Annika woke snuggled beneath a heavy quilt on a bed. Her head pounded and her body ached as if she'd been used as a punching bag. A rustle of sound caught her attention. She turned over warily and opened an eye. A log fire crackled, casting dancing patterns of light over a forest green sofa and honey-colored wood.
Where was she? She tracked back in her mind and remembered boarding the plane. Her breath hissed in as an echo of pain flashed through her. The ring had trapped her in Iceland. A gamut of emotions followed the realization: anger at Odin for daring to confine her, fear over what would happen to her now, but also relief that she had an excuse to stay with Tyr.
The sound of footsteps heralded Tyr's approach from a small kitchen in the far corner of the room. "You're back in the land of the living." He smiled down at her and placed a steaming mug on the nightstand before hunkering down beside the bed. "Hot chocolate with a nip of something to revive you."
He bent his head, his dark bangs flopping over his face, and pressed a kiss on the back of her hand. Her breath rushed in, carrying the woodsy smell of Tyr mixed with the sweetness of chocolate.
"How long have I been unconscious?"
"Long enough for me to lug you back to my retreat and put you to bed."
Her eyes opened a little wider when she realized she must be in his bed.
While Tyr fetched his own mug from the kitchen, Annika sat and pulled her knees up to her chest. She tried to smooth the creases from her black tailored pants but gave up and drowned her sorrows in a blissful mouthful of chocolate with a kick of alcohol. She held off reality for half a cup, then the strangeness of her situation swamped her, and she returned her mug to the nightstand unfinished.
She spread her fingers, gazing at Odin's ring. "How can I get it off?"
Tyr sat beside her and gently wrapped his hand around hers. "Forget the ring. There's nothing you can do about it. My brother Baldur cut off his own finger to rid himself of the ring but it just appeared on one of his other fingers."
Annika shivered.
Tyr drew her hand towards him and kissed her knuckles. "Stay here with me, elskan mín."
She stared around the tiny wooden lodge. The place was toasty and snug but little more than one room. Inside her head she'd sensed Tyr all her life, but moving in with him when they'd only known each other for a couple of days was crazy. Yet where else could she go? "I'll be in your way."
With a wry laugh, he cozied up to her. "No…you won't." His hand settled at her waist, and he eased her around to face him. "We've been together in mind and spirit for a long time. Our connection is strong."
He leaned his forehead against hers. Her eyelids fell as the familiar comforting sense of him swept through her, calming her fears and smoothing her worries. His lips brushed her forehead.
"There're things I need to explain, Annika. Things you have a right to know."
Tyr rose, and she immediately missed his touch. He fetched a small cream silk bag from a shelf before returning to the bed. After unfastening the drawstring, he upended the bag over his palm. Three linked blue crystal rings dropped out—similar in shape to a Celtic knot.
"This is your Magic Knot."
He rubbed a finger wistfully across the rings then placed them in her hand. A shimmer of awareness spread across Annika's skin before stirring through her. The air around her subtly shifted, and she felt she could reach out and touch the layers of light and warmth. She held up the strange jewelry. Flickers of firelight danced within the crystalline structure as if the rings themselves contained fire.
"The three rings of your Magic Knot hold the essence of your mind, body, and spirit," Tyr said. "Keep them safe."
***
Annika turned confused blue eyes on him, and Tyr's heart went out to her. She didn't deserve to be tangled up in this conflict between the ice gods. But even as the thought passed through his mind, a selfish part of him admitted that he was pleased to have her here.
He shifted closer to her and brushed his fingertips around her palm, circling the three crystal rings. The urge to touch her rode him like the need to breathe.
"Is the Magic Knot really magic?" she asked.
"I suppose it sounds like it to you, but it's simply a part of life. Humans have them as well, but they've internalized them."
Tiny lines appeared between her eyebrows, and his fingers itched to stroke them away.
"You're saying I'm not human?"
Tyr almost laughed. "Sonya, ástin mín, you've met your father."
She wrinkled her nose. "Point taken."
"I'm not human either." He gave into temptation and smoothed the pad of his thumb over her cheek.
