A Midwinter Fantasy (28 page)

“You don’t have to come—”

“Yes. I do.”

On the drive to Keflavik Airport, she stared out the side window, unsuccessfully trying to ignore the gold ring pinching her finger. “Vidar . . . what does it feel like . . . when the ring constrains you?”

He stared at her, his jaw clenched, his golden eyes gleaming as if lit from within. She wondered if that was his fiery nature showing. “It feels as if your joints are ripping apart and your muscles stretching to tearing point. It’s said the old dwarves captured the screams of prisoners tortured on the rack and added that to the gold.”

Nausea burned her throat and she pressed a hand over her mouth. She refused to believe a ring could do such a horrible thing, especially to her. She would leave.

“I’ll stay with you until you board the plane. If you feel even a hint of pain, come straight back.”

“You don’t think I’ll get away, do you?”

He gripped her hand so tightly it hurt. “Don’t go. Come back to my place,
elskan mín.”

Her guardian angel’s presence caressed her mind, loving
and persuasive. She closed her eyes, sinking into the feeling. She had loved the angel in her head for as long as she could remember. Now the sensation had subtly changed to include a zing of sexual awareness, and she was finally certain the feeling came from Vidar. But why hadn’t he spoken to her about the connection? Didn’t he want her to know? She had so many questions. She didn’t want to leave him, but she wouldn’t confine herself to Iceland like an animal pacing an imaginary fence too frightened to step outside. “I know you’ve got the resort to think about and that’s obviously a huge consideration, but if I get out, will you try to follow? I’ve only just found you. I don’t want to lose you.”

Vidar flopped back against the seat and shook his head. “Believe me, I’d leave the resort in a heartbeat if I thought I could be free of my father. I’d have no trouble selling the place. But I told you, I’ve tried to leave and I can’t. There’s no hope for me.”

The international airport was busy with tourists arriving for Christmas, many of them with red and white stickers on their bags proclaiming
LIVE YOUR DREAMS THIS CHRISTMAS
. Sonja saw one of the resort buttons on the ground with the same slogan. She kicked it out of her way, but Vidar bent to retrieve it and dropped it in his pocket. Vidar accompanied her in silence as she checked in and headed to security. She expected him to say good-bye at the security point, but he breezed through with nothing more than a few words to one of the officers.

“How did you do that?” she whispered when she caught up with him by a cafe.

“Glamour. I made them think that I’m dressed in a security uniform.”

“You’re wearing your fur.”

“You see through my glamour. We have an . . . an affinity.”

Why had he waited until she was about to leave to mention their link? Sonja wound her bag strap around her fingers. “I know we have an affinity. I sense you in my mind.” She glanced up to gauge his reaction.

He gave her an arrested glance. “I’ve always tried to be subtle, so you don’t notice.”

“Oh, I noticed. I feel as if I’ve been linked with you on some level my whole life.”

“Sonja,
ástin mín
.” Vidar halted, ignoring the people walking past them, and pulled her close. He curved a hand around her cheek. “I pledged to protect you when you were a baby, and I’ll always be there for you when you need me, even if we never meet again.”

Tears filled her eyes. His sadness whispered through her and suddenly she wasn’t sure she wanted to leave. Her job and the few possessions she had in London didn’t matter. What mattered was people. The only person she had in London was an aunt who’d never cared much for her—and she’d even started to wonder if Una really was her aunt.

She gripped the front of his coat. “Vidar . . .” She closed her eyes and pressed her face against his neck. Vidar had always been the most important person in her life, even when she had only known him as the guardian angel in her mind. But what would Odin do to her if she stayed?

Vidar kissed her hair, pressed his lips to her ear. “Although I want you to stay, if you are able to leave, you must go. Be free of my father.”

The announcer called her flight. Desperation tore through Sonja. She didn’t want to leave Vidar but she didn’t want to stay either. This was so unfair.

“Sonja.” Vidar eased her away from him. “Time to go.” He kissed her hard, and she kissed him back, angry with fate for letting her find her angel while making it impossible for her to
stay with him. She infused the kiss with all the love and churning emotions in her heart to show him what she couldn’t put into words. He pulled away. “Remember: any pain and you come back to me.”

