Because you’re no longer a threat to her as a dreki. Only as a man.
Which meant someone else had been that threat.
The thought made all sorts of possessive, violent male impulses whirl within him. Rurik contained it. He already knew he felt protective toward her, but the idea someone else had hurt her stirred the heart of the dreki spirit within him.
“Yourself. Tell me why Freyja Helgasdottir is no fool.”
Freyja gathered her skirts primly, and settled on a jutting rock. The look she gave him was faintly cunning. “And what will you give me if I do?”
Oho. Delight ran rampant through his veins. “For all your talk, you have heard stories of dreki.”
“Bargain with them at your own risk,” Freyja replied. “Keep your wits at all moments. And never, ever offer a truth for free, for they are curious creatures and cannot deny their interest. Next to their mortal form, their curiosity is their second major weakness. My mother told me many stories.”
All of it was true. “Did she also tell you a dreki’s second greatest strength is their patience?”
“No.” Freyja looked interested. “What is their greatest strength?”
“Now that is a secret.”
“And if I’m counting correctly, you owe me one.” Was that a smile that played around her stubborn lips?
“Perhaps. What do you want in exchange for your story? More gold?” He didn’t know how he felt about that. His gold was his gold. But would it be worth it, to learn the heart of Freyja?
Yes. And not simply because he was failing in his efforts of seduction.
He wanted to know her. She would be his lover—that was a foregone conclusion in his mind—but the fascination for him extended beyond the physical.
“A truth for a truth,” she told him.
Which was potentially dangerous. His eyes narrowed. Denial here could cost him any chance at bridging the chasm she’d set between them. “A truth for a truth. So be it.”
Freyja held up a finger. “And not a random truth, but you must answer a question I propose.”
“What if I do not care to answer it?”
“Then I may feel free to ask another question,” she countered. “Out of three questions, you must answer one.”
Trouble. But damned if he did not wish to play this game with her. His dreki nature loved the challenge. “Agreed. Now answer my question. Why is Freyja not afraid of me? Why did she dare confront me in my lair, when others would quail?”
“You can see my eyes, no?”
“Such wondrous eyes.”
Her smile stilled, but didn’t entirely die as she gazed at her lap. “They call me elf-cursed,” she admitted slowly, as if the weight of this secret weighed upon her somehow. “Or think I make deals with the devil. When I was a little girl, a priest came to our village, where my father was selling geese in the marketplace. I was playing and happened to look up, and the priest reared away from me and made a sign of the cross. He was horrified, and it scared me. It was the first time I ever realized I was different.
“I don’t fit in to my world, not very well. So perhaps that is the reason I am not scared of you, nor believe in provoking you. Because you are different and so am I, and maybe I understand what that feels like.”
“You make no mention of magic.”
Another of those slow, careful glances she was known for. “Is that another question?”
“Perhaps it is merely a challenge. For you gave half an answer. You know you have power, and that made you fearless when you came to confront me.”
“I was scared,” she admitted.
“But?”
“Mostly I was angry. And hopeless.” She threw the smooth rock she’d been toying with. “There is a point one sometimes reaches that is beyond endurance, and I reached it the night you stole my ram. You are big and scary, and could have killed me. But a part of me simply didn’t care.”
He fell into those eyes. Freyja had such depths to her he wondered if he’d ever see the entirety of them. “Now that tastes more like truth. A full truth.”
Freyja sucked in a sharp breath, as if uncomfortable. “Which means it is time for my question.”
“Proceed.”
She frowned. “I intend to, but first I have to think of... the question that makes me most curious. I don’t want to waste my chance.”
Rurik laughed, a rumbling purr deep in his throat. “So very female. Rest assured I have more questions for you. This doesn’t end with one.”
“Oh.” That little knot between her brows furrowed and she dragged her knees up to her chest, her skirts falling around her ankles. “Can you change shape?”
The one question he’d been dreading. “What is wrong with this shape?”
“Nothing.”
“Yes,” he conceded, scratching his head against a rock. “I can change forms. It is part of the goddess’s gift to us. But why would I? Humans are fools. They smell. And most of them are like brainless sheep. Then there are men here who wish to kill me, and I am slightly more vulnerable in human form—”
“More vulnerable?” she broke in. “I thought it was one of a dreki’s greatest weaknesses—the only time you can be easily killed.”
“Easily is a matter of opinion,” he growled. “I am powerful beyond your comprehension, and my magic is available no matter what form I wear.”
“How often have you changed forms?”
He dipped a wing—the human equivalent of a shrug. “That is like asking me, how many times have I eaten? I do not count such things. Often enough when I was younger, because I was curious, but not very often since. There is little reason to do so.”
“Have you ever seduced a human woman?”
“No.” Not yet, anyway. “And,” he forestalled her, “you now owe me three answers, for you asked four questions and I answered all of them.”
Freyja frowned. “You answered with some questions.”
“But they were rhetorical, were they not?”
If he could smile, he would have, for she looked utterly captivating with frustration written all across her face. “I do not think that is entirely fair, but I’ll allow it.”
“How kind of you.” Turnabout was fair play. His eyes narrowed. “What type of creature are you? For it is clear you are not human.”
