“Must?” He shook his head. “But I would know who I bargain with. Especially if it is my children you seek. Why should I wish them to be raised by such a man as Gunnar, knowing what I do of his stables?”
“They would be raised by me,” she said fiercely. “And protected by your own power, your magic.”
“Again, you make quite clear the cost. But while I will not deny a desire for companionship, I could find it elsewhere—with no price at all.”
“Girls and boys too frightened to be willing partners in your bed,” she replied coolly, picking up the box to examine it more closely. “Foolish children who will drown themselves, likely as not, when your back is turned. Not a woman who knows her own worth and chooses you, treats with you as an equal and a friend.”
He smiled at her clear disgust for his suggestion, and the circumstances by which he had, in the past, made his arrangements. She was not wholly wrong, though he had never forced a child into his bed. Even brook horses did not sink so low as that. “A woman who will not stay. Who will use me for my power and give me little but trouble in return.”
“But through me, your children will be princes. Kings. I will give you power over men, true power, through your blood and theirs. You need never fear for your own freedom again once your son sits upon Gautar’s throne.”
Isolfur laughed. “You paint a pretty picture, but I fear you reach too far with such a claim, Queen Signy. The only freedom I lack cannot be given by the likes of you, and I have never, in my long life, feared for myself among men. My son on Gautar’s throne will do me little good when it is the elves that hold me in irons with the rest of my kind.”
She shrugged, setting the small wooden box back atop the mantel and turning to face him. “Then take me back.”
“You’ll give up so easily?”
“Clearly I am of no use to you,” she said. “You are happy with your circumstances, and there is nothing I might offer you of any value. So take me back to the falls and we can both forget I ever called to you at all.”
“I doubt that,” he said, rising from his chair to stand before her. She did not quite step back, though he could tell she wanted to, the way her jaw tightened and her head came up. “I doubt that very much, indeed.”
“Which part?” she asked, just the slightest bit breathless, though she hid it well. She was brave, he must give her that much credit if nothing else.
“I doubt, Queen Signy, that I will ever forget you.” He brushed the back of his fingers against the soft skin of her jaw, the column of her neck. She swallowed, a flush rising beneath her skin and warming his hand. It had been so, so long since he had been warmed by a woman’s heat. “And I do not think you are likely to forget me, either.”
“Take me back,” she said again, her hands closing into fists. Whether to keep from slapping him away or catching his hand and keeping him close, she could not say. He was beautiful, this strange man—which should not have surprised her, but it had, all the same. Beautiful and charming and utterly unpredictable, and she was acutely aware of how little power she had, trapped inside his home. “If you have no wish to bargain, you cannot have me.”
He grinned, watching her. “Can’t I?”
She flushed again, and cursed herself for it. Never had she struggled so severely with her emotions, her responses. Not even after Gunnar had begun to beat her. Not when he had struck her, or choked her, or thrown her against the wall.
“You will not have me willing,” she said firmly, for of course he could bewitch her. Brook horses were never more powerful than inside the walls of their cottages, beneath the water. “And if you take me any other way, you are just as unworthy as my king.”
“You keep a wicked tongue in your mouth, Queen Signy,” he said, dropping his hand away at once, his fingers flexing as if his own body fought against the command. “Barbed and cruel.”
“An honest tongue,” she corrected him, more relieved than she wanted to admit at his withdrawal. “And if you refuse to return me to the falls, I will open the door and swim to the surface of your lake without your help.”
“You would drown,” he told her.
“Perhaps,” she agreed. “But you cannot believe I would call to you without some assurance. Unlike your peasant maids, I have some small magic of my own. Enough to see me well away from here.”
“Where you would be trapped in Elvish lands,” he said, still smugly confident. “With no friends and no way home.”
“Would I?” she asked mildly, lifting a brow. It was not exactly a lie. None of it was. But certainly an exaggeration of her own power, her own position in this game they played. She was not at all confident that she could exercise her will over the waters of his lake. Could not be certain she would not drown in the trying. But she would try. That was the most relevant part. And if she reached the surface—well. Finding help among the elves was not exactly impossible, but it was certainly unlikely.
He stepped back, his eyes narrowing as he took her in, his gaze raking over her from head to toe and back again. She merely let him look, pretending disinterest, and meeting his eyes with cool regard when he had finished, his beautiful face far more lined than when he had begun.
“Elvish blood,” he spat.
She couldn’t deny it, though from the way his eyes had sharpened, she was not certain it helped her cause. “Only the smallest measure.”
“But they meddle still,” he sneered. “Sending you here—summoning me. This is all their doing. To bind me, as they have the others.”
“No.” Signy shook her head. “I swear it upon my own life. I do no elf’s bidding in this.”
“In blood,” he demanded. “Swear it in blood, or you will never leave this place alive—I swear that on my life.”
She didn’t dare hesitate—not with the way his eyes glinted, or the tension in his body as he stood, poised for a fight. Living as Gunnar’s wife had taught her to see that much. To anticipate the threat of violence from the smallest sign. So Signy drew the knife from her belt, careful to keep the movements predictable, and pressed the tip to the pad of her thumb, pricking herself with a practiced stroke. “I swear my actions are my own, upon my blood and my life. I serve no one but myself and my people.”
