“But why?” Freyja asked.
I sighed and glanced at the maids standing behind her. “Are you going to let them stay or not?”
Freyja’s smile returned and she stepped closer to me. “Depends. What do I get out of this exchange?” She put her arms around my neck and I knew exactly what she wanted from me. I was pretty sure I was the only god in all of Asgard she hadn’t slept with. I pulled her arms away from me and shook my head.
“Freyja, can’t you ever do something nice for someone for no reason at all?”
“Havard, what makes you think I’m not offering to do something nice for you?” She twisted her wrist free from my hand and caressed the side of my face. “You’re so young. So beautiful and so young.”
I backed away from her. “My answer is still no. But I may have something else that will make you happy.”
She put her gold laden wrist on her hip and waited. I reached into my pocket and felt the gold band there and hesitated only a moment as I remembered why I had it in the first place: the same dwarfs who had made Freyja’s beloved necklace had made this ring. I’d gone to them to purchase an amulet that could result in the birth of another stallion just like the one I’d lost. They had promised me if I tied this ring into my best mare’s mane then she mated with my best surviving stallion, the foal that would be born to them would exceed the speed and strength of my dead stallion. Only Sleipnir himself had been faster than Magni. Having a horse that could potentially rival Odin’s had been the most exciting thing to happen to me in my short life—until a girl had run into her father’s arms to keep me from killing him and thrown my entire world into disarray.
But the only thing Freyja treasured more than men was gold, so I slipped the ring into my hand and offered it to her in my open palm. Freyja eyed the ring for a few seconds then looked up at me. “How long do you need them?”
“How long are you able to part with them?”
I had no idea how to go about finding my own lady’s maids, and I was certain Arnbjorg had never come across this problem before.
Freyja looked at the ring then back at me again. “I can part with one of them permanently if you’re willing to negotiate,” she said with a smile.
“You can have the ring or nothing,” I told her.
I had lost count of how many times Freyja had tried to get me into her bed. And she was certainly beautiful: rumor had it, even Odin himself lusted after her, but I had grown up watching my father take any number of lovers he wanted, while my mother—his wife—had remained loyal and faithful to him, and every time another child of his was born somewhere, we could see how it killed her a little more. Only her children cared. One day, it finally killed her altogether. I would never be a man like my father.
Nobody really knew what happened to Freyja’s husband or if he was even still alive, but if he was, I wasn’t going to sleep with another man’s wife. Freyja must have sensed I wasn’t bluffing because she held out her hand and took the ring. “Fine, Havard, you can keep one. I’ll come back for the other one when I need her.”
She slipped the ring on her finger and admired it for a moment before casting one more disgusted glance in Arnbjorg’s direction. “You should have at least asked they bring new dresses.”
I wanted to look at Arnbjorg again because I hadn’t realized there was anything wrong with her dress, but I wouldn’t let Freyja know she had stumped me. “It’s late. They can get them in the morning.”
Freyja just shrugged and turned to leave, but not before reminding me we could always renegotiate for the other lady’s maid. Her ego clearly couldn’t handle rejection. Granted, I hadn’t done so well with it either when I was in Arnbjorg’s house, but that was different. Sort of. At least I wanted to believe it was, and sometimes, that was almost as good as the truth.
I listened as the clinking sound of Freyja’s jewelry echoed off the walls as she left my palace then told Geirr to bring the maids she’d left behind to prepare a room for Arnbjorg. I didn’t turn around to face her until we were alone again in the dining hall, and when I did, my heart immediately squeezed and ached. She had remained standing in the presence of this goddess in my home, but Freyja’s words had affected her, and she blinked away tears as she studied the bowl of soup on the table in front of her.
“Arnbjorg,” I said quietly. But I wasn’t really sure what had upset her so much. The jab at her dress? That was such an easy fix. I could have a hundred for her just like Freyja’s by tomorrow.
