by Bec McMaster
"You still want me," he said breathlessly.
Somehow Árdís managed to straighten, pushing herself away from the wall and touching her kiss-stung lips. Somehow her shaky knees didn't betray her. "One last kiss, for old times’ sake."
His expression closed over, fury flaring his nostrils. "Like hell." He took a step toward her. "I know you want me. This isn't over, Árdís. You can deny me all you want, but there's still something between us. And we both know it."
"That was a kiss goodbye!"
She darted beneath his outreached arm, and tugged the window up. "You promised."
Haakon stared at her. Footsteps hammered on the stairs, keeping time with her racing heartbeat. Her head turned in that direction, and then she looked back at him, desperation searing through her. "Please."
Another long, drawn-out moment.
She didn't think he was going to go.
"I promised," he said softly, grabbing his sword belt off the bed and stepping one leg through the window. "And at least one of us knows what that word means."
Not forgiven. Never forgiven. It was a stab to the heart, but she simply shoved him through, flinching as voices broke out in the hallway outside the door.
"Search the rooms," a hard voice of command snapped.
Sirius.
Haakon paused there. His hand slid through her hair, and then she was kissing him once more, unable to resist, even as her heart broke into a thousand more pieces.
Haakon let her go, his fingers snagging in her hair. He teased the ends of one small strand of it between thumb and forefinger, and then slowly looked up.
"If you can forget me," he whispered, "then there is nothing more between us. I won't wait for you, Árdís. Not this time. I gave you everything, and you left me behind. You broke me, and you never once looked back."
Sirius would find her at any moment... but her hand captured his, her throat suddenly dry. "What are you saying?"
"My ship leaves in three days. I'm sailing home. Forever. Unless you give me a reason to stay."
Hope crested and broke within her chest. None of her reasons had changed. She loved him, and the only way to save his life was to make sure he never walked back into hers. She tried to memorize his face, knowing it would haunt her dreams for the rest of her life.
"There is no reason," she forced herself to say. "I cannot give you what you want. Only your freedom. We are done here. I'm sorry I didn't give you a chance to say goodbye. I'm sorry I dragged you through all these years. I should have released you properly."
His thumb stroked the fleshy pad of her palm. "Freedom? How am I ever free of you?"
"You could remarry. The name I gave you was false. The marriage isn't legally binding."
"Unlike others, when I give my word, I mean it." He gave her an odd look. "It seems your understanding of the word—and its customs—has improved over the years."
Árdís bit her lip. "Go. Go and... have children. Create a life for yourself and grow old."
His nostrils flared. "You don't mean that."
"I do. Find someone else...." To marry. The words caught on her tongue and stuck there, for it wasn't the truth of her heart and her dreki soul knew it. "Be happy," she said instead, for she could mean those words.
He stared into her eyes, and she thought he was going to argue further. A fist hammered on the door behind her. Árdís flinched.
"Three days," he said softly. "If you're not there by dawn when we sail, then I'll forget you. I swear I will."
And then Haakon vanished through the window, turning to stride along the gable.
Just as the door burst open behind her.
4
You have the storm in your veins, and fire in your heart. You are a princess of the Zini court. You can face her.
Árdís took a deep breath, and slammed both hands flat against the golden doors leading from her private chambers into the royal wing, pushing them open. She'd dallied long enough, and her mother wouldn't be pleased to find her summons gone unanswered, but the events in Reykjavik had raised conflict in her heart.
She felt restless. Cagey.
A violent spirit gowned in gold silk.
It didn't help that the queen had called an audience before the entire court, and nobody seemed to know what it was about.
The rough-edged corridor Árdís stalked along looked like it had been carved straight out of basalt. The floor gleamed like a mirror, polished by the Chaos magic that had created the court. Located in the heart of the volcano Hekla, the court was a world outside of the natural one, a bubble in time and space created by Chaos magic, where the dreki of the Zini clan congregated.
