“I DEFY FAERY”
I stared at him. “Wedding present, Your Majesty?”
“Aye, did you not agree to marry me?”
“I—” I closed my mouth. My back muscles flinched, causing my wings to lift slightly. “I thought—”
“Thought to renege, did you?” he asked, though I could hear the teasing note in his voice.
Again I felt pressure in my throat, and my eyes stung. I turned from him and walked toward the hearth, where the roasting hare was dripping and sizzling.
Treig made a small noise, like clearing her throat, and said, “I saw a patch of watercress near the stream, lady. I thought I would collect some, if you like.”
“Yes, thank you,” I replied.
I reached for the spit and raised the hare higher on the rack, so it wouldn’t burn. Then I faced him.
“I have not changed my mind,” I said in a clear voice. “I only thought that you would have. And I would understand it, Your Majesty. I’m sure we can agree that things are not as they were.”
“Aye,” he said, with a soft laugh and glinting eye. “There was a time when it was nearly impossible to get you to speak, let alone smile. I never knew whether you were actually listening to me prattle or casting spells in your head, hoping I’d combust.”
I tilted my head, eyeing him dubiously. “I believe you know what I mean.”
He sobered and took a step toward me. “I do, lady, and I am sorry for all you’ve endured since coming here. Regarding your most recent trial, as far as I can tell you’ve not changed in essentials. The priest waits outside, and I mean to go through with it, if you’ll have me.” He held out his hand. “I defy Faery or Ireland to produce a more beautiful bride.”
My hand trembled as I reached out and grasped his. The strength and heat that flowed through his deliberate touch was like nothing I had ever experienced. I felt it in every part of my body, the energy of it even raising the tips of my wings.
“I must tell you, Your Majesty,” I began in a voice that wavered, “from my conversation with Doro, I came to understand that a ceremony alone is not likely to provide the relief from his interference that we are seeking.”
He frowned. “The marriage will not make him answerable to you, as you believed it would?”
“Only if it is a true marriage.” I swallowed and waited, but the king only stared at me blankly.
After a moment, his brow cleared and his lips parted. His fingers, still wrapped around mine, squeezed slightly. “I see.”
I looked down, feeling hot and unwell. He squeezed my hand again, and he dipped his head to catch my eye.
Smiling, he said, “If that’s meant to frighten me away, I’m afraid you’ve taken the wrong tack. Might I suggest, if it is not a sticking point as far as you’re concerned, that we take such questions . . . as they come?”
I was not, and had never been, squeamish about the sharing of bodies. None of my father’s people were. I had been of age for many years, though it was only after my mother died that I ever acted on such urges. While I was still living with her, she had grown more and more devout. Our otherness became a source of suffering for her, and I was unwilling to do anything that might deepen the divide between us and Pastor Jón’s other parishioners. Once I joined my father’s court, I enjoyed my newfound freedom. On long winter nights the bleak landscapes called to me, and there were other solitary souls that ranged as I did.
What the king and I now spoke of was something different. We were neither countrymen nor strangers, but enemies who’d somehow found ourselves on common ground. The ways my body responded to him—they had stolen upon me. I had never before encountered a man whose mind I respected, whose companionship I enjoyed, and whose touch I craved more than I had ever craved anything.
He was waiting for me to answer. I picked over the words that he had used and replied, “No, not a sticking point, Your Majesty.”
He smiled, and it occurred to me that soon I would have license to touch the lines that formed at the corners of his eyes, like bird prints in the sand. I would have license—would I have nerve?
“Let us join the priest and have done with the formalities,” he said. “Afterward we can break our fast.”
Finvara
The parish priest, like the surgeon, had refused to call at Knock Ma. But a second messenger, leveraging the O’Malley name, had better luck persuading the holy man to attend us at the lodge that morning.
It was an easy matter to press Treig and the priest’s driver into service as witnesses. The holy man, though not warm, was civil, and at least outwardly demonstrated the respect due a son of the Earl of Mayo, if not a king of fairies.
The princess’s appearance did give him pause—when first his eyes came to rest on her, he crossed himself and murmured a prayer. I had to bite back an angry retort, though I recalled that my own first reaction to her had not been much different, and that was before she had wings. At least this meeting had involved no furies.
I introduced her as the daughter of a powerful Icelandic ally, and a new member of my court. I also told him the marriage had been sanctioned by my cousin, Queen Isolde, but that for reasons I could not disclose, must be kept secret. Whether he bought any of this, I had no idea. It was a time of transition in Ireland, and not an easy one. Some members of the clergy—particularly those imported from continental Europe—viewed the sudden influx of fairies as a threat to Catholic beliefs and teachings. This fellow was thoroughly Irish, was rumored to have secretly married his housekeeper, and, thankfully, was inclined to mind his own business. He accepted my explanation, and the whole affair was conducted with unsettling efficiency.
No longer sure whom we could trust, the ceremony—a brief exchange of Catholic vows—was conducted in the privacy of the cottage. We had a moment of difficulty over the bride’s vows—her eyebrows rose half an inch higher for each of the words “obey” and “serve”—and I directed the priest to replace her vows with the ones I had spoken.
