by Brenna Lyons
“You forgot me, young lady,” Sibold boomed out.
Her smile disappeared. Regana nodded quietly, as Jörg appeared on a limb above her. “We’re coming down, Sibold,” she assured him.
Gawen started as he realized she’d looped her skirts up above her knees to climb. He pushed Tilbrand well out of range, as she swung her legs off the branch. Sibold’s eyes widened, and he looked away quickly.
“Regana, your skirts,” Gawen complained.
“How else was I supposed to climb in it?” she demanded.
“Ladies do not climb,” Sibold assured her.
“That’s the problem. I am not a lady, and a lady’s skirts won’t change that.”
“And you thought she was frightened of me,” Sibold muttered to Gawen.
He didn’t answer. Gawen was too busy watching the two children climb down. He saw the loop of skirt work free, but he didn’t realize it was a problem until Regana tried to step down onto a lower branch. Her right foot got tangled in the hem, and her left slipped off of the branch while she tried to work it free.
At her scream of terror, Jörg’s head snapped down. His eyes widened at the sight of her hanging by her hands, and he dropped to the branch he was standing on and swung himself down to hang beneath it by his knees, while Gawen white-knuckled the branch just above his head, weighing his options for breaking her fall.
Jörg grabbed her wrists. “Regana, look at me,” he ordered.
She met his eyes, shaking in fear.
“Can you work your foot free?”
Regana shook her head. “It’s stuck fast,” she decided miserably.
“If I lift you to the branch above, can you straddle it and hold on?”
“I think so.”
“We’ll do that, then,” he decided. Jörg lifted her easily and turned Regana to help her over the limb. “One hand at a time,” he told her, releasing one and waiting for her to grip the branch before releasing the other wrist. “Sit still. I’m coming down to you.”
Jörg grabbed the branch his legs were on and lowered himself behind her smoothly. While the two older men watched, he leaned around her to work the skirt free from her foot carefully. He looped it back into her belt and tucked it in firmly. “Can you climb down, now?” he asked.
“Not in this,” she replied, obviously shaken.
Jörg nodded. “I’ll get you down.” He stood on the limb and stepped around her carefully before lowering himself in front of Regana with his back to her. “Wrap your arms and legs around me,” he instructed.
“What?” she asked in confusion.
“Either you climb or you hold on and I carry you. Which is it?”
She hesitated for just a moment before wrapping her arms around his shoulders and her legs around his waist. “I’m ready,” Regana told him, burying her face in his back.
Jörg nodded and swung down the remaining branches easily, even with Regana’s added weight. On the ground, he faced Gawen and swallowed hard. “If you’re going to strike me, please take Regana off first,” he requested. “I’ll take the punishment. Just don’t place her in the middle.”
Gawen took Regana from him, shaking so badly that he could barely stand. He let down her skirts while she clung to him. “Regana, I have never hit you in anger,” he began.
“If you’re going to, I accept it,” she whispered.
“Not this time. I think you’ve suffered enough, but if you ever do it again...” he warned.
“I won’t,” she assured him.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“I’m fine,” she replied in exhaustion.
She started to back away, but he grasped her hand. Regana wrenched her hand back and fisted it in her skirts.
“You’re bleeding.”
“It’s fine, Gawen,” she insisted.
“Let me see it,” he demanded gruffly.
Regana hesitated, sighing before she opened her palm for his inspection. The cut was from a blade, not from tree bark. Gawen flicked a glance at Jörg suspiciously and noted that he had his hand fisted, too.
“What was the blood oath you took?” he asked.
Regana bit her lower lip for a moment. “Blood oaths are between the two people alone,” she informed him.
Gawen glared at her then slid his eyes to Jörg. “Well?” he demanded dangerously.
Regana flashed Jörg a pleading look.
He darkened but nodded. “It is between us alone,” he repeated slowly.
“Jörg,” Sibold barked.
