“You think I don’t know that? But I had to do something.”
The two of them exchanged a look, and then his dad moved a shoulder. “Hell. If it was your mom, I’d have done the same thing.”
“Don’t worry, I have a plan,” Marjani said.
His dad looked skeptical. “You’ll need it.”
Marjani’s backpack had appeared next to the oak door. When Fane asked where it had come from, she just smiled. “A friend.”
Arne squeezed Fane’s shoulder. “I’ll keep the king occupied as best as I can. Go with the Goddess. Both of you.” He winked at Marjani and strode back to the center of the tower. “Who wants to bet on the fada?”
An excited ripple of voices responded. “Me!”
“I will.”
“I’ll put ten thousand on the king.”
Diamonds, the court’s preferred currency, exchanged hands, with Arne keeping the bank.
Marjani shook her head. “They really don’t see us as people, do they? They're betting as if it were a fucking horse race.”
“Their loss.” Another wave of dizziness hit him. He reached for her arm. “Let’s get out of here.”
But Sindre ’ported in front of the door, blocking it. He raised a glass of wine to Marjani, ignoring Fane as if he was less than dirt. “Dawn is at 6:17 a.m. I’ll see you then, love.”
His nephews—the blond twins—strode up to flank them, their expressions avid. They loved a good bet, and Fane suspected they hoped that if Marjani were forced to serve Sindre, they’d get a chance at her. Bastards.
Marjani’s eyes flashed turquoise. “I’m not your love, and I plan to be long gone by dawn.”
She slipped out of those fuck-me heels that Fane knew must be from Sindre, and tossed them in the powdery snow at the king’s feet—first one, then the other. They landed with a puff of white.
“We’ll see,” he said with a little smile and moved aside.
She slung her backpack over a shoulder and slid an arm around Fane’s waist. “Ready?”
Lightness filled his chest. Even if they did escape, he was out of a job and stripped of everything he’d earned since accepting Sindre’s geas. But hey, he’d be with Marjani, and he’d still have his Gift—and he’d never again have to kiss Sindre’s cold white arse.
Things could be worse.
“Ready.” He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and together, they walked past Sindre and the twins. The oak door swung open and then slammed shut behind them with an ominous thud.
The maze stretched in either direction, the path wide but with no openings to be seen in either direction. He waited until they went around a corner before pulling her to a halt.
“Jani? I meant it. I’m mate-claiming you.”
“Now?”
“Now.”
A shadow crossed her face. She set her palm to his heart. “Fane—think. If we lose, he’ll use the bond against us.”
“Is that why you didn’t accept my claim?” He heard the anger in his voice, but damn it, if the woman was still trying to protect him, he was going to turn her over his knee when this was over.
“He’ll hurt you to control me. Like he did just now.” She rose up onto her toes to whisper in his ear. “You know those river fada he keeps as servants? The woman and I talked while I was getting ready. She told me he hurts her mate to punish her. Do you think I could stand by and watch him hurt you?”
“Fuck that. I can take anything that SOB dishes out. At least if you’re my mate, he’ll stop trying to seduce you.” He gripped the back of her head and tilted it so that her face was angled up to him. “Accept the claim. We’ll do this together. If we lose, at least let me have that much. I’ll know he can’t touch you.”
Her throat worked. Her mouth opened. Rather than hear another no from her, he covered those soft, dusky-rose lips with his own. Spearing his tongue into her mouth.
Prepared for a fight.
But she didn’t fight him. Instead, her breath released with a sigh and her taut little body melted against him. He forgot how shitty he felt as his dick went iron-hard.
He kept his one hand behind her head, holding her mouth where he wanted, while his other hand went to her round little ass. He molded her to his body, pressing his insistent erection into her belly. Against his chest, her nipples pebbled through that sexy scrap of a dress.
She undulated her hips against his, and said something that sounded like, “All right.”
He dragged his mouth from hers. “That had better be a ‘Yes, Fane. I accept your claim.’”
