by Alice Wilde
A surge of energy leaps up within me and I force myself to swim faster. My toes scrape against something and I nearly scream in terror when I realize it’s just the bottom of the lake. I swim a few more feet and find I can finally stand with my head well above water. The shouts are growing louder from within the town and I wade as quickly as I can to toward shore. It’s only when I reach waist-deep water that I realize I’m completely naked with nothing to cover myself. The chilly night air sends goosebumps across my skin. Another shout, and this time I recognize it for certain as Ero’s voice. I hesitate only for a moment before forcing myself out of the water and toward the sound.
The town is quite dark, apart from a light I can only guess is coming from the center of town where I had noticed the fire from atop the ledge. I can hear voices growing louder and angrier the closer I get. I only wish I knew what they were saying.
I weave my way through the houses toward the light and find myself in the midst of a large crowd of people. My presence is noticed immediately as those closest to me gasp and scream, the whole crowd turning toward me as more people see me and react in similar manners. Every ounce of me wants to turn and flee, but then I see Ero.
He’s tied to an unlit pyre. One man stands to the side, holding a torch dangerously close to the dry wood, while another seems to be announcing something to the crowd. On the other side of the pyre is the fiercest man I’ve ever seen. His hair and beard are a shade of yellow I’ve never seen before. He’s wearing more furs than I can imagine would be comfortable this time of year, even in the chilly night air, and his cloak is fastened with the largest silver clasps I’ve ever seen. His arms are bare and as thick as a young tree and one of his hands is wrapped around the handle of a sheathed greatsword. I can’t help but think he must be the leader of these people.
Squaring my shoulders as best I can, I step forward, as bare and nearly as bloody as a newborn babe, and make my way toward Ero. The men standing by the pyre have yet to notice me, but the crowd parts quickly to let me through, growing ever quieter the closer I get to Ero. It isn’t long before the official-looking men finally realize something is going on and turn their heads in my direction. I can feel every inch of my body, and the eyes on it, but I keep my eyes focused on Ero.
The people around me have started whispering. I can’t discern what they’re saying other than a single word that seems to be repeated throughout.
Disir.
The word is whispered louder and more enthusiastically among the people the closer I get to the pyre until I step out from the crowd and into the open space between them and Ero.
Ero’s eyebrows spring up in surprise as he looks down and recognizes me. He mouths the word “princess” to himself in disbelief before a grin spreads across his face. I slowly turn my gaze toward the man I believe to be their leader, keeping my face as hard as possible and praying to all the gods I can think of that I don’t need to speak.
As much of a brute as the man appears to be, his mouth has fallen agape and his eyes are wide with shock, staring at me. I frown at him, letting my eyes bore into him and hoping my message is clear as I carefully point a finger toward Ero and say the only thing that comes to mind.
“Disir.”
The word drips from my lips like honey. The strangeness of the sound surprises me, but I somehow manage to keep my face straight as I turn my gaze toward the man still holding the torch far too close to the pyre for my comfort.
He, too, is staring at me, but his face is full of fear.
The moment seems to last a lifetime before the yellow-haired brute finally manages to speak, and I quickly look up at Ero for a sign as to what has been said. Relief floods through me as I see he’s still smiling down at me until a thud and a flicker of light in the corner of my eye catches my attention. The man holding the torch has tripped, and the flame he’d been holding so close to Ero’s pyre has caused the kindling to catch fire.
“Ero!” I scream, my heart leaping out of my chest. I crumple to the ground at the sight of the flames burning ever higher, and then my eyes roll back in my head. I blink, but all I see is darkness. I blink again, but this time there’s a small moving light in the center of my vision and I focus hard on it. The light grows brighter and I force myself to remain focused on it, pushing all other thoughts aside. I blink once again and find myself looking once more at the pyre, but this world is different.
While I can sense that the people and setting are the same as before, they are standing as if frozen in time, ambiguous shadows of themselves. I turn to look at the crowd of people and see varying shades of dark and light with the brightest of lights being the tiniest of the shadowy shapes. Looking back over my shoulder, I notice the space where the yellow-haired man had been standing is instead replaced by the darkest shadow of all. The darkness almost appears to grow and devour everything around it the longer I look at it, and I avert my eyes from it as quickly as I can.
I hesitate and then look up at Ero. His shadow is dark, but there’s a small spark of light somewhere in the center. Blinding light rises up in front of me and I nearly turn away, but something draws me forward. I need to understand what that spark of light in Ero’s shadow is.
Stepping forward, I reach out and touch the blinding light. It caresses my skin as I brush my hand through it, and then it moves, splitting to let me through as I make my way up toward the shadow.
Fourteen
LIi
A loud sound wakes me and I sit up, looking around in confusion. Night has fallen, but the moon is still rising, which means it has only been a few hours. Roan is nearby. He’d fallen asleep as well but had somehow managed to remain in a seated position.
