The Jewel of Time: a Time Travel romance: Called by a Viking Series Book 2

by Mariah Stone

  “No one. It’s a hunting cabin on my father’s lands.”

  He removed a cloth sachet, from which he produced what looked to Rachel like a medieval first aid kit—including what appeared to be a bone needle and a thread. Her stomach flipped at the sight.

  “What the hell, Kolbjorn?”

  “Stay still.” He sat close to her and looked at her forehead. Rachel’s skin tingled as if he touched her. “I don’t know if my father will decide to kill you or not, but I am not going to have your life on my hands if he wants to pardon you and you die of a rot-wound.” He pressed on her skin, making the sides of the gash come together. That hurt, but Rachel’s lips parted. His touch spread warmth through her like a hot shower on a cold morning.

  Kolbjorn’s face was right before her. Maybe she should do something if she wanted to seduce him and get the necklace back. If she moved two inches, she’d find his lips. His eyes locked with hers, and for a second, an invisible thread connected them as it had the moment they first saw each other.

  No! No way, Rachel. There can be nothing between you two.

  She looked down, breaking the contact.

  “It’s going to hurt,” he said. “When I patch up my warriors, I talk with them about hunting or fishing, or ask them to tell me their favorite story about the gods, or the women they fancy. I don’t know anything about you. Tell me about something you enjoy. That will distract you.”

  He punctured her skin, and pain shot through her like an electric current. She bit her lip but did not allow the whimper to leave her mouth.

  “All I’ve cared about for the last six years has been getting my mother through her illness.”

  She wanted to tell him how she had dropped out of high school, how she’d looked for jobs—anything that would be legal and that would pay something: cleaning, washing dishes, waitressing—and that the biggest joy she could imagine would be having her mother healthy again. When that day came, she dreamed of going camping again, with her mom and James, just like in the happiest days with their dad. Without the dialysis machine, without the weight of dread that had been part of her since her mother first fell ill. To make a fire—like this one—to grill some s’mores, laugh and joke, and to talk—not about kidney failure, and not about bills or the hospital.

  About nothing in particular and everything at the same time.

  But she could not open up in front of him.

  “And what did you like doing before?” Kolbjorn said, and Rachel felt the excruciating pull of the thread through her skin. She clenched her jaws to avoid crying out. “Talk,” he said. “And breathe.”

  “I went to school,” she said through clenched teeth. “I liked rock climbing and playing soccer. Why bother even talking about it? You have no idea what soccer is!”

  Kolbjorn punctured her again, and Rachel sucked in a breath. Her forehead burned as if he poured hot oil on it.

  “No, I don’t.” He frowned. “What is soccer?”

  “It’s a sport. Two teams play with a ball.”

  His hazel eyes flickered to hers for a moment, and tingling went through her. “Last stitch. And where are you from then? Where people play soccer?”

  The needle pricked her skin, probably rougher than necessary, and this time Rachel couldn’t stop the yelp of pain. Dang.

  “Where do you think I’m from?”

  He pulled the thread further, agonizing Rachel’s skin. The scar would probably stay with her her whole life. Not that it mattered.

  Kolbjorn rummaged with the thread, tying it up. Even though her forehead burned with pain because of him, she did not want his hands to leave her. But they did. He put one hand on his knee, the other one pointing the needle at Rachel.

  “I had thought you were a daughter of a merchant from the neighboring village. That was what folk told me when I had asked around about you. A pretty red-haired girl who dresses in black.”

  She forgot about the pain, about the necklace, about the wailing wind outside and that she was more than a thousand years from home. Her breath caught in her throat.

  “You asked around about…me?”

  He busied himself with putting the needle and the thread back in the pouch.

  “I did. But it does not matter now, does it?”

  He then took a dirty cloth out of the sachet and moved his hand to put it on Rachel’s forehead. She jerked back.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  “I want to wipe your blood. Not strangle you.”

  “With that dirty rag? I don’t want it anywhere near my wound. Are you kidding me?”