Her heart thudded as she lined up to present her boarding pass. She did a mental audit of the health of her body. Apart from the hollow ache in her chest, she felt no discomfort. She glanced back at Vidar when she passed through the gate.

He shouted, “I’ll be right here.”

Sonja’s breath faltered as she followed the line through the boarding tunnel. She felt light-headed and part of her longed for pain, for any reason to stop her boarding. When she reached the plane door, an air steward smiled at her and checked her boarding pass, directing her to her seat. Then she stepped over the threshold.

A burning shaft of agony ran up her arm, arrowed along her limbs, burrowed into her chest and belly. The bag dropped from her fingers and she stumbled, collapsed. Someone shouted. Hands gripped beneath her arms. The heels of her boots bumped over the metal threshold as she was pulled back into the tunnel.

The reassuring sense of Vidar’s presence flooded her mind, blocked the pain. Strong arms surrounded her; then everything went blissfully dark.

Sonja woke on a bed snuggled beneath a heavy quilt. Her head pounded and her body ached as if she’d been used as a punching bag. A rustle of sound caught her attention. She turned over warily and opened an eye. A log fire crackled, casting dancing patterns of light over a forest green sofa and honey-colored wood.

Where was she? She tracked back in her mind and remembered boarding the plane. Her breath hissed in as an echo of pain flashed through her. The ring
had
trapped her in Iceland. A gamut of emotions followed the realization: anger at Odin for daring to confine her, fear over what would happen to her now, but also relief that she had an excuse to stay with Vidar.

The sound of footsteps heralded Vidar’s approach from a small kitchen in the far corner of the log cabin. “You’re back in the land of the living.” He smiled down at her and placed a steaming mug on the nightstand before hunkering down beside the bed. “Hot chocolate with a nip of something to revive you.”

He bent his head, his dark bangs flopping over his face, and pressed a kiss on the back of her hand. Her breath rushed in, carrying the hot, spicy smell of Vidar mixed with the sweetness of chocolate.

“How long have I been unconscious?”

“Long enough for me to lug you back to my retreat and put you to bed.”

Her eyes opened a little wider when she realized she must be in his bed.

While Vidar fetched his own mug from the kitchen, Sonja sat and pulled her knees up to her chest. She tried to smooth the creases from her black tailored pants but gave up and drowned her sorrows in a blissful chocolate mouthful with a kick of alcohol. She held off reality for half a cup of hot chocolate, then the strangeness of her situation swamped her, and she returned her mug to the nightstand unfinished.

She spread her fingers, gazing at Odin’s ring. “How can I get it off?”

Vidar sat beside her and gently wrapped his hand around hers. “Forget the ring. There’s nothing you can do about it. My brother Baldur cut off his own finger to rid himself of the ring but it just appeared on one of his other fingers.”

Sonja shivered.

Vidar drew her hand toward him and kissed her knuckles. “Stay here with me,
elskan mín
.”

She stared around the tiny wooden lodge. The place was toasty and snug but little more than one room. Inside her head she’d sensed Vidar all her life, but moving in with him when they’d only known each other for a couple of days was crazy. Yet where else could she go? “I’ll be in your way.”

With a wry laugh, he cozied up to her. “No . . . you won’t.” His hand settled at her waist, and he eased her around to face him. “We’ve been together in mind and spirit for a long time. Our connection is strong.”

He leaned his forehead against hers. Her eyelids fell as the familiar comforting sense of him swept through her, calming her fears and smoothing her worries. His lips brushed her forehead.

“There’re things I need to explain, Sonja. Things you have a right to know.”

Vidar rose, and she immediately missed his touch. He fetched a small cream silk bag from a shelf before returning to the bed. After unfastening the drawstring, he upended the bag over his palm. Three linked blue crystal rings dropped out—similar in shape to a Celtic knot.

“This is your Magic Knot.”

He rubbed a finger wistfully across the rings then placed them in her hand. A shimmer of awareness spread across Sonja’s skin before stirring through her. The air around her subtly shifted, and she felt she could reach out and touch the layers of light and warmth. She held up the strange jewelry. Flickers of firelight danced within the crystalline structure as if the rings themselves contained fire.

