by Harmon, Amy
He kissed her until her mouth was sore and her lips swollen, until his breath filled her lungs and his large hands, molding and remolding her back, were the only thing that kept her from melting like hot wax against his chest. Then his mouth trailed across her cheek and settled in the curve of her neck. For a moment he kissed her neck the way he’d kissed her lips, insistent yet reverent, and then he raised his head, saying her name like he needed her to beg him to cease. She never would.
“Alba,” he whispered, fire in the word, and she tried to open her heavy lids—once, twice—before gazing at him in a love-drunk haze.
“More,” she pled, catching his mouth with hers all over again. He capitulated for several seconds, his tongue dancing with hers in a desperate embrace, before he rose to his feet—back bowed so he could keep kissing her—and severed the connection with a frustrated groan. The sound was more animal than man, a rumble that resonated in his chest. He retreated several steps, turning away from her, his long braid trailing down his broad back. She watched as his inhalations slowed and became undetectable to her eyes. He turned and walked back to her, not meeting her gaze. Then he reached down and clasped her around the waist, setting her on her feet before turning away once more.
“We need to get back,” he said, firm. No stuttering. No room for argument. But Alba still tried.
“I’m not sure that was a dozen more. I think it may have been four or five very long kisses . . . so we might have to have more lessons before you . . . go,” she babbled, breathless.
“I do not need lessons, Alba.”
She was silent for several long seconds.
“I know,” she murmured. “You are a very good kisser. How silly of me to think you didn’t know how. I have been waiting for you. I thought . . . maybe . . . you had been waiting for me.”
He spun on her, his face filled with such frustration that she stumbled back. Bayr had never looked at her thus, not even when she had scared him to death, when she had covered his eyes and made him run blind, when he had to trail her around the market, holding baskets filled with fripperies and lace, hour after hour. Not when she’d demanded he swing her over his head again and again so she could see how it felt to fly.
He was instantly in front of her, panting through the lips she had just kissed. A man his size should not be able to move so fast. But no one moved as fast as Bayr. No one was as strong. Or brave. Or true. There was no one like him. And he was hers. In her heart, he had belonged to her, and she had known one day, when she was grown, she would be able to claim him. The way Dolphys had claimed him.
She reached up and touched his face.
“I have been waiting so long, Bayr. Don’t you understand? I love you. I know you don’t see me as I see you. You don’t see us as I see us. I was a child that you cared for. I was your charge. Your responsibility. Your princess.”
“My Alba,” he groaned.
“Yes. But you were everything to me. Always. I’ve had my heart set on you all my life. Ask Dagmar. He tried to convince me otherwise. But I wouldn’t listen. He said it could never happen, that I must leave Saylok and marry a king of another land. He thinks the men of Saylok are cursed—including my father—and that I must leave to help her. Like you have. I would gladly leave this place. But not without you.”
His eyes shone, and his hands shook, and for a moment she thought he would kiss her again.
“Your father w-will never allow it,” he whispered. “If he knew I had laid a hand on you, if he knew I had kissed you . . .” His eyes darkened, and his throat worked like he couldn’t believe he’d done such a thing. “If he knew, he would cut off my braid and have my eyes b-burned from my head. Master Ivo saw this. He saw us. He warned me to wait . . . but I couldn’t stay away. Not forever.”
“You promised me you would come back.”
“I shouldn’t have.”
“You are the strongest man in all of Saylok. If anyone can stand up to my father, it is you.”
“I am one man. I cannot d-defeat the world by myself. Even for you.”
“Then promise me this—”
“No more kisses,” he interrupted.
She tried to smile but could not. Nor would she make such a vow. “My mother was sixteen when she married Banruud. Ghost was fourteen when she first . . . knew . . . a man. You know I am of age, Bayr. Of the few women Saylok has, all have long been married at my age.”
“The king will want to w-wait until he makes the most advantageous match.”
“My mother was the daughter of the king. She married a chieftain. You are suitable in every way.”
“Not to Banruud,” he retorted. He was so adamant in his arguments, and with every word her agony grew.