A smile trembled on her lips. “It was.”
“Say it. I want the words.”
“Yes, Fane. I accept your claim.” Her smile broadened and then she was beaming up at him.
Inside his ribcage, something warm and luminous bloomed, like a piece of the sun trapped in his heart.
He gathered her closer. “Goddess, I love you.”
Her eyes widened. “I feel it. It’s humming inside me like my quartz does.”
“The bond?”
She nodded. “Not that you’re getting out of the mate ritual, but we’re bonded.”
“You see me arguing?” He gave her another kiss to seal the deal. When he released her, another wave of dizziness hit him. He dragged in a breath.
Her brow creased. “You’re hurting.”
He massaged his chest with the heel of his hand. “I need a little time to recover, is all.”
“And I have zero healing ability.” She placed a hand over his and eyed him worriedly. “First he stole your energy and then your Gift. I’m surprised you’re still upright.”
“It was worth it to get you away from the king.” He rested his forehead against hers. “I’m some bargain as a mate, aren’t I? No money, no job, and an oath breaker on top of it.”
“Yeah.” She caressed his shoulders, her tone so tender. “You know you're out of your freaking mind, right? Giving up everything for me?”
“No, I’m not. This is the sanest I’ve ever been. But I wanted to spoil you—buy you things, take you places. Now, even if we get out of this, I’ll have nothing except my Gift. Oh, and a house in Newfoundland. I’m pretty sure he can’t take that; it was mine before I accepted the geas.”
“Fane.” She gave him a little shake. “You’re all I want. And when we get home, I’ll show you just how happy I am to be your mate.”
Home. He liked the sound of that.
He hadn’t had a home—not a real one—since his mom died. His chest warmed even more, Marjani’s love pouring through the mating bond. Melting Sindre’s ice and healing the pain.
“All right, then.” He took her hand. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
Instinct had him drawing on his Gift to spirit them out of there. But it was gone. He set his jaw and started walking. He’d just have to get used to it.
They turned a corner—and halted.
They were outside the castle. Above them, the first quarter moon peeped above the horizon on a chilly September night. His breath hitched. He and Marjani spun around, looking at the jagged black castle behind them.
She spoke first. “He let us go—just like that?”
Uneasiness prickled Fane’s spine. “This isn’t like him.”
Her eyes met his. “Maybe he has something else planned. Anyway, let’s get the hell out of here while we can. Just let me change first.”
She was already dragging off her dress. She knelt on the tundra to rummage in her backpack, covered in only a couple of silky gold scraps.
His mouth dried. He could just make out the shadows of her nipples, and when she leaned forward to dig deeper in the pack, the gold material stretched taut over her round behind.
She stilled and glanced up. “You’re looking. I feel it.”
“Yeah. Does it bother you?”
She shook her head. “I like it. I never thought I’d be so comfortable with a man again. But with you, I am.”
“Good. Because I intend to
do a lot of looking.” He waggled his brows at her. “Among other things.”
Her lips twitched as she pulled on her jeans. “Don’t distract me.”
“Sorry,” he said meekly.
She just snorted and finished putting on her clothes—a T-shirt and a gray hoodie. She shoved her feet into a pair of sneakers and slid the switchblade into her front pocket.
The dress she rolled up carefully.
He scowled. “Leave it.”
She hesitated. “I know he gave it to me, but it’s pretty—and it must have cost an arm and a leg.”
“Leave it,” he repeated. “I’ll buy you another one. Even if I have to save up for a year to do it.”
She gave the dress a last regretful look and then with a shrug, dropped it on the grass. “I don’t have anywhere to wear it anyway.”
Fane slung the pack over his shoulder. When she objected that he should take it easy until he felt better, he said, “When it gets to be too much, I’ll let you know.”
“Men,” she muttered, but stopped arguing.
He pointed west. “That way. We’ll find a portal to the human world. From there, we can hitch a ride to Reykjavik.”