When he had gone, I sent Treig outside to watch, and I bade my bride—my wife and queen, though it had not really sunk in—sit at the table while I served up our wedding feast. I split the rabbit and placed it, along with the watercress, on two plates. I found two tankards, blew out the dust, and poured into each a healthy measure of whiskey, which I’d found in a trunk at the foot of the bed.
“Thank you, Your Majesty,” she said.
“I think you had better stop calling me that,” I replied, “or no one is going to believe we are married.”
A smile tugged at her lips as she began pulling the rabbit apart with her fingers. “What shall I call you?”
“Finvara, if you like,” I said, going to work on my own dinner. “Or if you prefer, the name I’ve answered to my whole life.”
Glancing up from her meal, she said, “Duncan.”
I smiled, enjoying the intimacy of my name on her lips. “That’s right.”
Chewing a bite of rabbit, she closed her eyes and sighed. If she’d not eaten since before the ball, she must have been famished, and I felt a pang of guilt for making her wait. But I was relieved to have the ceremony behind us.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “You are a king. Your subjects, your family, your neighbors, even your servants—they are struggling to accept this. You are Finvara, whether they like it or not.” She pointed her fork at me. “Whether you like it or not.”
It was gratifying to have my choice of queen so promptly validated. “Finvara it is, then.”
She smiled her approval. “And you will use my given name?”
“Aye, if you permit me.” I drank from my tankard, feeling the whiskey burn its way down to my stomach. “Koli. Does it mean something?”
“It’s Elvish,” she replied, “or what the English call Old Norse. My mother chose it. It means ‘little dark one.’ ”
It was a name that carried a mother’s affection. “You were close to your mother?”
A shadow passed over her face, and she stopped eating. She nodded.
I hesitated, not wanting to cause her pain. Yet she was my wife now, and I still knew so little about her. “May I ask what happened to her?”
Her gaze lowered, she rubbed at the edge of her plate with her thumb. “My father let her die.”
I froze. Then I set my fork down. “How?”
When she looked at me I could see the pain and anger in her eyes. “The villagers hated us. They blamed us for anything bad that happened—illness, accidents, even soured milk. When a house collapsed and killed a whole family, they came for revenge. They drove us off a cliff.”
I stared at her in horror as she lifted her tankard and sipped the whiskey before continuing. “I was always meant to live at my father’s court eventually. She kept putting him off. He did not care for her influence over me. His men—they were always watching us. The warrior who later became my protector, Ulf, arrived in time to save me that day . . . but not her. It’s not Ulf I blame.”
Her relationship with her father was even more complicated than I realized.
I reached across the table and touched her hand. “What was her name?”
She offered a soft, sad smile that wrung my heart. “Njála.”
We finished our meal in silence, and I got up to add turf to the fire. She rose too, walking to the bed, and after a moment returned and handed me a sheet of paper.
After reading the brief missive, I said, “From Doro?”
She nodded. “He left it in my chamber. Treig brought it to me.”
“He has not accepted defeat,” I said, crumpling the paper and tossing it into the fire. “But he is nearly defeated.”
The page flared yellow, and then suddenly the fire burst to life, roaring like the ocean in a storm, flames licking the chimney stones and reaching out for us. I jumped back, shielding my bride, just as the flames took the form of a rearing horse, hooves tearing at the air as it screamed.
Koli’s furies swept into the inferno, attacking the beast and themselves bursting into flame. I’d filled a bucket from the stream when we first arrived, and I ran to grab it from beside the door. As I flung the water, I shouted a spell of amplification. The airborne wave crashed against the fire beast, dousing it with a hiss and flooding the fireplace. Steam rose and fogged the room.
Koli coughed and waved a hand in front of her face. “You were saying, Your Majesty?”
A laugh burst from my belly, and without thinking I spun around and caught her up in my arms.
She let out a yelp, and her hands came to my shoulders. For the first time, I heard her laugh—it was a sensual sound, sweet and thick like molasses. I wanted to swim in that sound. To breathe it in and let it drown me.
Our laughter died away all too soon, but I stood frozen, smiling into her bright eyes, feeling her body pressing against mine.
“You had agreed to call me Finvara,” I reminded her. My voice had gone to gravel.
She dipped her head slightly, and her full lips parted. “Finvara.”
While I was studying the ruby curves of her mouth, my arms crushing her waist against my abdomen, she pressed her lips to mine.
Suddenly the fire horse was racing in my veins—or at least I felt like it was. I held her tighter, hoping the right amount of pressure might soothe the throbbing at my groin—at the same time knowing it would only make matters worse.
Her tongue glided along my bottom lip. A hard groan rumbled out of me, vibrating to the core, and I moved my hand down to stroke the curve of her backside.
She released my mouth, and the tips of our noses touched. “I have done this before, husband,” she said.
I hoisted her higher, and she had to bend her head down over me to hold my gaze. “By choice, I hope,” I said, searching her eyes.