“The three rings of your Magic Knot hold the essence of your mind, body, and spirit,” Vidar said. “Keep them safe.”

Sonja turned confused blue eyes on him, and Vidar’s heart went out to her. Why hadn’t he refused when his father demanded he involve her in the feud with her father? She didn’t deserve to be tangled up in the conflict. But even as the thought passed through his mind, a selfish part of him admitted that he wanted her here.

He shifted closer to her and brushed his fingertips around her palm, circling the three crystal rings. The urge to touch her rode him like the need to breathe.

“Is the Magic Knot really magic?” she asked.

“I suppose it sounds like it to you, but it’s simply a part of life. Humans have them as well, but they’ve internalized them.”

Tiny lines appeared between her eyebrows, and his fingers itched to stroke them away.

“You’re saying I’m not human?”

Vidar almost laughed. “Sonya,
ástin mín
, you’ve met your father.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Point taken.”

“I’m not human either.” He gave into temptation and smoothed the pad of his thumb over her cheek.

“So if these stones really are part of me, why did
you
have them?”

“It’s complicated.” Vidar rubbed a hand back and forth over her quilt-covered legs, soothing. Explaining what had happened to her when she was a baby without freaking her out was going to be difficult, if not impossible. She had coped with so many revelations in the last few days; he didn’t want to shatter her perception of herself any further. Yet he owed her the truth.

He was damned if he told her, damned if he didn’t.

He rose and went to stare out of the small diamond-shaped panes of glass in his door. On the icy terrace outside, Gleda lay curled in a tight furry ball against the blast of snow-laden wind sweeping up the ravine. This lonely life he’d tolerated for so long would be transformed if Sonja stayed.

She came to stand beside him and squinted out through the window. “Where are we?”

“In the uninhabited interior of the country, where nobody can find us. I have an apartment at the resort, but this is where I retreat for privacy.”

For long minutes she stared outside, gnawing her lip. He gave in to the need to touch her again and smoothed his palm in comforting circles on her slender back. The touch seemed to rouse her, and she turned to him. “Tell me the full story about this feud between our families, Vidar. I need to understand.”

Should he tell her the whole truth and watch her world
crumble around her? Or should he lie and protect her feelings—and his own? He sucked in a breath. “Go and sit by the fire.”

He followed her to the sofa and sat beside her. He sent calming thoughts along their mental link, wrapped her in his strength so she could cope with his revelations.

“Our families had a falling out.”

With a frustrated breath Sonja said, “Don’t talk to me as though I’m a child.”

Vidar fought against his instinct to protect her. “Okay, here’s the short version—Troy’s father killed my brother.”

Sonja pressed a hand to her mouth. “My god. I’m sorry. When?”

“A long time ago.” He couldn’t bring himself to reveal just how long, or he’d have to explain about the Crystal Crib.

Sonja stared at him in silent horror for a few moments, then blinked as if waking up. “That doesn’t excuse the way Odin’s treated me.”

“Odin believes the sins of the fathers shall be visited on the children and grandchildren. He took revenge on Troy’s father, Loki. He also killed one of Troy’s brothers and condemned the other to spend the rest of his life in wolf form.”

Sonja’s eyes widened. “Wolf form?”

“Fenrir is a wolf shape-shifter. Odin trapped him in his animal form, so it wasn’t as strange as it sounds.”

Sonja flashed him an incredulous look that said his explanation was every bit as strange as it sounded. “What about my father?”

“Troy escaped with his life, but Odin took you and your mother away from him.” A memory he’d buried long ago crept into his mind: Troy as a young man before he came into his power, kneeling at Odin’s feet, begging him to return his wife and baby daughter. Vidar clamped down on the swell
of anger the memory roused. Because he’d helped Troy and his family, Odin had punished his disloyalty with the curse of the slave ring.

“What happened to my mother?” Sonja asked, her voice barely a whisper.

Vidar shook his head. “She’s gone, Sonja.” He had never discovered what happened to Troy’s wife, but she was human and surely long dead.

Sonja looked down and rubbed distractedly at the creases in her trousers. Despite her calm appearance, Vidar sensed her churning emotions. Instinctively, he encircled her with his arms and eased her against his chest, offering physical comfort as naturally as he’d always soothed her mind.