“What about your SUV?”
“It’s Sindre’s now.”
“Oh. Right.”
They started jogging across the tundra. At least this side of the castle wasn’t as boggy as the south side. Still, without his Gift, Fane felt like he was running through molasses. He grimly slogged on.
They’d gone about a mile when he realized nothing had changed in their surroundings. The moon was the exact same height in the sky, and the castle hadn’t grown any smaller.
He muttered a curse and halted.
“What’s wrong?” Marjani asked.
He knelt to finger a clump of weather-beaten grass. It felt real, but… “Sindre’s Gift is chicanery. The man can create illusions so real you can touch them.”
“You think we’re still in the maze.”
“Yeah. I do.”
Her nostrils flared and then she let out a single pithy word. “You’re right. I smell silver. Just a hint, but it’s obvious now I’m aware of it.”
“Damn it, I should have expected this.” Fane rose to his feet. “I know what he’s capable of, but I thought he’d use the maze itself to mess with us.”
“He did. If we’re still in the castle, then we’re in the maze. We just don’t know it.”
He nodded grimly. “How in Hades can we get out of it when we can’t see where it begins or ends?”
“Or when dawn comes.”
They met each other’s eyes.
And then the illusion faded, and they were in the maze, the pearly walls towering over them. Before them was a forked intersection with three options—left, center or right.
“Gotcha,” Marjani murmured. “Or do you have us?”
Fane peered down each of the paths, looking for a landmark, but all three were blank as a sheet of paper. “I have no fucking idea where we are. The maze is impossible to navigate without Sindre’s permission.”
The adrenaline that had fueled his jog had dissipated. He leaned over, hands on his thighs, suddenly so weary he could barely keep on his feet. Beside him, Marjani slumped against a wall.
“Nothing is impossible,” she said, but she didn’t move.
Silence fell. A thick, watchful silence.
The walls on either side pressed closer, squeezing in, inch by slow inch. His nape tightened. He shook his head from side to side.
It’s not real. It’s an illusion.
Beside him, Marjani drew a jagged breath, and he knew Sindre was getting to her, too. A hot, cleansing fury swept through him. She’d been through so damn much, and now she had to survive Sindre’s mind games as well.
Mind over matter, Fane.
He had to be strong for Marjani. He touched her hand, and damn if the encroaching walls didn’t recede a little.
“We have to keep moving,” he said. “Part of Sindre’s Gift is that he can manipulate things to seem worse than they are. He tries to steal all your hope.”
Her mouth tilted wryly. “He must not know what the Darktime was like. Okay.” She let out a long breath. “Let’s do this.”
He nodded and straightened back up, and then reeled as the maze swooped around him.
“Take it easy.” Marjani grabbed his arm, twin creases between her brows. “I wish I could help, but I have no healing Gift.”
He swallowed dryly. “I’ll manage. But now would be a good time to hear that plan of yours.”
She touched his cheek, concerned, and then nodded. “Okay, here’s what I think. An illusionist can only fool a living thing. He can’t fool an inanimate object like my quartz. And I’ve been studying the maze every chance I got. I think I’ve figured out its underlying logic.”
He shook his head. “I told you, that won’t work.”
“But north, south, east and west don’t change. I can use my quartz as a compass to keep us on track.”
He nodded slowly. “It’s worth a try.”
Setting her hand over where her quartz was concealed by her hoodie, she focused for a few moments. When she opened them, she said, “We’re a little east of the north tower. Where’s the closest portal?”
He dropped his voice. “The one by the east tower—the one I took you out of the other day.”
“Okay.” She pointed toward the left fork. “East is that way.”
“Lead on.”
35
This time Marjani took the lead, since the maze had narrowed to where they had to walk single file. The path twisted and turned, but she simply consulted her quartz at each intersection. At first there were only a few openings, but then doors and forks in the path started appearing every few yards, forcing her to keep referring to her quartz.
