“Goddamn it, why didn’t you tell me?” He could feel his throat straining with the effort to speak.
“Look at yourself. There’s your answer,” Roar said softly.
Asher spun and strode to the window. From where he was standing, he was just a black silhouette outlined in the glass. A blank negative space surrounded by the reflected apartment and Roar sitting calmly on the stool.
Asher held his jaws together tightly until the urge to yell or pull his sword had passed. Then he spoke as evenly as he could. “I care about her.”
Roar shook his head. “You’re forgetting a basic tenet,” he growled. “We don’t get involved.”
“It’s our job to take care of them. How can we not care?”
“We care for them collectively, as they are the weakest race, but we do not care about them individually.” There was a deep furrow between his brows. Remembered pain. “We can’t afford to,” he finished bleakly.
Asher leaned his head against the glass. It was cool against his hot forehead. “Is that what this is? An object lesson? I care too much, so you will step in and make sure I learn the lesson you did?”
“You know it isn’t.”
“Then, why?”
“I have my reasons, but I don’t think you’re ready to hear them.”
Asher closed his eyes. “You do like her.”
“She’s good for me.” Roar cleared his throat. “She won’t ever regret this. I won’t let her.”
Asher opened his eyes again and looked at the blank space that was him in the glass. He couldn’t talk about her this way, not with Roar already speaking of a future with her. It would be giving up. “What is there for us, beside this pathetic gesture of a life?” he asked. “Are we supposed to just grasp at being human? Forever? Pretend to be humans, but never really be human?” He drew a breath that shuddered. “There’s not even love left for us.”
“We can love,” Roar said softly.
“If we pay the price.” He straightened up from the glass. “I wanted to hurt you.”
“I know.”
Asher shook his head. “Are you ever going to stop pretending to be the wiser brother?”
“I’ll stop, if you stop pretending you don’t give a damn.”
“About Charlee?”
“About everything but Charlee. You’ve been riding the edge of this dilemma for centuries, Askr.”
Asher stared at him.
“Time to choose, little brother.”
“As you did?” he asked, the image of the pair of them at the feast, sitting with Stefan and Eira, playing out in his mind.
Roar stood up. “Time to be human, or not. You want meaning in your life? Make a choice. You can’t have it both ways. Not forever.”
“Any reason I had to be human walked into the great hall with you, three nights ago,” Asher said, the bitterness biting so deeply, it hurt.
“Then I guess your decision has been made for you, hasn’t it?”
The truth of that scalded, just like it had the first three thousand times he had faced it. Time had run out, which, as an immortal, he would have found ironically funny if his soul wasn’t writhing as layers were flayed from it piece by piece.
* * * * *
Eira shivered inside the thick layers of fur and thermal insulation wrapped around her. Even the view available from the top of Tryvannshøyden, overlooking the city, wasn’t enough to compensate for the bitter cold at the top of the mountain. It was nearly midnight, and freezing. “I’ve indulged you long enough, Sindri. What are you doing, anyway?”
Sindri didn’t seem to feel the cold. He wore the same ancient robes as always, and his head and hands were bare. He had his head tilted up, looking at the night sky directly overhead. “It’s nearly time,” he murmured. “Just a few more minutes, that is all I ask.”
“What happens in a few more minutes?” Eira asked.
“Something wonderful.” He lifted his arms out from his sides. “It’s coming,” he whispered, but the whisper floated across to her on the crisp, still air.
“What is coming? Gods’ teeth, Sindri. I’m tired. I’m cold, and I want a hot coffee so badly, I could slay every Einherjar between me and the coffeepot with my bare teeth. That includes you.”
Sindri turned to face her. He was smiling. “I’m not an Einherjar.”
“What?”
He pulled the front of his robe open, peeling aside the layers, from the waist up, exposing pale white flesh...and something around his neck.
Eira stepped closer. “I had a torc like that. Years ago. It disappeared.” Years ago.
“It was yours, but I have made it so much more than just a torc, now.” His smile was gentle, almost blissful. His arms extended again. It was almost like he was offering himself up. But the lift of his shoulders told her he was not offering himself, but the necklace. He was exposing it.
“What are you doing?” she demanded, but it came out as a whisper.
“Almost time....” He was straining, lifting himself up toward the stars. “The solstice is almost here.”
Solstice? Eira started, her mind whirling. The solstice was the moment of supreme power among the stars, or so they said. And he was reaching—for the stars.
“What are you doing?” she repeated, as unformed wariness curled through her.
Sindri grunted, as if he had been punched. He opened his eyes, looking right at her. “For you,” he whispered.
The torc began to glow, then pulse with an unearthly light. Eira threw up her arm against the blazing light that blasted out from it, protecting her eyes. She backed off.
“Do not fear! They will not hurt you, queen of the Chosen Ones!” Sindri cried.
They?
The light leapt up toward the sky, a bright path that went on and on, reaching out to the stars.
Understanding slammed through her. “No! Sindri, no! Shut it down!” She leapt forward, reaching under her coat for the knife she always carried in her boot. “Sindri! Close the portal!” She moved around behind him and grabbed the back of his neck, and pushed the knife blade up against the side of his throat. “Shut it down. Now!”
