“You’re not wrong,” Fossegrim said. “It would be too much to ask for in exchange only for a cloak, but you know as well as I do that this queen of yours will have needs you cannot meet without help. If you would prefer to resort to thievery instead, that is your choice of course, but the risks there are far greater than my small requests, I promise you. Let us say for the duration of your relationship with her and an additional ten years beyond it. And the information you collect—it is likely to keep us both free.”
He whipped his tail back and forth, pawing at the soft earth, and irritated beyond measure. But he could not say he was surprised, or even that it was wholly unfair. Even better, it would not be forever. And the length of Signy’s life was little more than a blink to beings such as themselves. Isolfur bowed his head in acceptance.
“Excellent.” Fossegrim grinned, leaning heavily upon his cane. “Now. What variety of cloak did you suggest you required?”
In fairness to the old elf, the cloak Isolfur received for his troubles was gorgeously made. No short shrift given to the spells or the woolen fabric itself. Signy would have no trouble slipping in and out of the castle while wearing it, for even he was inclined to look away from the place where he had hung it while he waited, impatient again, for her call.
Within his cottage, he could hurry the days or slow them as he wished, but even quickened, the sevenday that passed before he heard his name, felt the caress of her fingers through the water of the stream, was unbearably long. And why it should have been, when he barely knew the woman at all, he could not explain, but he was eager as a stallion to mount her again, to ride and be ridden, and see her lie back upon his bed, boneless and satisfied and too exhausted to even think of leaving. Perhaps he should not trust his own feelings, or perhaps the binding he had wrought between them had bound him in an unexpected way, or more likely than the rest, he had just spent too long alone, too long without even the illusion of a friend.
Yes, he told himself. That was all that it was. Made more potent by the heady rush of attraction. And not knowing her, too, leant her greater appeal, for he had spent the last week imagining her as he willed rather than knowing with any certainty her responses. It was infatuation at the worst, and nothing more. For she was a queen married to another man, a king, and he was only the sad, lonely creature who had bewitched her heart.
It did not give him any satisfaction to know it.
Signy waited for him at the stream where he had left her, seven long days ago, and before Isolfur had even formed himself fully from the water, she was upon his back and they slipped away again. The rush of water filled her ears, her sense of balance stretched to breaking by the strange magic with which he swam, following currents and springs and water tables she could not see or sense until they reached his lake, and she glimpsed the stone and shell cottage between the reeds.
She would never get used to the sight of him as he reached that doorway, the way hooves melted into hands and his horse’s body slimmed and shrank into a man’s. When she might have slipped from his back, half-way through, his hand found hers, and they took the final step across the threshold together.
“I’d hate for you to catch a chill from the damp,” he murmured, spinning her neatly into his arms and searching her face, her whole body with hungry eyes. But no—not just hunger. There was something possessive there, too, jealous and violent and barely leashed. “The least I can do is keep you dry upon my back until you’ve come inside.”
Which explained why he had not let her swim free to the door ahead of him, she supposed, but little else. “You could not have been far away, to come so fast.”
“Never,” he promised, stepping back to get a better look at her, head to toe. “And you are safe? Unharmed?”
She flushed at the intensity of his gaze. Escaping Gunnar’s violence completely, even with a brook horse’s blessing, was hardly likely, but she had done her best to remain out of his reach. Reserved and cool toward his court, as he preferred, and pliable and sweet in his bed. He liked to think her unworldly. Innocent and untouched but for what he taught her, and she let him believe it was so. Far easier that way to mask her reluctance to welcome him at all. To hide her inability to find any pleasure in his bed.
“Nothing that will not heal, in any event.”
Isolfur growled. “Undress.”
Signy stiffened, narrowing her eyes at the command. From Gunnar she must suffer such demands, but from Isolfur—she had spoken to him of friendship, pretended power when she had known from the start she possessed none, but she had hoped it would be different. Wanted desperately to believe it could be, even bound now as she was. Tied to him, body, mind, and heart. She’d given him so much of herself, and there was nothing to be done now if he chose to treat her as little more than his slave.
He snorted, and his hands smoothed down her arms from her shoulders, gentle and caressing. “Not for that,” he reassured her swiftly. “Or at least not yet, if you prefer to wait.”
“Then for what?”
“I will not have his marks lingering upon your skin, your body. Not while you are here with me.”
“For my sake or for your own?” she asked, not quite able to bite back the mocking tone. He could have her as he liked, but that did not mean she had to give herself up gladly. And he had sworn to protect her. Surely that meant he could not raise his own hand against her, either. She could only hope.
“If I cannot keep you wholly safe when you are away, I would do what I am able while you are here. That he might have done you any harm at all—” He snapped his teeth together on the rest. “For your sake and for my own,” he admitted. “For to see his marks on your body, marks I could not stop him from making, only drives me mad with rage, and it would do neither of us any good if I charged on four legs through his door with murder on my mind.”
