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Peace.
Oblivion.
There was a time of purest silence and velvet darkness.
Then came hot delirium. She burned within, her body ran with sweat.
And there were dreams.
In the dreams, she had visitors. Elli first. Elli was her middle sister. They were three, the sisters, fraternal triplets born within hours of one another: Liv then Elli then Brit.
“Oh, Brit.” Elli wore her Viking wedding dress—and her most patient expression. She carried her wedding sword out before her, point down, jeweled hilt gleaming. She floated above the ground, surrounded by light as golden as her hair. “What have you gotten into now?”
“Ell, you look fabulous.”
“You don’t.”
“Well, it’s just… I’m so hot. Burning up…”
Elli made a tsking sound. “You should have gotten your degree at least, don’t you think? Or maybe finished one of those novels you’re always starting, before you went off and got yourself killed?”
“Not dead. Uh-uh. Not dead yet…”
“Didn’t I warn you?” That was Liv, dressed for success in a cream-colored ensemble and those Miki-moto pearls that Granny Birgit had given her. Liv was bending over Brit, looking down, a scowl on her face, blue eyes narrowed, smooth blond hair falling forward against her cheeks. “Our dear father, His Majesty the king, has the whole palace bugged. Spies everywhere. How can you call him Dad? He as good as abandoned us, the daughters he didn’t need… until both his sons were lost.”
“He is what he is….”
“You should have kept your promise to Mom and come home with me in the first place. Then you wouldn’t be here. Sweating and delirious. Dying.”
“Hot. So hot…” Brit shut her eyes.
And when she opened them again, she could see her father. He seemed far away, standing behind his massive desk in his private audience chamber at the royal palace, Isenhalla. But at the same time he was there. With her. Looming over her, looking down at her. Firelight gleamed in his silver-shot dark hair and flashed off the ruby ring of state. Blood-red refractions danced everywhere. “Brit. Be strong.”
“So hot…”
“Fight. In your veins runs the blood of kings. I have big plans for you. Don’t you dare to die and disappoint me.”
“No, Dad. I won’t die. I swear I won’t….”
But her father only shook his head sadly—and disappeared.
Her mother stood in his place, tall and beautiful and thoroughly exasperated. “What are you doing, Brit? What were you thinking?”
“Mom,” she cried, reaching, crying out again when pain lanced through her shoulder. “Oh, Mommy, I’m so sorry….” But like the others, her mother had vanished.
Gentle hands guided her back to lie among the furs. An old woman with kind eyes bent close and whispered coaxingly, “It’s all right. Rest. You’re safe here.”
And there were other voices, soft voices. They whispered of the poison that burned through her body, they murmured that now they could only wait and watch and keep her as comfortable as possible. They spoke to her soothingly. They bathed her sweating face with cool wet cloths.
And then, within the swirling, firelit twilight…
The one whose picture she carried with her, in her pack. The dead brother she’d never know.
Valbrand.
A hot bolt of fiercest joy shot through her. Not lost! Not dead, after all.
Oh, she had known it, though until this moment she hadn’t quite dared to admit it even to herself.
Yet it had been there, against all odds, deep in her most secret heart. No one had really believed she would learn anything new when she said she would find the truth about what happened to him—well, okay, her father believed, at least a little. And Medwyn. After all, they had sent her here to find out what she could.
But no one else had any hope. Not her mother. Not her sisters. Not even Jorund Sorenson, the ally she’d cultivated at the National Investigative Bureau.
They all told her the truth was known already: Valbrand had died at sea.
She’d told herself they were probably right, that she only sought Eric Greyfell to understand better how her brother had died.
But still, she had known
And she’d been right.
She tried to say his name. But words wouldn’t come.
Valbrand. Tall and strong and so very alive. Standing right there, next to where she lay. He was dressed all in black, like the masked figure she’d seen in the heart of the fjord as she stared up, numb and fading, from the cold, rocky ground.
Had that been him, then—the masked one, in the fjord?
Valbrand was looking at Eric Greyfell, who stood beside him.
Eric warned her brother, “She sees you. She knows you. You shouldn’t be here, not without the mask.”
One of the soft-voiced women who tended her whispered, “She knows nothing. She’s trapped in her world of fevered dreams….”
Her brother, still looking at Greyfell, smiled. His smile was rueful, sad and teasing all at once. “The littlest of my little sisters…”
Not so little, Brit thought, irritated. Just because she was the youngest by barely two hours didn’t give anyone—even her long-lost and recently dead brother—the right to call her “little.”
She tried to tell him that, but again the words would not take form. Valbrand was still looking at Eric, still smiling fondly. “Your bride,” he said. The two words echoed. They bounced off the rough wooden walls.
Your bride, your bride, your bride, your bride…
Greyfell’s expression gave away nothing. “If she lives.”
“She’ll live,” said Valbrand. “Thor and Freyja protect her equally. Hers is the thunder, hers is love.” He chuckled. “And war…”
And then he looked directly at her. She saw that something terrible had happened to the left side of his face. It was crisscrossed and puckered with ridges of white scar tissue, the flesh between ruined, ranging from angry red to deep purple. What could do such a thing to a man?
Acid? A blowtorch?
She cried out in pity and despair.
The gentle hands caught her, guiding her down. The soft voices soothed her. “Rest now, you’re safe….”
Chapter Two
Slowly, the burning heat faded. The dreams receded.
