"I have a taste for gold." Her fingers twisted, just lightly, tugging the thick strands against his scalp with small teasing movements as though she were the most accomplished
hor-cwen
. It was her courage that was splitting something inside him into pieces, the way she looked at him as though he would never betray her gifts when he already had.
"It is a high-price taste. Sometimes the cost of things can be more than a person should pay."
She could turn away, even now. In two days or three, they need never see each other again.
"Aye. That is why we can only afford moments." Her eyes were very clear. So clear he could see all the courage and the determination, all the past grief and the present fears, the longing for such things to be overcome.
"If we want such moments."
"Yes."
Her fingers slid down again, across the linen but he caught her hand and placed it higher, as if she could feel through his heart what there were no words for, even no thoughts for.
Her hand pressed against his skin. The rush of aliveness, of merciless desire took his body. He sensed its echo shudder through her as her hand fused with the wild heat of his flesh. She touched him with a firmness that surprised. Her touch was like no other, so that however he tried to close his mind, he could feel it through more than blindly aching flesh.
He turned thought aside. Nothing existed for them except the moment. The shadows of the past were shades to be overcome. He would leave no shadows on her future.
Her breath sighed across his skin. Her hands moved over the aching, white-hot planes of his body, downwards, seeking the desire-hardened, blood-hot sex.
"Let me touch you…"
No words existed, only the fierce unslaked hunger, the elemental needs of the senses. He showed her how to touch and where the pleasure lay. He kept control, and there was nothing he would allow her to fear.
And when control was no longer possible, she had no fear at all, not of his merciless desire nor his wild-ness, so that the desperate heat and the harshly-held need shattered at last against the touch of her lamed hand.
No one in the ordinary world guess.
They were safe.
Alina lay wrapped in her cloak, three paces away from the person who held her soul. None of the men gathered round the fire, no one, could know what had happened to her. That she had changed utterly and beyond the possibility of return.
It was hidden from the everyday world and yet it lived inside her, with a strength and an aliveness nothing in this world or the next could mar. She rearranged Brand's spare cloak over hers, hugging it around her body as though its touch against her skin could be his.
The night air caressed her face, but she was not cold. She would never be cold again, nor so frightened, nor so bitter about herself.
All the problems of the future remained. They waited for her in the dark, outside the small circle of light cast by the flames. She knew that. But her courage to face them had grown. Because of him.
And so had her power. It was so unexpected, but it was true. She had expected loss, but it had not been so. It was like a gift. One she did not deserve, but which was there.
Her heart twisted. Loss, true loss, lay ahead. She could not contemplate that. The shimmering light of the flames danced before her eyes. Flames, pure gold, like Brand. Nay, not as strong, not as hot.
She watched her lover's hands as he ate.
He was her lover now. That had been sealed irrevocably, by the acts of the body and the mind. Even if she never saw him again.
The man, Eadric, sat next to him. Brand was talking to him about something or other. She saw the gleam of Eadric's smile.
Duda was stretched out at their feet, trailing through the grass like a piece of frayed rope. Uncon-scious. Doubtless dreaming of how to restore his leather jerkin to a state of unblemished finery.
Everyone else slept. Even Cunan.
Her tired mind drifted and her body seemed to float, pleasurably aching, still full of secret warmth. Her eyes drifted shut and the floating feeling intensified. She gave in to it. It was odd to feel so…safe. She was caught in the middle of a journey from one form of exile into another and now there was this…release. Rest. She could not find the word for it.
Brand's face drifted into her mind, the way it had looked when he had slept after the fever.
Peace.
She buried her head in the folds of his spare cloak.
The payment would be death.
Cunan stared at a night so dense it robbed sight. That did not matter because what he saw was in the mind: the Northumbrian and the whore's daughter who paraded herself as his sister. How could she have done it? After all that he had said to her. He, and all of her kindred, meant nothing to her.
It had always been so, all their lives. None of them had been good enough for her.
His hand caressed the knife hilt concealed in his bedroll.
It was done now, beyond his keeping. The lecher had taken his chance, and she had fallen. Willingly. He had guessed that much just by looking at her face. And because he knew the blood that ran in her veins.
But the house of Maol would not be dishonoured again. He would see to that. It was his right. The slate would be wiped clean and all that he had planned would still come to fruition.
His gaze bored through the dark, seeking out the Northumbrian's shape. The knife hilt dug into his flesh. The frustration of not being able to use it yet was unbearable.
If only the man had died today. But Goadel had bungled that. Fool. He had not been supposed to act alone. That was what they had agreed. The attack had been too risky, too open to chance, too— It might have succeeded but for the Northumbrian's forethought.
It was strange. He would not have considered such a man capable of forethought. Or that kind of courage.
Goadel did not know the mistake he had made. He would think he had bought himself time that he did not have.
And if the reckless attack had succeeded what would then have become of Alina? His breath hissed through the dark. She was not for Goadel's keeping. Not yet. Her rightful keeper was coming. He would be this side of the high western hills by now.
Tomorrow, they would cross the River Humber into Deira, southern half of the English Kingdom of Northumbria. Deira. The Northumbrian would think he was safe, in his own land. There would be no forethought when they reached what was familiar to him, only the high heart of the man's natural recklessness. Then the trap would spring.
He slept with the knife unsheathed.
Brand's blood surged.
He knew the lie of every wood and every fold of land that marked the wide-open face of Deira. Beyond it lay Bernicia and the true north, all the wild riches of its soul hidden in blue mist. His heart sang. It sought home. Every instinct drove forward. Yet he paused at the crossroads marked with the ancient Roman milestone.
Crossroads connected not only human pathways, but paths of the spirit.
Wyrd
was there, waiting, so much more discernible where the barriers that separated Middle Earth from the other realms were thinner. His eyes sought Alina instantly. She was quite safe on the patient grey gelding, looking ahead as he had been.
