Aevir awoke to the morning of his wedding. His heart leapt in joy and anticipation as he recognised the beginning of the familiar dream. It was one of his favourites, but one he rarely had any more. The sky had been grey for the last few days, but on this day Thor had seen fit to grant them blue skies and a warm wind from the south. A good omen. Aevir murmured a vow of thanks and grinned as it echoed across the valley floor and up the snow-covered peak in the distance.
Hands came from nowhere, patting his back, ruffling his hair as his friends teased him about the coming wedding. He’d known them as a boy, so he accepted the taunts as his due as they all set off across the vale to claim his bride. Though the dream was as vivid as if he were there, he found himself marvelling at how real the thigh-high grasses felt tickling his palm. His dream had never been this intense before, or had it? If this was how the grass felt, perhaps he could feel Sefa again, too. He started running, anxious to reach her.
The group arrived in Sefa’s village almost instantly, another indication that he was dreaming. Melancholy threatened to accompany the thought, but he pushed it aside, content to live in his dream. Though his bride had warned him of the superstition in her village that required the bride to hide from the groom until the ceremony, he was unprepared for the wait. He wanted to see her, to reassure himself that she was as happy to see him as he was to see her. Instead, he was thwarted by her family. It was his duty to meet her extended relatives and face the unasked question burning in their eyes.
How was he—the son of a slave and unacknowledged bastard—deserving of a woman as fair and decent as Sefa? It didn’t matter that he had worked tirelessly since being granted his freedom. That he had earned the coin necessary to pay her bride price. Or even that he had enough left over to provide a small home for her. Deep down where it counted, he still felt unworthy of her, the youngest daughter of a farmer.
His anxiety stayed with him until the moment she appeared at dusk. This was a dream, so she floated over the ground, the air streaming out behind her in rivulets as if she were moving through water. Everyone parted for her and when she was close enough that he could read the joy in her eyes, his unease vanished. The feeling of well-being that was always present between them took its place. His eyes drifted closed as he allowed himself a moment to soak in her presence. He was attuned to her in a way that went beyond vision, beyond words.
Her familiar scent greeted him and he opened his eyes to her smile and her light brown eyes staring into his. ‘Are you ready?’ she whispered.
‘Aye.’ He’d never been as ready for anything as he was ready to become her husband.
Slowly, he reached for her. Dreams of the past had ended at this exact moment, with him never touching her, always denied the feel of her warm skin against his palm. He hoped that this time would be different, that this time she would feel real for him. He decided that if he could touch her and have her be whole, then he would live here with her for ever in his dreams.
The fingertips of each hand brushed her cheeks. Her smile widened and she moved closer to him. Her palm pressed against his chest and he gasped at the cold sensation that jolted through his entire body. Disbelieving that what he felt could be real, he looked down to see that while her hand looked as it should, it was as frigid as a block of ice. Freezing cold followed the path of her hand as it moved over his torso. Tilting her face to the side, she leaned forward for a kiss. He cupped her cheeks in his palms and her skin might as well have been carved from ice. He cried out with the pain of touching something so cold with his bare skin.
Her brow furrowed and she said, ‘Aevir, kiss me. Please?’
He tried. By the gods, he tried, but he couldn’t seem to bridge the short distance between them. He gritted his teeth through the bite of the cold and tried again. Though there was nothing between them, the air itself seemed to defy his efforts, keeping him from her.
‘Sefa!’
She shook her head and laughed softly, blonde hair spilling over her forehead and around his hands. The golden strands should have tickled, but he felt nothing but the cold. ‘Stop teasing me.’ She giggled.
He called her name again, but it was already too late. Her face was fading. The dream was ending. He howled in protest even though he knew it wouldn’t help. The dreams always ended no matter what he did to try to keep them.
‘Sefa!’ His voice echoed in his own head as he sat up. A blinding pain came over him, staggering in its intensity. He fumbled for something to hold on to as he felt himself falling.
‘I’ve got you,’ a soft, familiar voice said. A shoulder lodged itself beneath his arm as a warm, yielding body settled itself against his side.
That voice. It was smooth and gentle with a slight husk that reminded him of Ellan. It couldn’t be her. She was back in Alvey. He was in Banford. Visions of a battle swam before his eyes so that he had to close them to think. Thinking made his temples pound, so he forced his eyes open again to get a good look at the woman. The movement made him dizzy, white spots spun behind his eyelids, leading him to hold on to her lest he fall over.