“So stingy.” He grasped her wrist, his lip curled and pressed the knife deeper, dragging it down to create a proper cut, then brought her thumb to his lips, licking the blood before it dripped.
She gasped at the heat of his tongue, the sting of his spit upon her skin, jerking back. But he only held her that much more firmly, turning her hand over and reaching for the bindings of her wrist.
“What are you doing?” she snapped, twisting free. “You have my vow, my blood, is that not enough?”
Isolfur caught her hand again, lifting it, to show her the pad of her thumb—completely unmarked, with not even the slightest stain of blood upon her skin. “It is not in my nature to take without giving something back in exchange.” He threw her hand away just as quickly as he had snatched it. “I would not be the reason such flawless skin is left scarred. But if you would refuse the gift…”
“No,” she said at once, still staring at her hand, her thumb. “Forgive me, please. I did not—”
“Elvish blood,” he said, holding out his hand—she gave him her arm freely then, watching as he unwrapped the bandage with gentle fingers. He studied the scabbed cut upon her wrist for a long moment, his expression grim. “But a human heart. Brave and foolish and as lonely, I think, as mine. If you wish to strike this bargain, Signy, Queen of Gautar, it will be in exchange for more than just your company in my bed and the children born of it. It is cold in this cottage and I have need of your warmth. I want your body, your blood, and your heart.”
A chill slipped down her spine, his words worming beneath her skin. It was more than she had thought to give. More than she had ever expected him to ask. Her body and blo
od—that was easily done—but her heart? It did not seem a promise that could be kept, a vow that ought be made at all.
“How?” she asked.
He bent his head and pressed his mouth to her wrist, his tongue tracing the mark, suckling at the sensitive skin and causing her to shiver. Making her flush all over again. And when he lifted his head, met her gaze again, his thumb smoothing over the spot—every trace of the scar she had placed there by her own hand and her own knife, gone completely—his lips curled in a smile rather than a sneer.
“Magic,” he told her. “How else?”
Was it bewitchment, when she had agreed to his terms? When their blood mixed, and she spoke the words he asked of her willingly, swearing her heart to his keeping alone, to ensure the safety the children of her body—all of whom, she prayed, born of his seed and granted his protection.
Ancestors, protect us all.
And when he sealed it with a kiss, with his hands upon her body and the unlacing of her dress, she joined him willingly in his bed, too. It was easy, somehow. As if the words had released something inside her, some passion she had kept restrained, or perhaps it was only his skill as a lover that roused her, allowing her to meet him at the precipice’s edge. To fall over the cliff into pleasure.
“Magic,” he murmured against her skin when she cried out, arching beneath him. “The kind you will only find in me, now.”
A kind she had never found before at all. Would never have found in Gunnar’s bed, regardless. And if this was what he wanted—to know she found pleasure only in his arms, from his body, and his hands, and his mouth, she did not regret the bargain at all.
“You will want me with every breath,” he told her, after, while they lay together, drowsy and satisfied. “And when you come to me, I will give you everything you desire. Everything you need.”
At least until Gunnar discovered them, anyhow. Until he realized his wife’s deceit. After that, there would be no knowing.
Signy sighed, and forced herself to rise, to collect her clothes and dress, while Isolfur watched her from the bed. “I need to get back.”
His gaze shifted to the window and the muddled blue-green light that streamed through it, wrinkling across the smooth stone floor. “There is time, yet.”
“I’ve been gone for more than half the day, already. He will wonder what’s become of me. Ragnar will wonder, too. Hunting for herbs is one thing, but they know I would not stay in the woods after dark to collect them.”
Isolfur rolled to his side, propping his head upon his hand and smiling. “There is time, Signy. All the time you wish to have, and your unworthy king will be none the wiser. I cannot stop its passing altogether, but I can slow it, stretch the hours within these walls. And the next time, you will call for me from that small stream just outside the castle, and we will have that much more time still when you are saved the trip to the falls.”
“But should anyone see you—”
“They will see nothing,” he promised her. “Only their queen splashing her hands in the water. Your husband will never know the truth, never suspect the children I give you are not his. While we are together, you will always be safe. And as long as there is running water, I will come to you, wherever you might be.”
“There is no running water inside the castle itself,” she said. “No place for a horse outside of the stables. And sooner or later, someone is bound to notice a white horse bursting from the water to rescue me, no matter how strong your charms might be.”
He laughed, low and warm and rough. “Are you afraid, Signy?”
She said nothing, her throat suddenly tight, her stomach twisting. Not with fear, exactly. No. This was something stronger. More insidious.
Dread. She dreaded what came next. Returning to Gunnar’s castle, Gunnar’s side, Gunnar’s bed. It had been so long since she’d been touched with any kindness, any tenderness at all. So long since she had not been tensed with fear lying in a man’s bed.
