Mistress of the Wind (27 page)

Astrid’s heart was seized in her chest and squeezed by an unrelenting hand. She bent down, putting her hands on her knees, closing her eyes. Gasping for breath.

If she didn’t look, perhaps it couldn’t be true.

The few servants around her murmured in amazement, and Astrid felt an icy drop of fear hit the back of her neck and speed its way down her spine.

She forced herself to look up. Saw one strong, muscled arm—its deep brown gouged by trolls’ claws—fade in and out of focus behind the iron bars.

She stepped closer, unable to help herself, and her movement caught the prisoner’s attention. Jorgen lifted his eyes to hers.

He was a wounded oak. Trembling with pain, uprooted and dying. But his shock at seeing her, his blink of understanding at what her being in the crowd must mean, sent her reeling back.

She crouched down, a forest of legs around her, hugging her knees, breathing deep. This wasn’t about her and Bjorn anymore. It was about Jorgen too. And if they managed to trick Norga, to get her to concede defeat, there was nothing to stop her killing Jorgen in the backlash of her spite and rage.

A shudder ran down her, almost unbalancing her on her haunches.

In all conscience, could they put their future happiness before Jorgen’s life?

* * *

The trolls who brought him down from the cell, two gray slabs of rock, must have thought him too weak and subdued to escape or commit violence. They let go of his arms as they stepped into the courtyard, and he was forced to walk toward his bride himself.

The hiss and suck of the sea sounded as if it were miles away, instead of just beyond the wall, and Bjorn used the beat of its far-away rhythm as he made his way to the raised dais. Not a death march, but a march of humiliation.

He did not try to make out Astrid in the crowd. Too much rested on Norga never discovering she was here until it was too late—

He froze, a high-pitched buzz in his ears. Hazel eyes, cool as the deep forest, stared out at him from a cage, bracketed on either side by iron bars.

Bjorn lifted a hand toward him, then clenched it into a fist. He looked up to the dais, locked eyes with Norga.

She smiled. Her eyes glinting with the knowledge of how this must affect him.

“A witness from your kingdom,” she said. “So it can never be said that this did not take place.”

Jorgen slumped against the bars, and slid, half-faded, to the filthy floor of his cage.

“He will die this far from the forest. It’s his lifeblood.” He was stripped of his power, but if Astrid had not been there, if this wasn’t about more than him, he would try to kill the troll queen right now.

He shuddered in a breath. Held himself still and calm.

“You are becoming more pragmatic as you get older.” Norga moved forward to the steps, unaware how close she was to a wild animal. “It is time to pledge yourself, Mountain Prince.”

Beside her, Dekla shuffled, her eyes darting between Jorgen, Bjorn and her mother.

Bjorn felt a thread of pity for her. A pawn of both sides.

“It looks as if your witness is dying, Mother.”

At her bored tone, the pity he’d felt evaporated, and his chest contracted with pain as he spun back to Jorgen.

The vedfe lay, eyes closed, almost completely faded away.

“No!” Bjorn threw himself at the cage. Thrust his hand between the bars and touched hot, fevered flesh.

“He needs water. What good is he to you dead?”

Norga said nothing, but the calculation in her eyes told him everything.

“He will get water and a quick journey back to his forest once the ceremony is complete. My little way of making sure you behave today.”

Bjorn walked to the dais but did not put his foot on the first step. The blood pounded so hard in his head, he felt lightheaded. His heart gave him such a stab of pain, he put his fist over it.

If he and Astrid went ahead with their plan, Jorgen would die. Either because he would never be returned to his forest, or because Norga would kill him in revenge.

He turned to face the crowd—searching, searching. This was not his decision alone.

He tried to swallow, and found he could not. A rock had lodged in his throat, hard and choking.

A small movement, someone standing from a crouch, drew his eye and suddenly there was Astrid amongst the servants. The tears glistening in her winter blue eyes made his knees give way, and he stumbled forward a step. She gave a tight nod, and stepped backwards, deeper into the crowd. Disappeared among the servants.

“We are waiting, Prince.”

Bjorn turned to the dais, looked over his shoulder one last time, and placed his foot on the first step.

Chapter Thirty-five

A
deathly cry, the final creaking scream of wild oak as it falls to the woodman’s ax, silenced every voice.

Bjorn leapt from the top step back to the ground and gripped the cage’s iron bars, straining to bend them with his bare hands.

Jorgen had faded away completely. Bjorn could see nothing of him.

“Give me the key,” he screamed to Norga, so wild he touched the heart of the bear, that place he had never allowed himself to go in all the time he was enchanted. Too afraid it would seduce him into forgetting his responsibilities, offer him a half-life with no real purpose, but no pain, either.

He embraced that wildness now. Was able to remember it only too well. He’d lived with his mind rubbing side by side with the beast long enough.

He saw, through the red haze around his vision, that Dekla’s eyes were wide, and Norga had taken a step back, her face twisted with shock.

She threw him the key, and expecting to have to fight for it, to kill, he missed the catch and it bounced off his chest, fell at his feet.

He scrabbled for it, his fingers shaking, and he cursed as he fumbled with the lock. He ripped the door open, then moved carefully forward on his hands and knees, feeling his way.

His hand touched a shoulder, and he knelt closer, touched Jorgen’s hot, dry face.

The lord of the vedfe was lifeless.

Bjorn sat back on his heels and looked across at the troll queen, murder in his eyes.

* * *

Astrid pushed her way through the crowd that had frozen around her, and took a step away from the safety of the herd toward the cage. Like an unexpected slap, the open space between the servants and the trolls brought her to her senses.

