Koli stepped in behind me, murmuring something in Elvish.
I gave her a questioning look, and she said, “We have found her heart.”
Here was a poetic turn I had not observed in her before. It reminded me of something my cousin Izzy would say—the Irish queen had inured me to whimsical tendencies.
“It doesn’t make you uneasy?” I asked.
Koli laughed and shook her head, eyes still moving over the room and its furnishings—a long dining table under an antique chandelier, and a roll-top desk against one wall.
I reached back and closed the door behind us. “Why do you think that is?” I asked in as light a tone as I could manage.
She gave me a teasing smile, and it lifted my heart that I had finally earned enough smiles to be able to tell them apart. “Maybe because I’m a descendant of Loki.”
I frowned. “Comfortable with chaos, then.”
She laughed and moved closer. “Comfortable with chaos.”
Reaching suddenly into the front of her gown, she said, “I had forgotten.” She drew out a chain that was hanging around her neck.
I grinned when I saw my compass at the end of it. She lifted the chain over her head and placed it over mine.
“I used the excuse of emptying your pockets to give you a cell key,” she said.
I pulled her into my arms. “That was a clever bit of jailbreaking, my lady.”
Koli studied me, smiling shyly. “She was someone important to you?”
I frowned, puzzled, and she added, “Angel.”
She had tried to read the inscription—I had nearly rubbed it off by now, so it would have taken good eyes and considerable effort. “Aye, the compass was my mother’s—Angelique.”
“Angelique,” she repeated slowly.
I smiled. “You have it.”
She rested her head against me, and I let my hands slide from her waist to her hips. She flinched, and I loosened my arms.
“Are the wings causing you pain?”
Her smile faded and she shook her head.
With a finger I tipped her chin back, so she’d meet my gaze.
“There are consequences for disobeying Alfakonung.”
I felt my expression harden. “What kind of consequences?”
She pulled her chin free. “I am far from the first to be punished in this way, though it was the first time for me. It is nothing, husband. And I will heal.”
I took hold of her shoulder. “Let me see.”
She hugged her arms around her middle, glancing warily around the chamber, and this display of childlike vulnerability caused me to burn with rage at the devil that had caused it.
“If you like,” she said, “but not here.”
I was not about to remind her that we had no real privacy anywhere on the ship.
Her gaze came to rest on the sleeping loft. Shallow stairways ran up the walls both starboard and port, giving access to a loft on either side of the captain’s quarters—one contained a bed, and the other was lined with bookshelves.
She walked toward the stairs and I followed.
There was just enough room in the loft for me to stand without brushing my head on the ceiling. The princess moved to the foot of the bed and stood facing it. She loosened her bodice strings and then waited silently. I went to her and eased the gown down past her waist. She wore nothing underneath, and I felt a tightness in my groin that was not welcome at this moment.
In the lamplight I could see narrow, silvery marks in the flesh around her hips, like the marks of a whip, except for the color—more like burns than lashes. Neither birching nor flogging were allowed on Aesop, but I had seen such marks on sailors, as well as on my mother’s passengers.
“What did this?” I asked grimly.
“A fire whip,” she replied. “It’s an elven spell.”
“Will it scar?”
“It is intended to.”
I ground my teeth. I will kill him. If it’s the last thing I do.
“It must be painful,” I said, straining to keep the anger from my voice.
“More so now,” she admitted, “in the calm and quiet.”
“What about Ulf?” I asked, my anger finding a new object. “What did he say about this?”
She raised her gown, pushing her hands back through the sleeves before she turned. “It was not his business to say anything.”
I stared at her in disbelief. “He knew of it, and he let it happen? I thought he was your bodyguard.”
“He serves my father,” she said. “As you know.”
“Has he not been your friend?” I argued. “Has he not been your lover?”
Instead of reacting to my fit of temper, she replied simply, “That changes nothing.”
My blood boiled. I’ll kill him too.
“By god, it ought to.”
She raised an eyebrow, and she straightened her shoulders. “If it had, perhaps I would have married him against my father’s wishes.”
I sighed out my anger and offered her a wry smile. She smiled too, and I moved closer and wrapped my arms around her. “Forgive me, acushla. It’s not you I’m angry with.”
“I know.”
“Men are fools, though I will claim the dubious honor of being a lesser one than your bodyguard. Would you really have married him?”
She frowned. “It was never a possibility. Neither of us would have crossed my father. If we had, he would have hunted us down.”
Her hand came up and she began to trace my bottom lip with her thumb. A firebolt shot from the point of contact right through my core, and the front of my trousers went taut. The last time she’d touched me like this, we were driven by circumstances to seal our marriage vows. There was nothing compelling us now.
“I had always expected to make a political marriage,” she said, her attention still focused on my lips.