Most of them had their own volcanoes and territories in the country. Her own was a small mountain in the south, where heat leaked from fumaroles, and she could lounge and listen to the hypnotic groan of the earth. But the court was where the clan gathered, and where those who had no territories of their own resided. It was enormous, a space that shouldn't have fit within the volcano—and didn't. Chaos bubbles existed in a side world of their own.
But despite the size, it was tradition that dreki would walk these halls in mortal form, and Árdís breathed a sigh of relief, for she didn't know how she'd explain the episode with the bracelet.
It had been all she could do to talk Sirius into allowing her to use the portal the servants used to travel back to Hekla, and even then his blue eyes had narrowed with suspicion.
Árdís strode toward the enormous throne room in the heart of the court, her golden skirts twitching about her ankles. I'll forget you. I swear I will. The words hammered in time to the sound of her racing heart.
Stop it, she told herself. It's over. It's done.
But the flicker of a rebellious flame smoldered in her heart.
She didn't know why she was so angry. For years she'd felt hollow and empty, but it was only now she realized the extent of it. Some sort of survival instinct must have dulled the edges of her pain. Her world had become a landscape of bleak shadows, one she navigated carefully, locking away her innermost hopes and dreams. And she hadn't even noticed. She'd played by the rules of her mother's court. She'd kept her head down, and tried to remain unnoticed by the more dangerous players at court. A slow, painful stifling, where Árdís became a marionette wielded by her mother's whims.
One glimpse of Haakon, and everything changed. Suddenly the world seemed full of color and life again. Dreams exploded to life in her chest. She could taste his kiss still. Her lips fairly burned with the memory of it.
And her heart ached with rage.
A shadow shifted out the corner of her eye as she reached the doors to the throne room.
A dreki in mortal form pushed away from the wall he'd been leaning against, his hair black, and his clear, almost colorless eyes locked upon her. "Princess."
Árdís stilled. "Roar."
Her illegitimate cousin prowled the court like a rabid dog seeking scraps. Of all her uncle Stellan's sons, Roar scared her the most. Magnus had been cruel, but disinterested in her; Sirius was frightening in his own unique way, but if she were honest, he'd never lifted a hand against her; and Andri, the youngest, was her favorite.
Somehow her brutal uncle had given birth to one son who knew what the words loyalty and honor meant.
Roar was not that one.
"I heard you led my brother quite a chase in Reykjavik." His smirk revealed how much he enjoyed the thought.
Sirius hadn't been quite as pleased. The second Haakon vanished, so had she, slipping through the window after him, and darting over the rooftops toward the docks, desperate to draw her dreki guards as far away from Haakon as possible.
"Sirius needed the exercise," she said, in the most casual tone she could muster. They expected a spoiled princess here, and so she gave them one.
The hallway was empty.
Every dreki in the court would be gathering in the throne room.
But if Roar thought, for one second, that she was helpless….
Árdís smiled, knowing what he saw when he looked at her. A gilded treasure he wasn't allowed to touch. It ate at him, but she could handle him. He wouldn't dare touch her, not with the threat of her mother's wrath looming over her.
Nobody crossed Queen Amadea if they valued their near-immortal lives.
He circled her slowly, taking her measure with insolent eyes. Árdís swallowed down the choke of rage, and turned her head to track him. His skin was as pale as the snow-capped mountains to the west. Thick black hair brushed against his collar. It always looked a little oily, as though he'd raked his fingers through it. Or perhaps that was just him.
"If you were mine," Roar whispered, his breath stirring across the back of her neck as he came around to her side, "I would keep you on a tighter leash."
She glanced sideways, beneath her lashes. "But I'm not yours. Am I?"
"Not yet."
"Not ever."
Roar angled his head and smiled as if he knew a secret she didn't.
Árdís swallowed. "You're going to make me late for my mother's announcement. If she asks, I'll tell her you waylaid me."
