The chills that danced across the surface of his skin were unlike any he’d ever felt before. His heart felt like it skipped a beat inside his chest, and it was all he could do to keep from gasping.
“So, you see, I was waiting for you the night you came to Dunvarak with the Light of Madra. The moment I saw you, I knew it was you Yovenna spoke of. I watched you that night,” she went on. “I watched you watching me. Even when you thought I wasn’t looking, I watched. I saw the way you were with your brother, how you looked after him and his mate, and I knew you spent your whole life looking after others.” Turning her eyes to meet with his, her face grew serious, her mouth tight with certainty as she said, “I think now it is time you had someone to look after you, Vilnjar.”
She reached her hand out and laid it over his, fingers curling around fingers just before she squeezed. Her touch sent strange tingles through his whole body, tightening and tensing him from the inside out. He didn’t know what to say, and didn’t realize until she turned a coy look over her shoulder he was supposed to get up and follow when she rose and started toward the tent he’d set up several feet away from the fire’s edge. She bent and ducked between the flaps, disappearing inside while he just stared after her feeling insecure and uncertain about whether following was the right thing to do.
He’d never been one to rashly rush into any situation, unlike his brother who’d probably bedded at least half the young women in Dunvarak without even asking their names. Without the possibility of a mate bond, Vilnjar preferred to take his time, making sure he at least felt a fond connection to a woman before inviting her into his bed. In his lifetime, there were only three, and it took him months and months with each one of them to work up the courage to finally go through with it.
He’d only known Frigga a week, and yet it felt like so much longer.
“Don’t just sit there.” The hard leather toe of a boot nudged into the small of his back, and when he turned to look over his shoulder he saw Logren regarding him with knowing eyes.
The other man didn’t need to say another word; Vilnjar understood his meaning. A woman like Frigga waited for no man, but the simple fact that everyone would know where he’d gone if he got up was enough to make his face feel like it was on fire.
Rising slowly, his legs felt heavy. When he bent to pick up their bowls, Logren cleared his throat. Furrowing his brow as Vilnjar looked back at him, he made a desperate face that brought an incorrigible grin to the other man’s lips. With a defeated sigh, he walked toward the tent like a man who’d been sentenced to death, earning a boisterous chuckle from Logren that made him feel even more ridiculous.
He hesitated at the opening, reaching up with an unsteady hand to pull the flap away and duck inside.
“Frigga,” he started, but she reached for him before he’d even stepped through the opening and tugged him into the darkness. Her warm body was instantly flush with his, and before he could utter another syllable her mouth was on his, soft lips parting, her dominating tongue pushing between his teeth.
She was already stripping the fur cloak from his shoulder, deft fingers working the brooch at the neck, hands shoving it away before she began fumbling with the ties of his shirt. Even though the look in her eye told him exactly what awaited him inside the tent, she still caught him by surprise, her aggressive kisses igniting an insatiable longing for more than just her lips.
Every time their skin touched, he felt their hearts beating as one, escalating to a dangerous pace until he swore it felt like it might explode inside his chest.
Gently gripping her shoulders in his hands, he held her against him, unable to stop himself from kissing her even when she started to pull away to finish taking off his shirt. He didn’t feel the cold air when she withdrew, only the absence of her heat. Tugging the layers of soft-spun fabric away from his skin and tossing his shirt somewhere behind her, she untucked her own shirt and lifted it away from her body. In the dim orange glow from the fire beyond their tent, her silhouette alone made every part of him burn.
He lifted a gentle, curious hand toward her, but she came into him again, more aggressively than before. The warm, soft mounds of her bare breasts pressed into his chest, her hungry mouth fed from his. The animal inside him did more than just stir, it rose to the surface, answering her aggression with eager, bruising fingers that gripped and squeezed her hips, yanking her body against his until she could feel how much he wanted her.
She gasped when they came together, a soft flutter of anxious breath passing from her lips to his when she shoved him back clumsily and fell in above him. Perched on her hands, the loose waves of her honey colored hair danced across his face, tickling his nose, along his cheeks when he moved through them, rising upward to find her mouth again as she straddled his hips.
Caught in the moment, the rest of their clothes were quickly lost, and as he rolled into her, pinning her on her back and rising above her, it never once crossed his mind he was doing something so unlike him it would change the man he was forever. All that mattered was Frigga, the single beating of two hearts, the rising heat of their union, the wholeness of knowing a part of him—missing since the day he was born—finally returned.
Before her, he was nothing; inside her, he was all things.
The women who came before her were just warmth and comfort, release from the natural tensions that built up inside a man, but she was so much more than that. Together they experienced every part of each other. Physical pleasure, emotional elation. Everything she felt, he felt. The aching desperation of his absence from her when he began to lift away, the anticipation of his body returning to hers when he descended to reclaim her.
Her heart fluttered, her stomach quivered against his, the heat of her breath rushed across his face and through the loose locks of his hair dangling above her. She lifted her hand to hold them away, her eyes searching for his in the darkness, and in their soft shine he saw forever.