But Arnbjorg shook her head and lowered herself to the table again. She picked at the bread but her appetite was gone. I reluctantly sat across from her and bit my lip, wishing, as I so often did, that my mother were still alive. She would know how to comfort her. She would know why this girl was upset now and what to say to her, and she would tell me what I should do. “Freyja shouldn’t have spoken that way,” I finally said.
Arnbjorg looked up at me and wiped hastily at her eyes. “Why not? She didn’t say anything about me that wasn’t true.”
She hadn’t actually said anything about her at all. “You mean your dress? Arnbjorg, we’ll get you any number you want. Any kind you want.”
Arnbjorg shook her head for the second time. “She was disgusted by me, Havard. She couldn’t understand why you would bring someone like me to your home. I told you I had no business here.” She pressed her lips together and buried her face in her hands, and my heart ached for her again.
I pushed myself away from the table, having lost my appetite now, too. I knelt beside her but she wouldn’t look at me. “Freyja would treat any woman in my home that way, Arnbjorg, because I would never agree to be her lover. I suppose we’re all far too prone to fits of jealousy for anyone’s good. My own father had numerous human lovers and even brought a thrall back with him once and kept her here for several weeks. In my mother’s home. I’m almost positive Freyja didn’t actually say anything about you, just your dress.”
Arnbjorg wouldn’t lift her face to look at me. She continued to weep silently. “Come on,” I told her softly and took her hand away from her face. She let me hold onto it but wouldn’t meet my eyes. I led her up the stairs then down the main hall of the second floor of my palace until we reached the room I’d asked Geirr and her new maids to prepare for her. They were still inside the room, trying to get it warmer and the maids had turned down the bed and were digging through a pile of my mother’s old sleeping gowns to find something for Arnbjorg to wear.
They noticed us in the doorway and were about to leave the room, but I stopped them. “You two stay with her,” I told the maids. “Bring her whatever she needs.”
They nodded and kept their eyes on the floor. Arnbjorg finally looked up at me, confusion written into those beautiful deep blue eyes again. “You’re not…?”
I shook my head slowly. I didn’t want to tell her this in front of an audience, but what choice did I have now? “I want you to love me, Arnbjorg. Only then will I share your bed with you.”
Arnbjorg inhaled a quick breath of surprise and glanced inside the room again then back at me. Maybe she didn’t believe me. I couldn’t blame her. But we weren’t alone now, and I couldn’t tell her in front of these servants that there wasn’t a force in any world that could ever compel me to hurt her. Perhaps she would never love me, but I would never stop trying to win her approval and to be a man she thought was good enough to lie beside her.
I dropped her fingers and reminded the maids to make sure she had anything she needed. I would have Geirr roaming the halls throughout the night to make sure they were treating her well. Freyja’s maids promised me they would treat her as well as the goddess they served, and I retreated into my own room, which seemed so much colder and larger and emptier now. It may have only been in my imagination, but from somewhere deep in my palace walls, I thought I could hear the painful sobs of a freeman’s daughter whose love I had no idea how to win.
Chapter Eight
For the second day in a row, I awoke from a nig
htmare that felt too real and was more confusing than any dream I’d ever had before, even those typical dreams that made absolutely no sense. I remembered reading about Freyja and this story must have been in that damn book somewhere, but I couldn’t seem to recall anything about a young war god named Havard. But there had been a lot of names in that book. I probably didn’t remember most of them.
The same murky grayness filled the room, so I assumed it was morning now, but I didn’t move. I heard Tyr doing something across the room but I didn’t want to turn to look at him. I wanted the remnants of this dream to fade, the heartache it had left behind so puzzling and frustrating. I was pretty sure though that Freyja was a tremendous bitch, and if I ever met that goddess-wannabe, I would be sure to let her know. Because they all seemed to care so much about my opinion anyway.
I don’t know how he sensed I was awake, but Tyr sat at the end of the bed and patted my bundled feet again. “About time you woke up. Keira’s ready. Let’s grab some breakfast and get out there before they pick through all the best weapons.”
I groaned and pulled the blankets over my head like a stubborn six-year-old kid who didn’t want to get up for school.