“But . . . would you want me?”
“My life is not about w-what I w-want, Alba. It never has been.”
“But . . . if nothing stood in our way . . . would you want me?” she asked softly, her hands pressed to her chest to shore up her heart. “Would you run away with me?”
“If nothing stood in our path, we wouldn’t need to run away.”
“That is not what I asked,” she wailed softly, hardly able to continue.
“Yes. Yes. Yes,” he hissed. “Yes!” He curled his hands into the tight weave of his braid and glared down at her. And then she realized he wasn’t angry with her. He wasn’t even arguing with her. He was arguing with his helplessness, and he was impotent with fury at the position she’d put him in. He would have gone on pretending, loving her in the way that was allowed. And she’d shattered all pretense.
All at once, he seemed to wilt, as though she’d drawn a rune upon his skin and pulled his heart from his chest. He fell to his knees, his head bowed at her feet, and wrapped his big hands around her ankles, shackling himself to her.
“My b-body is yours. My heart is yours. My s-soul, my thoughts, my d-dreams, my life. Yours. I will do whatever you ask. Whatever you wish.” He raised his eyes to hers, his gaze as tormented as his voice. “But know this, your father will not allow it. And when he d-discovers that I love you, we will both suffer. I can b-bear my own suffering, but I can’t bear yours.”
She sank down in front of him, and his hands slid from her ankles to her hips, pulling her into his lap as her lips found his all over again.
“You can’t prevent me from suffering,” she moaned into his mouth. “I ache with it. I am nothing but pain. But there is no Alba without Bayr,” she whispered. “Not now. Not then. Not ever again.”
And for a time, sheltered by the shadows and soothed by the thundering falls, she made him believe it.
25
The king did not return. Not the next day or the next. The grounds began filling with the tents and wagons of tradesmen preparing to sell their wares at the games, and the next night, the mount was flooded with clans and chaos as the Tournament of the King commenced without the king. The temple opened her doors to travelers making their yearly pilgrimages to worship within her walls, and the keepers heard the complaints and the confessions of the condemned. Three chieftains arrived—Aidan of Adyar, Lothgar of Leok, and Josef of Joran—and Bayr engaged each of them in private conversation. News of the Northmen on Berne’s shores had traveled, yet each chieftain had received reassurances from the king that measures were being taken to reach an agreement that did not result in war. According to Dred, the same reassurances had not been delivered to Dolphys. Elbor arrived at dusk on the second day, and he surrounded himself with soldiers, doing his utmost to avoid the other chieftains. Benjie of Berne was notably absent.
Alba greeted the crowds with upraised arms and a welcoming smile. When she declared the tournament open to “all of Saylok’s people, to her clans and her colors,” no fear or discomfort tinged her voice or chased her words, and Bayr watched her with awe and pride. The people called her Princess Alba like they knew her and threw flowers at her feet like they loved her. At the commencement of each contest she wished the entrants “the wisdom of Odin, the strength of Thor, and
the favor of Father Saylok,” and they battled as though they had all three.
It was not until the fourth day of the tournament and well into the afternoon that a lone horn sounded from the watchtower and a cry went up.
“The king has returned! Ready the mount for His Majesty, King Banruud of Saylok.”
From the King’s Village to the top of Temple Hill, one trumpeter signaled another, each wailing a note that rose at the end like a question, the sound growing louder and louder as it climbed the long road to the mount. Along the ramparts, another chorus of horns sounded, verifying the message had been received.
The grounds were thick with clansmen and villagers, but every contest was halted as people ran to the gates and spilled down the hill. No clan wanted to be accused of not honoring the return of His Majesty, and the road was flooded with clansmen mere minutes after the horns were sounded.
Aidan, Lothgar, Josef, Elbor, and Bayr stood on the palace steps, their most-trusted warriors behind them. The keepers, as was tradition upon a monarch’s return, stood on the temple steps, filling the space with rows of purple, the five daughters among them, the wreaths of their hair the only thing that set them apart.