Roar clucked his tongue. "We wouldn't want that, would we?"
He knew what it was going to be. Árdís's eyes narrowed. The court had been on edge in the last month, ever since her cousin Andri returned with the news of Magnus's death. Stellan's eldest son had been sent to make a treaty with Rurik, but Rurik had killed him.
Or so they said.
A hand reached out, hovering just above her collarbone. A challenge. He wasn't touching her. He hadn't broken the rules. But she felt that touch as if he had, and he knew it.
"I swear to the gods that if you don't get out of my way...."
Roar's fingertips settled, just lightly, upon her skin.
"Get your hands off her," said a cold voice.
And Árdís sucked in a sharp breath of relief, despite the fact the dreki who appeared was little better.
At least he keeps his hands to himself.
Sirius melted out of the shadows, almost as if he wore a cape of pure darkness.
He towered over the pair of them, his shoulders broad, and his long brown hair tied back with a leather thong. A warrior, dressed from head to toe in strict black. Cool eyes the color of a glacial spring locked on the pair of them, but it was Roar he gave his attention to.
"Of course. Brother." Roar gave a smirk and held his hands up as he backed away. "I know what I'm not allowed to touch."
Sirius paused but an inch from his bastard brother. "And yet, you keep taking risks. Árdís is mine. See you remember that."
"For now." Another faint, mocking smile. Roar took a step back. "Let us see if you can keep her. She has a frightening tendency to bolt when least expected." Sirius watched Roar stalk away, and the cold glitter of his eyes indicated a storm brewing between the pair of them. The very air seemed to chill with his temper, until it burned her lungs. Roar slipped through the doors into the throne room, and Sirius finally looked down at her.
"Sirius," she murmured, tipping her chin up. "As bleak and grim as usual. Killed anyone today?"
"Árdís," he replied, glancing around as he offered her his arm. "As frustratingly stubborn and painful as usual. And no, not yet, though the day's still young."
Neither of them looked in the direction Roar had vanished.
She could keep up this pretense.
But it seemed he was not going to allow her to do so.
"You should be careful not to be alone at the moment," he said, turning his attention toward her. "The bastard's starting to show his teeth."
"Perhaps he'd like to meet my claws?"
Sirius stared down at her. For a second she thought he was going to make some flippant remark. But his lips thinned. "Don't underestimate him. He's grown bold since Magnus died. He's always hungered for power and for father's attention, and without Magnus at my side, Roar sees a chance to take what he wants. And he wants you."
She'd spent most of the year avoiding Sirius. When they met, they traded careless barbs, but he didn't offer her warnings. This wasn't how the game was played. "You're the Blackfrost." Half of the court feared him. The other half dared not look his way. "Surely you—of all dreki—are not frightened of Roar?"
He'd never challenged his brother, but sometimes Árdís had seen even Magnus look at him in a speculative way.
She could rank every single dreki within the court on a scale of how dangerous they were. Except for Sirius. He didn't fight challenges. He didn't make idle threats. He bowed to his father's will. But the other males in the clan didn't challenge him either, and she'd seen unease in their eyes as they skirted around him.
That was almost an un-dreki-like action.
To be dreki meant one was arrogant to the bone. To be a male dreki only emphasized such a trait.
Sirius is a storm of ice and rage, she'd heard the servants whisper. They say he single-handedly destroyed the German clans when they flew north to take what was ours. He turned their own storm against him. Ripped them from the skies.
He'd earned the title of the Blackfrost years before she'd been birthed into this world.
"Frightened?" he mocked. "No. But wary. Roar knows he can't face me. Not one-on-one. If he makes a tilt at me, I know I won't see it coming. You should always watch an ambitious coward with both eyes, Árdís."
"Is that why you turned all snarly and overprotective?"
Hard eyes narrowed. "We're to be mated. Isn't that how I'm supposed to react?"
