She tried to claw together a semblance of control. “I have to,” she confessed. Abruptly she felt like crying, because the knowledge was sitting right there in the front of her conscience, like a neon light. She still loved him. She still wanted him, more than ever. Her body was tingling with need, making her want to press against him, to kiss him. She wanted to feel his heavy body against hers. Her memories of the one time he had held her like that were tattered remnants now, and she ached to feel that good, hard pressure again.
Instead, she closed her eyes and turned her head away.
“Charlee,” he said, more softly this time, making her open her eyes. A pair of Amica hurried along the corridor, sidling past them. Asher turned to give them room, and it brought him around so that he was facing her squarely. His blue eyes met hers. “What’s wrong?” he asked, his voice even lower so the Amica wouldn’t hear.
She could barely speak for the constriction in her throat. “Gods, Asher, I was so wrong and you were right. Right about everything.”
His gaze seemed to be boring into her.
She bit her lip. “You haven’t been taking care of yourself, have you?” she asked. “I can see it in your face.”
His gaze skittered away from her face. “Don’t,” he said softly.
“I thought I’d got over you,” she said. “I thought I was happy. Well, happy enough. But I was wrong.”
“Don’t do this,” he ground out.
“I love you,” Charlee whispered.
He hung his head. “Ah, guds, Charlee,” he breathed and lifted his head to look at her once more. His hand came up and for a breathless, dizzy moment she thought he would touch her, perhaps even stroke her cheek. But he instead moved it and pressed the flat of his hand against the wall by her head. “It doesn’t matter,” he said, his tone bleak. “You’re Amica now.”
She nodded. Hot wretchedness pulled at her, making her body ache. There was nothing she could do to deny it. She was Amica, and Eira would never let them be together. The Regin was far more ambitious than either of them.
The swing door slammed open again, this time bouncing off the wall and slamming right back against it again as someone fumbled against it. The light from the hall was blocked by a big barrel shape.
Arsenios stepped through the doorway and stood swaying blearily just inside the door, which slowly swung shut again behind him. He blinked at them. Arsenios was the rotund Einherjar, the first to ever flirt with Charlee. She had got to know him as an uneducated, but well-intentioned and very lonely Einherjar. The Amica would have been developed for Einherjar just like him, until their use as political tools had been discovered. He had flirted with little hope with Charlee since she had met him, passing a few minutes each time with pleasant compliments and hopeful innuendo.
Now he put his hands on his chubby hips. “Is he bothering you, Charlee?”
Asher made an annoyed sound and straightened up. “Your admirers await you,” he said dryly. “You should go and do your job.”
“No, Asher, please….”
He cupped her cheek with his hand, and for one electrifying moment his gaze met hers. His touch was hot and she shivered.
Then his hand was removed. Asher turned and strode toward Arsenios. “Go get ‘em, my Greek friend,” he said and patted Arsenios on the shoulder.
Charlee forced her sluggish, shell-shocked mind into moving. Her body, too. She almost stumbled along the corridor, toward Arsenios. “Arsenios, this is a bad time,” she said. “I have to serve mead.”
He moved quickly, his arm snaking around her waist and pulling her up against him. The smell of hot mead fanned her face. His arm had all the strength of a vice and she remembered that as an Einherjar, he would have been selected from among the fallen warriors on the battlefield for his fighting prowess, strength and courage. She couldn’t afford to underestimate him, no matter how lonely or pathetic he seemed to be.
“He said I should—” He burped. “—go for it,” he finished. “You’re such a pretty thing.”
“Arsenios, you really have to let me go,” Charlee told him as firmly as she could manage, wriggling inside the iron band of his arm.
“No, I don’t. Just a kiss. Just one.” He leaned over her, trying to kiss her and Charlee pulled her head out of the way, her neck straining.
At the same time, he jammed his other hand between her thighs. His fingers scrabbled, trying to push through the fabric of her dress, to reach deeper between her legs. The hem of her dress was climbing swiftly up her legs as he sought her flesh.