There was no longer life before Frigga, no memory of breath before she lifted into his kiss and quickened his docile heart with her fire.
The unbridled excitement of their first coming together brought on quick release, but the rapture of his ultimate pleasure gave her release too, their bodies shuddering and stiffening and then melting together as the frigid air cooled the sweat slicking their naked skin.
He started to roll away from her, a flood of emotions surging through him that bordered on guilt and shame over knowing another’s body before he knew hers. If only he’d waited, he thought, they could have experienced first bliss together, but she had not waited either, and he immediately found himself curious about the man who’d lain with her before him. Was it the boy she’d spoken of, the one she loved with all her heart, who claimed the part of her that should have been his?
As if to quell the quickening of his jealous heart, Frigga brought her arm up to stop him from moving away from her. She nuzzled the tip of her nose across his before slowly tasting his lips. The height of her emotions still flowed through him, a storm of bliss and joy mingled with the overwhelming heartache of the bond they now shared.
All other bonds melted away, the jealousy he felt with it, as he realized there would be no other for her, no one else but him until the day they died.
Pale daylight lit the swirling squalls of snow, making them glisten like magical whirlwinds before they parted from the path to occasionally reveal their destination. Great Sontok loomed in the distance, a dark shadow of stone separating Rimian from the unoccupied, lower Edgelands. They had not yet come upon the couriers or the refugees, but Logren reasoned they’d likely done the smart thing and made camp in the mountain pass. On the ledge where they’d camped the night Logren and his men swooped in and saved them from the Hunters after they’d been exiled, all that remained of his people would be shielded from the harsh weather, their position held aloft from the wild animals, goblins and trolls that desperately combed the tundra in search of weak prey.
Whenever his nervous stomach
clenched tight as a fist inside him, Frigga would ride closer, turning a warm, tentative smile in his direction and making the weight of the world lift away.
Do not worry, my love, she spoke to his heart. We will find your sister.
As much as he wanted to share her faith, he struggled with the notion, with his own guilt for purposely leaving his sister behind, for putting their little brother’s needs so far above everyone else’s he’d torn their whole family apart.
To make matters even more complicated, his thoughts were equally with Finn, stretched between his siblings until he felt thin and exhausted. When not in Frigga’s arms, his mind lingered on all the awful things he could not protect his brother and sister from, things the so-called gods chose for them.
Across the space between them, he found her eyes, calm blue, reassuring, filled with so much love he took comfort in her nearness and allowed it to wash away his fears.
Neither of them slept much, preferring instead to exhaust the limits of their newly forged bond only to discover there were none. Even as he’d dozed in the comfort of her arms, feeling more at peace than he’d ever felt in his life, the slightest shift of her body, the gentle touch of her fingers stirred him from rest and made him want her again. She would lift her leg over his, edge her body closer and spur him on until the beast beneath his skin was nearly raging with desire anew.
Even then, with the very shadow of doom hanging over his head, he wanted her. He could get lost in her arms, in her eyes, and forget for just a few moments that everything he’d ever known was gone.
A powdery layer of dry snow swept across the road into the mountain, making for treacherous climbing with their horses. By midmorning the pass became so narrow they were forced to dismount and travel single file along the slick, rocky path. The led the horses into the passage. Determined to reach the survivors, Logren drove them onward without stopping, without even looking back when one of his men slipped on the ice and would have lost his footing had it not been for his tight hold on his horse.
At first it baffled Vilnjar how dedicated Logren was to the cause. They were not his people—merely a shadow of the place he’d come from. Few accepted him or his mother, save for those closest to Rognar. His being there defined the man in ways Viln had not imagined. Despite his arrogance, Logren was a man of action, much like his father before him, dedicated to the preservation of their people, all of their people. And try as he might to deny it, the people of Dunvarak were U’lfer; they were all that remained.
They didn’t reach the encampment until well after midday.
Logren arrived at the open cavern platform first, Vilnjar scanning over his broad shoulder at the huddled survivors for signs of his sister. The thread of hope he barely clung to diminished the minute he realized Ruwena was not among them.
Grondr Grey Wolf and his young daughter, Magret, rose to meet him, the Grey Wolf’s dazed eyes brightening at the sight of a familiar face.
“Vilnjar,” he gasped, hobbling over and throwing his strong arms around the man and squeezing so tight he could barely breathe. It was comforting, seeing a familiar face he’d never thought to see again. “You’re a sight for sore eyes, I tell you.”
“Grondr,” he began to withdraw, scanning the faces of the other survivors hunched near the small fire. One of them was a fellow council member named Nadon Well-Thought. Nadon’s face also seemed to light up when he saw Vilnjar among their rescuers.
The old man ambled toward him almost desperately, his dark brown eyes brimming with unshed tears, but as the Grey Wolf backed away and Nadon threw his grateful arms around Viln sobbing, he only stiffened, staring dazed at the other survivors.
Backing away, he felt Frigga’s warm comfort at his back, her hand lifting to rest on his shoulder as he searched the horrors etched into every wrinkle on Nadon’s face. “The others,” he began, swallowing the rising ache in his throat, “my sister?”