‘Lie back,’ she whispered and put gentle pressure on his chest with her hand.
His left arm felt heavy and stiff. He tried to put his left hand out to ease himself down on to his back, but it wouldn’t come loose from whatever held it in place. He gave it a jerk to pull it free and regretted the movement immediately as pain throbbed from his shoulder down his entire body. A groan sounded. As the noise vibrated through his chest, he realised it came from him.
The woman crooned softly as if trying to pacify a child. ‘Lean into me and I’ll help you down.’ She put her small body behind him and encouraged him to lean on her. Didn’t she realise that he could crush her with his weight? The woman was no bigger than a child. Aevir tried to stay upright, but his body complied with her gentle command. He was horrified to realise that he really had no choice. He was as helpless as a child.
When his back hit the mattress, his body relaxed and the pain receded bit by bit. For the first time, his eyes were able to focus on his surroundings. He was in a small, unfamiliar house with a thatched roof. A thin blanket was hung and partially blocked him from the rest of the home, but a fire flickered behind it in the centre of the larger room. The alcove was unlit and appeared to hold little more than the narrow bed he occupied and a small table. The woman’s hand guided his head down to the soft bedding before she moved from the bed to kneel beside him. ‘There now. Much better.’
In the shadowed confines of the alcove, he could make out her shape. Her hair was braided down one side, the heavy length lying across a shoulder, while the firelight in the distance picked out honeyed highlights.
Ellan. He was unprepared for the relief that came over him when he finally allowed himself to admit that it was her. She was the only person he wanted to see. He wanted to reach out and touch her just so that he could make certain she wouldn’t disappear like Sefa. Even thinking of her and Sefa in the same breath made an ache well in his throat. He swallowed thickly and then hissed when her icy fingertips touched his forehead. ‘Your hands are freezing.’ His voice came out as a hoarse sound he barely recognised.
She smiled and picked up a linen ball. It took a moment for his brain to figure out that it was a piece of linen that had been wrapped around something and tied off at the top. ‘’Tis snow,’ she said and placed the ball very gently against his bare chest, rubbing it in small circles.
His body clenched painfully to prepare for the cold. It was freezing, but after a moment he noticed that it wasn’t very unpleasant. It was as if his body craved the coolness.
‘You have a fever.’ She spoke as if explaining something very difficult to someone very daft, but it didn’t seem to bother her. There was a smile in her voice. ‘I’ve been using snow to try to cool you down.’ Her other hand came to his forehead again, but this time he found himself subtly turning into her touch. Though he couldn’t see her features very well, he could make out the shadows of her eyes and the shape of her mouth and nose. He focused on her lips as she spoke. ‘I think it’s working. You’re still burning up, but you’re not going to set the blankets ablaze any more.’
‘Did I die?’ Vivid images of home passed through his mind. He was already losing the threads of the dream. He remembered Sefa, but he couldn’t say which memory it was. Their wedding? The day he’d taught her to fish? The day she had been taken from him? Those were the dreams that usually tormented him, though he hadn’t had one of them in a long time. ‘Did you bring me back?’
‘Nay, you did not die.’ She tossed the ball of snow away and leaned forward, her palm on his chest. ‘Do you remember what happened?’
He dared not shake his head and bring back the awful pain. ‘I remember that I dreamt, but not what came before. A battle? I thought you were in Alvey.’
‘The Scots attacked. Can you remember that?’
Vague images of battle swam before his eyes, but they were less important than the vision before him now. He wanted to ask her to get a candle so that he could see her better, but he was half-afraid this was also a dream and she might disappear. ‘I fought...’ He could remember that there had been a battle, but he couldn’t say what had happened. Who had suffered defeat. How he was injured. ‘I remember fighting, but I can’t recall what happened.’
She soothed his brow with her cool hand and he closed his eyes to savour it. When he opened them she was swimming before his vision, floating somewhere off to his right. Her form reappeared before him, but she seemed to move too fast. She held a cup and when she made to have him drink it appeared at his lips far sooner than he anticipated. Her other hand curved behind his head, her fingers curling into his hair as she lifted him slightly.
