Sitting in a swirling bed of dark silk was a silver circle of stones that dazzled like stars made of lightning. At the center of the circle was a blue stone, a larger mate to the one in the ring Leofric had given her during the betrothal ritual.
A crown. The king was giving her a crown.
“This is the Diadem of Æbbe. My grandmother. Your ring comes from her as well.” He lifted the small crown from its silk bed. “You join our family now, Astrid of the North. You carry our heir. It would honor me if you would wear these family jewels when you meet your betrothed before God, and if you would claim them as your own.”
She nodded, and he set the crown on her head. When he offered his arm, she took it, and the King of Mercuria led her through the castle to the chapel, where she would wed his son before his god.
~oOo~
A long swath of golden cloth split the chapel in two. All of the benches—there was a word for them, but Astrid couldn’t remember it—were packed full of people in rich clothes, all of them standing and staring at her. At the very back, separated from the others, were the castle servants she knew: Elfleda and Audie and the others. Elfleda smiled and gave her an encouraging nod.
At the end of the aisle, the king lifted her hand to his lips. Then he let her go and walked alone down the golden aisle toward the altar. As he passed, a wave went through the crowd: people bowing and curtseying to their king. Then they all stood straight again and stared at her.
She stood alone and felt small and weak. At the head of that long aisle stood Leofric—she could see him, standing tall, his hands at his sides, dressed in dark leather breeches and a dark doublet, over his shoulders a cloak of golden and blue brocade trimmed with fur. He wore his crown, much higher and more elaborate than the one on her own head, and smaller and simpler than his father’s or brother’s.
He was smiling at her.
But she couldn’t move. Between them were all these people she didn’t understand, people who thought her a curiosity at best and an animal at worst, who whispered and japed and hoped for her to do something worthy of mockery. She hated that she had to pass through such a gauntlet to reach the one person in all this world she trusted.
As she stood there alone and unmoving, she heard the rustle of whispers moving through the crowd. She was already giving them something to laugh about behind their hands.
This was shame she was feeling, was it not? She rejected shame. These people could not make her feel shame; she would not allow it.
Just as she steeled her spine to take her first step—how absurd that she needed courage to do no more than walk in a straight line—Leofric’s friend Dunstan turned from his place at the front of the chapel and strolled down the aisle straight for her. His smile was bright and sly—amused, but not at her expense.
When he arrived before her, he held out his elbow. “Might I escort milady to the altar?”
It felt like a rescue, silly as that was, and she was glad for it. “Ja. Thank you.” She took his arm and walked, with her back straight and her shoulders square, down the golden aisle.
At the altar, Leofric held out his hand, and Dunstan set hers in it. Then he stepped back, and there was only Astrid and the man she loved. She barely even noticed the new bishop.
“You are beautiful,” he murmured as he led her to kneel on a rail padded with silk. “You’ll be happy, my love. I swear it.”
With her hand in his, Astrid could nearly believe it.
~oOo~
That night, stripped to his breeches, Leofric unfastened the lacings at the back of Astrid’s gown. He’d barred the door from the intrusions of revelers. That was something their people shared in common: the revelry after a couple were wed, and then jesting attempts to crowd in on their night together.
An attendant had taken their crowns and Leofric’s cloak, and he’d wasted no time thereafter in shedding most of the rest of his clothes and coming for hers.
She was in Leofric’s own chamber, a place she’d never before seen. It was a grand suite of vast rooms, each one far bigger than even her improved quarters had been. The bed was a mammoth thing draped in heavy black and red fabric. It was so high from the floor that there were steps leading up to it. The fireplace across from the bed was nearly tall enough for Astrid to stand in.
A table was laden so heavily with sumptuous foods and wines that it seemed they could stay in this room for weeks and never need be bothered.
She had her own suite of rooms as well now, adjoining his. The two of them had private space between them that might have housed half the people of Geitland.
As he loosened the gown and pushed it from her shoulders, she dropped her hands, one at a time, still busy finding all the vexing pins that had been holding her braids and their adornments in place. When she finally was able to let her hair fall down her back, he pushed the gown over her hips. It pooled at the floor, and he helped her step out of it.
“You were glorious today,” he purred, sweeping her hair to the side. He tucked his head against her neck and brushed his beard over her skin. “Thank you.”
She sighed and turned in his arms, sliding her hands into his hair, letting the cool silk of his loose curls coil over her fingers. “I yours now.”
“And I am yours.” He leaned back, and her hands fell to his bare chest. “You’ve made me happy, Astrid. I will help you find your happiness as well. I swear it.”
“Between us, trust and truth, ja?”
“Always.”
The day had not been so awful as she’d expected. Unlike the baptism, the words she’d had to swear at the altar had mostly been about Leofric, and those words had been true. She’d closed her mind to the words about his god. That had been much easier than when she’d been swearing to love a god that was not one of her own and never would be.