The boy grimaced. “I’m sorry, Sibold. I gave my word. Honor demands that I stand by it now.”
“Then, honor has cost you extra duties. In the future, do not make pledges that will contradict your position.”
“Yes, Sibold,” he breathed miserably.
Regana grimaced. “I’m sorry, Jörg. I keep getting you into trouble.”
“Don’t apologize.” He smiled a secretive smile. “Just remember that oath.”
Regana smiled widely, and her eyes glowed in mischief. “Should I?” she teased.
“You had best remember it. It was a blood oath, and it was your idea. You’re honor bound to it now.”
Her smile disappeared. “You planned this?” she half-asked, half-accused.
“Yes, I did,” he admitted happily.
“You sneak,” she shot at him.
Jörg bowed comically and walked away with a smug smile on his face and Tilbrand in his wake.
Regana fumed, mumbling curses at his retreating back.
“What was the oath, Regana?” Gawen demanded.
“Nothing he’ll survive long enough to collect,” she promised.
“Now, my dear,” Sibold chided her. “Is that ladylike?”
“Who cares?” she grumbled. “I’ll never be a lady.”
Chapter One
500 AD
Jörg swept Regana into his arms the moment she entered his chambers, stifling her laughter with a passionate kiss. He carried her to the furs before the roaring fire and deposited her gently on her feet. “Undress for me,” he requested in a voice rough with his need.
She smiled, knowing what the simple pleasure of seeing her disrobe did to him. Her movements had ceased to be tentative weeks ago, and the woman left was nothing but sensuous and bold. That, as much as her body, had him aching long before he took her every night she came to him.
Disrobed and with her black hair cascading around her hips in silken waves, she reached her hands out to him in invitation. Regana was one of a kind, a rare jewel. She looked and acted like no other woman he’d ever met. Some of the villagers considered her a bad omen, but Jörg could see nothing bad about her.
Jörg groaned in anticipation as he took her mouth fiercely and drew a hand from her hip up to capture the full swell of her breast. “All I can think about when you’re not with me is this,” he breathed as he swept her down onto the furs with him and covered her with his body.
“I’ve noticed,” she teased, running her hand over the bruise on his shoulder. “Gawen will not be kind if you let your attention wander again.”
“Neither will Sibold, but enough of them. I want you.”
“Good,” she purred, moving against him purposefully.
“Tell me,” he requested quietly.
“I am yours, Jörg.”
“You will marry me when the battle is over?”
“As soon as it is allowed. You are permitted your choice then, and Gawen must agree. He will be so intent on Bavin, he will not care about anything else.” She smiled widely. “Besides, we have a blood oath,” she reminded him.
Jörg chuckled. “All that time, you complained that I tricked you into it, and now you throw it back at me,” he mused.
“You did, but maybe I wanted to be tricked.”
She was suddenly very subdued.
Jörg tried to meet her eyes. “Regana?”
She smiled weakly. “I only fear that the others will learn about us. If they do, Gawen wi
ll kill you. You know he will.”
Jörg sighed raggedly. “If I don’t have you, I die anyway.”
He knew that was true. Jörg had fought off the fire in his blood for months before he gave in. Sibold had warned them about this part of the curse. With the speed, increased healing, reaction time and Blutjagd — the thirst for the fight — came the sexual burn, the urge to choose a mate. Sibold had decreed that none could make that choice until after the battle, to maximize their Blutjagd in battle he was sure, but Jörg couldn’t wait. The want burned at him until he felt he was going insane. He felt himself printing and was powerless to stop it. After that, Jörg was tortured until he consummated the union with Regana. Other women had ceased to be a comfort long before that time though he still occasionally performed with one to this day — with Regana’s blessing — so that no one would get suspicious.
