Fantasyland 01 Wildest Dreams (4 page)

I never expected to have that, my Dad
walking me down the aisle, not since I was fifteen and their plane
went down. If I ever settled on a guy, I knew there would be no Dad
walking me down an aisle.

So, okay, this was good or, not really since
I had no clue who I was marrying but I decided to take it as
such.

I looked to the front of the church that was
coming ever closer and saw no cross or other church-like thing of
my world but instead six enormous statues that looked carved out of
ivory marble positioned to form a curve at the front. There were
three men statues and three women starting with a man with legs
planted, hands on hips; the next was a woman looking down at her
belly where both her hands were resting; the next was a man who had
one arm straight out, his legs separated, knees slightly bent, his
other arm lifted, hand looking at the ready to pull what looked
like a sword from his back; the next, another woman, this one had
one arm dangling in front of her, her hand loosely opened at her
pubis, her other arm lifted and resting on the side of her neck, a
weird smile playing at her lips on her slightly downturned face;
the next, a man with legs planted, arms crossed; and the last, a
woman standing with her hands loosely cupped together, fingertips
touching each other, head slightly bowed, lips to her hands.

Weird.

In front of this display stood a man wearing
white robes with a long, wide satin band around his neck and
dangling down his front bearing stripes starting with dark blue
then light blue, red, deep violet, gold then bright green.

Okay, interesting. It seemed in this world
they had more than one god. It was going to be cool learning more
about that.

I sucked in breath to say something to my
Dad, anything, and to get him to say something in return then it
caught in my throat as a man moved to stand in front of and to the
side of the man in white robes then that man looked down the aisle
at me.

My step faltered when I took in all that was
him and there was a lot that was him to take in.

“Sjofn,” Dad growled, his hand over mine in
the crook of his arm tensing. He felt my step falter and he thought
I was going to bolt. With effort, I pulled my shit together and
kept walking.

But I was thinking,
oh no.

And that would be a big, oh no, no,
no,
no.

No.

Was that…? Was he…?

Oh shit. He was. He had to be. He was
standing at the front of the church.

It was The Dragon.

It was my groom.

And I got his name. I totally got it with
the way he was glowering at me like he most assuredly did
not
like me, he also did
not
want to be there and further,
what he did want to be doing was slaughtering entire villages
either with weapons or, perhaps, breathing fire at them and setting
them alight.

He was massive. I was five six. He had to be
six three or six four. His hair was very dark, very thick with bit
of wave and it curled around the turtleneck of his sweater that was
a dark brown so dark it was nearly black. He did not wear weird
leather shorts but wool breeches that fit him snug and did not come
near to hiding the power of his massive, muscular thighs. The same
could be said for his sweater which did not hide the breadth and
brawn of his shoulders. He had on boots that went to just below his
knees and I saw that he didn’t bother shining them for his
nuptials. They were smudged and even had dirt and mud on them.
There was a leather band slanting across his chest, under his ribs
at one side, over his shoulder at the other but there were no gold,
rubies or anything on his. I saw the fall of a cloak, this one not
a lustrous fur pelt like Dad’s but a simple hide.

I could also see the hilt of a sword over
his shoulder behind where the band was and knives on either side of
a leather belt at his waist.

His features were tan, sharp, strong and
prominent. Heavy brow, jutting square jaw, carved cheekbones, full
lips with tons of ridges in them. If his look wasn’t so dark
and
extremely
pissed
off, he’d be hot.

He was not.

He was freaking scary. The bulk of him, the
intensity of angry energy he exuded which I could feel pressing
against my skin, the murderous look in his eyes.

Scary.

No,
terrifying
from top-to-toe.

And this was saying something, coming from
me, Seoafin Wilde, a woman who did not get scared easily.

But no matter how frightening he was, I
could not tear my gaze from him so as we cleared the front of the
church, I didn’t.

And I saw his eyes were a weird shade of
light olive green, not green or brown or hazel but light olive
green surrounded by a mass of dark, curling lashes.

As I got closer and then we stopped a few
feet from him, I noticed instantly he dwarfed me not only in height
but in build. He was two of me, at least.

Oh God.

This was not good.

The man in white robes said something I
didn’t understand not because I was freaking out but because it was
in a weird language and the man known as The Dragon tore his
furious, brown-green gaze from me and looked at him then he lifted
a fist.

My torso swayed back as the massive thing
sliced through the air.

Dad clutched me tighter then forced me
forward so I was standing beside The Dragon as he pried my fingers
from his elbow and lifted my hand, curling my frozen fingers over
The Dragon’s fist and holding them there.

God, my fingers got nowhere near covering
his mighty fist.

The music stopped.

Oh shit.

The man in robes said something and my Dad
replied with a loud, authoritative, “Yes!” his fingers squeezed
mine then he was gone.

Gone!

Just like that.

Oh shit!

Without any ado, the man in robes tipped his
head to the ceiling and started babbling in a foreign language that
was nothing like anything I’d ever heard before. And I’d heard a
lot of foreign tongues and knew my way around a few of them.

Crap.

This went on for awhile as I stood next to
my scary giant groom. Then it went on for another while.

Then it went on.

All the time it went on, I stood with my
hand on The Dragon’s fist and, well… that was that.

Strange.

So strange and it went on for so long, I
started to relax. Then I tensed when the robed guy turned abruptly
and moved to stand in front the statue of the dude with his hands
on his hips. The robed guy lifted his arms to the statue and
started droning again.

Then he droned more. Then more. Then some
more.

About fifteen minutes later, he moved to the
statue of the woman with her hands on her belly and started droning
again.

Hells bells, if he prayed to all of them for
fifteen minutes, we’d be standing there, hands raised, for over an
hour.