“You would not make it past the guards,” she agreed, her fears dissolved by his words—replaced by new ones. For what could she do for the children he gave her if he died? And he would die, if he tried to kill Gunnar as a beast rather than a man. Without the power of his voice, the magic he could weave with his true hands, the best result he could hope for with such a scheme was enslavement in Gunnar’s stables. Likely, for Isolfur, that was a fate worse than death.
He took her face in his hands, searching her eyes. “Is that fear for me or for yourself?” he asked, wry and teasing now.
“I do not know quite yet,” she answered honestly. “Both, I suppose. Perhaps it will always be both.”
“Such is the nature of the bargain we struck,” he said, stepping back. “But I have a gift for you, to make you safer still.”
Her eyes narrowed. “A gift?”
Isolfur smiled at her suspicion. “As is my right, in service of your safety. Part of the binding between us, and nothing more.”
Signy pressed her lips together, unnerved at how easily he saw through her. Had he read her so well before they’d exchanged promises? Or was it only now that she had given up so much of herself that he found such insight? She had not known him long enough before or after to know one way or the other. Likely it would be a question she would never answer. And not for the first time in the last sevenday, she wondered if she had been too hasty, too foolish in coming to him at all, in risking the bargain she’d struck.
“You do not trust me, I know,” Isolfur said gently. “I see it in your eyes, Queen Signy, when you look at me that way. But I swear to you, this is no trick. I will not trick you now that you are mine. It does not serve either one of us.”
“And how can I be certain that is not a trick?” she asked.
He opened his hand, palm up. “I would swear it in blood if you insisted upon it. And you are no fool, my lady. Whatever power you had before we struck our bargain, you have it still. You know what to do with a blood oath, at least, of that I’m certain if nothing else. How much of what you told me was
bluster, and how much was truth—perhaps there is trust to be built on both sides, between us?”
She snorted at that, but gave him little else in response, shifting her gaze instead to the damp, clammy room and the fireplace with no fire lit inside it. “You must not feel the cold at all.”
His lips twitched and he moved away from her, removing a cloak from a hook beside the door, offering it to her. “This will keep you warm, dry, and safe—or hidden at least, from the eyes of your king’s guards, when you desire to slip away unnoticed.”
She fingered the fabric tentatively, unwilling still to accept it. She could barely even look at it, but her fingers told her what her eyes would not. Heavy wool, but woven so fine and so soft—Elvish-made, it had to be, to be so finely constructed. And if that was so, it was no small gift.
“The king would notice,” she hedged. “He would wonder where I found such a cloak.”
“He would not,” Isolfur said. “Should he look in your trunks, his gaze would skip across it, unable to linger long enough to notice. And so will the gazes of his guardsmen when you wear it, reinforcing the magic already wrought upon your person.”
“It is too rich a gift,” she said, letting the fabric slip from her fingers and meeting his eyes. “It cannot come at no cost to me.”
“Not too rich in repayment for your heart, your body, and your blood. Or else you undervalue yourself abominably.”
“But I traded you that for our children, for their protection.”
“And yours,” he said firmly. “As I told you before, though you did not believe me then, either, it seems. Is every word from your husband’s mouth a trick of some kind, that you think me so faithless? Or is it because I am a brook horse that you mistrust me so completely, despite our bargain?”
“Brook horse or elf, orc or dragonkin, I know enough of the world beyond ours to be wary of gifts, even if my husband were not cruel and faithless,” she said. “And you cannot tell me your kind is not capricious under the best of circumstances.”
“But an oath is still an oath, a bargain made in blood cannot be broken without cost. I have no intention of betraying my blood or my word and risking the result. If you cannot believe I would keep faith for any other reason, surely you must recognize my own self-interest.”
That much she could not deny. And he was not wrong that she knew the power of blood and the oaths made upon it. Knew the risks he took in breaking such bonds—it was foolish to try. Even for a brook horse. She offered the smallest nod of acknowledgment, and he smiled, flicking his wrist and wrapping the cloak about her shoulders, warm and soft, and not nearly as heavy as it ought to have been.
“Yes,” he said softly, his eyes all but glowing with pleasure. “That will serve you quite well, I think.”
“You might have simply laid a fire,” she said, dropping her gaze. “Flame would have kept me just as warm in your cottage.”
“But not as warm or as safe outside of it,” he said, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear and back beneath the hood of her new cloak. “And I’ll lay a fire for you still if you find my bed too cold for your liking.”
She laughed despite herself, a new warmth blossoming inside her. She met his eyes then, that he might see her desire, her own pleasure at this kinder suggestion, rather than his earlier demand. “If there is one thing I trust, Isolfur, it is the comfort I’ll find in your bed.”
His lips curved and his eyes crinkled. “You honor me, Signy.”
She stepped back, moving toward his bedchamber. “Then perhaps you will honor me, in return? We can warm one another.”
She did not have to ask him twice, and he gave her all that she had hoped he would—warmth and pleasure and delight.
Everything that Gunnar had denied her.
When Isolfur had finished, the only marks upon her were his own, from teeth and tongue and lips where he had suckled upon her skin, and she was limp and drowsing, cuddled against his chest, one of her shapely legs hooked over his and an arm thrown across his stomach. He watched her breathe, followed every flicker of her eyelids, stretching every heartbeat, every moment as long as he dared.