It surprised him that she accepted him so readily. In retrospect, Jörg wondered if the flutch — the curse — had helped in that respect somehow. Regana, though not the meek flower many in the village painted her, was still proper and fine, having left her tree climbing and hunting days far behind. Still she reacted to his first, admittedly skirting the edges of brutal, advances so readily that he rationalized later that the flutch could only be to blame for her response somehow. He rationalized much later — after she succumbed to him, after Jörg had taken her several times without even the benefit of shelter, after she started coming to his chamber to meet him, once his mind had formed a truce with the fire that consumed him any night Regana did not come to lie with him.
As he moved his hands over her, drawing her into a need that would have her ready for his invasion in mere moments, Jörg considered his situation. He had given up his life the first time he touched her, with that first demanding kiss that he stole from her beneath their tree that rolled over into his first possession of her with hardly a breath between.
To this day, Jörg was not entirely sure what happened in those fevered moments between meeting her eyes and taking her on the cool grass, but once embarked upon, it was a course he could never turn from. Some part of him wasn’t sure even now that Regana had ever admitted her willingness to the course, but she had been willing. He knew that much, and the knowledge saved his soul and his life.
In that pivotal moment, Jörg had broken the rules of training. Until he earned his seal and was granted his autonomy, he was at Sibold’s whim, and Sibold would not be sparing in his death if he learned of this trespass.
Worse, he took Regana, a KlingeStütze woman. Her father was dead, but even were he not, by virtue of Gawen’s place as first-cursed and having completed his training, he was lord of the house. By all rights, Jörg’s life was forfeit to Gawen alone if they were caught. Blutjagd upon him, Gawen would demand Jörg’s life when he could show mercy and be content with a beating for the trespass. Even if Gawen did show mercy, Sibold would not. If they were caught, Jörg would die by someone’s hand within the hour.
Regana moaned beneath him and arched to his caresses. His blood screamed for release, and he moved to take her. It would be over soon, the midnight meeting and hiding. The battle was less than a week off. Once they returned victorious, he could claim her openly, properly. His duty completed, Jörg would reap his reward. He would have his wife and children. He would live a life of ease until duty called him again.
As Jörg roared out his release to the empty house around them, he wrapped himself protectively around her. Anything for Regana! He would go into battle and face the gates of hell itself for her — and he might. They were outnumbered more than ten to one, but the flutch allowed them the ability to defeat many more than that.
“More than human,” he could hear Sibold quote in his mind.
Jörg shuddered at the thought. Faster and stronger, yes. But in many ways, the warriors were less than human now. They were vicious, predatory, territorial, rutting animals that were only stable killing or training to do so and laying with a woman. Regana was his salvation and his life.
He held her close to him as long as she would allow and groaned in pleasure as she kissed his blood mark tenderly. Finally, she planted a kiss on his cheek and rose to collect her dress. She donned it quickly and pulled on her cloak against the chill of the night. As always, it was Regana who saw the truth that she must leave before they were discovered together. Left to Jörg, they would have been found in each other’s arms at daybreak long ago.
“I live for the night you don’t have to leave,” he told her yet again. It was an old refrain, but no less true. The idea of having her in his bed all night— To have her again and again was his idea of paradise.
Regana smiled patiently. “Then make your choice of me as soon as the battle ends,” she teased. “Tell them you’ve printed so far that you cannot wait for the ceremony. In the meantime, I must go before Gawen finds me gone.”
“Take care, Geliebt,” he called after her as she left. Jörg smiled at the small endearment. Regana had always been his beloved. She would always be his only beloved.
Jörg sighed as the door closed behind her. He stretched out on the furs and drank in the heat of the fire. It didn’t warm him as much as Regana did, but until she was in his arms again, it would be his only comfort.
He furrowed his brow, as something intruded on his senses. Jörg couldn’t identify it readily, save its obvious malice, and he sat up, grasping for his weapons.
The blow to his head sent him sprawling over the drawn blade, and he vaguely felt it cut into his arm as he landed unceremoniously on the furs. A shadowy figure crossed the blurry brightness of the fire, as the darkness took him.
