Astrid nodded, but she did not apologize and she kept the apple tightly clasped.
“You’re either simple or you’re impertinent.” Dekla jumped to her feet, amazingly quick, and for a moment, Astrid thought she’d strike out.
But her eye fell on the apple again, and she took a step back, as if to put the temptation of a sound beating out of reach.
“I will see you tonight.” With a final, longing look at the apple, Dekla turned back to the castle.
Astrid watched her go, and wondered what Dekla would do if she realized the man Astrid intended to marry was the very one the troll princess was shutting her in a room with that night.
* * *
Astrid stood, small and insignificant, before the barred doors of Norga’s castle. She fiddled with the apple deep in her skirt pocket, North’s entreaties for her to reconsider echoing in her head, and the weight of Dame Elv’s bread heavy in her churning stomach.
A scrape of wood on slate sounded to her right, and a sliver of light shone from a small door cut into one of the massive wooden gates.
“Come,” Dekla whispered, and Astrid took a tentative step forward.
Dekla shifted uneasily, glancing over her shoulder into the dark courtyard.
“The guards are inside, having their ale. Hurry.”
Astrid gathered her courage and slipped over the threshold.
The moment she was through, Dekla closed the door and shot the bolt across, careful not to make a sound.
Without a word, she strode to the inner-castle entrance, and Astrid had to jog to keep up. When they reached it, the troll princess blocked the open door and peered inside before jerking her head for Astrid to follow her.
As she stepped into the castle, Astrid was hit by the smell of troll. Iron-scented rock and moss. She remembered leaning up against the mountain door, smelling that same smell as the wind bombarded her, as Norga’s killing team closed in, and shivered.
Dekla led the way to an open staircase and Astrid stayed close to the wall as she pulled herself up the massive, uneven steps.
They reach a passageway, and Dekla stopped at the third door on the left. “I do not care how badly things go. I don’t care what happens to you in there. You stay within, quiet, until I come for you at first light. I cannot risk standing here to listen for you.”
Astrid nodded, keeping the smile from her face, hoping her eyes wouldn’t give her joy away.
She hid her impatience as Dekla unlocked the door and held it open for her. As she ducked under the troll’s arm and glanced back, she saw the satisfied smirk on her rival’s face as the door swung closed.
A cold fist closed around her stomach as she took in the room. A small candle gave off an unsteady light, revealing a prison cell. A narrow bed lay against a wall, and a chair and small table stood in the center of the chamber. There were no windows, and Astrid realized they were in the sea-facing part of the castle, that the wall before her was the one she had scaled early that morning.
But all these realizations were just background to the focus of the room.
Bjorn lay on the bed, his eyes closed.
“My love,” she whispered, kneeling beside him. “I have come for you.”
He made no sound, and suddenly stricken, Astrid reached out a hand and touched his face. He was warm, alive. But she could hear now from his breathing he was in a deep, unnatural slumber. The horror of that realization seemed to stop time.
“No.” Her anguished cry was echoed back at her by the dark walls. This could not be. After everything, after managing to do the impossible, to be right here with him, for him to be enchanted . . .
She turned to look at the small table, at the remains of food on the plate. Sniffed the air. The smell of the rich stew lingered, and was at odds with the starkness of the cell.
So, enchanted, or perhaps . . . drugged.
There would be no joyful reunion tonight.
Chapter Thirty-one
Bjorn lay as if dead. He wore the shirt she’d wished for him, but the three drops of tallow over his heart were no longer the only stains marring the snowy white linen. They were lost in the grime and gray now.
Still, not even the filth of Norga’s castle could dim his beauty. Her breath caught as she watched him in the weak light of the candle.
Something moved, furtive and sly, and she jerked her eyes up. A cliff spider, as big as her hand, eyed her from the dripping cell wall above Bjorn. It did a little to-and-fro dance, as if undecided which way to leap.
