“No, I would have never tried this on, because it is so beautiful. I don’t see things how you see them.”
I slam my book closed, frustrated. “No, I just see you how everyone else sees you. You don’t see yourself that way, Thyra. You pick ugly clothes because you think you need to look ugly because that is how you view yourself and it isn’t right!” I yell, capturing the attention of the boutique owner.
“Sassa,” Thyra whispers, shocked that I raised my voice at her.
I’ve never done that before. I always keep my temper with her, but my skin has felt tight all day, ever since last night. My nerves are shot. My body burns and aches, like when I was sick the other day, but this is different. This feeling will not go away, not until I feel that man’s lips against mine again.
“I apologize for how I said it, but I’m not sorry for what I said.” I exhale a deep breath and slump my shoulders, pinching the bridge of my nose.
“You’re just a delight today,” she mutters. “But at least this dress looks good.”
An unfeminine noise escapes my throat as I work through whether to laugh or cry. I decide to laugh. I choose to let it go, to forget how angry it makes me that she thinks of herself that way and forget the man that turned my world upside down. “It is beautiful. You must get it.”
“I shall. And thank you, for being honest with me. It’s hard to work through, but I’ll try to be better.”
“Oh, Thyra…” I place my book down and walk over to her. “You’re perfect how you are. I just wish you saw yourself how I see you, but that isn’t why I’m so on edge today. I have much on my mind. I apologize for taking my frustration out on you.”
She pulls me by the wrist again and pushes me into the privacy room. “Untie me. And who is he?” She gathers her hair over her shoulder to get it out of the way of the ties.
I run my hand down the front of my dress. It is a bit stuffy in here. “He? No one. You know I don’t talk to men. You know that.” I swallow my lie, and it immediately turns in my stomach. How do I tell her I had a scandalous night with a man I don’t even know?
“I’ve known you since we were five, I know when you are out of sorts. And today, you have barely been present.”
Her words strike me guilty. Today was important for her, too. I ruined it with my convoluted mind, and for what? A man I don’t even know? “I’m so sorry; I should have been a better friend to you today.”
“You’re amazing. You picked out this amazing dress that made me feel beautiful. You’re really good at that, Sassa. You always know how to make me feel pretty when I don’t know how to do it myself. I’m here for you; like you are for me. It’s always me that has the problems. I’ll listen, maybe I can help.”
Once the last ribbon is loosened enough, she slips out of the beautiful, wine-colored gown and I lay it against the chair, careful not to wrinkle it. I help her put on the dress she came here in and lace her up again. I never thought talking about this would be so hard, but I am finding it extremely difficult. “I met someone.”
She spun around so fast the corset strings rip from my grasp. Her mouth drops open, a big smile hiding underneath the expression. “Oh my gosh, I knew it. Who is it? Is it the captain’s son? I always thought he fancied you. He always looks at you like food.” Her emerald gems sparkle with excitement.
I lower my voice to a soft whisper. “I shall tell you, just not here.” I do not want anyone finding out about my little escapade last night and telling my father. Everyone knows everyone here, and any news about me will get back to the King, and then I will never be able to leave my room again. He will probably bar my windows shut.
“Alright, but you promise you will tell me?”
“Over tea. Shall you stay over? We haven’t done that in ages.”
She squeals with excitement, throwing her arms around me in a tight hug. “Oh, yes. I can’t wait. Let’s buy this dress first. Can I keep it in your closet? I don’t want my father seeing it until the day of the party.”
“Of course you can. I’ll take the best care of it. In this dress, you will be able to get any man you want,” I say, with a soft nudge to her side.
She blushes, but as she picks up the dress, she turns to me and smiles. “That would be nice, but I just want to enjoy how I feel in it.”
The admission makes me jump for joy, and this time I squeal, embracing her in a tight hug. I’m so elated that she feels that way. I want her to be able to make herself feel good before anyone else, even me. “Now, we just need to talk about how we shall do your hair.”
She runs her fingers through the ends of her red hair and puckers her lips as she thinks. “I thought I’d just wear it like this?” she asks, as though I would simply accept that.
Oh, but I don’t.
“Are you mad? I forbid it! All this gorgeous hair will be treated like that dress treats you.”
She gives me a big bright smile as we leave the privacy room and make our way to the front. A sack of gold coins later, we are out the door, walking arm in arm down the street to the castle. It has been years since I felt like a regular girl. I’m always the King’s daughter, the princess, always put up on a pedestal, but not right now.
Right now, I’m just like any other girl. The idea of gossiping over boys and brushing each other’s hair sounds so normal it is almost like a dream. I’ll be able to gush about my night with Hohlt and swoon all over again for a man that I will never see again.
To think I was almost willing to give him my virginity, and I hardly knew the man. I do not know what got into me last night, but no one has ever ignited my body like he did. He was infuriating, sexy, brooding, bossy, yet commanding and charming.
He is everything I’ve ever dreamed about in a man. He was a warrior through and through. A tough heart, but even thicker skin.
“There you go again, not listening to a word I have to say. No denying it now.” Thyra elbows me in the ribs, yanking me out of my wet dream.