Midnight came and went. Fane halted. “We should’ve reached the east tower by now. Hell, we’ve had time to walk around the whole damn castle.”
She frowned down at her quartz. “As far as I can tell, we're basically where we started. It’s like the entire structure has been twisted into a new form. It’s not anything like it was last week.” She scowled. “How the hell does he do that? Keep us walking but never going anywhere?”
“I don’t know, but it’s fucking brilliant. Even if someone breaks in, he can keep them wandering and confused for as long as he wants. Sometimes he doesn’t bother to send the guards to get intruders, just waits until they collapse from hunger and exhaustion.”
Her chest tightened. She raised her gaze to Fane’s.
“It’s almost one o'clock. We’ve spent close to three hours trying to get out already, and we haven’t gone anywhere.”
“Hey.” Fane rubbed her arms. “He hasn’t won yet.”
“No? I feel like a fucking lab rat, running on a wheel as fast as I can without getting anywhere.”
A low chuckle sounded from somewhere nearby. She whipped out her switchblade and turned in a slow circle, but there was no one to be seen.
Fane blew out a breath. “It’s just Sindre, messing with your mind. You have to fight it.”
Weak. You’re weak.
“Sorry.” She returned the switchblade to her pocket. “You’re right.”
Fane pointed left down yet another narrow passage. “I don’t think we've tried this way yet.”
Once again, they followed the path around what felt like the entire castle. She tried to key into the maze’s underlying logic like she had before, but there didn’t seem to be an underlying logic anymore.
Then things got worse. The tiled floor turned into a bog.
They slogged through it, feet sinking into slimy black muck, the icy water sloshing around their calves. Marjani frowned. Something seemed funny, and then she realized what it was. All she smelled was the faint scent of silver.
“Wait.” She grabbed Fane’s arm. “If it’s really a bog, it should stink like a rotten egg. But it doesn’t.”
His nostrils flared
. “You’re right.”
“It’s not real,” she said. “It’s another illusion.”
They continued walking, more confidently now. But the icy water rose higher until it was at their waists, then their chests. Fane shrugged out of the backpack and held it above his head.
“Just in case,” he said.
When it reached her throat, Marjani had trouble convincing herself that the bog wasn’t real. The cold seeped into her bones and her feet felt like blocks of ice.
She stumbled and knew a moment of stark terror when the black water closed over her head. She came up, choking and coughing. Fane grabbed her, and she clung to him, shaking with cold.
“Get on my back,” he said.
She shook her head. “I’m okay,” she said between chattering teeth. “You’re…the one…hurt.”
“Get on my back,” he repeated evenly. “The man’s a genius at illusions. If he convinces you that you’re drowning, you will. It won’t matter that it’s all in your head. Your lungs will seize and you’ll die anyway.”
She gave a hard shiver and sucked in another mouthful of water.
“Now, Jani.”
“Okay, okay.”
He shifted her to his back. Slinging the backpack over a shoulder, she twined her arms and legs around him and Fane continued slogging his way through the water. He was half-walking, half-swimming now.
Then Sindre took pity on them—or more likely, he didn’t want to actually kill them, just scare the crap out of them. After all, he couldn’t enforce a geas on a dead person.
Whatever the reason, the land sloped up. When the water reached Fane’s waist, she slid off and walked alongside him until they stepped onto the dry blue tiles again.
Marjani instinctively started to scrape the greenish-black slime off her arms and hands—and then swore under her breath. “I’m clean.” She held up her hands for Fane to see.
“Me, too.” He showed her his own unsoiled hands.
“Holy mother, he’s good.”
Fane nodded grimly. “What time is it?”
“Two-thirty.”
“Less than four hours.”
Their eyes met. She knew his thoughts must be running along the same lines as hers. What did it matter if they had four hours or four minutes? They were no closer to escaping the castle than when they’d left the north tower.
Charming Marjani Page 24