‘Drink. This will help you.’ When he was too slow to accept, she smiled and added, ‘Lord Vidar had it made for you.’
He couldn’t find the words to say that Lord Vidar’s endorsement was not needed. He would have taken anything she offered him. The cool liquid wet his lips and then trickled across his tongue. Ale mixed with something bittersweet. He grimaced as his stomach recoiled. She cautiously took it away after he had a few tiny sips, returning the cup to the small table beside the bed.
As he struggled to keep the liquid down, she started speaking. It took him a moment to work out that she was reciting a list of his injuries. A severely dislocated shoulder with a deep gash in his thigh, topped off with a blow to his head. He raised his right hand—the uninjured one—to the top of his head to feel the egg-sized lump there. Pain made lights dance behind his eyelids.
‘You’re still in Banford,’ she was saying. ‘I’ll be here to care for you until you recover.’
Whatever was in the ale was starting to take effect. He could feel the dark comfort of sleep trying to pull him under. Once more, he forced his eyes open so that he could see her. She smiled down at him, her face entirely too close to his. ‘Stay,’ he whispered.
She took his hand with hers—or had he taken her hand?—her fingers squeezing his with surprising force. ‘I’m here. I’ll make certain you recover.’
Her tone was confident and reassuring. For the first time in a long time, he gave his worries over to someone else. It didn’t make sense—as so much about his fascination with her didn’t—but he was certain that as long as she watched over him nothing bad would happen. The comfort of that thought helped him to drift off into a deep and dreamless sleep.
Ellan stared down at the man lying in her childhood bed. Despite the calm and self-assured way she had spoken to him, there was the very real possibility that Aevir would not make it through the night and the thought terrified her. His injuries had occurred yesterday, but according to Elswyth his fever had not set in until this morning. It had come on fast and with a vengeance. When Ellan had arrived just before nightfall he’d been virtually unresponsive, lost in that unknown world between the living and death. She had spent the past hours bathing his torso in snow in the hopes that it would cool his burning skin.
‘How is he?’ Ellan nearly jumped out of her skin as Elswyth peeked around the curtain separating the alcove from the rest of the farmhouse. She quickly hid their clasped hands beneath the corner of the discarded blanket, unwilling to allow anyone to share in their stolen moment.
‘He woke up for a few moments. He spoke. I think the fever may be breaking,’ Ellan said.
Elswyth walked to the other side of the bed and placed her hand over his forehead, careful of the lump that could be seen under his hairline. Despite Ellan’s hope, she didn’t smile or appear relieved in any way. Instead she gave her an almost pitying shake of her head. ‘Perhaps he’s not quite as hot as he was.’ But Ellan got the feeling her sister hadn’t noticed a difference since she’d checked him an hour ago. ‘It’s a good sign that he woke up.’
‘He won’t die if that’s what you’re thinking.’ Ellan clenched her jaw, prepared to will it to be so if necessary.
Elswyth was silent. Ellan tried to keep her gaze centred on Aevir, because she couldn’t bear the pity she knew would be reflected on her sister’s face. Though she hadn’t asked any questions, Elswyth suspected something was happening between them. As the silence dragged out, Ellan couldn’t help herself and glanced up at her. Her expression was worse than pity. It reflected pain and heartache.
Pain for Ellan. The knowledge made panic swell in Ellan’s chest, but she managed to keep it under control. For now.
‘I wasn’t thinking that,’ Elswyth whispered. ‘I was thinking—’ She broke off and looked down at the warrior.
His shallow breaths were ragged, and his chest moved up and down with some difficulty. The powerful muscles of his torso were of little help to him now as he fought the most important battle of his life.
‘What were you thinking?’ Ellan asked.
‘Well...you once confessed to me that you had kissed him. I wondered if something more than kissing had happened.’
Ellan knew what her sister was asking. If they were lovers it would explain this horrible, suffocating pain that came over her every time she thought of what it would mean if he didn’t wake up in the morning. There was no explaining it. Their precious moments of contact didn’t make a relationship. Or it shouldn’t. Yet somehow it had.
Ellan shook her head, because she knew that what she was about to say would sound ridiculous and unbelievable, but it was true. ‘Nay, there was only the kiss. I do not know how to describe the feeling he gives me, but the first time I saw him it was as if I knew.’
Silence fell and Elswyth waited a moment before asking, ‘Knew what?’