“And so you have.” As her fingers continued their gentle exploration, I dropped a hand to her buttocks, avoiding the injured flesh directly above, and pulled her against me. The breath hissed between her teeth. “How does it feel to be married to the enemy?”
Her lips curved impishly. “I thought that you would be unbearably ugly.”
I laughed. “Are you implying that I’m not?”
She narrowed her eyes, considering. “I expected you to look more like Doro.”
I lifted my eyebrows. “Is he unbearably ugly, then?” I’d have guessed most lasses would consider Doro to be the very picture of genteel masculine beauty. But my new wife was no lass.
“No,” she admitted. “He is softer in form and feature than the men I know, yet he emanates power, and in the beginning I found his ambition compelling. When he told me I was to be his queen, the idea did not repulse me.”
“Not repulsive,” I replied. “High praise, indeed. And what about me?”
Her fingers moved to the buttons of my shirt. “I was not at all repulsed by you. It was very inconvenient.”
I grinned, tightening my grip on her backside as her fingers proceeded down my chest. “I found you inconveniently not repulsive as well.”
She gave a short nod. “You expected me to be an ogre.”
“Aye, it’s true.”
“It was not difficult to exceed your expectations.”
When she had unfastened all the buttons she could reach, I pulled her sleeves down off her shoulders, baring her breasts.
“Perhaps not,” I agreed, cupping one breast, rubbing its bright nub with my thumb. “But when it comes to women, I know what I like. I leaned close to her, raising a hand to rub the other nipple. I could feel the quick rhythm of her breath as she pressed into my hands.
I whispered in her ear, “Spirit. Courage. Fire.”
“Fire?” she murmured, hands coming to my arms as she leaned further into me.
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I slid one hand into the front of her dress, over her strong belly muscles and into the soft, dark curls between her legs. I pressed a finger into the hot wetness awaiting me. “Fire,” I repeated, and she moaned.
“Now that I have met one of your lovers,” I said, my fingers stroking around her opening, “I find that I am curious as well as brutishly jealous. Tell me about him?”
She drew back to look at me, a puzzled smile on her face. “What do you want to know?”
I cupped her with my hand, inserting a finger, and she shuddered, muscles clenching around me. “How did it happen?”
She rocked into my palm, making soft sounds in her throat. Her hands came to my hips, and my finger slipped out of her as she pulled my hardened cock against her belly.
“We had been hunting in the highlands,” she said breathlessly. “It was winter and there had been no game for days, but then we took three rabbits. We were so hungry we roasted and ate them all, and drank a good deal of landi besides.”
“I don’t know what landi is,” I said with an appreciative chortle, “but I think I can guess.”
I stepped back far enough to unfasten my trousers and lower her gown. Moving close again, I wrapped my hands underneath her buttocks. “Will this hurt you?”
Her hand came to my cheek. “Let’s find out.”
I lifted her gently, and I slowly lowered her onto my cock. She did cry out—though not in pain—and folded her legs around me. I closed my eyes, half-drunk myself on the sensation of being inside her.
“Where was I?” she said in a voice low and heavy with arousal.
“Landi.”
She braced a hand on each of my shoulders, rocking her hips against me. “Ulf was telling bawdy stories and I was laughing,” she continued, “though I only understood about half of them.”
Her dark wings stroked the air around us. I dug my fingers into her buttocks, moving her back and forth over my cock, a low moan rumbling out of me.
“Once, when he peeped through a window—most Icelanders have no idea how often we watch them—he saw a dairy maid and a shepherd. When he told me what they were doing, I started asking questions. Finally I asked him to show me.”
“You did no such thing,” I choked out, thrusting hard inside her.
She leaned close to my ear and whispered, “I did.”
I groaned and carried her to the bed, easing her off my cock. She lay down on her stomach, spread her legs and her wings, and looked over her shoulder at me—the challenge in her gaze was almost enough to end me. Bending over her, I pressed my palm between her legs, rubbing and kneading as she raised her backside against me.
“What did he do then?” I demanded.
She laughed at me. “He just stared with his mouth hanging open, like you are. I started unlacing my shirt. I took it off and sat there half naked in the firelight, watching him try to devour me with his eyes. Then I reached up and began touching my breasts.”
“You’re killing me, wife,” I growled as I lowered my hips and entered her.
She gasped and pushed her hips back, shifting her knees underneath her while she braced herself with her arms. Then she began battering my belly with her backside, wringing her pleasure from me. Finally she pressed hard against me and froze. I could feel the spasms of the muscles inside her as the waves of sensation took her.
I watched her body slacken and listened to her breath. When the tension in her muscles had wound down, I bent close to her ear and asked, “What happened next?”
She drew her hips forward until I slipped out of her, cock throbbing desperately.
She rose to her knees, and she turned and unbuttoned my shirt the rest of the way. She pushed her hands inside the edges of my shirt and ran them down my chest and stomach. And then she took me between her cool hands.