The rest of the ritual had been spoken in a language far beyond her knowing, and had required nothing more of her than her presence, so she’d turned her mind from it and studied the man at her side. A fine-looking man. A good man. Beloved. The only one she’d ever felt such a thing for. She would have chosen him if she had been free to make any choice.
Then there had been feasting and reveling, and she’d felt moments of true enjoyment. At the heart of her enjoyment was a single, simple truth: she loved this man, and now they were truly mated. There was more than safety in that. There was certainty. A space of solid ground in this world she stumbled through.
“I have happy with you,” she said and bent her head forward to kiss his chest, at the spot over his heart.
His hands came up to frame her face, and he lifted her head. Searching her eyes, he asked, “Do you, my love?”
“Ja. With you.”
“I’m glad. And you’ll have more.” He leaned down and kissed her, pulling her tightly to his body, enclosing her in his arms, and Astrid felt her body and mind let go of everything but him. It was always the way—in his arms, she belonged. She was home, and at ease.
If she could stay like this, closed off from all the rest of this world, only with him, she might imagine that she was the woman she was supposed to be.
His mouth left hers and drew along her jaw, leaving light nips to tingle her skin. She sighed and arched more closely, pressing the point of her desire to the point of his, little more than his breeches yet between them.
He groaned and dropped his hands to her hips. At her ear, he murmured, “I want to take you to the cabin in the morning. A few days for ourselves, to hunt and rut and feed each other, and not be bothered. A celebration of our own kind.”
Their single night at the cabin was the happiest she’d been in this world. If she could live there always, she would. She took hold of his head and pulled him back so she could see his face. “You mean this?”
“Aye, I do. We can take a carriage.”
“No, I ride!” Oh, the thought of that ride, of the wind in her face, her feet in the stirrups, racing Leofric as they rode through trees dappled with sunlight. She would not be
cooped up in one of the closed-up boxes they called carriages.
“But the babe. Astrid, you must think of him.”
“I’m well again. I ride.” There was little more than usual of her belly yet. Nothing to get in her way.
He condescended with a smile. “Women shouldn’t ride when they’re with child, love.”
That was absurd. “I not big yet. I ride.”
“But—”
She stomped her foot. “Your women fall down at little thump and go to bed and cry. My people strong. Women ride until belly too big. We have big, strong babes. I ride!”
“You’ll give Elfleda worry. My father, too.”
Rather than repeat her demand yet again, she arched an eyebrow at him. She would claim this victory at least.
He laughed. “Very well. You ride—at my side. Only then.” His grin growing, he grabbed her and brought her to his body again, pressing his hard sex to her. “Unless you wish to ride me. Then you’ll be atop.”
Feeling freer and happier than she’d been since the time they’d last spent at the cabin, Astrid laughed.
“Mercy, what a delight that sound is,” Leofric said. “And rare indeed. When you laugh, I see our future.” His expression turned hot and serious as he pulled loose the tie on her underdress. “Tonight, I would have you lie back. Let me attend to you, my wife. Lie under me and let me give you all the pleasure I know how to give. Let me lead you there.”
Astrid rarely coupled passively. She liked a grapple, and she liked to win it. But when Leofric’s hand slid along her side and he swept her up to cradle her in his arms, she was reminded of the feeling of being carried just this way, up from the dark, into the light, away from the black place where she’d been fighting against death and into a world she could learn to live in.
She looped her arms around his neck and kissed his cheek, nuzzling her nose in his dark beard. It was a more impulsively affectionate gesture than she might ever have made, but it didn’t feel strange to make it. Leofric tipped his head into her touch and tightened his hold around her, and she could feel that she’d pleased him.
“I love you.”
She’d pleased him even more; his smile shone over her. “You will always have my love, Astrid of the North.”
Astrid of the North. She’d heard herself called that repeatedly in recent weeks, but it was the first time she’d heard it in Leofric’s voice. Suddenly, cradled in his arms, as he stood in the middle of his magnificent bedchamber, Astrid realized that she had gained a name beyond that which her parents had given her. She’d cast off her father’s name and sought one made of her own life, and she had it. She was Astrid of the North, a name that would have been meaningless in the world she’d had.
She was also a duchess now, but that was Leofric’s title applied to her. Astrid of the North was her own. She had come to this world as a shieldmaiden. And a new thing dawned upon her: every time she’d been called by these people a savage or a beast, an animal or a barbarian, they’d been calling her a shieldmaiden—a word they did not possess. A woman they feared. She was beyond their understanding, beyond their language, beyond their capacity to define.
Whether she ever lifted an axe or a shield again, she would always be the sum of her own life. She would always be a shieldmaiden because she had lived as one.