She nodded. “By choice. Should I have told you earlier?”
Letting her slip partway down, I pressed my cheek to hers and whispered in her ear, “I’m sure it was none of my business, but I’m desperately hoping that you will tell me more about it later.”
She laughed, and her mouth came again to mine, greedy and insistent. I carried her toward the table. Recalling the recent changes to her body, instead of pushing her back onto it, I shoved our dishes out of the way and pulled her on top of me. Her wings drooped forward over her arms, covering our bodies like a feathery bower.
She started working at the buttons of my shirt, and I reached down to grip the skirt of her dress.
Then the door to the cottage banged open.
Koli
Before a single thought came into my head I snatched Finvara’s knife from where it rested on the table, rose to a crouch, and threw it at whatever had just ducked through the doorway. The blade struck with a satisfying thunk—and only afterward did my focus broaden enough to realize I had nearly assassinated a friend.
“Ulf!” I shouted. My knife had lodged in his leather chest armor.
He was a great hulking beast of an elf with a wolfish glower, a mass of coarse, plaited hair hanging from both head and chin, and dark paint masking the top half of his face, making his light-amber eyes glitter in the dim light of the cottage. Both ears were pierced with iron rings all the way from lobe to pointed tip.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded.
His gaze shifted from me to the king, who’d sat up but was still positioned behind me. The elf warrior stepped to one side and raised a bow with an arrow already knocked.
I flexed my back muscles hard, lifting my wings and blocking his aim. “Ulf, no.”
“You’ll hide behind a woman, then?” my father’s man shouted in English.
“Gladly,” replied Finvara, “as it appears you don’t mean to assassinate her.”
“Ulf!” I snapped, and continued in English, “Lower your weapon. This man is my husband.”
He turned his glare on me without lowering the bow. “Husband!” he barked.
“Who is this, Koli?” asked the king.
“My guardian,” I answered without taking my eyes off Ulf. “My former guardian. He is my father’s captain. What I don’t understand is what he is doing here.”
“You mean to tell me that you’ve married this argr Irishman against your father’s will?”
“I have married him, and that’s the last question I’ll answer until you answer mine.”
His eyes rolled back toward the king. “I’ve been sent to dispatch him.”
“Sent by who?”
“By your king,” he growled. “Your father.”
“He sent you all the way from Iceland to assassinate Finvara? Is that not what he sent me to do?”
“He knows that you’ve refused. And he is here.”
He is here. My blood went cold, and my heart flapped against my ribs like a small bird trying to escape. I glanced over my shoulder at Finvara.
“The tree mark?” muttered the king.
Of course. I had long suspected that if I acted in a way that betrayed my father’s interests, not only would yggdrasil punish me, but the king would know it.
“He’s too late, Ulf,” I said, and I felt the king’s steadying hand at the small of my back. “And he’s broken the treaty by coming here. His ally has lost his power. If my father has business, he can bring it to me, but it’s better that he goes home.”
It was the first time I had ever dared to speak against my father, and I caught a flicker of alarm in Ulf’s gaze.
What I was attempting was risky. If Doro was correct about the nature of the old magic that bound him, he was still a threat to us—though we had been on the brink of addressing that concern before Ulf burst in.
“If I kill this man, hrafn,” began Ulf, “you will be queen. Your father would forgive much were you to come to him now in possession of an Irish crown, and Faery lords be damned.”
“I am queen already, my friend,” I said, standing and fully extending my wings. “If you try to kill my husband, I will kill you.”
Ulf’s amber eyes went wide. Then he lowered the bow a few inches and grumbled, “Loki’s sack.”
Digging my wings hard against the air, I leapt from the table. My feet met the floor softly, like bird feet. I reached out and pushed Ulf’s nocked arrow to one side.
“What has happened to you, hrafn?” he asked. Raven, his pet name for me, had never been more fitting.
His wolf eyes had softened, and I allowed an old affection to creep into my tone as I replied, “A new kind of magic. Something called alchemy.”
His eyes moved over my body, and he replied, “Impressive as that is, it’s not what I’m asking.” He glared over my shoulder at the king, who stood watching us with folded arms.
“Do you remember when you found me?” I asked Ulf.
“Of course I do.”
“Then you remember that you had to save my life. And that when you took me from my mother’s home I had nothing. At court, you were my only friend.”
His mouth set in a firm line. “Já.”
“The bond between us wasn’t about fear, or duty. It had nothing to do with my father, or the loyalty we owed him. It was about trust.”
Ulf frowned deeply, but he gave a blunt nod.
“That’s the kind of bond I have with Finvara, and you have a choice to make, my friend.”
He eyed me sternly. “Don’t ask me. Not that, hrafn. You know I won’t betray your father.”
I reached up and took hold of his chin.
“Return to him, then. Tell him I have married Finvara, and that we are allies. Invite him to Knock Ma to speak to us.”
Ulf shot the king a dark look before replying, “He is there already. He has seized the castle.”