I yawn and stretch, every muscle sore and stiff. I doubt we’ll be able to travel far for at least a few days. I’m not even sure if I have enough energy to shift if needed. Slowly getting to my feet, I walk a little ways back into the forest to relieve myself. A rabbit scurries across my path and my stomach growls at the idea of meat roasting over a fire. I should probably check with the others to see what we want to do for the night. Almost instantly, the drowsy fog in my brain clears as I realize what I hadn’t before.
Running back to camp, I push aside the branches to reveal the ledge and exactly what I’d feared.
Roan starts at the sound of me crashing back into the camp and looks up at me, sleep still clouding his own mind.
“They’re gone,” I say.
Roan shakes his head and then seems to grasp what I mean, leaping to his feet. He grimaces, and I know fatigue has dug its claws into him as well.
I close my eyes and breathe in. There’s no lingering scent of Ero, but there is of Annalise. She couldn’t have left more than half an hour ago, and it must have been in pursuit of Ero. I walk over to the ledge and look out over the view below.
“Roan,” I say, “you might want to take a look at this.”
Roan hurries to my side to look in the direction I’m pointing. In the middle of the village below is a massive crowd surrounding a large pyre—and right in the midst of it all are Ero and a very naked, and bleeding, Annalise.
“Holy hell,” Roan growls. “What in all the saints’ names is going on down there?”
“We don’t have time to guess,” I say. “Let’s go.”
Without another thought, I jump down the ledge, controlling the fall as best I can. I can hear Roan following close behind. There’s no warning when I suddenly find myself falling over another ledge and straight down into a lake. I shift into my leopard form before I hit the water, more out of self-preservation than because I want to. I resurface and look up just in time to see Roan drop into the water beside me. We’ve both shifted, but I don’t think it’s because either of us wanted to.
“I think I just shifted out of fear,” Roan says, creating a link between us. “I don’t think that’s happened before.”
“I hadn’t planned to shift either,” I admit. “I’m not sure if that was merely out of self-preservation or becau
se of something else.”
“Like our beasts taking over?” Roan says with a laugh, which dies away almost immediately.
“We don’t have time to worry about it now,” I say, pushing the issue out of my mind for the time being. “We have to get to Annalise.”
Turning toward the town, we make quick work of the swim to shore and shake the water from our fur.
“Ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.”
I focus my energy on shifting and then glance over at Roan.
“I can’t shift back,” Roan says.
“Neither can I.”
“We’ll just have to make do with these forms,” growls Roan, and with that, we make our way into the town.
It doesn’t take long for us to reach the pyre we’d seen before, but now there’s smoke rising from it and I can’t help but imagine the worst.
I let out a snarl that even I wasn’t aware I could make, and people turn and scream, parting so we can make our way through. Roan and I come to a stop right in front of the raging fire and all we can do is sit back in shock. There, in the middle of the fire is Ero, holding Annalise tightly in his arms.
Fifteen
Annalise
As the flames die down around us, I look up into Ero’s face. This isn’t how I pictured things going, and certainly not with him.
When I reached the shadow on the pyre and touched it, the world came back into focus around me and I realized what I had done. I expected fear to take over as I looked down at the flames surrounding us. All I knew was that I couldn’t let go of Ero, not yet.
“Hold me,” I said, and he did.
Now, here we were, alive and unharmed in the dying light of the fire.
“We can leave now,” I say.
“I know,” Ero says, his eyes not moving from my face. “I’m pretty sure we’ve been able to since the ropes burned away, princess.”
His tone is gentle and teasing, but not in the way he used my pet name in the past. The same word, but now there is an entirely different feeling behind it. A feeling that sends my heart racing and brings a smile to my face.
Ero steps carefully down from the pyre through the remaining flames, not a single hair on his head singed—although we’d both be needing new clothes.
“It looks like Li and Roan have decided to join us,” Ero says with a nod toward them.
I look in the direction he’s nodding and sure enough, two leopards are sitting stoically watching us. The crowd has moved back and is standing silently a safe distance away from them, watching on. But, as soon as Ero and I are safely out of the fire, the stunned silence turns into excited murmuring.
“What’s happening?” I ask.
“Aside from the two of us surviving a fire unscathed,” Ero says with a laugh, “I think you just proved me to be the rightful heir.”
“I did what?”
“You may not have noticed, but I was not in the best situation when you arrived.”
“Seriously, Ero. Just tell me what is going on.”
“I think we should carry on with this conversation at a later time,” Ero says. “I don’t know about you, but I’d rather not stand around in the nude discussing my past and present with the whole village watching on.”
I blush deeply at the thought and suddenly realize that although naked, I no longer have any open wounds on my skin either.
Ero turns toward the man with the yellow hair and says something in a commanding voice, and I watch as the other man grudgingly nods his head and motions for us to follow him. As we make our way up a path toward a large building, Ero continues his tale.