Ten years ago he'd tried to claim her, before she fled the court and fell into her husband's hands. It had been a power play, she suspected, for he'd never looked at her the way some of the other dreki did.
And he'd shown little interest in her since.
She snorted, resting her hand lightly on his arm as he turned them toward the throne room. "For a dreki male who's supposed to be mating with me, one could be forgiven for thinking otherwise. Or are the rumors true? They say you keep a cold bed."
Thick lashes obscured his eyes. "One could say the same for you."
Yes, but I have a reason. Her hand went to the ring around her throat. It was dangerous to wear it here, but some last hint of defiance within her had seen her slip the chain over her head before she left her rooms.
"And the entire court's been expecting you to set a date for the ceremony."
"The entire court?" he mused. "Or you?"
They paused before the enormous gold doors. Through them she could make out the hush of muted voices. Over a hundred dreki waited, her mother chief among them.
Anticipation stole her breath. She didn't know why she was so nervous. "If we both said we didn't wish to mate, then my mother might—"
"Find an alternative," he said softly. "Would you prefer Roar?"
She shook her head violently. "No. I'd prefer no one. I'll rescind my position before the court. If I step down as my mother's heir, then she'll have no choice but to name you. We wouldn't have to—"
"Árdís."
"We...." She saw his expression, and the words—and the hope within her breast—trailed off.
"Your mother's waiting," he said, "and she's not very happy about it. Something about insisting I should have made you fly back to Hekla."
"I wanted to take the portal," she replied, her teeth bared in what she hoped was a smile. The bracelet remained upon her wrist, despite her best efforts. "I had something to see to in the servants’ quarters."
He shrugged. "Your head. But I do not think this the time to broach the subject of calling off our arrangement."
He isn't saying no.
They could discuss this another time.
Árdís took a deep breath. "Let us go greet Mother then, and find out what this is all about."
"You're late," the queen whispered the words to her on a thought-thread as Árdís paused before the dais. "Sirius claimed he had to fetch you from the human town."
Hundreds of whispers hushed as Árdís pasted
a smile upon her face and knelt before the queen. At least the manacle didn't restrict her psychic abilities. "I wasn't aware you were going to insist upon an audience. There was a necklace I wanted."
Amadea reclined upon her golden throne, her hands curved over the ends of it. Golden waves tumbled down her back, and her face was as smooth and unmarked as Árdís's own. They could have been sisters. Perhaps even twins.
But the glittering green of her mother's eyes held a cruelty she could never match.
"Stellan," the queen murmured, turning her head toward her younger brother.
Árdís lifted her eyes as her uncle strode forward. Wearing the same unadorned black as his son, Stellan was the power behind the throne. With Amadea's magic, and his might, there was no hope in overthrowing them. As he stopped in the center of the dais, the crowd fell silent.
Árdís hastily moved to the right side of the queen.
"Bring forth the prisoner," Stellan boomed.
The line of warriors shifted, and a pair of them dragged someone between them, his knees scrabbling on the floor.
This was the part of court life she hated. Árdís steeled herself. Ever since her father—the rightful king—had been murdered, the court had begun to spiral into dark depths. Her mother and uncle were members of the Zilittu clan from Norway, and ruled not with her father's sense of law and fairness, but with the crushing might of fear.
Heads turned. People strained to see who it was. A woman cried out, clapping a hand to her mouth. "No!"
Then the two warriors—Balder and Ylve—threw a dreki down before the dais.
No, not a dreki. A drekling. Árdís felt ill. Children could be born between dreki and humans, and though the child might bear some of its dreki parent’s powers, the further the bloodline bred, the weaker the blood became. It had become tradition for mortal mothers to make the treacherous trek up the slopes of Hekla and leave their unnatural children upon the doorstep to the court, a tradition started by her father who welcomed all. The court was filled with dreklings—those with dreki blood who were unable to shift forms and soar through the skies. The queen saw some use for them, but Stellan did not.