“If nothing stood in our path, we wouldn’t need to run away.”
“That is not what I asked,” she wailed softly, hardly able to continue.
“Yes. Yes. Yes,” he hissed. “Yes!” He curled his hands into the tight weave of his braid and glared down at her. And then she realized he wasn’t angry with her. He wasn’t even arguing with her. He was arguing with his helplessness, and he was impotent with fury at the position she’d put him in. He would have gone on pretending, loving her in the way that was allowed. And she’d shattered all pretense.
All at once, he seemed to wilt, as though she’d drawn a rune upon his skin and pulled his heart from his chest. He fell to his knees, his head bowed at her feet, and wrapped his big hands around her ankles, shackling himself to her.
“My b-body is yours. My heart is yours. My s-soul, my thoughts, my d-dreams, my life. Yours. I will do whatever you ask. Whatever you wish.” He raised his eyes to hers, his gaze as tormented as his voice. “But know this, your father will not allow it. And when he d-discovers that I love you, we will both suffer. I can b-bear my own suffering, but I can’t bear yours.”
She sank down in front of him, and his hands slid from her ankles to her hips, pulling her into his lap as her lips found his all over again.
“You can’t prevent me from suffering,” she moaned into his mouth. “I ache with it. I am nothing but pain. But there is no Alba without Bayr,” she whispered. “Not now. Not then. Not ever again.”
And for a time, sheltered by the shadows and soothed by the thundering falls, she made him believe it.
25
The king did not return. Not the next day or the next. The grounds began filling with the tents and wagons of tradesmen preparing to sell their wares at the games, and the next night, the mount was flooded with clans and chaos as the Tournament of the King commenced without the king. The temple opened her doors to travelers making their yearly pilgrimages to worship within her walls, and the keepers heard the complaints and the confessions of the condemned. Three chieftains arrived—Aidan of Adyar, Lothgar of Leok, and Josef of Joran—and Bayr engaged each of them in private conversation. News of the Northmen on Berne’s shores had traveled, yet each chieftain had received reassurances from the king that measures were being taken to reach an agreement that did not result in war. According to Dred, the same reassurances had not been delivered to Dolphys. Elbor arrived at dusk on the second day, and he surrounded himself with soldiers, doing his utmost to avoid the other chieftains. Benjie of Berne was notably absent.
Alba greeted the crowds with upraised arms and a welcoming smile. When she declared the tournament open to “all of Saylok’s people, to her clans and her colors,” no fear or discomfort tinged her voice or chased her words, and Bayr watched her with awe and pride. The people called her Princess Alba like they knew her and threw flowers at her feet like they loved her. At the commencement of each contest she wished the entrants “the wisdom of Odin, the strength of Thor, and the favor of Father Saylok,” and they battled as though they had all three.
It was not until the fourth day of the tournament and well into the afternoon that a lone horn sounded from the watchtower and a cry went up.
“The king has returned! Ready the mount for His Majesty, King Banruud of Saylok.”
From the King’s Village to the top of Temple Hill, one trumpeter signaled another, each wailing a note that rose at the end like a question, the sound growing louder and louder as it climbed the long road to the mount. Along the ramparts, another chorus of horns sounded, verifying the message had been received.
The grounds were thick with clansmen and villagers, but every contest was halted as people ran to the gates and spilled down the hill. No clan wanted to be accused of not honoring the return of His Majesty, and the road was flooded with clansmen mere minutes after the horns were sounded.
Aidan, Lothgar, Josef, Elbor, and Bayr stood on the palace steps, their most-trusted warriors behind them. The keepers, as was tradition upon a monarch’s return, stood on the temple steps, filling the space with rows of purple, the five daughters among them, the wreaths of their hair the only thing that set them apart.
The king’s guard began to clear the enormous courtyard between the temple and the palace, forcing the curious and the clustered to move out onto the grass and the grounds to give the king and his retinue wide berth. To return during the tournament created a chaos the king’s men clearly weren’t accustomed to, and more than one villager was shoved to the ground in an attempt to clear the square. From outside the walls of the mount, a rumble began to swell and spill through the gates, a wave of shock and speculation that tumbled from one mouth to the next.
The horns bellowed again, indicating the king was nearing the gate, and Alba appeared at the top of the palace steps in full regalia. She had opened the tournament wearing only a long white dress and a simple gold circlet on her brow. Clearly Banruud expected a more formal greeting. Her crown was a smaller replica of her father’s, with six spires, each with a jewel that matched the color of the clan embedded at the base and the tip. Emeralds for Adyar, rubies for Berne, sapphires for Dolphys, orange tourmalines for Ebba, brown topaz for Joran, and golden citrines for Leok. The glossy black of her royal mantle, trimmed in white rabbit’s fur, should have been too much for her pale hair, but it accentuated it, highlighting the contrast of dark eyes and light locks. The chieftains and their warriors moved to the sides, creating an aisle for her to descend between them, but she stopped in their midst, Bayr on her left and her uncle, Aidan of Adyar, on her right.
Alba didn’t look at Bayr, but tension radiated from her straight back and her slim frame. Her face was perfectly composed, her hands at her sides; no fidgeting, no nervous chatter, no shifting or craning of her neck. Her crown had to be heavy, but she stood with her eyes forward, waiting for the king and his entourage to enter through the gates and give her leave to greet them.
They had slept very little since Bayr had arrived; at night they stole beyond the walls where the darkness gave them cover, where they could swim and fly and talk and touch without watchful eyes or wagging tongues. They hadn’t admitted they were hiding their relationship, but they both knew they were.
He had promised her he would make his case to the king when he returned, that he would bow before him and pledge all his strength to Saylok for her hand. He turned his head the slightest degree so he could train his eyes downward on her shining crown and the hair that spilled over her black robe. He had touched that hair. He had wrapped his hands in it as he kissed her mouth.
When he kissed her, she was not so composed, nor was she still or silent. He had kissed her so often that her lips were red and sore, and the soft skin of her neck burned from his rough cheeks. He was a man undone by love, unstrung by devotion, and though he would not give her his seed, he did not deny her in any other way. He had filled his hands with the length of her hair and buried his face in the sweetness of her body. He’d kissed the soft skin of her breasts and held her hips in his hands as she pled for relief beneath his mouth. When she touched him in return, her eyes wide, her fingers roving, he had moaned her name and begged her to save him. And she had, sending him to his knees over and over again, bled of all strength but completely reborn.