It was not only her beauty which drew him, that much he was certain of now. The fire inside her, the steel in her spine and the strength of her spirit—the very things that meant she would inevitably demand her own return to a king who did not deserve her—that was what had captured his interest, what left him thoroughly enthralled. She was strong enough to destroy the man she had married, to turn her own power and all she had bargained for against that fool king and win. But instead, she practiced careful restraint. Played the mouse to Gunnar’s cat, at what cost he did not wish to imagine. All for the people who had fed her to the monster to start. A kingdom she had left behind and might never so much as see again.
Sacrifice.
That was the word for it. Selfless and pure, and absolutely foreign. Oh, he’d heard of it before. That elf king, Ingvifreyr, for one, when he had gone to save his people from Sinmarra. But as a rule, the elves were selfish creatures, and certainly the men and women he had bargained with for sons and daughters never offered themselves in exchange for the riches or magic or blessings they sought. It was always another they gave up, to their benefit. And while they might tell themselves it was for the good of the girl or boy, that the child would be better fed and cared for than they could provide, they did not fool anyone but themselves with such talk.
But perhaps it was no different for Signy. Perhaps he gave her more credit than she deserved. After all, he gave her pleasure and safety and gifts in return. He gave her friendship and a retreat from the cruelty of her husband. If she had always intended to bargain with him, to protect herself with his power, to find comfort and kindness in his bed, had she really sacrificed anything at all?
It soured his stomach even to think it. There was no question, truly, and even to muse as much was a betrayal, a dishonor she did not deserve. He had seen with his own eyes the tension in her when she had first summoned him. Saw the stiffness in her again when she had returned a second time. And she had lived with Gunnar for some time before she had called to him at all, suffered in her marriage until she watched every movement he’d made, braced for sudden violence.
He had never had a woman come to him the way Signy had. Never known a woman who did not greedily accept every gift he offered. That Signy bargained for the benefit of others—yes, she benefitted to some degree, but would she have come to him at all if she had not needed children to secure her marriage and protect her people? If she had not feared for the children she might bring into the world at all?
Isolfur thought not. She was too proud, too honorable. Likely she had not wanted to break her vows to her husband at all, and that was why she had waited so long to come to him. And all these things—every piece of it, fascinated him all the more.
He did not want to return her to her king. He did not want to let her leave him again. Not that day or any other. But he could not keep her against her will, either, and he knew if he asked her to stay, she would refuse. That she must refuse, or everything she had sacrificed would be for nothing. The bargain she had struck would mean nothing.
“How much longer?” she murmured, barely awake.
“Long enough,” he told her.
“Before sunset,” she mumbled. “Or else he’ll know I’ve gone.”
He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “You’ve time, yet, Signy. Sleep on, and I’ll wake you well before.”
A soft hum of acknowledgment was her only response before she drifted away again.
He had no choice but to be content with what she had given him. These stolen hours and little else. For now.
But it would not satisfy him forever. And one day—one day she would be wholly his, with no fear of returning too late or being seen leaving. Free to come and go as she wished, when she wished, and not before, not for any
reasons but her own. That much, he promised himself.
She could see it in his eyes that he wanted to ask it of her—the flick of his ears and the flare of his nostrils when she slipped from his back onto the bank of the stream—but as a horse, of course, he couldn’t, and she was grateful for the silence. Grateful, too, that as a man he had not voiced the desire, had not tried to persuade her to stay.
Signy’s gaze slid from his long face to the sky, checking the hour. The sun was still high enough that she need not hurry. But even so, even wrapped in the cloak he had given her, it would not do to linger within sight of the walls.
Isolfur dropped his head, nosing at her hand until she stroked his broad forehead, letting her fingers tangle in the forelock of his mane. “We know so little of each other,” she said, unsure if she meant to remind herself or him. “Bargain or no, it is too soon. Likely we would drive one another mad if we spent more than these half-days together.”
He snorted, and somehow she knew it for the objection he couldn’t voice otherwise. She pressed a smile into a frown. “We do not even trust one another.”
Isolfur bared his teeth, but she did not fear his bite. She was too familiar with how effectively he could use those teeth upon her skin. But that thought, too, made her drop her hand away and step back, for she could not return to Gunnar flushed with desire for another man.
“I do not know when I will be free again,” she told him. “It could be another sevenday, or even a fortnight. And I dare not establish any sort of pattern that Ragnar might notice.”
The brook horse ducked his head again, acknowledgment this time, and she glanced at the walls. This time, too, was borrowed. “Until then,” she promised him.
But turning from him, back to the castle and her king and her thrice-cursed duty—it made her ache. Because of the bargain, of course. Because she had given him her heart along with the rest of her and he had only to tug upon that binding to make her feel for him, desire only him. She had been foolish to give up so much, to give him such power over her. And Ancestors help her if he ever chose to use it.
The Queen and Her Brook Horse Page 3