Tyr didn’t move. I thought about trying to kick him off my bed, but I figured it would not only be ineffective, I might actually break my foot. “You were making noises in your sleep again,” he told me. “Same dream?”
I sighed and threw the blankets off my face. Tyr was watching me with something like concern and compassion behind those pale gray eyes and it made me uneasy—mostly because I was getting worried about that whole Stockholm Syndrome thing again.
“Who’s Havard?” I asked.
Tyr’s eyebrow’s knitted in confusion. “Don’t know. That’s a really old name. Where’d you hear that?”
“Must have read it in that book of yours,” I mumbled.
Tyr shook his head at me. “He’s not in any of our legends. And you must have heard it somewhere, not read it, because you pronounced it correctly.”
I sat up and pushed the rest of the blankets off me and started grabbing my clothes. “I’m in Iceland, Tyr. Who knows where I heard it? Doesn’t matter.”
Tyr still didn’t move off my bed so I headed toward the bathroom to change since getting naked in front of Keira was one thing; I didn’t want to get naked in front of just Tyr. There were some things that were too weird, even for me. “Except,” Tyr said, “that’s not Icelandic. It’s an old Norse name.”
I glanced over my shoulder at him. “Didn’t they speak Norse here at one time?”
Tyr nodded. “Yeah, about seven hundred years ago.”
I yanked the door open to the bathroom, aggravated and irritable but I wasn’t really sure why. “So what? You took the name of a dude that was supposed to be an old Norse god. I’m sure there are plenty of people in Iceland who like mythology, too.” Then I slammed the door behind me, but I still didn’t know why I was so pissed off.
They didn’t let Hunter come with me this time, and I protested about it the whole ride. Keira ignored me, or at least tried to, and Tyr kept asking me questions about this dream I’d had but wouldn’t tell him anything else about. That got Keira all curious about my dreams so she started pestering me about them, so I ignored them both and just sat in the backseat pouting for the rest of the drive.
They brought me out to a vast empty field where the same group of people I’d met yesterday were already gathered, and just as Tyr had predicted, they were poring over a table with weapons piled on top of it. Both Tyr and Keira pulled me up to the table and encouraged me to pick up different swords and axes and spears and honest to God, I didn’t even know what half of that shit was. I didn’t want to touch any of it.
Keira pushed the hilt of a sword into my hands. “You won’t know what weapon you’re meant to use if you don’t experiment with them. Now hold this.”
I held the sword away from me like I was holding a viper and eyed it just as warily. “It’s heavy,” I complained. It wasn’t, actually, but it was the first thing that had popped into my head for me to whine about.
Tyr snorted and took the sword from me. “Guess swords aren’t your thing.”
“Weapons aren’t my thing,” I corrected.
Keira pushed a spear into my hands and that was even worse. I ended up dropping it on the ground. In my defense, it was pretty damn cold outside and my fingers were getting numb. Or I was completely serious when I told them the closest thing to a weapon I’d ever brandished was a sharpened pencil and this whole expedition into the Icelandic countryside to force me to use weapons made me extremely uncomfortable.
Tyr bent down to pick up the spear and tossed it on the table. Frey approached us and looked between the pile of weapons and me. “This would be so much easier if we knew your family’s history,” he said. I turned to watch the others in the field behind me, all of whom had already chosen their weapons and were fighting or training or hell, I don’t know what they were doing, in that cold morning air of the countryside of Iceland. It kind of made me feel like a Viking, actually. Except I’d be the first one dead because I couldn’t even hold onto a spear.
“Do you know anyone named Havard?” Tyr asked Frey. I glared at Tyr but I really wanted to hit him again.
“That’s it,” I told him. “You are so not my BFF anymore.”
I don’t think Tyr knew what that was.
Frey shook his head and some of those loose blond curls fell into his eyes. He reached up with one gloved hand and pushed them back behind his ear. I stared at his gloves with more envy than I’d watched Michael Deshotel when he took the girl I’d been lusting after for almost two years to Homecoming. I think he scored with her, too. I really hated that bastard.