She understood herself in ways they never would, and now she understood them as well, more every day. That she could now walk among them—that she had power over them, that they bowed to her—that was a victory.
She had won.
As Leofric climbed with her into his royal bed and laid her upon the thick heaps of soft silk covers, she smiled and spread her body wide. She would let her husband worship her, and she would trust him to give her all the pleasure there was to be had.
He must have seen her surrender, because he said her name like a prayer.
On his knees, he loomed above her, then pushed back and stood on the steps, his eyes locked on hers as he opened his breeches and shoved them away.
Need surged through her at the sight of his body. From the moment her eyes had grown used to light again, they’d wanted to look upon him. The mere sight of him had steadied her even when her own mind had seemed alien and strange.
And his touch—his touch brought her home.
Though he was tall among his people, among her own he might have been only average height for a man—a few inches taller than she, but not so tall that they couldn’t meet face to face. And he lacked the stone-hewn breadth of shoulder that Leif or Vali or Ulv possessed. Yet he was beautiful. His face was handsome, his dusky blue eyes, straight nose, and strong brow framed by dark waves and a closely trimmed dark beard. His lips were full and his smile kind and sincere. He was lean and well-shaped, strong shoulders tapering to narrow hips, sleek muscle making curving contours under his skin. Light curls of dark hair covered his chest and belly, his legs, and his forearms.
And at the center of it all was his sex, standing proudly erect for her. None before him had given her the pleasure that he had.
Seeing where her eyes had traveled, Leofric chuckled and circled a hand around himself, stroking languidly. Astrid smiled back and touched herself, sliding her fingers through her folds, already wet for him. Even her own touch zinged more than usual, and she moaned and licked her lips.
Leofric growled like a beast and dropped onto the bed, crawling over her and pushing her hand away to make room for his own. At the touch of his bigger, rougher fingers, Astrid gasped and lifted her hips. She was glad of the babe for this if for no other reason—the way being full of his child had made her want him even more, had made his touch even more intense.
“Your pleasure is mine tonight.” He slid a finger into her, and Astrid closed her eyes and, for this night, gave him dominion over her body.
As his finger probed, finding all the places inside her that could make her moan with need, he showered her with kisses, over her throat, her shoulders, her chest, her breasts, her sides, her belly, each kiss like a prayer, a moment of devotion, his tongue laving and savoring each piece of her. When he lavished her breasts, while his finger—now fingers—pumped into her, she couldn’t be still. Hot charges of unmanageable sensation pulsed through her and drove her to writhe. She closed his head up in her arms and held him to her, her fingers dragging at his hair.
Again and again, he brought her to the precipice of completion, and again and again, he pulled her back, slowing his fingers and gentling his mouth until she could be still beneath him. When Astrid was moaning, virtually keening with frantic need, when she couldn’t breathe enough to fill her lungs, when she could think of nothing but her desperate desire, his fingers left her completely, and she cried out a protest.
Flailing, she tried to grab his hand and put it back, but he only chuckled. “Close your eyes, love,” he said. “Be still and let me move you.”
When she did as he’d bid her, she felt his beard between her legs and then his tongue at her core. Clutching his head to keep him close, she completed almost at once, shocked at the force of it, and shocked more at the sound that erupted from her mouth. She screamed. And screamed. And screamed until the waves and waves of ecstatic release finally ebbed. He fed on her until she’d lost all control of her body, and even the will to control it, and her hands dropped from his head.
Gasping in great gulps of air, she wedged her eyes open and looked down her body to see him smiling at her, still nestled between her thighs. He laughed lightly, his eyes glittering with happiness.
“I’ve waited long for that, my love.”
“For what?”
“To hear you scream in ecstasy. To know I reached so deep into your soul that I touched its fire.”
She smiled and brushed a finger over his damp beard, his hot lips. “You make pretty words.”
He scooted up and kissed her belly, lingering over the wide scar that slashed across it. “You give me a pretty life.” His breath caressed her skin as he spoke. “I will worship
you and our child—our children—every day I draw breath.”
Her belly twitched beneath his mouth’s adoration. She tugged on his hair and brought his attention back to her eyes. “Knulla mig.”
Understanding exactly what she wanted, he grinned and pushed himself over her, feeding himself into her as she brought her legs up and encircled his hips. He filled her full with a bestial groan and latched his mouth to hers. Tasting herself on his lips and tongue, she dug her hands into his back and felt his muscles flex as he took her with wild ferocity.
When he released, he threw his head back and roared up at the top of the royal bed, and seeing his tense, dark ecstasy brought Astrid to another release of her own.
She went to sleep that night snug in his arms, his fingers laced with hers. As she felt his body ease into rest behind her, she smiled.
Soul's Fire (The Northwomen Sagas Book 3) Page 25