Charlee shrieked in shock and for a moment, she froze. Then instinct took over. She head-butted him, aiming the top of her forehead not for his head, but for his nose. She connected squarely, and she heard and felt the crack of bones. His big nose flattened itself against her flesh, sliding greasily.
Arsenios squealed. His arm dropped from around her waist.
She reached down for the wrist belonging to the hand between her clamped thighs. The calm, directing tones of dozens of trainers and instructors over the last few years blended in her mind into a single thread of thought. One always worked against a joint for maximum disabling power. So she yanked his hand from between her legs, lifted it, and brought her right arm swinging in a hard arc, her fingers lifted up, and drove the heel of her hand right up against the side of his elbow.
She heard the crack and felt his arm go limp, then she staggered away, trying to yank the dress back down, as Arsenios bent over almost double, his arm hanging uselessly, and his other hand clamped across his nose and mouth. He was making muffled squealing noises.
“What the devil is going on in here?” came a new voice.
Charlee tried to untuck the hems that were caught up between her knees, but she was shaking too much.
A hand on her shoulder turned her gently but firmly around. “Here, they’re hooked up.” Hands tugged on the panels and the dress dropped down to the ground again.
Charlee looked over at Arsenios. He was breathing heavily, even closer to crumpling to the floor than before. Then she looked up. Roar stood looking from her to Arsenios. Roar, Asher’s brother. Had he come looking for him?
Then Charlee coupled up more facts, her mind starting to sluggishly turn. Roar was an earl. He had caught her almost red-handed, physically attacking an Einherjar, an act that came with dire consequences.
She brought a shaking hand up to her mouth. “Oh Hell’s bells, what have I done?” she breathed, looking at Arsenios.
Roar looked at her sharply. Then he moved quickly and grabbed her arm. “Come with me. Quickly now.” He said it kindly enough, but his voice was low and firm, demanding no protest.
She let him pull her out of the service corridor, around Arsenios and into the light in the hall, which seemed so much brighter than when she had been in the hall last, only a few short minutes ago.
Shock was making her thoughts buzz high and loud. Nothing registered. Instead, over and over again, she kept playing the moment when he had tried to kiss her. The shock of his hand against the junction of her thighs.
Roar caught an Amica’s elbow in his hand and tugged her around. It was Gan-shu, the tiny pixie from China. “Quickly and quietly,” Roar told her. “Find an earl. Find Georges if you can. Tell him there’s been an incident I witnessed. One of the Einherjar assaulted an Amica, Charlee. He’s to keep him in a lonely room until I get back. Then find a Valkyrie. Anyone will do. Tell her that Arsenios is in the service corridor and needs medical help. Finally, find Eira. Tell her all this and that I’m taking Charlee somewhere quiet to recover. Do you understand all that?”
Gan-shu nodded, a sharp movement. “I have it.” Her gaze flickered over Charlee, then she hurried away through the crowd, her tiny hips swaying despite their diminutive size.
Roar walked Charlee through the hall, holding her elbow all the way. Unlike when Charlee tried to move through the throng, people made way for Roar. He had the shoulders and the height that made it hard to miss him as he approached. People just
naturally melted back out of the way for him.
“Where are we going?” Charlee asked, and was surprised at the breathless and weak sound of her own voice.
“The closest quiet place I can think of,” Roar told her.
They moved through the big doors, out into the round hall, and he picked up his pace. Out here, there were people still moving across the hall in day wear and street clothes, heading for portals on the other side of the hall from the ones they had just stepped through. Roar was drawing attention in his formal tuxedo, his hand still firmly around her arm.
He was heading for the portal that jumped to New York and she realized, her mind taking seconds to work it out, that stepping through a portal would instantly bring them to somewhere much more quiet and discreet than Tryvannshøyden. Of course it was closer than anywhere outside the longhouse.
Roar pulled her through the portal, not breaking the pace of his step for a second. She felt/saw the wash of intense, dead blackness, then was stepping out the other side. The hall she had only caught a glimpse of four years ago was empty of people, silent and sparsely lit.
