Mistress of the Wind (5 page)

She didn’t fit in here, in the rooms of gold and silver, decorated with furniture her father and brothers would weep to see, so beautifully did they respect the wood and celebrate it.

She ran her fingers along the polished stone walls, smooth as glass, the silver like fish scales on black velvet, enriched with a hint of blue and green.

“Your room is this way,” the bear called her from the stairway in the center of the main hall, and she lifted her hand from the wall slowly, unwilling to see what now lay in store for her.

“Night is nearly falling,” he said urgently, and there was something in the way he spoke, a suppressed excitement, that slowed her steps still further.

“Astrid, please hurry.” His voice came in a shout, and the huge arches bounced his plea around her, amplifying it, making her jerk.

“All right.” She walked toward him, not running, not lagging either, cradling her bundle of things in her arms. Uncowed.

“I am sorry, but we must make haste. And when I ask you to do something, you need to listen, for your own safety.” His voice was quieter, but no less urgent.

She quickened her steps, her only acknowledgment of his order. It was too similar to her father’s constant demands that she go faster, work harder, be more obedient. Although, to be fair to the bear, he had said please. And sorry.

He waited until she was level with him, gave her a fierce look, and led the way up the deep stone stairs.

Astrid bowed her head, though it was not in acquiescence. She did not want him to see the defiance in her eyes, or the willful set of her jaw.

She was not a dog, nor a bought thing. She had come of her own free will.

“How do you know night is falling?” she asked him.

His stride faltered. “I feel it, soul-deep.”

His answered surprised her, and she looked away from him. “I will find it hard, without windows.”

“For your protection, I must keep you within, but the magic my father infused into this place should more than make up for it.” He spoke as if his mind were on other things, and he increased his pace as they reached the floor above.

“The magic?”

“Ask what you want, and it will appear. Whatever dish, whatever drink you desire. Whatever clothes you need.” He was almost loping along now, down the wide passageway, and Astrid had to jog to keep up.

Why was it so important to find her chamber before nightfall? And with all the rooms in this palace, why was there one special room for her?

“Here. Your chamber.” He was panting slightly as he pushed open a door. “This is the only room you may sleep in.”

Astrid stepped into the room. Like the rest of the palace, the floors were brown granite bright with gold, the walls black and silver. A massive bed stood in the middle of it, with a canopy of dark blue velvet drawn up in pretty folds, waiting to be let down to enclose the bed in a tent of luxury.

The walls were hung with silk hangings, portraying beautiful scenes from the outdoors. Waterfalls, forests, mountains and fjords.

And there was something odd.

Astrid frowned as she tried to work it out, and then she realized. Of all the rooms she’d seen, this one alone was not lit by torches hanging from sconces. Instead, the light came from cleverly cut skylights in the side of the mountain, slanting down into the room.

Natural light. And perhaps this was why he was in such a hurry to show her the room before the sun set.

She had misjudged him.

“Oh, thank you.” Her voice caught at his kindness. “It is beautiful.”

He seemed pleased at her words, and bowed low. “The light is fading and I must go. Ask for a hot bath, dinner, whatever you wish.” He backed out of the room.

Surprised, she lifted a hand in goodbye. But the way he hunched, a small furtiveness in his eyes, made her check the farewell, her hand half-raised. Then he closed the door. Closed her in.

Unsure, Astrid took a tentative step toward the pale wooden door and then another. Lifted her hand to the handle and pulled.

Locked.

He had locked her in.

And for the first time she saw, while she had natural light from her skylights, it was the only light she did have. There was no fireplace here, or wall sconces. Within a few minutes, she’d be in darkness.

“I want a hot bath. And towels. And a beautiful white nightdress. And dinner fit for a king,” she called out, fear and anger mingling at being tricked, at being imprisoned. She closed her mouth abruptly as the things appeared. The bath in one corner, the nightdress and towels hanging from a wooden stand next to it. The dinner laid out on a table with a white linen cloth.

“Oh.” She breathed the word out, sniffed the tantalizing smell of roast lamb with mint and rosemary. The rose scent of bath oil.

A solution to her problem occurred to her and she grinned suddenly. “I want a candle,” she called.

Nothing appeared.

“A fire.”

Still nothing.

“A torch.”

Nothing moved in the room except the perfumed steam from her bath and the fragrant steam of her meal, drifting upwards, swirling in the fading beams of light from her ceiling.

Cool air flowed in from the sky lights and Astrid shivered. Hugged herself. “Why do you want me in the dark, bear?” she whispered.

As if she wasn’t in the dark enough already.

Chapter Eight

H
e never made it to his chamber. He wasn’t sure afterward why he thought he needed to. As it was, halfway there pain struck him like a bolt of lightning and ripped him to the core, like a tree split and charred in a thunderstorm.

He slammed against the wall and slid to the floor, sure somehow Norga had not honored the deal. That he was dying.

He lay there, flaying like a fish out of water, and for a moment, as the pain increased beyond the imaginable, beyond what he could take, he knew he was dead.

Astrid was imprisoned in her room and she’d be stuck there, while his body rotted in the passageway outside, was all he could think. Until he couldn’t think anymore. Of anything. Except the stabbing, slashing knives of pain.

As he curled up, almost gave up, the pain just stopped.

It was as shocking as running into a door.

He shuddered, reeling at the absence of pain where once pain was all he had.

He looked down at his paws . . . hands.