“Of course I am human,” she shot back, opening her arms wide. “Do I not look human?”
“You look human,” he admitted. “You smell human, though you smell better than most of them. But you are not human. They have no powers, nor magic, unless it is god-given, and you do not bear the stamp of any gods.”
“You can sense that?”
“I once met a man in Norway,” he admitted. “He used to chew berries and send himself into a trance, where he could communicate with his god. The strain showed on his aura, and I was... wary of crossing him. He smelled wrong.”
“That is a very old practice.”
“It is. But then, I encountered it when I was in my youth.”
“How old are you?”
“Hundreds of years,” he replied, with a faint shrug of his wing. “Dreki think in terms of cycles, not years, so I am not entirely certain. I am in my tenth cycle, however. How old are you?”
“Four-and-twenty.”
“Where does your power come from?”
She paused.
“Did you think I had forgotten?”
“No.” Freyja’s lips twisted. “It’s just... I don’t know where it comes from.”
Lie. It seared along his magic nerves, making him hiss.
“That’s not the truth—”
But Freyja wasn’t looking at him. Her gaze settled on a point behind him, her lips parting with a faint O.
Rurik craned his neck. And there, pinwheeling above the glaciers to the south, was the smaller silver dragon he’d sighted that night in Akureyri.
On the edges of his territory, practically daring him to retaliate.
“Go home,” he growled t
o her, his claws digging into the rocks as he drew himself to his full height.
“Wait!” Freyja called.
But Rurik wasn’t listening. Instead, he danced along the edge of the path, careful of her frail mortal body, and launched himself into the air with a powerful thrust of his wings.
“Go home, little mouse, while I take care of this visitor.”
“Be careful!” she called.
“Always,” he sent back. “After all, you still owe me the answer to that question.”
It had to be a trap.
He knew this, and yet he went anyway, because to ignore intruders in his territory went against dreki nature. His. This land was his. Bought and bargained for with blood and death, and he could no sooner allow this transgression than he could roll over and submit.
Screeching a battle cry, Rurik roared through the skies. The power of the land shivered through him, until it felt like he’d captured the power of a storm, bottled lightning in his belly.
Ahead of him, the silver dreki spun, his wings stiff as he banked. There was the flash of a paler belly, and claw marks across the dreki’s cheek, and then he withdrew in a dive that sent him fleeing.
“Andri.” The unexpected sight made Rurik’s wings skip a beat.
All of his earlier suspicions bore fruit. Of course his mother and uncle would send the kit he’d once considered a younger brother.
Rurik beat his wings as he dove after his younger cousin. Andri had been on the verge of adulthood, almost two cycles old, when Rurik left in exile. Now he was a dreki grown, though not quite as large as he himself was. A young warrior who would bear the mark of his father’s temper on his face forever.
“Go home,” he told his smaller cousin. “And I shall forget this trespass.”
Andri hissed at him as Rurik fell in beside him. The smaller dreki was fast, but Rurik’s strength and skill meant Andri would never lose him. “My father sends his regards.”
“His regards? Or his son as a sacrifice?” Rurik spiraled in a slow circle around the other dreki. Together they began a dangerous dance. Airborne battles were brutal, and a fall could shatter wings and bones, but he’d been primed for this fight since the day he was born. “Is Stellan so careless with his sons he would send one into a fight that is not his own?”
Andri refused to comment. And Rurik began to grow suspicious. Was Andri here on his father’s terms—or did some part of the youth want to reach out to one he’d once trusted?
“I won’t kill you,” Rurik told his former squire, making a decision. “Unlike others, I made an oath to protect you and I intend to keep it. You shouldn’t be here. This is not your fight.”
“I have a duty to fulfill,” his cousin replied.
“If you come against me and I am forced to protect myself, I’ll knock you from the skies, but I won’t kill you,” Rurik warned.
Andri soared high over Krafla. “You’re a fool then. You’re my clan’s enemy.”
“You’re my cousin,” he shot back, “And you were always mine, more than you were ever Stellan’s. You’re the one good thing he ever created, and you have more honor in you than any of your nestlings.”
Andri broke the thought-thread between them, veering away. Rurik ignored his distress and went after him. There were only two reasons Andri could have sought him out today. Either the youth meant to lure him into a trap, or his guilt had driven him to make contact.
“And where’s the other dreki?” Rurik caught up to his squire swiftly. “Who did your father send? Vargur? Grimold? Magnus? T—”
A shock of connection betrayed Andri’s thoughts, and made Rurik’s heart thud in his chest. “Magnus,” he repeated. “Of course he sent his heir.”
He and Magnus were of an age. Kits raised together, but never friends. Never allies.
Magnus was everything Stellan hoped to produce. A dreki with a heart as black as his hide. When Stellan and Amadea married into Iceland’s Zini clan, they’d brought all of their Norwegian clan’s prejudices with them. The intermarriage was meant to be a treaty between the Zini and Zilittu clans to broker peace, but all of Stellan’s sons—bar Andri—thought of themselves more as Zilittu than Zini. And with Amadea sitting on the throne her husband, Reynar, once owned, it seemed the treaty had been more of a long-seeded plot than an honest reconciliation.