  “I always use cloth like this on my warriors.”

  “Kolbjorn, listen to me. What you call a rot-wound is infection; and this dirt”—she pinched the gray material between her thumb and her index finger”—is exactly what causes it. Wash it with soap, then boil it in water for at least five minutes. Then you may apply it to open wounds. Understood?”

  He watched her seriously. “Are you a witch?”

  She barked out a laugh. “Something like that, to you, probably.”

  Kolbjorn eyed her. “Did you bewitch me, then? That moment, when I first saw you. I could not move. I wanted to follow you, but it was as if you asked me not to. Was it a spell?”

  Rachel’s pulse must be running faster than a Formula One race car. He was right in front of her, and she was hit with that primal scent of hay and leather and man that she’d smelled when she’d entered his house all those months ago, with his warm hazel eyes and the beard she had wanted to touch for so long…

  Her hand rose as if by its own will, and her fingers traced his short beard. Crisp. But so pleasant against her fingertips. Maybe she was casting a spell.

  Maybe he was, too.

  Everything lost its meaning now, and time stood still, just as it had the first moment they saw each other. Now, all that mattered was him and her and the pull.

  They came together, as inevitable as the sunrise. Her arms wrapped around his neck, her lips found his—they were firm and warm. Kolbjorn’s arms wrapped around her and pulled her close, pressing her against him, every part of her skin burning where their bodies touched, even through the layers of clothing.

  He licked her lower lip, and her knees melted. She let him into her mouth. Their tongues met, stroking, gliding against each other. Heat surged through her, her skin sweat-damp.

  The urge to be with him, skin-to-skin, soul-to-soul, to feel him bare and true against her overtook her like intoxication, and she began untying his cloak.

  His hands began fiddling with her cloak, too. Then a loud gust of wind hit the hut. The walls shook, and something cracked above their heads. A swarm of snowflakes stung Rachel’s cheek, and they both jolted out of their exploration to stare at the roof, where planks hung through what was now a large hole, and thatch lay on the earth floor in a pile of snow. The wind rushed in, and the warmth of the fire—and Kolbjorn’s lips and hands—the cold of the storm chilled Rachel’s burning face and body.

  And so, it seemed, it did his. Kolbjorn’s eyes were as hard as stone, and he pulled away from her as if she threw a bucket of ice water over him.

  Chapter Seven

  “T hor’s hairy balls,” Kolbjorn spat as he left Rachel and rushed towards the hole, even though his body burned to continue what they had started.

  The kiss had made all his thoughts evaporate, and with them—logic. She must be a witch. How else could she make him forget the most important goal in his life?

  He must take her to Father, who would surely punish her. He could not give in to the urge to have her, to kiss her till the end of eternity, only to have her killed when the storm ended.

  The wind that now wailed in brought the smell of snow and chilled Kolbjorn’s skin—and his desire—returning him to sanity.

  He studied the damage. The wooden beams supporting the roof were still intact. It was the thatch and two rotten planks that had broken from the pressure of snow and the strength of the storm.

&nb
sp; “I must fix it or we’ll be dead,” he muttered.

  “Let me help,” Rachel stood next to him.

  He ignored her and looked around. The shack had not been repaired for a while, and this was the result. What Kolbjorn needed was an ax, nails—some of which must still be in the wood rot—and fresh planks, which he did not have.

  But firewood lay in the far corner of the hut, and maybe he could cut the bigger pieces to cover up the hole temporarily.

  He wouldn’t be able to do it alone though—not before they froze to death, at any rate. He glanced at Rachel, who eyed him with a frown. “Quick”—he gestured at the planks—“find nails that are salvageable.”

  Rachel nodded and sank to the floor to rummage in the rotten planks lying in a small pile of snow that was growing bigger with every blast of wind. Behind the firewood stash, Kolbjorn found a log and placed it in the middle of the room. There was also a woodcutting ax. Kolbjorn took it, propped his battle ax against the wall, and began hacking at the log.

  “I got six nails,” Rachel said. “Is that enough?”