Astrid watched it warily and shrieked as it dropped onto Bjorn’s chest.
She flapped her hands ineffectually and it stared up at her with shiny black eyes, unconcerned. Dekla’s little watchdog.
Astrid edged to the table, too afraid to take her eyes off it, even for a moment. She reached back, slid the plate off.
She lunged, flicked the repulsive thing off Bjorn and onto the floor, and jumped on it. Jumped until it was a squashed nothing beneath her worn-out shoes.
Then she lay her head on Bjorn’s chest and wept until the weak dawn light edged beneath the door.
* * *
She was standing, waiting, when Dekla opened the door, her face a careful blank.
“Cried all night, did you?” Dekla’s eyes were full of hard amusement. “Why is that?”
Astrid said nothing and Dekla glanced into the room.
“He doesn’t look like he’s moved since when I first let you in.”
Astrid clamped back the scream within her. She looked at Bjorn one last time.
He stirred, on the brink of waking, and Dekla moved as if stung. She grabbed Astrid by the shoulder and shoved her out the door, slamming it closed and turning the lock in one panicked movement.
“Time to go.” She spoke as if short of breath and her hand trembled slightly as she held it out expectantly.
Astrid forced herself to plunge her own hand into her pocket and bring out the golden apple.
Moments before she dropped it into the troll’s palm, the whisper of a footstep on stone sounded just behind them.
The shock, the abject fear in Dekla’s eyes, made Astrid snatch the apple back and drop it in her pocket. She stepped away, crouching down, deep in the shadows, and Dekla turned toward the footsteps, blocking Astrid with her body.
“Mother?”
Astrid saw her palms slide up and down her sides, the jagged black nails of her fingers snagging and pulling the wool. When there was no answer, no further sound of footsteps, she bunched the fabric up in fists. Squeezed until her knuckles were white through the sage green of her skin.
“Mother?”
At last the footsteps moved again, and the shadows around Astrid deepened as something big blocked off even more of the dawn light coming from the thin slits of the windows facing the courtyard.
“Who were you talking to?”
“No one.”
Dekla had been expecting the question, Astrid could tell by her smooth response. She’d recovered well from her shock at her mother’s spying presence.
“You said something.” The voice was menacing, and Astrid was suddenly aware of the strength of her opponent. This troll had captured Bjorn and enchanted him. She must never forget how powerful she was.
“Just talking to myself.”
The smack of flesh against flesh, the crack of a hand across a cheek, made Astrid bite back a cry. She stuffed her fingers in her mouth and stared up from the dark corner where she crouched. She’d rather know if a blow was coming her way than be taken by surprise. She always had done. It had made her father hit her harder. To him, her looking him in the eyes was a challenge.
“That’s for all the sulking you’ve been doing,” Norga said, her voice icy. “Going out for long walks, skulking in passageways talking to yourself. I’m making you the Mountain Princess. I’m putting you over the yggren, over the sprites. And what thanks do I get for it?”
Dekla said nothing, as if she knew no response would be the right one. Any a
nswer would earn her another blow.
Astrid watched Dekla’s nervous fingers, and remembered her own twitches with her father.
This scene had been played out many times between mother and daughter.
Had Dekla been happy when her mother was with Bjorn’s father, playing princess? She’d been abandoned for a more beautiful life, even though it was all a pretense.
Dekla was sobbing quietly, holding her cheek with both hands. She did not even glance Astrid’s way.
“Stop sniveling. Not here.”
Dekla moved a little, and at last, Astrid could see Norga. She looked an older version of her daughter, but her face was harder. Crueler. She was bigger by at least a head. Double Astrid’s height.
She pointed at Bjorn’s door and lowered her voice. “Get some backbone. You’ll need it to control the golden boy.” She half-raised her hand, as if to strike out again, but changed her mind, and instead lashed out with her foot at Astrid.