As Amadea and Reynar’s eldest son, Rurik was the only dreki who could thwart their ambitions to rule both clans. His brother, Marduk, was too young to be a threat, and though Marduk was considered an adult, he wouldn't have the strength to combat Magnus. Would he?
“Tell your brother I accept his challenge,” Rurik said slowly, thinking of his brother. Magnus would want his path to the throne to be unhindered, regardless of whether or not Marduk could ever actually beat him. Then there was Andri...“We can settle this between us. You don’t have to be involved.”
“He’s not offering challenge.”
Of course not. Magnus would consider himself the strongest male now, and hence the rightful heir, which meant Rurik was the one who had to offer. And he would let his cold dead body sink into the seas before he ever condescended to those who’d plotted against his father, then blamed Rurik for the king’s death.
“Even if you offered, he would not accept it,” Andri said quickly.
So this was not to be an honorable duel. “Why are you here then? Does your brother know where you are?”
“I wanted to warn you,” Andri said, after a long hesitation. “And no, he doesn’t.”
There was the hint of his old squire: Andri, whose sense of honor would forbid an ambush.
“I knew you were here,” he replied. “But thank you. I had hoped they hadn’t corrupted you completely.”
The skies gleamed blue around them as Andri broke the mental connection between them. Even so, Rurik caught the faint mournful taint of the younger dreki’s emotions. This could not be easy for the youth. He’d followed Rurik around the court as a kit, like an enamored lass. The day Rurik took Andri as his squire had been the most joyful either of them shared.
The day his young squire lied and said he’d seen his prince in the king’s quarters the night the king was murdered, had been the worst.
“I don’t hold you responsible for my exile,” Rurik sent, in a thought-thread. He could almost feel Andri’s guilt through the thread. “You were never the sort to fall in line with your father’s plots, nor were you ever interested in his bribes. I know he must have threatened you with something in order for you to betray my trust.” Andri tried to shy away, but Rurik wouldn’t let him break the thread. “I forgive you,” he told the youth. “But you should have come to me the moment Stellan made his threat. I would have protected you.”
“You couldn’t have,” Andri whispered.
“I would have tried.”
“I know.”
The smaller dreki broke away, and this time Rurik let him go, hoping the words had been enough to sway Andri from this fight.
Because if Magnus was involved, then this only ended one way... with someone dying.
Chapter 9
By the time Freyja returned home, Rurik was lying on a rug in the sun, reading a book. His shirtsleeves were rolled up to his elbows, revealing tanned forearms, and he clasped one hand behind his head, muscles shifting in his abdomen as he craned his neck to watch her walk into the yard.
It wasn’t as though she’d suspected he was anything other than what he claimed, but a part of her had wondered.
He knew so much about dreki, after all.
But her dreki had thundered into the south, and that was the last she’d seen of him. He couldn’t have beaten her back here, then changed form and waited for her, could he?
No. Not without Freyja seeing him in the skies.
She laid that faint suspicion to rest. She’d clearly listened to her mother’s eddas too often as a girl. After all, what would a powerful creature ever want with the likes of her?
“Did you enjoy your walk?” Ru
rik graced her with a faint smile, taking in the state of her skirts. “Tsk. You’ve ruined your boots.”
“Better mine than yours,” she pointed out.
“True.” Rurik rolled to his feet with fluid grace, setting the book upside down. “Where are you going?”
“Some of us do not have time to laze in the sun,” Freyja shot over her shoulder as she headed to the barn. Thanks to her journey to warn the dreki, she was already behind in her day’s work, and needed to see to dinner soon, if they were to dine at all.
Scrambling up the ladder into the loft, she glanced around, noting how much hay she needed to shift. Rurik’s blankets lingered by the slatted window at the front of the barn, slashes of sunlight spilling over his makeshift bed. But she was not going to think of that.
“You look like you would enjoy an afternoon spent lazing in the sun.” Rurik followed her up the ladder, looking far too male—a healthy one at that—as he hauled himself into the loft. There was a strength in his muscular frame she could not match. “Maybe you should join me?”
“If you’re only here to flirt with me, then I might as well put you to good use.” She picked up the pitchfork and thrust it into his hands. “Here.” She pointed to the pile of hay. “I need to shift that over there, so I can drop it down into the stalls when I need to feed my animals. If you want to impress me, then you can help. I will be back to check on your work within the hour.”
Rurik shot her a narrow-slitted gaze, then glanced at the pitchfork as if it was the first time he’d ever seen one.
“If the work is good enough for me,” she pointed out, “then it is good enough for you, my lord.”
And without waiting for a protest, she scurried down the ladder, and toward the door. She needed to fetch her small flock in, then set her stew on the stove. The clouds were brewing with all their spring glory, indicating a storm later that night.
It took longer than she’d expected—her small flock didn’t want to go anywhere near the barn, the stupid beasts—but she finally managed to hunt them all inside their stalls, and swung the iron pot she’d prepared earlier over the stove, before she returned to the loft.
Myths & Magic: A Science Fiction and Fantasy Collection Page 17