He was free.

Until the sun rose, he was free.

He lay shaking for a minute more, unable to move, unable to trust it wasn’t a terrible joke.

But nothing happened and he pushed up on his knees, held his arms in front of him, twisting them this way and that. He stuck out a leg, wriggled his toes. Then used the wall to pull himself to a stand.

Elation expanded his chest. He would give every miserable second of the last eleven months three times over for this. Every soul-destroying, happiness-leeching day had been worth it to find Astrid, without whom he could never have set foot inside these walls again.

He glanced back the way he’d come, to her chamber at the far end of the corridor. Looked toward his own rooms.

He needed to get used to himself again. And the thought of a bath, of food like stew and bread after too long on raw fish and berries, decided him.

He used the wall to steady himself as he moved toward his wing of the palace, but when he reached his door, he couldn’t help a last look down the passage.

He would walk this corridor again before the sun rose.

* * *

The snick of the stone shutters closing over the skylights jerked her out of her doze. Astrid held her breath, her heart thundering.

She’d closed those shutters herself earlier, then, frightened by the absolute darkness they created, opened them again. She preferred to pull down the velvet drapes of her bed to cut off the cool air from the outside than entomb herself in her chamber.

Another shutter clicked closed. Someone was in the room.

Now she was aware of it, she heard footsteps, bare feet padding across the granite floor.

A man. Not Bear.

He blundered into the table she’d wished up earlier, clean of dishes and leftovers, and she heard a curse.

“Who is there?” she called out, sitting straight up and looking wildly around for a weapon. What could she use . . . of course! “I want an ax,” she whispered to the room, and one suddenly weighed in her hand.

She could have asked for any number of sharp objects, but she knew how to handle an ax.

“I don’t mean to frighten you,” a voice called, a deep voice, a bit like Bear would sound if he were human.

“Well, you have.” Astrid scrambled to her knees on the bed and held the ax double-handed. “I am armed, do not come any closer.”

She wished she could draw back the velvet drapes, although with the shutters closed, she’d be just as blind as she was now, the starlight shut off.

“Armed?” He sounded amused.

“With an ax.”

“Astrid, where would you have gotten an ax?” The way he said it made her cock her head to one side.

“Is that you, Bear?”

“It is me. But not in the shape you’re used to.”

She was silent a moment, remembering the sound of feet, his voice. “You are a man now?”

“I am.”

She lowered the ax slightly, then gripped it again as she felt the sudden rush of cool air on her face as the curtains were pulled aside.

“Don’t come any closer.” She could not see anything. Even the ax which she’d brought up in front of her face was just another piece of darkness.

“I want only to lie with you, make you truly mine as you agreed.”

“I did not agree to be yours. I agreed to go with you.” Astrid shuffled back on her knees, shaking, the ax still raised high.

“Yes, but you knew I wanted you as my woman. That coming with me would mean being my wife in all but name. Why, even your parents asked me about marriage. You could not have misunderstood.” He spoke softly, calmly.

She wanted to say she had misunderstood, but he was right. “I thought, with you being a bear . . .”

“You hoped my enchantment would save you from my bed?”

“Yes.” She whispered the admission.

“It would have anywhere else. But in terms of the agreement with my enchanter, I am able to return to my human form in my own castle from sunset to sunrise.”

“Why won’t you give me a light in this room? I can’t see you.”

“Exactly.” The satisfaction in his voice sent a shiver down her spine.

“What is this enchantment all about?” She had to know, she couldn’t remain caught up in this without knowing the stakes.

“I cannot tell you.”

She shook her head at that, although she knew he could not see her. What did he fear she would do if she knew the truth? Was it that terrible?

She drew a deep breath. Perhaps it was.

“What is your name, then?”

He laughed, short and sharp. “What else but Bjorn? My enchanter did not choose my form at random. It amused her to turn me into my namesake.”

She felt the mattress give way at the foot.

“I still have the ax ready,” she warned.

“Then set it down, Astrid.” He spoke as a mother speaks to a recalcitrant child, or a man speaks to his dog, making her want to draw blood.

“No. I have some oaths I would have you swear first.”

Bjorn chuckled, a deep sound from his throat. “You are very good at making me swear oaths, my beautiful one. What would you have of me this time?”

“A promise that you will not take me until I say I am ready. I will not give myself to a stranger. I wish to know you first.”

There was silence from the end of the bed.

Ha, he was speechless for once. She smiled in triumph.

“I will admit I do not want to swear an oath like that.” His voice was dangerously low and her smile faded.

“I am not yours and you do need to swear that oath if you have no wish to be felled by an ax.” She spoke sharp as the edge of the blade in her hands. “But even if I could not protect myself, would you not rather I went gladly to your arms? I agreed to come with you but had no idea what awaited me, and I have known you only three days.” She paused, swallowed. “I am afraid.”

Again there was silence, and then a sigh.

“I cannot find fault in what you say.” He paused. “It is only that I have been waiting for this moment a long time. I have been alone so long . . .”

Stricken by the pain in his voice, Astrid lowered the ax, set it down on the floor to lean against the bed.

“Come then.” She was used to sleeping in the same bed as Bets and Freja. It would be the same as that. “Lie with me as we did in the forest on our way here.”

The cool draft cut off abruptly as the drape was dropped back into place, and she felt him crawl across the bed toward her.

Fingers reached out, touched her face, and then lifted back the blankets for them both.