Her clog clipped Astrid’s hip and pain exploded in her side. Astrid could not help the whimper that escaped her gritted teeth. When had Norga noticed her?
“Get to work.” Norga carried on along the passage, and panting with nausea, Astrid heard her thunder down the stairs. She leant back against the wall, trying to banish the stars before her eyes.
The chill stone on her neck steadied her, but there was something wrong with the silence.
She looked up, and found Dekla staring down at her, her eyes gleaming at Astrid’s pain. Her pride assuaged by her mother’s kick.
The witness to her own humiliation, humiliated.
“Get up.” Dekla did not offer a hand.
Slowly, using the wall to her back to help her, Astrid pushed herself to her feet.
Again, Dekla extended her hand, but this time, Astrid did not need to force herself to pull out the apple. She knew what she faced, now. What Bjorn faced.
She put the apple in Dekla’s hand, and limped out into the world again.
* * *
Bjorn heard a door slam, voices, and he jerked up from bed.
Astrid?
His head was fuzzy, as if he were sickening, but he was sure he’d heard the impossible.
Blank walls stared back at him.
Perhaps he was going sick and mad. Perhaps Norga’s spell to strip him of his power within her castle walls was having a deeper, more insidious effect than merely rendering him a watered-down version of his former self.
He swung his feet down and grimaced when he saw a pulpy mess of spider spread across the stone floor. One of his hideous visitors, squashed to a paste.
He frowned.
He’d hit more than one with his boot, and he knew from experience they were robust. This one looked as if it had been ground down.
And he hadn’t done it.
Had Dekla come in while he slept?
The thought gave him an uncomfortable tingle down his spine. He wouldn’t put it past her. But to take the time to kill a spider while she was here? That didn’t ring true.
She barely noticed the things.
He frowned again. Toed the mess.
Was he so desperate, he was trying to find hope in a pulverized spider? Hope that Astrid had achieved the impossible and somehow found a way to this pit. Found a way past the guards and through the labyrinth of Norga’s castle to his room.
And what? Sat beside him while he slept and did not wake him? Vanished before he did?
He laughed at himself, even as his heart ripped in two.
Could Norga have brought him any lower?
* * *
“So the daughter is as slippery as the mother.” North spoke without looking at her, his eyes closed, stretched across his rock. Still barely there.
Astrid swallowed her self-pity—a bitter pill—and rubbed her hip. “She’s not as violent, but she enjoys watching her mother hurt others.” North half-opened an eye at that, and his lips thinned as she gave the swollen bruise one last rub. “I know where he is now. I know there is no window we can rescue him from. I know Dekla . . .” What did she know about Dekla? That the troll princess was possessive. That she longed to be admired as well as feared.
That when she looked at Astrid, her fingers twitched with their desire to claw her face, grind her head-first into the dirt.
She threw a stone into a sea as restless as herself. “He doesn’t even know I was there.”
North said nothing, and the gulls cried for her as they dived from the cliffs into the murky waves.
Astrid threw another stone, squinted at the horizon, trying to work out the time.
“It was around this time yesterday Dekla went for her walk.”
“You will arrange another meeting?” North spoke as if he did not care, but it seemed to her his voice was sharper, the air slightly colder.
“Of course.”
“What will you exchange this time?”
Astrid pulled the sack from its hiding place under North’s rock and brought out the comb and the flute. Touched each lightly with a fingertip.
“The comb.”
It was the one she least wanted to part with. The most beautiful.
Dekla would not be able to resist it.
“She’ll trick you again.” North’s voice was barely a sigh in the still, bitter air.
“She’ll think she is, anyway.” She clenched her fist around the comb, winced when its teeth dug into her palm. “I’ll take some charcoal I found on the beach and write Bjorn a message on his wall. And I will leave him something he knows could only come from me.”
“What is that?” North lifted up from the rock for the first time in over a day, a cloudy eyebrow raised a notch.
