Beyond a Darkened Shore(58)

I tilted my head to give him better access, a small sound escaping me as his lips touched the sensitive skin. But just at that moment, the flames from the funeral pyre caught my attention, and I stiffened. The acrid stench of burning flesh wafted toward me. Gently, I pushed against him and leaned back. “This is wrong. We shouldn’t do this while the men who fought beside us burn close enough for me to feel the flames.”

Leif appraised me with heavy eyelids. “Was it so terrible kissing me, then?”

I felt heat rise from my core all the way to my cheeks in a flush. “No.”

“Shall I try again?” he asked, his gaze raising my temperature still more.

Yes. “No.”

He nodded as if he’d known that would be my response. I pulled my knees to my chest and rested my chin on them as a cold wind stirred my hair. “I have a proposal for you,” Leif said, his voice a mere murmur at my side. “If we spend this night in each other’s arms, then I give you my word that I will do nothing but sleep beside you. The night is cold, and we both have lost so much.”

There was no manipulation in his voice. Absent, too, was his usual gruff overconfidence. In the darkness, it was merely one soul asking the other for warmth and comfort.

“Just for tonight,” I whispered back.

We lay down upon his silver wolf mantle, my back to his chest. He wrapped his arms around me, and as the welcome warmth flooded me, I closed my eyes against the tears that threatened. In Leif’s arms, I realized the turmoil and mental anguish I’d felt toward him was unfounded. Leif was a Northman, an outsider, but he accepted me more than any of my own clan ever had.

For I couldn’t help but think that no one had ever held me like that, nor had I needed them to.

But on this dark night, I didn’t dare pull away.





16





As the sun rose the next morning, the ground was cool with mist and dew, but the last wisps of smoke of the funeral pyre were still drifting to the sky. I clenched my jaw to keep the tears from flowing anew and bent to touch the pile of ash, picturing Sleipnir as he once was.

Bowing my head, I sent up a prayer for Sleipnir and even the Northmen who had fought beside me. Give me the strength to exact revenge.

We kept up a grueling pace on foot all the way to Mide. We were silent and focused, and I missed Sleipnir with every step. In spite of my pushing Leif away, like I had so many times before, things seemed to have changed between us—as though we had both bared part of our souls. For the first time, I felt a breath of hope. With our combined strength, there was little that could stop us.

Buoyed as I was by these thoughts of our near invincibility, the feeling dimmed when I thought of actually going home again. What reception would I receive when I entered the bailey? Would my father bar my entrance to the castle? More important, what would I do if he tried? I knew the answer to that; I knew that I would shout the truth about the j?tnar threat from the middle of the castle grounds if I had to. My clansmen might not believe me, but they had a right to know what would soon threaten them—if it wasn’t already an immediate threat. Again, a jolt of fear for my sisters shot up my spine. I had to see them again, exile or no exile.

I glanced at Leif running beside me, the sun turning his hair to gold, and I knew that whatever I was about to be greeted with, we would deal with it—together. He caught me admiring him and flashed a smile that I returned easily. A friendship and alliance forged by bloodshed and shared loss.

A gull cried nearby, and I slowed my pace. When I took a deep breath, the salty tang of the ocean breeze filled my nostrils, bringing forth a torrent of memories. The familiar scents of home.

Only . . . another smell presented itself—stronger than the others. The acrid smell of something burnt.

On the crest of the next hill, we stopped. My father’s castle loomed before us on the next rise, and the longing for my home struck me in the chest like an arrow.

The smell of burning in the air became stronger, and the first pinpricks of fear pierced my abdomen. “Wait for me here,” I said hurriedly to Leif. “My father would have your head on a spike.”

His jaw tightened. “I will not.”

“Leif, please—”

He crossed his arms. “Where you go, I go,” he said.

I glanced from his determined face to the outline of my father’s castle in the distance. I hadn’t the time to debate. “Fine. We go together.”

We sprinted down the hill and climbed the treacherous cliffside of my father’s castle. Only two guards waited for us at the gates, their faces gray and gaunt.

“Princess Ciara!” said the man I belatedly recognized as Faelan, Fergus’s brother. His presence was an ominous sign, as he was a farmer, not a warrior. “What are you doing here? We thought you’d been exiled.”

“I was,” I said, bracing myself for whatever instructions my father had given him in the event I came home.

“Brádan,” he said to the gaunt man next to him, “hurry and notify the queen her daughter has returned.”

Confused now that he should send for my mother instead of my father, I take a step toward him. “Faelan, where is my father?” I asked.

Faelan stilled, and the panic that had engulfed me since I smelled fire began to smother me. “Princess, it is not for me to say . . .”