“Dagmar,” she mourned. “Dagmar, where have you gone?”
In an instant, he was no longer watching. He was within. He was aware. His limbs prickled and his heart leaped, and he drew breath. Once. Twice. And again. He felt the soil, cool and moist beneath him, and reveled in the warmth of the woman above him.
“Dagmar, come back to me,” Ghost pled. And he obeyed, blinking eyes that were his to command once more. He stared up into her frightened face and lifted his hand to touch her luminous skin.
“What happened to you?” she moaned. “What did you do? I’ve been trying to wake you.”
He could only shake his head and trace the swell of her parted lips, remembering the kiss from his vision. She covered his hand with hers, her fear becoming confusion at the intimacy of his touch.
“Dagmar?”
“Once . . . I found you . . . beneath this tree,” he whispered with a voice that began in his chest and rattled through his throat.
“Yes. You did.” She tried to smile, but it wobbled around her worried lips.
“When I saw you that day, I thought you were dead,” he rasped, remembering. Reliving.
“I was dead,” she whispered. “And you brought me back to life.”
He closed his eyes, aching for the girl she’d been and for the fool he’d become. Oh, to do it all again! But it was not to be. They were not to be.
“You were lying exactly where Desdemona died.” He opened his eyes and found her again. “I couldn’t bring her back. She wanted revenge. She wanted her blood curse more than she wanted to live,” he said.
“Yes. She did. And I wanted my daughter more than I wanted to die. We both chose, your sister and I,” Ghost murmured, and grief and regret lined her face. “In the end, we both chose. We all . . . chose.”
For a moment they were silent, studying each other, hiding nothing.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “Banruud took your child, he took Alba, and we made him king. I . . . made him king. I did not stop him. And now I must. Now I must, or he will destroy her, and he will destroy Bayr.”
There is no Alba without Bayr.
The words became a beating drum. Time was growing short, and Dagmar still had so much to say.
“I love you, Ghost,” he confessed, despairing.
Her lips trembled, and her gray eyes became mirrors, reflecting his feelings, suddenly so simple. So clear.
“I have loved you from that very first day when you told me you lived beneath this tree. You were so young and sad, and yet you made me laugh,” he said.
Her cheeks flushed, and she looked seventeen again, the same age she’d been then, the same age Alba was now.
There is no Alba without Bayr.
“Since that day, I have loved you . . . and I have feared you,” he admitted, rushing to confess all.
“As I have feared you. There is no love without fear. They walk hand in hand,” she said with a small smile. “That is why it hurts so much.”
He could not speak, so great was his agony, so complete was her understanding. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, as if she petitioned Odin for courage. Dagmar pulled her face to his, awkward and afraid, yet bolder than he had ever been. When her lips touched his, the fear fell away, leaving only wonder, only want. He deepened the kiss, drowning in his own submission, savoring the wet intimacy of her mouth against his.
She moaned, the sound both tortured and triumphant. Love rushed into longing, and desire grew into a deluge. They sought no shelter but let the torrent take them away, the kiss a skiff in the storm. Their lips clung and clashed, a frantic coupling fraught with both pleasure and pain. When Ghost gasped for air, he buried his face in her throat, suckling her skin like a hungry child.
“I fear you are saying goodbye,” she cried.
Dagmar’s heart broke even as his body wailed, railing against the injustice of denial and the inequity of time.
“You have to take the clan daughters and go, Ghost. You have to leave the temple mount,” he pled, forcing her eyes to his and his mouth from her skin. “You have to leave now.”
She cradled his face, dazed, desperate, and he pressed his lips to hers once more, hungry for a final taste, for a precious moment more.
“I will not leave you,” she panted, adamant. “I will not leave Alba.”
“She must go with you. Take her and the clan daughters and go to Dolphys.”
“The king will come after us.”
“Bayr and I will stop him,” he promised. “The keepers will stop him.”
“Bayr is gone, Dagmar,” she moaned. “He knows the king is his father. That is why I came to find you.”
Alba had fallen asleep. She’d been sent from the feast, from the presence of the Northmen and the antics of Gudrun. The chieftains were a bristling pack of dogs, eyeing each other with distrust, snarling at the king, yet united in their horror at the presence of the Northmen on the temple mount.
She’d kept her eyes averted from Bayr from the moment her father returned. To look at him would be to give herself away. To look at him would break her control and dash her hopes. His tension quivered beneath her skin and stole her breath.
She was exhausted, and she’d removed her gown and crawled beneath the coverlet, closing her eyes to sleep until she could see him again. When she awoke, her chamber was cloaked in shadow and the sky beyond her windows was dark. She sat up abruptly, then stumbled from the bed to draw back the curtains whispering softly in the night air. She didn’t know what time it was, but the moon was high and the hour was late.
Bayr would be waiting on the moor beside the hidden door. He would be waiting and worrying. She pulled her dress over her thin sheath and shoved her feet into the leather slippers she’d abandoned hours before. The coiled sections of her hair were coming undone, and she pulled out her pins and ran hurried fingers through her tresses, leaving them loose around her shoulders.
She cleaned her teeth, dabbed herself in rose oil, and pricked her finger, squeezing out just enough blood to pinken her pale lips and cheeks and draw her rune. Then she pulled a deep-blue cloak around her shoulders and left her bedroom. She flew down the tower stairs and into the body of the palace, past guards and lounging Northmen stretched out in the great room as though they intended to stay indefinitely. She wasn’t worried about them staying. She was worried about them leaving and taking her with them as Gudrun’s bride.
He wasn’t waiting. The hillside behind the temple was hushed and haunted with the revelry from earlier in the day. The tournament brought all manner of tents and temporary shelters, but most of the visitors stayed on the mount itself and spilled down into the village on the north side of Temple Hill. The south side was pocked with ravines and rocks, the rolling meadows that stepped off into forests and foliage not as desirable for making camp. All week, she and Bayr had avoided company by trekking to the falls or hiding away in the old shepherd’s hovel Ghost had long abandoned. They’d walked in the woods and lain in the long grass, and Alba had been so careful to keep the rune around them, terrified that someone would see, that someone would tell, and that Bayr would pay the price.
She sat in the grassy gully where the tunnel opened up onto the slope and bit down on her dread, willing herself to wait. The chieftains had called the king into council. She’d heard the talk among the guard and the castle staff as she’d tiptoed beneath their noses.