She watched Bjorn throw open the cage door, crawl in and touch Jorgen’s invisible body. Saw him sit back and look up at the dais, every muscle tensed, his lips drawn back over his teeth as if he planned to leap straight through the iron bars and rip Norga’s throat out.

If he did attack, she would join him.

What did she have to lose?

But even as she braced to run forward, Bjorn jerked slightly, as if touched by an unexpected hand. She watched the rage drain out of him, his head and shoulders drooping over his chest, his fisted hands opening and rubbing his temple.

Norga’s dark magic at work? Bringing Bjorn to heel?

Astrid trembled, hardly breathing, waiting for Bjorn to come back to his senses. To fight.

Instead, he stood, stooping slightly in the cage, and walked slowly, as if carrying a heavy weight on his back. He eased himself out of the cage door to the ground, rather than jumping down as she would have expected, and seemed to wander, puzzled, away from the dais, toward the measly center court fountain that trickled its water into a moss-stained bowl of stone. He stumbled as he got to it, slumped to the ground, and shook his head.

He put out a hand, caught a palm-full of water, and rubbed it over his face. It seemed to revive him, and he stood up, his face controlled again, his eyes hard.

Norga and Dekla watched him, their faces giving nothing away. But Astrid thought the way they stood since Bjorn was overcome in the cage was more relaxed. Their hands no longer clenched, their necks no longer straining forward.

They had been afraid of him.

As he walked back, Bjorn’s step was normal, no longer slow and full of effort. He looked down at the first step up to the platform, but his feet remained firmly on the cobbles of the courtyard. “If this it to be a true marriage, I am entitled to ask my bride-to-be to prove herself. To do something for me.”

As Norga hissed in a breath, Astrid’s mouth dropped open. This was how it should have gone, had Jorgen not arrived. This is what they’d planned.

But she would never have chosen to do it over Jorgen’s dead body.

* * *

Bjorn could see Norga had not thought of the groom’s prerogative to ask a favor of his bride. Had forgotten it, perhaps, or never knew it. But his words hung silver in the air, the clear ring of truth to them.

“What would you have me do?” Dekla stepped forward, speaking—asserting herself—for the first time.

Bjorn looked into her eyes and saw nothing but hardness.

“I would have you wash my shirt.” He lifted the fine cotton, gray and dull, off his chest as if its very touch offended him.

Norga frowned, and Bjorn could see her mind working, sure there was a devious trick behind the simple request.

“And when she does that, you will marry her?”

“I will marry whoever is able to make this shirt completely white again. If your daughter is the one to do it, then I will marry her.”

“You wish to humiliate me. Make me to do the work of a servant, before you are forever under my thumb.” Dekla spoke softly, and Bjorn had to strain forward to hear her. “You had better enjoy it, Mountain Prince, because it will cost you.”

Bjorn shrugged. Stared up at her, defiant.

“Bring me warm water in a basin and some soap,” she called into the crowd, and two women hurried off into the inner castle.

Under the guise of watching them go, Bjorn searched for Astrid, found her standing in the first rank of servants, close as she could to him. She was tense, waiting, and he could see her cheeks and eyes were red from weeping.

The two women stepped out of the kitchens, a large wooden tub between them. One stumbled in her nervousness as every eye turned on them, and they set it down with a thump, spilling water. It swirled over Bjorn’s worn, scuffed boots.

Slowly, deliberately, he loosened the ties that held the top of his shirt together, and bent forward to pull it over his head. He straightened, holding the shirt like a rotting fish with the tips of his fingers, and looked up at Dekla.

Her eyes moved from the shirt to his bared torso, and she pursed her lips, her gaze refusing to meet his.

She walked down the steps to him and stopped just near his shoulder, at least a head taller than he.

“I can make myself beautiful, you know,” she whispered. “Beyond my mother’s lands. Where my power will not clash with hers.”

Bjorn flinched.

She reached out and took the shirt, and for a moment, her eyes did meet his, blasting him with barely controlled emotion. Lust. Yearning. Greed.

“As she looked for your father, I could look for you. And I have things. Beautiful, golden things.”

Bjorn stepped back, crossed his arms over his chest, and said nothing. He felt a muscle jump in his jaw, and realized he was grinding his teeth together.

Dekla watched him a moment longer, and did not find what she was looking for in his eyes.

“Never say I didn’t give you a chance, Bearman. You could have had the illusion of beauty, but I will not try to make your life easier again.”

“I have spent too long enchanted,” he answered her, so quietly it was her turn to lean forward. “I am giving you the benefit of my experience. It is no way to live.”

She reared back, her black-tipped fingers gripping the shirt as if she would tear it to shreds.

“Careful,” Norga called from the dais. “He is a tricky one. We do not want to forfeit anything because of your temper.”

Dekla shot her mother a look of loathing, but her grip loosened and she turned to the basin at her feet.

“I will make you wash everything in our palace every day, for this,” she said to Bjorn, her voice sweet and light as Norga’s had once been in her magical woman’s body. “And I will turn myself into a beautiful woman each day, and tease you, and tease you, until you beg me to lie with you. And just as you get into my bed, I will take my true form again.”

Bjorn dropped his hands to his side, cocked his head, considering.

“You and your mother keep confusing me with an animal, princess. I may have looked like one for a long time, but I never was one.” He nodded toward the basin. “If you are able to do this task, and I am forced to marry you, there is nothing in heaven or earth that would make me beg for your body. You are chaining yourself to a life of unhappiness for your mother’s greed. I feel sorry for you.”

Dekla cried out. Whether in pain or anger, Bjorn could not tell.

“
You
prepare yourself for a life of unhappiness, Bearman. You are about to lose.” And Dekla plunged the shirt into the soapy water.