* * * *
“You hit him too hard!”
Jörg tried to place the disembodied voice that intruded on his slumber. Bertolf? But why would his cursed brothers— His heart sank. Regana! They had seen her leave his home and had taken him to face Gawen. He would die very shortly.
“Sunrise is coming soon. We can’t hide him all day,” Geldric complained miserably.
Hide me? Why would they bother to hide me? His death would be a very public display.
A hand touched his neck, cold and somehow menacing even in its regard for his well being. “Relax. He wakes,” Tilbrand ordered the other men. The hand retreated then smacked his cheek roughly. “Wake, Jörg. Face us.”
Jörg forced his eyelids up and squinted, even in the dim light of the training area. He groaned at the spike of pain that split his head in two and scanned his eyes over the men assembled around him: Dado, Redulf, Bertolf, Geldric, and Tilbrand. “Where is Gawen?” he managed in a thick, confused voice.
“Are you so anxious to face him, Jörg?” Tilbrand asked in amusement.
“I don’t understand,” he moaned, trying to find some sense in what they were saying.
He would have no choice in facing Gawen. Surely, even now, the older warrior was being dragged from his bed to come deal with the trespass to his house. Would Gawen strike Regana for her part in it? The thought hurt. He could do that, and in his fury, Gawen might do it.
“No one has informed Gawen — yet.”
Jörg looked at them in apprehension for the first time. “My penalty is in Gawen’s hands alone,” he reminded them. They couldn’t plan on taking the penalty themselves. The censure to them would be even higher than the censure to Jörg in its wake. They would overstep their bounds if they did so.
“We don’t dispute that. We don’t wish you to die, Jörg.” He said it smoothly, too calmly for the younger man’s comfort. “We understand the fire in your soul for her. You are the greatest of us. It is only right that the one who burns brightest in battle is consumed in other ways as well.”
“Then, why?” he asked in confusion.
“We need your help.”
“In battle? Of course. If this is a warning to control the fire until after the battle, I understand.”
The mixture of amusement and unease on the assembled faces set his teeth on edge. This was no simple
warning. Jörg wasn’t sure he was comfortable with whatever it was at this point.
“We need you for another reason, Jörg. We need you to remove the stone for us.”
“You can’t,” he protested. “Sibold’s magic protects the stone from those who would use it selfishly.”
“Yes, it does,” Tilbrand spat. “We cannot remove it. Only one who removes it with no intent of using its power selfishly can do so.”
“Why would I do that?” he asked weakly, suddenly shivering in the cold room, exposed before the older men in all — body and soul. “Why would you?”
“To be victorious,” Geldric replied as if it should have been obvious.
“To be immortal,” Redulf added. “I have no wish to die in battle.”
Jörg could see the fear in his eyes. They had no choice in their cursed state. They were born to it, and Redulf wanted no part of it.
“Immortality without your soul?” Jörg asked in disbelief. “You’ve gone mad. Why should I do this? I would rather give my life to Gawen than free the stone to you. That aside, pulling the stone to save my life from Gawen’s blade — or even Sibold’s would be a selfish act. The stone will not release to me.”
He smiled at his victory, but his smile faded as Tilbrand threw back his head and laughed into the semi-darkness, a wild, frightening sound. At twenty-three, the only older first-cursed was Gawen himself. Tilbrand was a huge bear of a man, and Jörg suddenly felt small and defenseless. The older man’s eyes were cold as the winter ice and friendly as a forged iron blade as he leaned over his prey.
“If that was your reason, you’d be right,” he assured Jörg. “You will not remove the stone to save your own life. That would be selfish. I agree.”
Jörg couldn’t find his voice. A sick certainty cut through his heart like the slice of a weapon. He met those cold eyes again.
“You will take it for the most unselfish reason of all, to save an innocent woman.” His smile turned licentious. “Well, not so innocent after all, as we’ve all well seen,” he decided. “Very well, in fact.”