Brit woke weak and exhausted. She found herself in a large wooden room, bare rafters overhead. The windows were small and set high up. Thin daylight bled in through them. Very carefully she turned her head.
She saw a big, round-bodied stove in the center of the room, the chimney rising through the rafters above. And a pair of long, plain benches on either side of a plank table made of whitish wood—a deal table, she would have bet. Deal was the pale wood that came from the Norway spruce. There were oil lamps set in sconces on the walls. She lay on a bench-like bed built into one wall. Her blankets? A nest of furs. Someone had dressed her in a soft cotton nightgown.
There was a woman—a slim, straight-backed woman with white hair. She wore a thick, coarsely woven ankle-length tan dress and good-quality rough-terrain lace-up boots. She sat on a high stool at the far end of the room, her back to Brit. She was working at something that looked as if it might be an old-fashioned loom.
Brit licked her dry, cracked lips. Was this real? Was this actually happening? Or was it just another of her endless, swirling dreams?
She sat up. Her shoulder throbbed, her stomach lurched and her head spun, but she didn’t lie back down. “Valbrand?” she managed to croak out through her parched throat. “Eric Greyfell…?”
The woman rose and came to her. “There, there. It’s all right. You’re safe.”
She remembered that kind, wrinkled face, those loving eyes. “I… I know you. You took care of me.”
“You’ve been very ill,” the woman said as she guided Brit back down and tucked the furs around her again. “We feared we’d lose you. But you’re strong. You will recover.”
It came back to her then: the Skyhawk, the forced landing, the death of her guide. “Rutland… my guide?” Maybe that part—the part where she saw the guide dead—was only another of the fever dreams.
The kind-faced old woman shook her head. “What can be done has been done.”
“But I…”
The woman had already turned away. She went to the stove, dipped up liquid from an iron pot with a wooden cup. Cup in hand, she returned to Brit’s side. “Your guide’s body was sent to his family in the valley just south of this one.”
So. That part was real. Twin tears dribbled down the sides of her face. “My fault…”
“No. What fate has decreed, no mere mortal can alter.”
“It wasn’t fate, it was my own arrogance, my own certainty that I could—”
“Here.” The woman bent close again, lifted Brit’s head and put the cup to her lips. “Drink. This will soothe you.”
“But I—”
“Drink.”
Brit lacked the energy to argue further. She drank. The warm, sweet liquid felt good sliding down her dry throat.
“There,” said the woman. She set the empty cup on the floor. It must have tipped. Brit heard it roll beneath the wooden ledge that served as her bed. The woman ignored it long enough to carefully smooth Brit’s furs again. “Rest now.” She dropped out of sight as she got down to reach under the bed. In a moment, with a weary little grunt, she was on her feet, cup in hand. She started to turn.
“Wait…” The old woman faced her again, one gray brow arched. “My brother. I want to see him.”
The woman shook her head. “Princess, you know that your brothers are gone.”
“Kylan, yes.” Kylan was the second born. He had died years and years ago, when he was only a child. “But not Valbrand. I saw him. In this room, while I was so sick. His face, the left side, it was… badly scarred.”
There was a short silence. The fire crackled in the stove. Then the woman said, “A dream, that’s all. A dream brought on by your fever.”
“No, he was here. He—”
“Prince Valbrand is dead, Your Highness. Lost to us. Surely you knew. He was taken by the mother sea a year ago this past July.” The woman spoke so tenderly, with such sincere sympathy.
Brit opened her mouth to argue further, but then the woman leaned close again. A silver medallion dangled from her neck. It must have swung free of her dress when she bent for the cup. Brit couldn’t resist reaching out and touching it. It spun a little on its chain, catching the firelight. The sight made Brit smile.
The woman smiled, too, the web of wrinkles in her face etching all the deeper. “My marriage medallion.”
Marriage? Brit frowned. And then she sighed. “I have one, too.” Brit pressed the place where her medallion lay beneath the nightgown, warm against her breast. “From Medwyn, my father’s grand counselor. But mine’s only for luck.”
“Ah,” said the woman, a strange and too-knowing expression on her wise, very lived-in face. “Sleep now.”
Brit did feel tired. But she had so many questions. “Where am I?”
“You are where you wished to be, among the ones they call the Mystics.”
“How long have I been… sick?”
“This is the fourth day.”
Her plane had gone down on Monday. “Thursday? It’s Thursday?”
“Yes.”
“How did I—?”
“Eric found you. He brought you to us.”
Hope bloomed, a small, bright flame, within her. “Greyfell found me—in Drakveden Fjord?”
“That’s right.”
“But then, it must be true.” The woman frowned down at her, clearly puzzled. “I saw him—Eric Greyfell—in Drakveden Fjord, where I crashed the Skyhawk. Valbrand was with him, I swear he was. Wearing a black mask. And there was this guy with a crossbow…” She laid her hand over the thick bandage on her shoulder. “Someone shot him before he could—”
“Hush.” The woman’s warm wrinkled hand stroked her brow. “No more questions now. Sleep.”
“My father. My mother and my sisters… they’ll be so worried….”
“Word has been sent to the king that you are safe with us.”
The questions spun in her brain. She needed the answers. But the woman was right. There were too many to ask right now. She could barely keep her eyes open.
“Sleep,” the woman whispered. Something about her was so familiar.