"So if these stones really are part of me, why did you have them?"
"It's complicated." Tyr rubbed a hand back and forth over her quilt-covered legs, soothing. Explaining what had happened to her when she was a baby without freaking her out was going to be difficult, if not impossible. She had coped with so many revelations in the past few days, he didn't want to shatter her perception of herself any further. Yet he owed her the truth.
He rose and went to stare out of the small diamond-shaped panes of glass in his door. On the icy terrace outside, Helga lay curled in a tight furry ball against the blast of snow-laden wind sweeping up the ravine. This lonely life he'd tolerated for so long would be transformed if Annika stayed.
She came to stand beside him and squinted out through the window. "Where are we?"
"In the uninhabited interior of the country, where nobody can find us. I have an apartment at the resort, but this is where I retreat for privacy."
For long minutes she stared outside, gnawing her lip. He gave in to the need to touch her again and smoothed his palm in comforting circles on her slender back. The touch seemed to rouse her, and she turned to him. "Tell me the full story about this feud between our families, Tyr. I need to understand."
Should he tell her half truths and protect her from the worst of it? He sucked in a breath. "Go and sit by the fire."
He followed her to the sofa and sat beside her. He sent calming thoughts along their mental link, wrapped her in his strength so she could cope with his revelations.
"Okay, here's the short version—Vali's father killed my brother."
Annika pressed a hand to her mouth. "My god. I'm sorry. When?"
"Before you were born."
Annika stared at him in silent horror for a few moments, then blinked as if waking up. "That doesn't excuse the way Odin's treated me."
"Odin believes the sins of the fathers shall be visited on the children and the grandchildren. He took revenge on Vali's father, Loki. He also killed one of Vali's brothers and condemned the other to spend the rest of his life in wolf form."
Annika's eyes widened. "Wolf form?"
"He was a wolf shape-shifter, so it wasn't as strange as it sounds."
Annika flashed him an incredulous look that said his explanation was every bit as strange as it sounded. "What about my father?"
"Vali escaped with his life, but Odin took you and your mother away from him." A memory he'd buried long ago crept into his mind: Vali as a young man before he came into his power, kneeling at Odin's feet, begging him to return his wife and baby daughter. Tyr clamped down on the swell of anger the memory roused. Because he'd helped Vali and his family, Odin had punished him with the curse of the slave ring.
"What happened to my mother?" Annika asked, her voice barely a whisper.
Tyr shook his head. "She's gone, Annika." He had never discovered what happened to Vali's wife, but she was human and too fragile to survive Odin's wrath.
Annika looked down and rubbed distractedly at the creases in her trousers. Despite her calm appearance, Tyr sensed her churning emotions. Instinctively, he encircled her with his arms and eased her against his chest, offering physical comfort as naturally as he'd always soothed her mind.
"I survived," she whispered.
He smoothed his hand down her silky blonde hair again and again, as if he could wipe away her pain and confusion. "Yes, you did, ástin mín."
"So why didn't I live with my father?"
His heart contracted at the tremor in her voice. "Your father loves you, Annika. He would fall on his own sword if he thought it would protect you."
"Really?" She raised uncertain eyes to him and he realized, with a crushing sense of sorrow, that she'd grown up without anyone to love her.
Except him.
The child he'd comforted and protected out of a sense of duty to his boyhood friend Vali, had grown into a woman. Along the way, his concern for her well-being had grown into love, a miracle for him in the dark cold land where he'd been bound against his will for over a century.
"So, how did you end up with my Magic Knot thingy?"
The trouble with telling half-truths was that the gaps had to be filled with lies. "I wanted a way to check you were safe, so I took your Magic Knot and formed a bond with you. That meant I could be with you in mind and spirit wherever you were."
As her questioning blue gaze met his, he realized exactly what he'd revealed.
"We're bonded in some way?"
"Yes, ástin mín." And the bond of mind and spirit no longer satisfied him. His body yearned to make their link physical. To fulfill the true nature of the Magic Knot bond, he would make her his mate.