The breath hissed between my teeth—her stroking fingers both soothed and stoked.
Watching me closely, she squeezed my cock and said, “He came around the fire to stand in front of me, and he opened the front of his trousers.”
I let out a whimper. A whimper! If she’d had Doro’s knife, she could have carved out my heart and I wouldn’t have cared.
“He showed me how hard he was, and then I did this.”
She bent over me and very slowly, very deliberately licked the bead of moisture from the tip of my cock. I cried out from the delicious shock of it.
Her tongue snaked over me and I took her head between my hands. The silky wet heat of her caress was almost too much. I knew I would end quickly, like a beast in the field, if I watched her face while she licked me.
When at last her mouth closed over me, I could no longer resist. At that same moment, she lifted her eyes to meet mine, and she drew back until just the tip remained in her mouth. A wave of dizziness washed over me as she swept her tongue once around it, and then she slowly glided forward until I felt myself molding into the curve of her throat.
“For the love of—”
Her lips moved back and forth over my length until I thought I would explode. My fingers dug into her plaits, and I held my breath. I could no longer stop myself from moving, but I tried to keep my thrusts as gentle as possible so as not to choke her. God—I had never felt anything like the tight, wet heat of her.
“Koli,” I croaked, “I’m going to—”
She took hold of my hips, preventing me from drawing out, and she glided down my shaft until I was sure I felt her lips on my belly.
Stars exploded behind my eyelids and I let go.
Koli
There was magic in that salty warm fluid, or so the ancients believed. My ancestress Gunnhild had bound men to her—warlords, necromancers, would-be kings. It was said that by her magic she lived to be one hundred and twelve, and even as a white-haired matron, men worshiped her as a goddess. Her bed was never empty unless she chose it. And when she needed men to raise a sword in her name, she was never left wanting.
I was no sorceress, but the way my husband was looking at me made me feel just as powerful.
“God in heaven, wife,” he croaked. I lay on the bed on my stomach, and he stretched beside me, one heavy, hot hand resting on my backside. “Have I survived that, or is this the afterlife?”
I reached out and touched his chin, feeling the dark stubble under my fingertips. Reassuring myself that he was real.
“Did you ever think about this before we married?” I asked him.
A smile spread over his face. “I might have once or twice. Did you?”
“I might have,” I said, returning his smile, “once or twice.”
He chuckled softly, and his eyes closed. A moment later I could tell by his breathing he was asleep. I scooted closer and he lifted his arm, draping it over my folded wings.
When I woke, the chamber was brighter—light streamed in through the windows in the stern. Finvara was awake already and watching me. He reached out and pushed a strand of hair out of my eyes.
“It’s hard not to think about how all of this could have been avoided had I not been such a headstrong ass,” he said.
I considered this a moment, my mind waking slowly. I recalled how it had stung me that he had refused to honor Queen Isolde and my father’s arrangement, and how I had vowed to make him pay for it.
“We can’t know that it could have been avoided,” I said. “My father was never interested in a lasting peace. Nor was I.”
His answering grin was full of mischief. “You’ve no idea how charming I can be.”
I gave a little snort. “I think I have an idea.”
He laughed and rolled onto his side, fingers trailing down my arm.
“Do they bother you?” I asked him. “My wings.”
His face softened as he studied them, eyes flowing from my shoulders down to my legs, and I found myself holding my breath.
“It’
s like they were there all along,” he said, “and I just never noticed them. They suit you. And they’re erotic as hell.” His face lit up, eyes moving back to mine. “Can you fly?”
I laughed at the sudden boyish intensity. “I can, but it’s exhausting.”
He scooted closer to me and bent to touch his lips to mine.
tear yourself from your marriage bed, elf maid. dublin castle is in view.
RECKONING
Finvara
Like Knock Ma, Dublin castle was much changed. The basic structure was the same—a marriage of buildings constructed at different points in history, in different architectural styles. There were surviving medieval structures, including the defensive tower and great hall, a chapel built early in the nineteenth century, as well as living quarters and state apartments constructed in the eighteenth century. The Irish capital was a city of two names, with many citizens referring to it as Baile Atha Cliath. The name Dublin—more commonly used by city dwellers, officials, and foreigners—originated in the time of Viking settlement. It meant “dark pool,” which referred to a peaty tidal pool at the confluence of the Liffey and Poddle rivers, and had the advantage of being much easier to say.
The Poddle river had been diverted under the city and no dark pool had been present in my lifetime—and yet there it was, next to the castle where there’d once been a park. At its center was a perfectly round island, over which was anchored a gas balloon, brightly decorated in purple and gold. The cityscape surrounding the castle had been invaded by forest, with trees sprouting right out of cobbled alleys and tiled roofs.
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