Astrid dropped the comb into her pocket and took the carved bear from the sack. She lifted it up to show him, rubbed it against the bodice of her thread-bare blue dress to make it gleam.
North grunted, lay back down, and Astrid slid the sack with its one lonely treasure and what remained of the bread and cheese from Dame Elv under his rock. She slipped the bear and a crumbling piece of charcoal in to join the comb in her pocket.
“I think the wedding is on Friday. After the raising of the gate of honor, that’s traditional. It’s what makes sense.”
“And today is Wednesday.”
“Yes.” The things that could go wrong, the danger she was in, went unspoken between them. She had two nights left to rescue Bjorn and she would do what she needed to do.
The time she had was more than she’d expected. She’d feared the worst, and she was grateful to have time in hand.
“Wish me luck,” she called to North, but he didn’t answer as she set off along the cliff bottom, weighed down by the sky and her troubles.
When she reached the deep gorge where the river fell in a sheer curtain into the sea, she climbed up beside it and started inland, following the twisting ribbon of water to the meadow where she’d met with Dekla the day before.
Waiting had never agreed with her, and while she sat and pretended not to watch for the troll princess, she realized her edginess had everything to do with the stillness.
There was no wind stirring here.
There had never been a time when she had not had the wind dancing around her when she went outside.
It was the most evil thing about this place. The dark sky and darker sea, the way everything loomed, sharp and threatening, were nothing to the wind-forsaken atmosphere.
Astrid lifted her hands behind her head and worked the knot of the cord fastening her braid.
It came free and she burrowed her fingers deep, massaging her scalp. She shivered with the pleasure of unbound hair.
Then she took the comb and began to work it through her tangles, the only chance she’d have to use her gift. She bent her head forward and her hair fell in a curtain of gold silk, a few shades lighter than the comb itself.
A shadow fell over her, and Astrid forced herself not to check her movement. She looked up easily.
“Princess.” She nodded
as if they were casual acquaintances.
The princess’s eyes were blank, but Astrid had seen the longing to rip Astrid’s hair out with her black-nailed fingers before she’d mastered her jealousy.
“I want it.” She breathed the words out on a possessive sigh.
It was on the tip of Astrid’s tongue to tell her owning the comb would never make Dekla more like her. Never make Bjorn love her. But she held her tongue.
And most likely, Dekla did not want Bjorn’s love, only his admiration and obedience. And she would never have that.
“I cannot trust you,” she said instead. “The prince slept through my visit last time.” She went back to brushing her hair.
Dekla hissed, and leant over her, her fingers twitching with her desire to yank her hair.
“It was nothing to do with me, that he slept.” Her eyes gleamed, vicious in their lies.
Astrid kept her expression neutral. She needed to be a believable dupe. Not too stupid or Dekla may find her suspicious. But not too bright, either. She had to get into Bjorn’s room tonight and tomorrow night to have any chance of saving him.
“Well?” A hint of fear spiked Dekla’s tone.
“I don’t know.” Astrid tugged the comb through her hair one last time and laid it in her lap, then lifted her arms back to braid it, as if she had all the time in the world.
Dekla’s gaze burned her thighs as she focused on the comb.
“Decide.” The word was sharp with panic.
“It is a lot to risk for another night of him snoring through.” Astrid widened her eyes as she looked up at Dekla. Uncertain naivety.
Dekla lifted a fist to her heart and knocked it once. “I will see he gets a hearty meal for lunch and dinner. He will be strong as an ox for you.”
Warmth crept up Astrid’s cheeks at the troll’s words, offering her her lover like a whore. Dekla would think it maidenly blushes.
“What if he sleeps again?”
Dekla shrugged. “Wake him up.”
“Same time as before?” Astrid’s voice quavered. Only she knew it was anger and not a virgin’s uncertainty.
“The same time.”
Dekla almost gave herself away, the glee leaking from the corners of her mouth.
Mistress of the Wind Page 17