The last of the light erupted from the torc, leaving a blazing trail across the inky black sky. The light in the torc faded.
“Too late,” Sindri whispered.
“You fool! Do you know what you have done?”
“I opened the bivrost for you. I found you the way home, just as you have always wanted.”
Eira threw her head back and cried out a formless, inarticulate protest. “You have exposed us all! Anyone can use the bivrost! Any of them can reach Midgard now!”
For the first time Sindri’s confidence faltered. He did not seem to notice that the point of her knife was digging into his neck, causing blood to run that looked black in the dim light. “But you wanted this!”
“Not when we do not know how to reach Valhalla!” she cried. “We’re weak without Valhalla, we have been weakening for centuries. We shut it down to protect ourselves! You fool! You stupid fool! Do you have any idea what you have done?”
Sindri had his head twisted back in her cruel grip, but didn’t seem to mind that either. He just looked at her from the corner of his eyes. “I did it for you,” he whispered.
“Why?” she demanded, shaking him like a terrier might shake a rat.
“So that you would see me properly. So that you might like me.”
Eira took a better grip on her knife, ready to plunge it deep and tear it across his throat. Then she saw the look in his eyes and hesitated.
He knew what he had done. He had accepted his death. Now he simply watched her. There was sadness there. And love.
For her.
We both must give up what we really want.
Eira tossed him aside. “You have killed us all,” she told him. “You can meet your fate with the rest of us.”
* * * * *
Charlee hurried out onto Pearl Street, wrapping the heavy coat more firmly around her.
The sidewalk was covered in soft snow, and more big, fat flakes were drifting down through the late afternoon air. It was already close to sunset. On the temperature gauge, it wasn’t nearly as cold here in New York as it was in Oslo, but she had learned that cold was subjective. Twenty degrees here felt just as cool as sub-zero in Norway.
She glanced up the street, looking for a cab. Of course, in this weather, there would be none immediately available. No one was silly enough to walk far.
“Charlee.”
She whirled and almost lost her footing on the slippery sidewalk.
Asher stepped away from the side of the building. His hands were shoved deep in his pockets. He wore his leather coat as usual. He never felt the cold. Never felt the need to huddle close to a fireplace, or enfold himself in warmth.
“Asher.” She wrapped her arms around her middle. “Have you been waiting there?”
“Yes.” He halted right in front of her. Close enough that she was acquainted once more with how truly tall he was, and how wide his shoulders were. She always felt petite when she was near him, and she was taller than most women she knew. Eira and Ylva were taller, but only just.
“You’ve been waiting for me?” she asked. It was probably a self-evident question, but she was having trouble thinking. Standing before him like this…it was too suggestive. She struggled to banish the rush of memories it produced. The corridor where she had beggared herself with the truth, his office where he had pressed her up against the wall. The kiss she had nearly taken, so many years ago. There were not many days since when she failed to regret letting that moment go by.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” Asher confirmed.
“Have you been waiting long?” There were snowflakes on his shoulders and hair, but now he had stepped out to the edge of the sidewalk, the tiny breeze was blowing them away.
He pulled his hands from his coat and cupped her face. “I would wait forever for you.”
Charlee’s breath caught. “Asher…” she began, barely above a whisper. She had no idea what to say next. Hope flared hot and hard in her chest, stealing her breath and making her heart race. He was watching her. His eyes were so blue!
He kissed her, his lips soft and she sighed into his mouth. The kiss lengthened and grew heated, and Charlee let it grow. There had been so few kisses, so she grasped this one eagerly. His arm came around her and she realized she had slid her own arms up around his neck. Even in her heels, she had to stretch to kiss him, but that was right, that was perfect.
The heat grew between them and Charlee moaned. Her body ached and throbbed. The depth of her need for him was a little bit frightening. She gripped his jacket, steadying herself.
Asher brushed her hair back from her face. “Will you come with me?” he asked. His voice was rough.
“Yes,” she said, knowing exactly what he was asking and where he would take her.
* * * * *
They barely stepped through the apartment door before they came together once more. She heard keys dropping and Torger’s happy panting, but Asher was kissing her again, and this time, the softness was swamped by urgency. Wanting. Driving need.
Unlike the few brief occasions in the past, this time Charlee knew that the Asher kissing her was the real one, stripped bare and exposed. He had come to her with all his shields down.
She wasn’t aware that she was crying until he wiped her tears away. “Don’t,” he whispered. “Not now. You can cry and yell and call me every sort of fool under the sun. But later. This is just you and me for now. Forget the rest.”
She forgot. It was easy, in his arms, to let the rest of the world and all her cares and worries float away.
She felt softness beneath her. Somehow they had made their way to the bed. Then the warmth of skin against her and Asher’s weight over her.
When he slid into her, he hesitated as he felt the resistance, then cautiously eased his way in. “No one, Charlee?” he asked, his voice hoarse. “No one at all?”
“I didn’t want anyone else.”
He kissed her, his lips hard and demanding, telling her wordlessly that he didn’t mind, that he was even a little bit pleased at her virgin state. It would appeal to his ancient psyche.