“My father was the jarl here a long time ago, when I was just a boy, before everything went wrong. I wasn’t the first in line to rule as I had several older brothers, but that hadn’t bothered me since I’d always preferred the idea of being a Viking warlord. But the day my family was murdered, I was found sitting alone, the sole survivor, holding my young sister’s body in my arms. At first, they had compassion for me, but compassion soon turned to fear and suspicion.”
“Oh,” I whisper, my mind trying to make sense of everything he’s telling me. Suddenly my own life doesn’t seem nearly as bad as it once did.
“The people soon wanted a new jarl, and one of the berserkers, the man you see in front of you, stepped forward. Stories about madness and a curse spread through the village, and it wasn’t long after that I was driven out of town. I was told never to return lest they leave my fate up to the spirits. So, at barely fourteen years of age, I fled the only home I’d known with nothing, no one, and nowhere to go.”
“But how would they have recognized you after all these years?” I ask.
“You’d be surprised how hard it is to hide your identity with a face like mine,” Ero says with a wink. “It’s not as common as you think to have hair as white as this. Even Bjarke here doesn’t have naturally blond hair.”
“Is that why it’s so yellow?”
“He used to be a redhead,” Ero says. “He must have changed it sometime after he became jarl.”
“So, what happened after you left?”
“I joined a group of rogue Vikings. We’d sail back and forth, raiding and plundering goods to sell back home or to other, richer cities. It’s not something I’m proud of now, but it was all I had, and it kept me alive. I learned how to fight, to lead, and to sail. I wanted for nothing and had riches and women to spare…among other things.”
“Why did you come back alone?” I ask.
“I knew coming back here would be a risk, but I didn’t know how much of a risk we were really taking,” Ero says. “When I saw that the three of you had fallen asleep, I took my chance. I may not have many redeeming points, but I wasn’t about to put your lives at risk until I knew what we were up against. Although I have to admit I didn’t realize they’d quite so literally put the fate of my life in the gods’ hands.”
“Do they think I’m a god?”
Ero looks down at me with a curious expression.
“Have you normalized what you’ve just done already?” He asks. “Annalise, you just walked through fire unharmed and saved me in the process.”
It’s not that I’ve forgotten, but I just don’t know how to accept what I did. I don’t even know how I did it, and I’m too tired to think about what any of this might mean.
“I…I know,” I finally say. “I just can’t wrap my mind around it right now. None of this seems real, let alone possible.”
Ero frowns, but nods his head in understanding.
“We should focus on getting a bite to eat and a good night’s rest first anyways.”
“Clothes first,” I say with an uneasy laugh.
Ero shrugs.
“I don’t mind being naked so much now that we’re away from so many eyes.”
“Well, I do.”
“Suit yourself,” Ero says before saying something to Bjarke, who grunts in reply.
We’re led down a hall to a bedroom where a servant lays out two sets of clothes for us before leaving the room. Bjarke has called for several guards, who stand towering on either side of him in the doorway. He says something and gestures toward Roan and Li, and I look up at Ero nervously. Several words are exchanged, and then I watch anxiously as Roan and Li are practically dragged out of the room, the door to the room shut tightly behind them.
For the second time, Ero and I are left alone, and I can feel myself beginning to panic. Ero sets me down on the bed, and I quickly snatch the garments meant for me and put them on. They’re far simpler than the dresses I’d worn in Scotland, and easy enough for me to manage on my own. Ero doesn’t dress immediately, but sits down on the edge of the bed, resting his head in his hands.
I watch him warily as I slowly edge myself away from him. I can’t help but worry that he might be experiencing one of Damien’s links by the way he’s currently behaving, especially now that we’re alone. And then I hear a quiet whimper and my heart stops in my chest.
“Ero,” I say quietly, “are you alright?”
Ero doesn’t move or raise his face to look at me, and then I see his shoulders tremble. He’s crying. Without a second thought, I rush to his side and fling my arms around him, my heart aching for him. For the next half hour, I hold this gorgeous, giant of a man in my arms as he weeps into his hands.
When Ero finally manages to control himself, he wipes his eyes with one hand and looks up, staring straight at the wall opposite us. His eyes, lips, and cheeks are flushed a soft pink, but it somehow makes him look even more attractive than ever.
“Sorry about that,” Ero says as he clears his throat in embarrassment. “I don’t remember the last time I fell apart.”
“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” I say.
“You don’t mean that. I’m a terrible person, and I’ve only reiterated that time and again over the past several weeks—no, the past several decades of my life.”
“I don’t know everything about your past, and I have blamed you for things that have happened recently,” I say. “I genuinely believe you have good in your heart, but you have to be willing to let people in.”
“I can’t,” Ero says, his voice hardening.
“Why not?” I ask. “You’ve let Roan and Li in.”
“That wasn’t a choice.”
“You’ve let me in,” I say, but I see Ero grow tense as the words leave my mouth.
“I have not,” Ero snaps. “Just because you saved my life doesn’t mean you’ve managed to capture my heart.”
Looking down at my hands, which are now resting in my lap, I sigh.
“I didn’t say anything about capturing your heart, Ero.”
