pushed Ulf’s nocked arrow to one side.
“What has happened to you, hrafn?” he asked. Raven, his pet name for me, had never been more fitting.
His wolf eyes had softened, and I allowed an old affection to creep into my tone as I replied, “A new kind of magic. Something called alchemy.”
His eyes moved over my body, and he replied, “Impressive as that is, it’s not what I’m asking.” He glared over my shoulder at the king, who stood watching us with folded arms.
“Do you remember when you found me?” I asked Ulf.
“Of course I do.”
“Then you remember that you had to save my life. And that when you took me from my mother’s home I had nothing. At court, you were my only
friend.”
His mouth set in a firm line. “Já.”
“The bond between us wasn’t about fear, or duty. It had nothing to do with my father, or the loyalty we owed him. It was about trust.”
Ulf frowned deeply, but he gave a blunt nod.
“That’s the kind of bond I have with Finvara, and you have a choice to make, my friend.”
He eyed me sternly. “Don’t ask me. Not that, hrafn. You know I won’t betray your father.”
I reached up and took hold of his chin.
“Return to him, then. Tell him I have married Finvara, and that we are allies. Invite him to Knock Ma to speak to us.”
Ulf shot the king a dark look before replying, “He is there already. He has seized the castle.”
OLD MAGIC
Finvara
“What?” I stepped forward to stand beside Koli. I glanced between the two of them and noted a distinct lack of shock in my bride’s expression—but behind her eyes I saw fear.
“You and I had hardly left Iceland when your father’s seer put it into his head that you were going to betray him,” Ulf said to Koli. “I told Alfakonung that the woman had made a mistake—that you would never betray him.” Ulf narrowed his eyes. “An hour ago we arrived at Knock Ma and discovered that it was true.”
“How did you find us?” I demanded, a sinking feeling in my chest.
Ulf shrugged. “Your own people. The druid has kept to his promise and turned them against you.”
Grinding my teeth together, I recalled how I had felt grateful for Doro’s hand on the helm.
Koli was looking at me, eyes wide with alarm. “Your family, Finvara.”
I shook my head. At least in this one aspect, I had managed my affairs better. “After you vanished, I advised them to pack up and go, for their own safety. They didn’t even wait for first light.” When I told my father I’d betrothed myself to Koli, I’d been pretty sure he was ready to wash his hands of me.
Koli returned her attention to Ulf. In watching their interaction—their ease and familiarity with each other, despite the argument—a suspicion had taken hold of me: that the large and menacing elven male was at least partly responsible for the statement I have done this before, husband. While I had not been disturbed by her confession, it had not occurred to me I would ever meet one of my predecessors. Bollocks, I was not even yet among their numbers.
“Tell Father we will come to him at Knock Ma,” said Koli. “Tell him we want to talk.”
I caught movement in the doorway behind Ulf—the slightest shifting of shadows—as he scowled at her and replied, “I think you had better come with me now, hrafn.”
“I think you had better do as the queen says, Northman.”
Treig now stood behind the warrior. Before he could turn, she jabbed the tip of her pike against the back of his neck—and he vanished.
“Hold your position, Treig!” Koli ordered. “He’s still there.”
Koli reached out and plucked at the air, and the knife she’d flung at him—which had remained stuck in his armor—appeared in her hand. Then she reached again, and I heard a low growl. Ulf became visible, and I saw she’d taken hold of his bow. His gaze was bright and angry
“I’ll return it to you,” Koli said, raising the tip of the knife to his throat. “You have my word.”
The warrior finally let it go.
“Leave now,” ordered Koli. “Take my message. We won’t be far behind you.”
With one final half-stricken glare, Ulf turned to go. Treig stepped out of his way, and we watched him stride off into the trees.
“How is it he was able to burst in on us?” I asked Treig. She had a thick, blood-smeared lump on one side of her forehead
“The rest of the escort slipped away, sire,” she said. “When I went looking for them, he surprised me.”
Shaking my head, I said, “I’m grateful for your loyalty. This has unraveled with devilish efficiency.”
“Doro is cunning,” said Koli. “You couldn’t have known.”
“I did know,” I said, “because someone I should have listened to tried to warn me. But I . . .” Looking up at her, I took a deep breath and sighed, and I reached for her hand. “I had other things on my mind.”
She tugged my hand. “Come husband, we don’t have much time.”
I nodded. “Aye. I must notify the queen. She never responded to my message about Corvus, and I suspect it was never sent. We’ll have to—”
“Finvara.”
The warm molasses in her voice drew my gaze to her. “Aye?”
“Ulf will reach Knock Ma, and he will return with reinforcements. I have only bought us a little time.” She hesitated, lifting her chin before continuing, “Doro’s fealty could solve many problems.”