I can’t believe I lost my mind in the middle of the walk. “Apologies. I don’t know what has gotten into me.”
“Someone is in love!” she skips and sings.
“Keep your tone down!” I giggle, skipping along with her. “And I am not. Not even close.” The more I think about her words, the more I wonder if it is possible to fall in love overnight. It isn’t possible. What I feel for the man is desire, pure sexual, raw desire. Love at first sight doesn’t exist.
But if that is the case, why does my heart feel so empty now without him?
Chapter Eight
Grim
I can’t get the taste of her off my tongue or the memory of her body in my palms. I growl, sawing my blade against a rock to try to drown out the images from that night, but nothing works. Everything I do, she is in the forefront of my mind. And it really pisses me off, because I’m here, and she is somewhere else.
Somewhere she doesn’t belong.
“What is going on with you?” Einarr slaps a few fish on the ground next to me. They flip and flop, fresh out of the river.
The same river where I lost a piece of myself. A piece I know I will never get back. To some, it may not hold significance, but for me, I make sure nothing can penetrate my being. Because my life is surrounded by death, it has made me cold to life. But being near Sassa… melted a part of me. And I can’t tell which part.
“Nothing,” I grunt, running my blade against the worn stone on the ground.
“Bullshit,” he hisses, plopping down on the ground. He gathers a few pieces of wood and starts kindling, scratching wood against rock to create fire. He has always been the best at that. It makes me a little jealous, but I will never admit that.
I sigh and hang my head, the tension in my neck rising, causing the base of my skull to throb. “Nothing is wrong.”
“I’ve known ye since we were wee boys, barely old enough to stand to piss. I know when something is wrong.”
My impatience turns to anger, and I throw the freshly sharpen blade ri
ght past Einarr. It plunges into the thick of the tree bark, latching into the depth of the wood.
“I said nothing is wrong with me!” I roar through the woods. My voice carries through the brush, and the pain in my head stabs me in the temple, just like that knife would.
Einarr moves his body, turning toward me with a dark brow. He doesn’t believe me. “Right,” he grunts, turning back to the fire to prepare the fish. He slams a rock over their heads to stop them from moving and sighs. “We are about to cross enemy lines. I need you in the right headspace. I’m not talking to you as your second. I’m talking to you as your friend. Grimkael, ever since two nights ago, you haven’t been yourself. I’ve let it go. I thought, ‘perhaps my friend is nervous’.”
I snort. I never get nervous.
“But you never get nervous,” he says. Aye, he knows me all too well. “So, for the life of me, I can’t figure out what the hell is going on. And you shall tell me, or you shall starve because you can’t filet a fish worth ye life, and I won’t ride with you to the King’s castle.” He kicks his feet up on a tree stump and laces his arms over his head. “Have your pick.”
“You’re a real bastard,” I snarl, stomping over to the tree my knife juts out from and sheathing it again.
“I’m not the one that threw a knife at my friend’s head.”
“I threw it past your head. There’s a difference. If I wanted to kill you, I would have.”
“Fair enough,” he says with a click of his tongue. “So?” He takes the blade from my hand and starts cutting the fish.
I take a few deep breaths and take in my surroundings. The trees are still full, but the faintest amount of pine needles dust the earth’s floor, preparing for winter. The air holds a nip, the impending doom of snow and the familiar crackle of wood burning takes me back to a time when life wasn’t so complicated. Two tents sit up next to each other, and our horses graze the grass down by the riverbed.
We aren’t staying in the spot where I met Sassa. We are a little farther up and a little west, but it stills reminds me of her. I place my hands on my hips and stare into the sky, the same sky I caught her staring at when I had the chance to taste her lips.
He deserves to know. He is right. We are going into enemy territory tomorrow, and he needs to know if he has to back me up more than I usually expect him to. “I met her. Sassa.”
He stops cutting the fish, and the curiosity in his eyes grows cold. The hard gleam is directed right at me and the lines around his eyes crinkle. “You weren’t going to tell me this? You don’t think I had a right to know that you went ahead with the plan?”
Anyone else would be dead if they spoke to me like that. Einarr gets a lifetime of free passes, though, considering he is my best mate. “The plan is still in motion. She has no idea who I am.”
“How did you manage that, Warlord?”
He says the title like poison. “You were asleep when I met her. I heard something north of here, and I followed it. I introduced myself as Hohlt, and I think it will be easier to convince her to come with me.”
“You mean telling her she has to go with you, or you will rain hell on her father’s land? I’m sure she won’t expect that from the man she met. Tell me, did you fuck her?”
“Einarr,” I warn. “Don’t talk about her like that.”
“You didn’t.” His eyes are round with shock. “You had the princess in your hands, and you let her go?”
My fists clench at my sides as he continues to talk about her like some piece of meat. “Einarr!” I say his name again one more time, in hopes that he catches the underlying promise of death in my tone if he keeps going.
“I tell you. If I had a woman like that—”
I don’t let him finish the sentence. I take my knife out and press it against his throat, right along the scar he has from a previous battle. “I will cut your tongue out if you finish that sentence.” A few droplets of spit fly from my mouth onto his face.