The king’s guard began to clear the enormous courtyard between the temple and the palace, forcing the curious and the clustered to move out onto the grass and the grounds to give the king and his retinue wide berth. To return during the tournament created a chaos the king’s men clearly weren’t accustomed to, and more than one villager was shoved to the ground in an attempt to clear the square. From outside the walls of the mount, a rumble began to swell and spill through the gates, a wave of shock and speculation that tumbled from one mouth to the next.
The horns bellowed again, indicating the king was nearing the gate, and Alba appeared at the top of the palace steps in full regalia. She had opened the tournament wearing only a long white dress and a simple gold circlet on her brow. Clearly Banruud expected a more formal greeting. Her crown was a smaller replica of her father’s, with six spires, each with a jewel that matched the color of the clan embedded at the base and the tip. Emeralds for Adyar, rubies for Berne, sapphires for Dolphys, orange tourmalines for Ebba, brown topaz for Joran, and golden citrines for Leok. The glossy black of her royal mantle, trimmed in white rabbit’s fur, should have been too much for her pale hair, but it accentuated it, highlighting the contrast of dark eyes and light locks. The chieftains and their warriors moved to the sides, creating an aisle for her to descend between them, but she stopped in their midst, Bayr on her left and her uncle, Aidan of Adyar, on her right.
Alba didn’t look at Bayr, but tension radiated from her straight back and her slim frame. Her face was perfectly composed, her hands at her sides; no fidgeting, no nervous chatter, no shifting or craning of her neck. Her crown had to be heavy, but she stood with her eyes forward, waiting for the king and his entourage to enter through the gates and give her leave to greet them.
They had slept very little since Bayr had arrived; at night they stole beyond the walls where the darkness gave them cover, where they could swim and fly and talk and touch without watchful eyes or wagging tongues. They hadn’t admitted they were hiding their relationship, but they both knew they were.
He had promised her he would make his case to the king when he returned, that he would bow before him and pledge all his strength to Saylok for her hand. He turned his head the slightest degree so he could train his eyes downward on her shining crown and the hair that spilled over her black robe. He had touched that hair. He had wrapped his hands in it as he kissed her mouth.
When he kissed her, she was not so composed, nor was she still or silent. He had kissed her so often that her lips were red and sore, and the soft skin of her neck burned from his rough cheeks. He was a man undone by love, unstrung by devotion, and though he would not give her his seed, he did not deny her in any other way. He had filled his hands with the length of her hair and buried his face in the sweetness of her body. He’d kissed the soft skin of her breasts and held her hips in his hands as she pled for relief beneath his mouth. When she touched him in return, her eyes wide, her fingers roving, he had moaned her name and begged her to save him. And she had, sending him to his knees over and over again, bled of all strength but completely reborn.
In the days since he’d arrived on the mount, he’d thought only of her.
Not his clan, not his duty, not his purpose. Just her.
He hadn’t worried about the Northmen or the longboats in the harbor of Garbo. He hadn’t dwelled on the raid on Sheba or the battle in Eastlandia. When Dred and a handful of his warriors had arrived for the tournament, armed and watchful, Bayr had seen to his responsibilities with the same quiet efficiency they were accustomed to, but his heart and his head were far away. For the first time in his life, he was consumed by his own desires, and everything else became a distant landscape. He’d spent the daylight with the keepers or his men, stealing sleep in patches, a bit at dawn, a bit at dusk, but he spent the nights with Alba.
Now, standing at her side, close enough to reach out and touch the smooth line of her jaw and the length of her throat, he could only mourn that the nights were over. He would do anything to have her. He would give away all his power to keep her. But deep in his chest, where honesty lived and hope languished, he knew it wouldn’t be enough.
Through the fog of his infatuation, he noticed that the villagers that had been cleared from the central courtyard had begun to turn and point, to clutch each other and cower. All at once, he was doused in the painful present and shaken from his love-drunk haze. His fear for Alba—for all Saylok—stretched and shuddered, coming fully awake inside his chest.