Nadon shook his head in despair, shifting his gaze downward in sadness. “Ruwena was not in the village when it was attacked.”
“What do you mean, she wasn’t in the village.” Every muscle in his body tightened with a terrifying rage not even Frigga’s closeness could calm. “Where was she?”
“I do not know,” he insisted. “She begged an audience with Cobin the day after you and the pup were exiled, but he refused her request, thinking to teach her a lesson in obedience.”
Vilnjar scoffed at the thought, a raw sound scraping through his tight throat. Rue was almost as disobedient as their brother, her temper far more dangerous than Finn’s had ever been. In her rage at having left her behind, there was no telling what she might have done.
“She escaped sometime during the night, aided by several of the Hunters from her pack. They killed the watchman left to guard her. Cobin sent trackers to hunt them down and bring them back for punishment, but the trackers never returned.”
Good, he thought, it served them right, but that smug moment of victory was tainted with the dreaded realization she had taken the lives of men who might have protected their village, their people from destruction.
“We should have heeded Rhiorna’s warnings,” Nadon lamented in a near wail on the brink of hysterics. “We should have…”
“It’s too late for all the things that should have been done, Nadon.”
Vilnjar took a step back from the old man, his gaze passing over all that remained of his people. The women who’d survived were middle-aged, one of them clinging desperately to a teenage boy who’d been badly burned in the fires. The healer they’d brought with them passed across his view, kneeling to tend to the boy’s burns.
Nine. Nine U’lfer were all that escaped from Drekne. How could that be?
“I don’t suppose you thought to warn the people in Breken as you were fleeing for your lives?”
Nadon looked guiltily away, Grondr also refusing to meet the intense fury of Vilnjar’s disbelieving stare.
“There wasn’t time,” Nadon stammered. “They were so many.”
“How many?” Logren prompted.
“At least at thousand,” the old man’s body trembled as he shook head in dismay. “We…”
“Left an entire village of people behind, the last of our people, to see to your own bloody safety!” The rage building inside him wasn’t tempered, even when Frigga’s steadying hand lowered onto his shoulder from behind. “How selfish could you possibly be?” he shouted at Nadon, and the old man shrank back, trembling as his eyes widened to hear Vilnjar, who was always so compliant while they were on the council together, speak in such tones to an elder. “And my sister, you left her behind too. All because you were too stubborn to listen to the voice of reason when it spoke.”
“Vilnjar,” Frigga drew him away and he stumbled over the backward movement of his own feet. “If your sister escaped before the fires, then she is still out there. There may even be time enough to warn the people of Breken and help them to the safety of the mountains before it is too late.”
Even Logren didn’t seem to believe there was time enough to warn the small village of Breken, which lay only about thirty-five miles south of Drekne, but her suggestion and her nearness filled him with a sense of undeniable hope.
“Frigga,” Logren intervened, “we don’t have enough men to form a party and head into the Edgelands to face an army.”
“And Rue could be anywhere,” Vilnjar added, his voice so distant and lost in the final moments of his last conversation with Ruwena.
You can’t just leave me here. Let me come with you.
He denied her. Put his foot down because he thought he was doing what was best for her and their people. He’d set aside her safety to protect their brother.
“Ruwena is not the only one still out there,” Nadon spoke up. “Everyone scattered to the four winds when the fires started. The Grey Wolf and I fled south with everyone we were able to gather.”
“And there were no signs of the king’s army near Breken?” Logren mused, his fing
ers bristling through the long hairs of his bright red mustaches.
Nadon regarded Logren with suspicion, tilting his head and studying the young man as if he knew him, but couldn’t place his face in memory. “I know you,” he said after a long silence.
“You knew me, perhaps, when I was very small. My father was the man your council betrayed.”
“You…” he stammered in disbelief. “You are a son of Rognar?”
“I am the son of Rognar.”
“But… how are you… Rognar’s boy died in Vrinkarn...”
“And yet he stands before you, a man grown,” Vilnjar quirked his brow and sneered.
“How can that be?”
“It doesn’t matter right now,” Logren interjected. “What matters is we get your people to our city safely.”
“Then it is true?” Nadon marveled. “The things Rhiorna said…”
“Every last word.” Vilnjar was smug. He felt Frigga’s disapproval course through him and though he was instantly ashamed, he couldn’t hide his self-satisfaction.
He warned them in the hall, told them they were fools not to heed counsel even he had trouble believing, but too much happened in that time, so many things that changed his mind. Rhiorna summoning the spirit of their god, the whirling essence of it passing from the seer’s dying body and into Lorelei.
“I have seen things since that night, prophecies she spoke of come to pass, and among them lies a city to the south of these mountains where our brothers and sisters wait to welcome you among them.”
“But how can that be?”
“It is a miracle we can discuss in greater detail another time,” Logren said. “Tell me, are you sure these were King Aelfric’s men who burned your city to the ground?”
Sorrow's Peak (Serpent of Time Book 2) Page 20