He doesn’t flinch. He blinks. There isn’t the tiniest bit of fear. He stares his copper eyes into my blue ones, just silently daring me to use the knife on him.
He knows better. I don’t have it in me to kill him, never will, but the way he spoke about her—for the first time, I considered it for a fleeting moment. He narrows his eyes as the one thought I didn’t want him to think enters his mind. “This has turned into more for you.”
I let go of him and put my damn knife away. “This mission has always meant more. I want a wife. I want a family.”
“Sure, we all do. But this wasn’t meant to be more, not yet. This was supposed to be about power.”
“It still is about power.”
“Is it?” he asks, placing the fish on the hot rocks. The scent rises in the air as they start to sizzle from the water and fat.
“Can’t it be both?”
He shakes his head and pokes a stick in the fire to readjust the wood. A gush of smoke and a large flame dance toward the sky, cooking the fish fast, which is good because I’m starved.
“Of course it cannot be both. Are you mad? What if she finds out you only wanted to be with her for power? She will never forgive you. You need to choose. Power or love.”
“I cannot do that, Brother.”
“Then this will not work.”
“It will work. I want her more than I want the power!” The honesty of my words has me stumbling back until I hit a tree. I slide down the rough bark, ignoring how it bites into my bare skin. It causes deep grooves and scratches, but I don’t care. It doesn’t hurt as bad as the pain of not having Sassa in my arms again.
Great, I’ve turned into a damn sap. My father would give me twenty lashes with a silver-spiked whip for this.
“Well, well, well. How the mighty have fallen,” he teases.
“Fuck off,” I grumble and toss a pebble over to him. Leaning my head back against the tree, I roll my head back and forth. “I don’t know what happened, Einarr. She was beautiful. The rumors are true. I was transfixed. And then I swam with her, and we shared a kiss, and nothing has ever felt so right before. Chaos and strife are our close friends, and peace was a known enemy, but with her, peace was all I felt.”
“I didn’t know you were a poet, Grim!” Einarr laughs, and I throw another small rock at him.
“Shut up.”
“Get your ass over here and eat. We have a big day tomorrow.” He uses his fingers to pinch the meat off the skin of the fish and stuffs it in his mouth. “Have you thought about what her reaction will be when we storm in there tomorrow? You can’t really think she will forgive you.”
“She won’t. Not right away. She is too full of fire to let me off the hook that easy.”
“And you like that? You’re an odd man.”
“I like to be challenged.”
“Oh, you’ll be challenged. You’ll probably be fighting with her all day and night. Be ready.”
“After I’ve tasted that mouth, I’m ready for anything when it comes to her,” I say. It takes me by surprise as I chew the bland fish. I find myself willing to battle every man in the country if it means winning her heart. I hope she knows that after the other night, she shall be mine. She is mine.
Einarr tosses the skin of his fish out in the woods and licks his fingers. “You really mean that.”
“I do. She is strong, feisty, smart. She is perfect to have by my side. She makes me feel… something. Here…” I press my knuckles against my heart, as if a dull ache is there and I’m trying to rub it away, hoping to ease it.
“That is life, Brother. She makes you feel alive. At least, that’s what my mum used to say.”
He never talks about his parents. Ever. He stops chewing and shakes his head. “Wow, I didn’t even know I knew that. I thought I forgot all about them.”
“It’s a nice memory, Einarr.”
“Aye, I hope to have that one day, but—” He rubs a hand over his face and smiles. “Fuck this shit. Why are we talking about this? We need to go to bed and g
et ready for the morning.”
“Aye, I’ll put out the fire. I’ll see you in the morning.” I nod.
“Aye. Goodnight.” He hurries off into his tent and turns off the lamp.
I sigh and place my elbows on my knees. I toss the rest of my fish in the woods, losing my appetite. I knew what Einarr was about to say. He was going to say, ‘How could a woman want this?’ And he was going to point at his face. The long, jagged scar that runs from the top of his forehead, over his left eye, down his cheek, and stops right below his jaw.
We are all scarred from battle. Some worse than others. I think about what Einarr said before he ran to bed, away from a conversation that would make him uncomfortable. Anything that rubs him the wrong way, he flees from. He refuses to face it. He doesn’t know how to handle emotion, which is another thing that makes him an excellent warrior.
He puts all of his rage and feeling into his blade, killing everything in his path, but my friend, my brother, is slowly killing himself with every day that passes because he’s torturing himself. He thinks he is to blame for his parent’s death.
How long has it been since he has felt life? Like his mum said.
I rub my knuckles over my heart one last time and decide maybe that is why I hurt so much. My heart is sore, not from sadness, but from beating with vigorous life, more than it ever has before.
My life awaits for me just a few miles north. Morning can’t come soon enough.
I want that for my brother. He deserves life, too. But one day at a time, aye?
Chapter Nine
Sassa
The day is beautiful. The sun is high and hot in the sky, but the breeze is cool against the sheen of sweat gathering on my skin. I tilt my head back as I make myself sway on the swing my father built for me when I was just a young girl. The tip of my right foot pushing against the ground, rocking me back and forth.
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