Roar let her arm go and seemed to relax. He turned to face her. “Well, that has got you out of the lion’s den for a moment or two.” He studied her, and Charlee realized that the principal similarity between him and Asher was their eyes, which were the same shape and had the same direct stare. But Roar’s were a paler blue than Asher’s. Right now, Charlee couldn’t decide which of them was the taller and didn’t care.
“Thank you for your help, earl,” she told him. “I can sit at one of the tables up there. It’s out of the way—”
“Do you like scotch?”
“I’ve never tried it.”
“I don’t think you should be alone, not for a while. My apartment is just off the hall here, and there is a scotch bottle in the cupboard that needs finishing. A glass, to warm you, then I will head back to Oslo to clean up this mess.”
It was a reminder that she had attacked an Einherjar. How could she have been so stupid?
“Hey,” Roar said gently. “Stop worrying. This will all work out.”
Charlee took a deep breath. “I’ll try.”
“Come and have that drink.” He turned and walked the length of the hall, Charlee following him. His stride was just like Asher’s.
* * * * *
Charlee roused from sleep, to realize that someone was shaking her shoulder. She swam up from the depths of the most profoundly solid sleep she had ever experienced, trying to put together where she was. For a while, she thought it was the big hall and that Eira was waking her, which she had never done.
“Charlee, wake up.” It was a male voice. It seemed like a voice she knew, but at the same time, it wasn’t familiar at all.
Then she remembered. Fitting it together, she sat up, trying to come to full alertness as quickly as possible.
Roar was sitting on the edge of the bed, his tuxedo jacket unbuttoned, the tie hanging loose on either side of his neck. A thick lock of his dark blond hair was falling over his eyes, shadowing them.
“You’re back,” she said, then looked down at the bed. “I hope you don’t mind. The sofa was full.” The sofa was half-covered in CD cases, loose silvery CDs and old vinyl records. She hadn’t been courageous enough to move them, in case she messed up an order she didn’t understand or, heaven help her, she scratched one of them.
“I fall asleep on the sofa most nights. I think the bed can use the exercise,” Roar told her.
“Did they…are they mad at me?” Charlee asked.
Roar grinned. The quick grin was like Asher’s, but his chin was broader, the jaw not as sharply defined. “Eira was as pissed as a bee in a bottle.”
“Oh.” She plucked at the bedcover she sat on.
“At Arsenios, not you,” Roar clarified. “She wanted to fillet him for messing with one of her ladies. I talked her down.”
Relief touched her. “And Stefan? The Council? Am I to face them?”
Roar looked puzzled. “Why would you?”
It was Charlee’s turn to be puzzled. “Because I hurt Arsenios. I attacked him.”
Roar nodded. “I saw his elbow before they started working on it. It looks to me like you’ve had some training with Tiny Woods.”
Charlee nodded, her surprise increasing. “I have.” Tiny Woods was one of Howard’s senior trainers, and he had been very critical of her fighting abilities when he had first started her on his basic program. Toward the end of her six weeks with him, he had smiled in approval. Once.
Roar threaded his fingers together and wrapped them around one knee. “No offense, Charlee, but I walked in and saw your skirt hiked up around your hips and you about to pass out. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what happened, which is just as well, because I’m not one. Yes, it’s frowned upon for the Amica to attack an Einherjar. We don’t like anyone assaulting us, when it comes right down to it. There’s so few of us to start with. But that doesn’t mean a justified attack won’t be given due consideration.”
She realized she was still plucking at the bedcover and made herself stop.
“Arsenios was more worried, once he had sobered up, about whether you would ever talk to him again. I don’t think he really processed much beyond that point. The rest of us are more concerned about how a slip of a girl bested an Einherjar. I just won the bet, by the way.”
“Tiny Woods?” she asked. A smile tugged at her mouth.
“Tiny Woods,” he confirmed, “and a woman that kept her head.” He stood up. “Eira knows you’re here. I’ll take you back to Oslo as soon as you’re ready, but I suggest you wait until it is late morning over there, and the effects of the mead have dissipated.”