The packed church was silent behind us and
the robed guy seemed like he was in trance of ecstasy, chatting it
up in prayer with the lady statue so I figured maybe I should take
that moment to get to know the scary guy whose hand I was kind of
holding and who would be (maybe if this wedding didn’t last a
decade) my husband for a year.

Shit.

I peeked at him out of the corner of my
eye.

Okay, slightly less scary. He didn’t look
pissed anymore. His eyes were aimed at the robed guy and he looked
bored out of his skull.

I could dig that. I was getting bored too.
Maybe I could work with this.

So I pulled my shit together and shuffled my
body a little closer to his.

I stopped when his head tipped down, his
green-brown eyes captured mine and they went from bored to mildly
annoyed which was still super-freaking-scary.

I stared up at him.

But what could I do? Really, I had no
choice.

So I whispered, “Uh… hi.”

His dark brows snapped together.

Yep, that was super-freaking-scary too.

Oh hell.

I plowed on, still whispering. “Uh… do we
have to stand with our hands like this?”

His expression didn’t change and he made no
reply.

“I mean,” I went on, tipping my head to
robed guy, “he’s kinda into what he’s doing so I think he wouldn’t
notice if we took a break.”

No answer but his eyes didn’t leave
mine.

I kept going. “He’s so into it, we could
probably go sit down or even,” I tried to joke and smiled up at
him, “go out, get a beer and come back and he’d still be at
it.”

His eyes narrowed on my mouth.

Definitely
super-freaking-scary.

I stopped smiling and stopped speaking and
his eyes snapped back to mine. I wanted to look away but for some
reason, I couldn’t. Maybe it was because, really, upon closer
inspection, he could be seriously hot if he didn’t look like he
wanted to break me in two.

Then I
really
wanted to look away when his eyes started roaming, my face,
my hair, my crown and then they drifted down where they took their
time examining my ample cleavage.

Ho boy.

In the middle of this, for some reason,
his jaw got hard (or,
harder
), his angry scowl returned, his eyes came back to mine for
a slash before they turned back to the robed guy.

Well, that didn’t work.

The robed guy moved to the next statue and
started jabbering at it.

I tried to figure out my next move but there
wasn’t one. I was apparently a princess at my wedding to a man
known as The Dragon, both my parents didn’t seem to like me much, I
was standing in front of a huge church with a shitload of people in
it and I was getting married in the longest, most boring ceremony
in the history of time.

Not a single bit of that was good, even the
princess part.

Okay, that wasn’t true. The princess part
was good. So were my crown and my kickass clothes, not to mention
my boots and underwear.

And I kinda liked the sleigh and wished I’d
had a moment to enjoy the ride because I was guessing it would have
been fun.

I held onto those thoughts as I kept my hand
curled around his fist and then the robed guy moved onto the next
statue.

Then, ever game (this
was
my adventure and I had to make the most of it, as
I always did because that was what my parents taught me to do), I
pulled in a breath and braved another step closer to my scary
groom. I got so close, our arms brushed and his chin dipped back
down so he could scowl at me.

“Hi,” I whispered, “me again. Your future
wife?” I made a lame attempt at a joke.

He did not laugh. He did not even smile. He
continued to scowl but said no words.

Maybe he didn’t have a sense of humor. Maybe
he actually had no emotions at all except being bored and
pissed.

“Uh…” I persevered, “what are those statues
made of? That looks like marble. I’ve never seen anything like it.
It’s gorgeous.”

His head tipped slightly to the side but his
eyes went alert.

Uh-oh!

Stupid!

Sjofn would totally know what those statues
were made of and likely have seen them countless times before
(unless, of course, she wasn’t religious).

Shit!

“Uh…” I mumbled quickly, “I mean, I should
know, of course. And I’ve, uh… seen it before, obviously, I mean,
seen those statues before just not um…” Shit! “That marble, uh…
anywhere else. But I never thought to ask and um… well, we seem to
have time to chat.”

He glared at me. Then he shook his head once
and looked back at the robed guy.

Okay, that didn’t work either.

I sighed and I did this heavily.

Then a thought occurred to me. I squeezed my
fingers on his fist to get his attention and his head turned and
dipped to look at me again.

I fought the fear his scary-assed glower
sent slithering through my belly, got up on my toes and leaned in
slightly, whispering, “Do you speak my language?”

Again with the brows snapping together and
narrowing of eyes so I dropped back down on my feet and leaned away
an inch.

Then, his voice came quiet but deep and
growling and just as scary as the rest of him, “Have you been at
the drink?”

The bad news was, he thought I was tipsy.
The good news was, he spoke English.

“No, I… don’t think so,” I answered, still
whispering.

“If you do not know then you have and have
had too much,” he returned, still growling quiet.

“Well, I don’t feel lightheaded or sick and
I’m not swaying or singing, which I do, a lot when I’ve imbibed too
much so,” I tried another smile, “evidence is suggesting I’m not
shitfaced.”

He aimed his narrow-eyed, knit-browed scowl
at my mouth again then it snapped back to my eyes.

Then he growled low, quiet and now
ominous, “Shut your mouth…” his neck bent further so his angry face
was closer and finished, “future
wife.
”

He spit out the last word like it tasted
foul then straightened and looked at the robed guy again and so did
I to see he had fortunately moved onto the next statue.

Hmm. None of that went well. Not any of it.
Not even a little bit.

And I was right when I first saw him, he
didn’t want to be here at all but, I was getting the impression,
especially not with me.

I decided to try again maybe at the
reception. Maybe after I had some alcohol and maybe after I got
some down him. Maybe he’d loosen up then. Maybe, if I got enough
down him, he’d pass out so I could avoid the wedding night,
uh…
festivities
until I could figure out how to avoid the marital
consummation on the whole.