This time the parting from her would be absolute. More final than when he had believed her dead. More deeply entrenched inside him. He had made it so.
All of her lived in his mind, the warmth of her skin, its fineness, the gasp of her breath. The way her eyes darkened. The deepness that lived in the heat of her gaze.
He would have looked away. But in that moment, she turned. Their gazes met, held in the bright sunlight. Then split apart as Cunan's heavy roan shouldered through.
Brand turned his own mount with a knee, leading them off the exposed line of the road, toward the shade cast by the trees. It would hide them. It was home. Every sinuous line of the land, every tree and every blade of grass, seemed different, bathed in the subtle light of the north.
The brightness shifted, then was cut off by the black depths of the forest's shade. Like all that was inside him. This time the pain that lay ahead seemed greater than the instinct to live.
He did not have any regrets.
He quickened the pace, like someone rushing headlong to meet their doom, impatient to feel the fell weight of its hand.
The others followed.
"Alina."
She turned her head. They had stopped for a brief respite. Doubtless for her benefit. But she could ride now at a pace she would not have believed possible only days ago. It was probably the amount of food Brand made her eat. She was twice as strong and her clothes fitted.
It was more than that. It was the sparking of the life force inside her. Released by him. It seemed unconquerable.
If she did not look to the future.
She glanced up from the shade she had found, narrowing her eyes at the taut male figure looming black against the low sun.
"Cunan."
"Who did you expect?"
He stood like a jailer, his hand resting on the knife hilt at his hip. He had not been private with her since the day she had fled to the monastery herb garden, trying to hide from her feelings for Brand.
She suppressed the thought, lest he could read it. But her heart knew, with the sixth sense that women have, that Cunan had guessed what had happened since beside the clear water. She wondered whether he hated her for it.
She did not care. She was no longer a child to be bullied by an older brother, angered by the condemnation in his eyes. Hurt—
"What is it you wish, brother?"
"To know what is in your thoughts."
She tilted her chin.
"No one ever knows that. It is part of my charm."
Cunan's hand clenched on the well-worn hilt of polished bone.
"Like mother, like daughter. I will take a bet even
your…friend
does not know what goes on in your head."
She found her mask smile.
"No, he does not."
"He just has his uses, is that right? Oh come, Alina, we are no longer children. You have your needs, I do not doubt it." He must have seen her stiffen because he squatted down beside her, the hand that had rested on the knife hilt held out like a token of peace. His hound eyes watched her.
"I cannot blame you for that. In fact I am sure your
Northumbrian has fulfilled those needs most satisfactorily. I hear that is his defining talent. Seduction. And he always gets what he wants."
How many women do you think he has had? You were just one more amusement and a greater trouble to him than he ever expected.
"You hear so many things, do you not?" Her hands clenched, unseen.
She tried to make her fingers uncurl. It had not been just a heartless amusement, what had happened between her and Brand. It had not been just a meaningless satisfaction of the flesh.
…there will only be the pleasure. Naught else.
Her skin tingled. Such pleasure. He had known it could happen. She had not. It had overwhelmed her. Even now, the memory of his hands and his mouth on her could make her burn. She had given in to the pleasure completely, with all that she was. She had not been able to do anything else.
Seduction. Such an expert touch… Her face, her whole body, seemed to go rigid.
"So? I can see that you, at least, are not so light-minded, Alina." Her brother's gaze held hers, his hand, wide and sword-calloused like Brand's, stayed extended towards her. She looked at it. Her heart beat out of time.
Cunan was right.
She was not light-minded. She loved. Even if her love could not be returned.
And she owed debts.
The hand dropped.
"Come. You have more sense than that. Just what do you think will happen if you cast in your lot with that heedless fool?"
"I think that our…" She paused, getting her voice under control. She said it again. "I think that
our
brother Modan will survive."
And there was Cunan's face as it truly was, pared down to the bones and the twisting sinew.
'
'''Modan
. Modan will be safe enough, I have told you. Your duty lies in loyalty to our father's wishes. It is due to the interests of—"
"May I join you? Or is this a family discussion?"
Her fast-beating heart thudded at the sound of the English words. She had not heard him approach. He must move as quietly as Duda who was standing beside him. Cunan's face darkened with anger. She thought that hers must be whiter than chalk.
She did not know how long Brand and Duda had been there. Cunan did not move.
"Yes, it is a family discussion and therefore none of your concern. Or of your… slave's."
Brand settled on his heels like Cunan, hands carelessly resting on his knees. It was like watching a wolf ready itself to spring. Cunan's hand moved towards the bone handle of his knife. It fumbled, just slightly.
Brand's gaze missed nothing at all.
"I think we share some of your concerns."
There was not even a rustle as Duda settled him-self on the grass. Cunan shot him a glance of contempt.
"Do you expect me to speak in front of that slave—"
"Duda is free."
"Want to know why I am free?"
The faint flicker in Brand's eyes told her that Duda's question was not part of whatever Brand had planned to say. Duda's gaze flicked from his lord to Cunan and then just as suddenly it was on her.
"Perhaps the lady princess would like to know." The sharp, crinkled eyes held hers and she knew that there was nothing irrelevant about what Duda would say at all. Cunan was seething. She could feel the wolf's tension in Brand, that awful focus that never stopped before it had…all that it wanted.
There might be blood if she said
yes
. There might be more blood if she said
no
. The sunlight rippled the way it did on moving water.
"Tell me."
"I would have been enslaved because I could not pay my compensation for theft. Brand paid my
wergild
."
"A thief," spat Cunan.
"Aye. I used to steal to eat. I have no kin. They are dead. I have no home. I lost it years ago. It was burnt in a dispute between two noble thanes over who owned it."