“I ruined your evening,” Charlee said.
“It’s the same evening I have every fifth year. You didn’t ruin it at all.” He smiled. “It was a nice change, actually. I haven’t rescued a damsel in distress for a very long time.”
Charlee could feel herself blushing. “I really made a mess of things. But I just reacted at the time.”
“And training did the rest.” He slipped the tie from around his neck and opened the top button of the shirt. “It’s nearly dinner time here in New York. I haven’t eaten since lunch, and I know how hard Eira works you ladies. Would you like a very late supper, Charlee?”
Her stomach growled and he grinned. “I’ll take that as a yes. I’ll order a pizza. Come out and sit at the table. I’ll make coffee. I’m in need of it.”
In the end, Charlee made coffee and dinner. It began with her washing out coffee cups and then helping him grind the beans, and then he happily sat at the counter at her suggestion, while she took over the coffee-making. Her search for cream in the fridge let her discover the food already there. She glanced at the contents. “There’s ground beef here, and onions and more. I could make karbonader, if you would prefer that to pizza?”
Roar looked hopeful. “Really? That would be….” He shook his head wonderingly. “I haven’t had meatballs for the longest time.”
So Charlee cooked the simple meatball and onion gravy sauce dish she had learned in Ylva’s kitchen, while Roar sat and watched. She sipped her coffee as she moved about the kitchen, and refilled his. There were some vegetables in the crisper, including a lettuce, that were not completely beyond use, so she made a very simple salad and added it to the plates beside the karbonader and put one in front of Roar.
He sat up, looking at it. “It smells delicious.”
“Wait until you try it,” she warned him. “I’m better at calculus than I am at cooking.” She sat on the other barstool and picked up her fork.
Roar had already speared and eaten his first meatball. He considered for a moment as he chewed, then swallowed and nodded. “If your calculus is better than your cooking, then the world of science needs to brace itself.”
She laughed. “Thank you.”
“I’m beginning to understand what they mean about the charm and danger of r
edheads.”
“They do? I mean, people don’t like redheads?”
“It’s a history thing,” he said apologetically. “There are a lot of redheads in Norway, more than any other country except Scotland. There were songs and stories about them. A redheaded woman was considered to be both a blessing and a curse, and they warn about her hot temper and her sexual drive. So Norse men are both drawn to and wary of redheads.” He grinned. “They are if they heed the warnings from the past.”
“The Kine take prophecies very seriously,” Charlee pointed out.
“They do,” he agreed.
“Do I frighten you, then?”
Roar gave her an easy smile. “I’ll let you know.”
She realized that he was looking at her from the corner of his eye. Not at her eyes, but slightly lower down. Then he looked away.
“It’s alright,” she told him. “You can look at it. It’s only a scar.”
“Mmm. I’ve seen lots of them, but never on a woman’s face before. I’m sorry. I wasn’t staring because it’s a scar. I’m staring because it’s clearly a knife wound.”
Charlee nodded. “Do you know the story of how I got it?”
“Yes.” He gave a small grimace. “Asher was forced to tell the Council about you and your scar, many years ago. The facts have stayed with them, though. It isn’t general knowledge. But that wasn’t why I was looking, either. I was thinking that every Einherjar that meets you must look at your face, catalogue the scar as a knife scar and wonder what sort of an adventurous, interesting life you led before you joined the Amica.”
“An interesting life is considered a curse,” she pointed out.
“Not to the Einherjar. We thrive upon interesting. It helps pass the time, which we have an abundance of.”
“Life has certainly been peaceful since I started working in the Second Hall,” Charlee agreed.
“Despite fending off drooling Einherjar with your razor-sharp mind?” Roar asked.
“Is that what I do?” she asked curiously.
“You’re keeping me on my toes.” He pushed his plate away and patted his stomach. “I think I can safely say that is the best meal I have had in months.”
The Branded Rose Prophecy Page 44