“He’s brought the Northmen to the temple mount,” Aidan growled.
Lothgar cursed, a stream of foul words that grew into a roar that was muffled by the distress of the crowd.
“It is King Gudrun,” Alba said, her voice low and dull, as though she too had been cruelly awakened from a beautiful dream.
King Gudrun wore his eyes rimmed in black like the keepers, but his hair hung in dirty coils down his back. The top was gathered into a knot pierced by animal bones to keep it from falling in his eyes. His men wore variations of the same thing. All had leather hose and tunics studded with metal, swords strapped across their bodies, and blades bound to their boots with long leather straps. The horses they rode were heavy bodied—thick backs and legs, giant hooves and heads. They had to be to carry such big men, and the Northmen were big. Bozl had not exaggerated when he said they were as big as Bayr.
“My people. My daughter. My chieftains. My keepers,” Banruud boomed, his arms raised to call the crowd to attention. “In the spirit of peace and negotiation, I have brought King Gudrun of the Northlands to see our temple and to take part in our tournament. We welcome him and his men among us the way I was welcomed among his people. We are in need of strong alliances. May this be the first of many such visits.”
The people murmured nervously; no one jeered, but there was no jubilance in their greeting, no cheers or waving of their colors.
Alba began to descend the final palace steps, her sense of duty demanding she bid the visitors welcome, but Bayr moved forward with her, unwilling to let her approach a foreign—and reputedly vicious—king by herself. Aidan was of the same mind, for he too remained at her side. Josef and Lothgar trailed them as they walked out into the courtyard to present the Princess of Saylok to the King of the Northlands. Elbor, not wanting to be left behind, hurried to join them, though he cowered behind Lothgar. Benjie of Berne was mounted just behind the king, a few of his men around him. Bayr should have known he would be wherever Banruud was.
As Alba neared, King Banruud dismounted with the ease of a much smaller, much younger man. His hair was shot with silver, but he was otherwise unchanged. His eyes, when they met Bayr’s, were as flat and unforgiving as they’d always been.
“Father, I thank Odin for your safe return,” Alba greeted Banruud, stepping away fro
m the chieftains and pressing the invisible star on her forehead to the back of his outstretched hand. Turning to the North King she curtsied, low and lovely, and rose up gracefully. “King Gudrun, we welcome you.”
There was an appreciative murmur among Gudrun’s men, and the North King slid unceremoniously from his horse and grasped Alba’s fingers as though to press a kiss on her knuckles. At the last moment, he turned her hand so her palm was facing up. With exaggerated pleasure, he licked upward from the tips of her fingers to the pulse at her wrist, and his men roared in rowdy approval.
Bayr growled, a deep guttural rumbling that caused Gudrun to raise his eyes and withdraw his tongue.
“Is that not how it’s done in Saylok?” the North King asked Bayr, sardonic. “Or is she yours, Chieftain?”
“May I present my daughter, Princess Alba of Saylok,” the king interrupted, but his eyes censured Bayr, his expression hard, his mouth tight. “The Temple Boy has fallen back into his old ways. He returns to the mount after a decade and immediately considers himself the princess’s protector.”
“Temple Boy?” Gudrun repeated, his eyebrows raised in query.
“I am Bayr. Chieftain of Dolphys,” Bayr said, carefully. Slowly. He did not acknowledge Banruud but kept his gaze on Gudrun.
“Ah. I have heard of you, Dolphys. You are known for your strength. I should like to test it,” Gudrun hissed.
“These are my chieftains—Dolphys, Adyar, Joran, Leok, and Ebba. You’ve met Berne,” the king said, tossing his hand toward the men who trailed his daughter. Bayr was not the only one who bristled at the introduction. The clan chieftains were subordinate to the king, but the implication that they were “his” did not sit well.
Banruud offered his arm to Alba, who took it without hesitation, though her fingers barely touched his sleeve and her posture did not relax. Banruud nodded toward the keepers standing in silent observance on the temple steps. Ivo had moved out in front of them, a stooped crow bent around his staff.