She did not want to go back. And it was not any bewitchment of Isolfur’s that inspired it. She had married a foul, awful man, a monstrous creature with a monstrous heart, and after the smallest taste of something better, she did not want to go back to that life.
“I must go back,” she forced herself to say, the words bitter and cutting like glass in her throat.
Isolfur studied her face, his laughter fading, replaced by something else that she could not quite parse as he rose and came to her, warm hands cupping her face as he ducked his head and caught her eyes.
“I will protect what is mine.”
And she must continue on as she had begun, as if he couldn’t. She must return to Gautar, remain queen, and serve. Cautious and careful and utterly alone.
Isolfur had meant to ask her to stay, but one look at her face had chased the words away, replaced them with fury and rage like he had never known. Rage for a man who could not see the gift he had been given in a queen like Signy. For a man who, if she did not fear him, she certainly despised. And a world which had placed her into such a man’s power—whether he deserved her or not.
So instead, he had promised his protection and taken her back to her horse at the falls. But he had not left her there. He had trotted with her through the woods as far as he dared, and followed his sense of her farther still, until she crossed the stream and disappeared inside the castle walls.
He could not linger so near to Gunnar’s guards and grounds without risk, and turned back then, slipping into the nearest brook and following the water where it ran beneath the stone and earth, searching out the castle’s well. Dug deeply, but not impossible for him to navigate, should a desperate need arise. With enough momentum he could launch himself from its depths—but it would not be a subtle thing, or easy to hide. And once he appeared, without help, he would have no other choice but to leave through the gate.
It would be a foolish risk to take. And for what? A beautiful woman in his bed? A woman who promised him nothing but trouble, truly, of that he was certain. Married to a man he had no use for at all. As greedy as an elf, that one, and easily as arrogant. Isolfur had not lived free so long without recognizing the traits. Once, he might escape him, but once Gunnar knew what he had caught, Isolfur would not be so lucky a second time.
No. He must remain outside the walls. And that meant the only protection he could offer was in charms and tricks and blessings. He must weave a cloak of magic for Signy, now that she was his. One of cloth, that she might wear when she slipped from the castle and called to him, to make the men and women and children she passed look away; and one of spells to stay the king’s heavy hand, for he had seen the way she recoiled when he moved too quickly, too near, and he did not care for it at all. She need not live in fear, not now that she was his.
The elves would have the cloak he required, already woven, but he could not simply trot into a market and drop gold upon the counter of a shop. To most of them, he was nothing more than a beast to be broken beneath their whip and hitched to their wagons. But there was one he might trust to secure him what he needed—one who had not betrayed his king or the dignity of his race.
He threaded his way through the waters to Fossegrim, climbing from the river upon the old elf’s carefully tended bank. Fossegrim was crouched beside his small fishing boat, fussing with nets and knots and line, and he grunted at the interruption. “It’s been some time since you dared show yourself this near the village.”
Isolfur whickered, tossing his head, and the old elf levered himself up with his cane, cocking his head. Fossegrim had always had an affinity for water—and all the magic it contained. The same magic that gave a brook horse its strength. Where other elves saw only an animal, Fossegrim saw the man glimmering beneath, the still waters that ran deep.
“You look well-satisfied for a forgotten creature,” the elf observed. “Struck a bargain with a woman, have you?”
Isolfur b
obbed his head and trotted toward his cottage, farther up the hill. Carved into the hollowed stump of an old fallen tree, and dug out of the dirt—Isolfur much preferred the stone of his own cottage beneath the water, even if it was damp and cold.
“Shopping for your unfortunate maiden, are we?” Fossegrim kept pace, despite his cane, and Isolfur curved his neck and bared his teeth in response. “Ah—a worthy woman, then. My mistake.”
He snorted, flicking an ear in acceptance and stuck his head through an unshuttered window, nosing at the curtain pane and rolling his eyes.
“Yes, I’ve a cloak to spare, of course but—you cannot have come to me just for wool to warm her against the clammy cold. And there would be a question of payment, too.”
Isolfur lifted his head, snapping his teeth at the sly old goat. Of course he had a price in mind—no doubt he’d be waiting for the right opportunity to arrive before presenting his demands. And Isolfur was uncomfortably aware of the debt already, for Fossegrim had helped him slip free of the iron traps set by his fellows more than once. Had helped him to remain free when he might have done otherwise.
Fossegrim’s lips twitched, more amused than threatened. “You’re not the only one fond of a good bargain, Isolfur. If I help you obtain what you need for your woman, hide your comings and goings from the others along the way, you must do something for me, in return.”
He stamped a hoof, waiting. Impatient now.
“We’ll call it an exchange of services, if that does not chafe you too sorely. You act as my spy and my agent, at times, telling me the news of what you see and hear in your travels when you return here, for the most part, and I will provide you with anything you require for your—” The elf’s eyes narrowed. “A queen, is it? That seems rather unwise on both sides. But what could she want with you?”
His nostrils flared, and he lowered his head, ears pinned flat to his skull. It was not anything he had not thought himself, but even so, he resented the elf’s unasked-for opinions, to say nothing of the bargain itself.
The Queen and Her Brook Horse Page 2