Then she forgot even that petty concern as the rhythm of pleasure picked her up and carried her along.
She didn’t climax that time, nor the next, but she learned quickly and soon she was crying out her own sweet release, while the world shifted around them, forgotten and ignored.
* * * * *
Asher’s fingers were trailing along her spine, keeping her just on the edge of sleep. She groaned. “Don’t you ever sleep?” She turned her head on the pillow to look at him.
“With you in my bed?” He shook his head. “Sleep is just not going to happen.”
“You’re, what….? Two thousand years old or something. Elderly people need their sleep.”
He laughed and his fingers drifted up to her cheek. “You’re on Oslo time. It’s three in the afternoon there. Of course you want to sleep.”
“Because I’ve spent all of my last night and most of my current day having hot sex is why I need sleep. It’s nine in the morning here. Even you should be passing out by now.”
“I have all the time in the world to sleep. Later.”
Charlee studied him, sobering. “Is this your way of saying goodbye, Asher?”
The corners of his jaw flexed. His gaze shifted away from her and his hand stopped moving. “It was supposed to be. I think.”
“You think?”
“I haven’t been thinking very clearly for a few days now.” His gaze came back to her. “Mostly, I have been working on instinct. It has always served me well enough.”
“On the battlefield, you mean?”
Asher blew out his breath. “I’m not used to speaking plainly. Yes. On the battlefield, I work on instinct.”
Charlee sat up. “You’ve never had a relationship with one of the Kine? Amica? Not even Ylva?”
Asher leaned his head back against the headboard. “Only human,” he muttered.
“Human women you couldn’t talk to, not properly. Women you couldn’t be yourself with.”
He turned his head to look at her. “This is where you get to call me an idiot.”
Charlee shook her head. “I was thinking about how lonely it must have been.”
His lips parted, as if she had surprised him. He sat up and faced her properly, bending his knee and bringing it up to his chest and wrapping his arm around it. “If it was loneliness, then I suppose I have always been alone. Even among the Kine.”
“You don’t talk to Roar, either?”
Asher gave her a small smile. “Brothers, when we were human, were not like human brothers now. He was the heir to my father’s kingdom. I was just the younger son. A place was found for me in my father’s army.”
Charlee picked up his hand. “Then you’ve always been alone,” she summarized.
Asher stared at her. Through her. She had the sensation that his mind was working hard. Then he climbed from the bed and went to the window, which was frosted over almost completely. Charlee wondered if he was aware of how often he sought out the cold when he wanted to think. The icier the better.
She sat still, letting him work it out.
Finally, he turned to face her. His eyes were dark with stormy emotion. “I don’t want to be alone anymore.”
Charlee’s heart lurched. “But...Roar….” She hated having to speak his name, especially now, but there were commitments she had implied she would make with him.
“There’s a way around that,” Asher said quietly.
The band across her chest tightened even more. “I don’t understand,” she whispered, but she did understand. She just didn’t want to be right.
Asher crossed his arms and his knuckles whitened as he gripped hard. “I could…leave.”
“Leave the Kine?” Everything inside her felt suspended, even her breath and her heart, as she wai
ted for his response.
“Yes,” he said at last.
“No, Asher. No. Not for me!”
“If not for you, then who else?” He came and sat beside her. “I can’t think of a better reason.”
“But you’ll die!” she cried.
“Long after you have gone,” he agreed softly. “But I will have a life with you before then.” He held her face. “I want this, Charlee. I want to be with you. If leaving them is the only way, then I will leave.”
“I can’t ask that of you.”
“I’m making the choice,” he said flatly. “So tell me what you want, Charlee. What you want, not what you think is best for me. Be selfish for once in your life. If ever there was a moment to take what you want, it is now.”
She swallowed. “I want you.”
“With no conditions?” he asked gently.
“There have been criteria surrounding you being in my life since I met you. If you can throw it all overboard, I can. No conditions, Asher. I will accept you in any way you want to be a part of my life. No more fighting my instincts.”
Asher closed his eyes for a moment. “So be it,” he said and opened them. He smiled at her. “I am yours, Charlee. Lock, stock and rusty barrel.”
She threw herself against him and locked her arms around his neck. “Only if Torger comes with you.”
“So much for no conditions,” he muttered and kissed her.
* * * * *
“Can I move in here?” Charlee asked, as she poured the coffee. “I don’t have anywhere else to live, and Eira will drop kick me across the Pacific when she finds out.”
Asher paused in the act of lowering bagels into the toaster. “Wouldn’t you rather get a bigger apartment, somewhere nice? Up near the park? Or a house, even—but we’d have to move away from Manhattan.”
Charlee pushed his mug toward him. “You really mean it?”
He kissed her nose. “I really mean it. The whole nine yards, Charlee. White wedding, the works.”
Her breath whooshed out of her. “Wedding.” she repeated, stunned.
“White picket fence, and Torger guarding the gate.” He smiled.
Charlee carefully didn’t voice the other half of that domestic cliché, but her heart shifted, sadness touching her.
The Branded Rose Prophecy Page 48