  “No.” First flitch flew from the log.

  The smartest thing for Rachel to do now would be to make wooden nails with the woodcutting ax while he worked on the flitches, but there was no way Kolbjorn would trust her with an ax.

  “What do you want me to do now?” she said.

  “Nothing,” he barked, and the next flitch flew.

  “Come on, I am not some blue-blooded princess. I can do stuff. I know how to work with metal, the basics of jewelry.”

  “What?” The next hack sent a third flitch flying.

  “My mom is a jeweler. I watched her often when she still worked.”

  “Jewelry won’t help here.”

  “Well, no, not technically, but I can do something. Let me hammer the planks to the roof. You said we must hurry.”

  Kolbjorn straightened up, took a breath and regarded her. She stood straight and proud like a goddess of battle, with that wound on her forehead and blood caked against her pale skin, her lips full and dark, her cheeks red from frost, her auburn hair blowing in the wind. What he wanted most was to scoop her into his arms, take her to the sleeping bench next to him, and make her lips swell and her cheeks burn for very different reasons.

  He chased the thought away.

  “Can you make wooden nails?”

  “I can figure it out.”

  Kolbjorn was surprised by her keenness. He pointed at the opposite corner of the room. “Go there. I will trust you with the ax for now. If you make one wrong move, you’ll be dead sooner than you can think your next thought.”

  Rachel frowned. “Why are you so jumpy?”

  “You could kill me to get your necklace, couldn’t you? Your mother’s life against mine, who would you choose? Though if you killed me, you wouldn’t be able to fix the roof on your own. So you’d be dead, and with you your mother.”

  “But I’d never kill you, Kolbjorn.” She reached out her hand. “Give me that ax. I’ll figure out what to do.”

  Kolbjorn handed her the woodcutting ax and watched carefully as she moved away from him. Then he turned to the firewood stash and found a few wooden twigs that were thick enough and hard enough to become nails. He handed them to Rachel together with a couple of pieces of firewood.

  The wind blew in more snow, and after another blast, the roof cracked. Kolbjorn’s eyes shot to the direction of the hole to see if any more planks had flown off. But, for now, they remained secure.

  In between the hacks of his battle ax, Kolbjorn threw glances at Rachel to make sure she was not making any moves or planning any tricks on him, but she seemed to be completely occupied by her task. The tip of her tongue peeked out the corner of her mouth, which made her look like a little girl, and Kolbjorn hid a smile.

  “So, how’s your dad doing?” Rachel said, and Kolbjorn froze with his ax above his head.

  “Why?”

  “Dunno. He is so intense.”

  “That’s none of your business.” He cut another flitch.

  “I’m just curious.”

  He smashed the ax into the log, but it went in at the wrong angle, and a fountain of splinters sprung from under it. “Loki’s hundred-year turd! You dare to ask about my father. You! Do you know what you cost me? Do you know that he took away everything?”

  And he did not mean his possessions. He meant things more important. Everything he had worked so hard for his whole life. His father’s approval. The chance to belong to his family.

  Rachel froze, the wood and the ax in her hands. “I never meant for you to get into trouble.”

  The wind blew in another shower of snow, some of which hissed in the fire. “That is why I need to deliver you to him, so that he forgives me. Being a bastard does not play in my favor.”

  “Are you illegitimate?”

  “I am his oldest—and yet, a bastard. He has two legitimate sons.”

  “And your mother?”

  “She was a slave. She died. I never knew her.”

  Rachel cut another splinter. “I’m sorry that she died. That’s crazy. You never knew your mother, and yet your father is in your life every day. And I am fighting to keep my mother alive when my father abandoned me like a sack of garbage.”

  Kolbjorn regarded her intently. What was this strange situation they were in? Rachel and he were opposite in many ways, and yet something visceral connected them and resonated deeply in him when he looked at her, when he heard her voice.

  He understood well the fire in her that made her do anything to save her mother. He’d also rather die than let harm come close to his father. Somewhere in his gut, he felt that Rachel was the same.