Ellan shook her head, unwilling to give voice to how she felt. If she didn’t say it now, then it might never be said and she wanted one moment in time...one moment in her life that she could remember having it known. ‘When I saw him, it was as if he belonged to me. Something inside me recognised him as mine.’
‘Oh, Ellan. I’m so sorry.’ Ellan had been so intent on watching Aevir struggle to live that she hadn’t noticed Elswyth had moved until she put her arms around her.
‘I can’t help but think that he’s lying here because of me. I made him promise to find you and keep you safe. If—’ Her voice broke off as a lump filled her throat.
‘It’s not your fault. He’s as stubborn a Dane as they come. No one can make him do anything,’ Elswyth said. ‘We’ll do everything we can to help him live so that you can have him.’
Ellan smiled, but gave her head a shake. ‘I’m afraid he doesn’t want me. I already asked him to marry me and he said nay.’ When Elswyth stared at her in bewilderment, she explained, ‘It was the night Father came to Alvey. We spoke and he told me that he’d arranged a marriage for me. I decided then that I needed to marry a Dane, so I asked Aevir. It was only half in jest.’
‘He told you nay?’ Elswyth’s eyes widened.
Ellan nodded. ‘It was stupid to think he might take me as a wife.’ What could she offer him anyway?
‘Who did Father betroth you to?’
Ellan shrugged as she looked down at his still form. She hadn’t thought about that much since Elswyth had been taken. ‘He didn’t say, and with him missing I’m uncertain if it matters.’
Her sister nodded. ‘I’ll stay with Aevir. I came to tell you that Lord Vidar wishes to speak with you.’
Ellan closed her eyes. She had nearly forgotten that the main reason she was in Banford was because Lord Vidar had sent for her. ‘Please don’t leave his side. I can’t bear the thought of him waking up again only to find himself alone.’
Elswyth assured her that she would stay with him, so Ellan left the alcove. She stopped near the front door to slip into the fur cloak Lady Gwendolyn had loaned to her. As she put it on, her gaze went around the farmhouse where she had been born. It should feel like home to her, but it did not. The hearth was alight with a cheery flame, but it was the one she had laboured over for too many years. There was a scar on the back of her right hand where swine fat had sputtered into the fire and burned her when she’d been only six winters. It was far too young to be put in charge of the family’s meals, but it had been a task relegated to her more often than not.
In the corner was her father’s straight-backed chair. Some part of her recognised that it should provide some sort of comforting memory. But she could only recall the many times he sat there chastising her for charring the meat. Or how he would gather Galan, Elswyth and their younger brother Baldric around him as he recounted some tale from his youth, but would send Ellan off on an errand. She knew deep down that his rejection wasn’t personal. He’d told her often enough that she had the look of her mother, which she took to mean that he couldn’t stand the sight of her. Knowing that, however, didn’t make his neglect hurt any less.
Her life was not here. Apparently, her life was not with Aevir, either. Where was she meant to be? It was a question that had stalked her for years. The answer was as elusive now as ever.
Holding the fur closed tight about her, she flung the door open, prepared to hurry through the bitter wind to the hall across the fallow field. She gasped when the light from the house’s open door illuminated a familiar face in her path. ‘Henrik.’
The corner of his lips quirked upwards and he quickly glanced down before saying, ‘I thought I’d walk with you. With the potential for more Scots about, you shouldn’t walk alone, particularly at night.’
She returned his smile, though it was probably a feeble effort since she didn’t really feel like smiling. Her heart was too sick over Aevir. However, she appreciated his thoughtfulness and his obvious shyness despite the fact that he towered over her was endearing. ‘Thank you, Henrik. I appreciate that.’
He was a comforting presence at her side for the entire walk. The night was late and there weren’t very many people about. A light snow had fallen earlier in the evening and the brisk wind promised more to come by morning, so the few people she saw were hurrying quickly from one structure to the other. It wasn’t until they were almost at the door to the hall that his large hand settled gently on the small of her back.
‘Don’t be intimidated by the Jarl’s questions.’ He gave her that same warm grin. ‘He may be rough with you to get to the truth, but I’ll be by your side.’
She nodded her thanks, but as he pushed open the door, she couldn’t help but think that this was all wrong. Aevir should be with her, not this man who looked at her as if he hoped for more than friendship.