While I had not forgotten what the elf warrior had interrupted, I had entirely forgotten how it related to the situation at hand.
Koli
The king’s eyes burned bright with understanding, and an answering flame kindled low in my belly. I saw his hands clench and release at his sides.
“Treig,” he said, “are you well enough to watch?”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“If Ulf comes back with reinforcements, they will make noise. I want plenty of warning this time. Make sure our horses are saddled and ready.”
Treig glanced at me, and I nodded. She left us again, closing the door behind her.
“Thank you,” he said. His voice was low and sincere, but the flicker of heat had given it an edge.
“For what?” I asked.
He came closer. “This visit was unexpected. You must have known him for a very long time, and defying him, and your father, can’t have been easy.”
I nodded and looked away. “He has been a good friend.” My only friend, until now.
“It must have been hard to leave him behind.”
Something in his tone drew my eyes back to his face, and I could see that Finvara had read something in my friendship with Ulf that I had not told him. He was not mistaken.
“It’s difficult to lose someone you trust with your life. But Ulf was my father’s man centuries before I was born. There has never been anything he’d cross him for. Not even me.”
Narrowing his eyes, the king moved still closer. His hands landed gently on my hips, sending a warm shiver through me.
“I’m not sure that’s true,” he said. “He didn’t kill me.”
I studied the smooth, brown skin between the edges of shirt that I had unbuttoned earlier. Then I touched it with my finger. I am allowed this now.
“That was not about me,” I replied. “My news surprised him, and he would want to confer with my father before carrying out an order that could not be reversed.”
The king pulled my hips forward so our bodies touched, and the muscles between my legs fluttered.
“Trust me,” he said, his voice soft, “it was mostly about you. And I should be grateful, but I saw enough to make me resent him.” He raised a hand to my check, fingers slipping into my hair and tilting my head back. My heart leapt to the base of my throat. “It’s a weakness of mine.”
As he spoke the last words, he bent over me, touching his parted lips to mine. Despite years of sun and sea air, they were silky and smooth. His tongue moistened my bottom lip. I coiled my arms around him and pressed my breasts against his chest. His hands glided down over the fabric of my dress to my backside and squeezed. I gave a murmur of pleasure and took his top lip between my teeth.
As I nipped his pliant flesh, he gasped. His hands slid around the base of my wings and up to my shoulders, and before I realized what he was doing, my dress was sliding down my arms, hardening my nipples and triggering a delicious aching.
I had not bothered with underclothing, and my naked skin brushed against the cool white of his shirt, the
rough wool of his trousers. His hands tried to be everywhere at once, leaving hot trails over my back and hips.
“I haven’t been able to get this out of my mind since last night, when I saw you before the tomb.”
His hand glided up my ribs and he cupped it over one breast—tickling, lightly squeezing, and finally rolling the hardened nipple until I thought I would fall to my knees.
“Husband,” I hissed, clutching his arms. I had known lust and urgency, but this swirling, liquifying heat was a shocking revelation.
He bent suddenly, scooping me up in his arms, and carried me to the bed. He set me down, crouching beside me with one knee on the mattress, as he began tearing at the bottom buttons of his shirt. I lay on my side, propping my head in one hand, and reached for the button of his trousers. He tossed his shirt onto the floor.
I froze for a moment, taking in the litheness of his form. His upper body was sculpted, like drawings of statues I’d seen in a book on ancient Greece. I reached out and splayed a palm across his chest, letting it slide down to his belly, appreciating the contrast of smooth skin and hard muscle. He had a body that only a few days ago I would have considered weak compared to my rough and rugged kinsmen. He was indeed a work of art.
He took hold of my hand, kissing the palm, and I found myself captivated by the sensual lines and complicated musculature of his arms. A mark had been inked on one forearm—a constellation, I thought. Before I could touch it, he unfolded my legs like a clamshell, settling between them.
I steadied myself against the bed so my weight wouldn’t fall onto my back. As soon as I had stilled, that full bottom lip of his connected gently but directly with the overripe nub at the top of the cleft between my legs. I arched my back and gasped.
He began lightly circling the nub with his tongue, teasing me to the point of madness. I writhed and offered murmured protests, which he ignored, until finally I took hold of his head and pulled his mouth against me. He laughed, vibrating the delicate tissue, and he slipped a finger inside me. My muscles closed hard around him and I let out a cry of pure desperation.
He raised his head then, my body quivering violently in protest, and crawled up next to me. “Now wife,” he murmured, “I do hate to see your suffering. Is there anything I can do to ease it?”
The Raven Lady Page 17