  Kolbjorn’s throat clenched. The Norns who spun people’s fates were so cruel. In another life, under different circumstances, he would fight for Rachel, too. Kolbjorn hit the log for the last time, and a perfect flitch flew out.

  He straightened up. “That should do. Come, help me fix the roof.”

  They hurried to the opening, and Kolbjorn stood on a small stool to hammer the flitches with the back of his ax. Wind blew snow right into his face, choking him, but he went on. He’d gotten it right—the flitches were long enough to cover the gaps between the beams.

  “I don’t understand something about your dad,” said Rachel when she handed him the next flitch and the nails. “He knows you are his son. He trusted you with the most important treasure—not his legitimate sons. But you are still not in the family? Why can’t he just acknowledge you? Like, can he say, ‘Legally, Kolbjorn is my son.’ ”

  Kolbjorn’s jaw bones clenched. She hit right in the eye, didn’t she?

  “Yes, he can.”

  “So why doesn’t he? Why does your father manipulate you like that?”

  Kolbjorn froze and glanced at her. “Manipulate me?” The suspicion had turned in his stomach before, but he did not want to believe it. He couldn’t give up his quest after all this time. Kolbjorn drove a nail in, and the flitch covered part of the hole, which stopped the wind from blowing in his face. “He does not manipulate me,” he mumbled. “He has conditions.”

  “Oh. Conditions.”

  “Yes. And because of you, I broke them. So I’m further away from my goal than ever.”

  “Your goal? So you do want him to legally take you into the family.”

  It was as if she lashed his heart with a whip. Everyone in the village knew about the situation, the unspoken agreement between the jarl and his bastard hung like a tapestry on the wall of the mead hall. Modolfr was the only person who asked him about it to Kolbjorn’s face, but Kolbjorn only answered yes or no or hmmed in response.

  Kolbjorn had never pronounced the words, as if saying them out loud would bring a bad omen and make his goal unattainable.

  But something about Rachel—her strangeness and her familiarity, the fact that her own father had abandoned her, the fact that she cared about her family as much as he did about his—made him feel that she might understand
him like no one else could.

  “There’s nothing I want more,” he croaked, “than to have my father acknowledge me.”

  Kolbjorn froze and so did Rachel. The words briefly hung before him in a white cloud and then evaporated on the wind.

  “The worst of it is, he promised it to me a long time ago. Until I was five years old, I did not even know I was a bastard. He had even told me he was so glad when I was born, he had given me a version of his name. Kolbjorn. It means ‘dark Bjorn.’ The tradition is to name every first-born son after his father, but I was a bastard, so that was as close as he could get.”

  Kolbjorn hammered the nail deep into the wood. “Kitchen maids and slaves made sure I was fed and dressed, but every day of my life, he was there. I slept in the alcove in his longhouse, he let me eat with him at the table. He handed me his sword the moment I was big enough to hold it and gave me my first fighting lesson.”

  Kolbjorn took another nail from Rachel’s hands. His fingers burned when he touched her, but he did not hurry to take them away. Rachel listened and said nothing. He hammered the nail into the flitch, and it blocked a bit more of the endless storm.

  “Then he got married and everything changed. Before the wedding feast, he told me he’d make me a Bjornsson if I proved myself a great warrior and an honorable man, and my whole life filled with this purpose.”

  Kolbjorn grimaced from the bitterness in his mouth. “Then Alfarr was born, and he couldn’t name him Bjorn anymore, because I sort of took that name. But there he had his real, legal son. He forgot about me. He still talked to me from time to time, to make sure I trained well. Maybe he saw something in me.”

  Kolbjorn swallowed and thought that perhaps, as Rachel said, his father had just wanted to manipulate him, to keep him close in case he needed him.

  He continued, “Father kept saying that because I was a bastard, he could only accept me into the family if I was worthy, if I was the example of honor and the best warrior in the whole of Norway. That if I would accomplish every single task and bring him everything he asked me to, he’d make me his real son one day. That I should make him proud.”