Tyr picked up a different spear for me to try but I wouldn’t reach for it.
“Doesn’t sound familiar,” Frey answered. “It’s an old name though. Could have known someone by that name hundreds of years ago and just don’t remember.”
I scoffed. “You wouldn’t remember a god?”
This time, Tyr dropped the spear and he was lucky the handle landed on his foot and not the sharp pointed end. “You never said it was a god’s name.”
I just shrugged. “It’s nobody’s name. It was just a dream, Tyr.”
Keira was watching me carefully now, too, and even she had lost interest in throwing different weapons in my hands at the moment, so I buried them as deep into my coat pockets as I could. Didn’t they know they’d abducted a native Southerner? I was pretty sure I was three minutes away from dying from frostbite or hypothermia.
“You’re having dreams about a god named Havard?” Frey asked.
I ignored him and kicked the spear with the tip of my shoe to get it off Tyr’s foot. He may be holding me prisoner and everything, but I didn’t want to see the guy getting impaled. Or losing another limb.
Keira touched my coat sleeve and I wanted to ignore her, too, but when she wasn’t busy hating me, she was so beautiful, I couldn’t. “Gavyn,” she said softly, “why didn’t you tell me about these dreams? I know you don’t want to be here, but you’re probably having them for a reason, and we need to help you figure out why. It can help us and you.”
“How’s it going to help me? You gonna send Hunter and me home if I admit I’m having dreams that scare the shit out of me?”
Frey was apparently incredibly observant because he offered me a smile and took one of his gloves off. “I’ll trade you. I’ll give you my gloves in exchange for you telling us all about these dreams. Everything. Even the way they made you feel.”
I eyed the black leather in his hand for a minute as I considered his offer. I didn’t want to admit to any of them that the reason I was reluctant to replay any part of those dreams was exactly because of the way they made me feel, as if this young god’s feelings were mine and I couldn’t disentangle myself from everything he saw and smelled and felt and wanted. But the tingling numbness in my fingers won out and I snatched the glove out
of Frey’s hand. “Can we sit in one of the cars with the heater on, too? If all I’m going to do is talk, I may as well be warm.”
Frey handed me his other glove and nodded, and I followed them back to Keira’s car where I upheld my end of the bargain. I mean, I’m not an asshole like Odin. If I make a deal, I’ll stick to it—even if it’s something really stupid and likely to end in either my humiliation or untimely death. Fortunately for Hunter and me, we were pretty good at keeping each other alive.
Keira sat in the backseat with me, and I was secretly glad Tyr hadn’t. He might be tempted to pat my head finally. I’m pretty sure the guy had decided I really was like a pet. I played with the straps at the wrists on Frey’s gloves as I began recounting the first dream, which led directly into the second, and all three of my captors listened silently, but I wouldn’t meet their eyes. I kept undoing then refastening the gloves to keep me distracted as my mouth prattled on, which was something I had a lot of practice in.
When I got to the end of the second dream and explained how I’d woken up feeling heartbroken and anxious, I finally stopped talking and the air in the car seemed heavy and thick. I let my eyes drift to the fighters in the field who had apparently decided they liked the idea of being heroes because they were really going at it out there. I cringed as one of them swung a sharp looking sword at one of the wannabe-god’s necks. “If somebody gets decapitated, I’m throwing up back here. Just warning you.”
For once, Keira didn’t roll her eyes or sigh like I was the most obnoxious living thing on the planet. She just kept those amazingly beautiful eyes on me and it made me self-conscious so I decided to see if anyone was going to get decapitated after all.
Frey was the first of them to speak. “I don’t know either of those names. If Freyja was after Havard, which I totally believe, then I would have known him, too. We should get her over here. See what she knows about this.”
I shot Frey my best don’t-even-think-about it glare but I was too intimidated by the thought of Freyja showing up for some reason. Part of me suspected it was because I was terrified I’d meet this woman who’d shown up in my dream and she’d look exactly like she had in my imagination, and that same part of me also suspected I already knew that would happen.
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