The Magic Queen (12 page)

But then he blinked, and the primordial was gone, replaced once more by the irreverent fertility god. “I like you, Baba Yaga.”

She shivered. His fingers barely held onto her, but she felt as trapped as a bear with its paw caught in a steel trap.

“But I’ve a challenge for you. Will you accept it?”

He’d said the magic words, and he knew it. There was nothing in this life she loved so much as a good challenge. She was a fool to accept it. She knew this. Whatever it was, she knew without a doubt that it would be difficult for her.

“What?” She narrowed her eyes.

“Don’t kill them.”

Plucking his hand off her chin, she stepped back, assessing Freyr like a predator with its prey, trying to sniff out its weakness. And he let her, standing tall and proud as though in defiance of her.

Finally, she shook her head. “Why ever not? They’ll try to kill you. If I don’t, the rest of the women will think me weak and incapable. I have to at least kill one.”

Thinning his lips, he shook his head. “I think the goddesses are bluffing. Why go to all the trouble to search out your mates only to then demand you turn around and kill them?”

“And gods always make sense,” she scoffed.

His crooked grin made her pulse speed. She rubbed at the fine hairs on her forearm now standing on edge.

“No, but Aphrodite, Themis, and Calypso aren’t stupid. Think about it for a minute.” Freyr crossed his arms and waited, letting her do exactly that.

Tugging her bottom lip between her teeth, she thought about it. She had thought their rules silly when she’d first heard them. Counterintuitive really. Like Freyr said, why go to all the trouble only to have the women kill them off?

The only reason Fable had walked away with her man today was because Freyr had chosen that exact moment to—

She sucked in a sharp breath. “Fellatio! You didn’t!”

Obviously knowing exactly what conclusion she’d come to, he nodded. “I did. And I’ll do it again, over and over.”

“Why?”

“Because”—he stepped forward, and moving so fast she’d not had time to jump out of the way, he lightly ran a finger along the corner of her jaw—“I think the entire riddle of your game is to not kill. Why? Because it goes against your very nature. You’re ruthless, Baba Yaga. That’s who you are. So now...don’t be.”

Held fast, feet rooted to the ground, Baba experienced a tumult of emotions: need, fire, desire, hot flashes, and even a tiny spark of irritation. Powerful as she was, even she wasn’t entirely immune to the powerful magick of the gods. She reached up to brush off his hand, but much to her chagrin, found herself wrapping her fingers around his wrist instead, as though to pin him fast.

“It makes sense,” she said, enunciating each word and hoping like hell that he didn’t hear the deep inflection straining her voice.

He dropped his hand and stepped back, casting her a strained look, one she couldn’t decipher. His eyes flicked down toward his fingers, and all he did was stare at them, almost like he was startled by something.

Maybe he was feeling that same queerness of spirit she’d been afflicted with. But then he coughed, cleared his throat, and very deliberately curled his hand into a fist and slipped it inside his pocket.

“I don’t think we’re going to find any food in this direction. Change of course?”

Pouncing onto his words like a lifeline to help break the weird tension zipping between them, she nodded. “Yes!”

Twisting on her heel, she turned and marched in the opposite direction. Tonight was going to be a very long, very weird night. She just knew it.

Chapter 7

Baba Yaga

She’d been right, of course. It had been a strange night. In fact, every night for the past two weeks had been strange, full of strain between them. Things were no longer quite as easy going as they’d been before.

Baba had battled twice more, once with the fairy queen and once with the centaur queen. Because of Freyr’s words, she’d decided to test his theories and let their males live. She’d almost paid dearly when it’d come to the centaur queen, receiving an arrow in her bum for her trouble.

She’d wanted to rip the smile off Freyr’s face when she’d hobbled back from the fight. He’d wisely chosen to say nothing about the butt shot after that.

Oh, Baba could have ended both their males easily. Well, maybe not so easily when it came to the fairy queen’s mate. Holy hell, she still had no idea what that thing—creature—was. She wasn’t afraid to admit he’d boggled her, and she planned to make a detailed examination of her books when she returned home to find out just what in Kingdom kind of monstrosity he’d been.

It rankled her not to know everything about everything. Also, she’d had to do something—let’s say a little on the eccentric side, and leave it at that—to get past the fairy queen. Even now, that thought made her cringe.

There’d been an unspoken agreement between her and Freyr after exiting the fairy queen’s trial. Never talk about it. Ever again.

On top of that, Calypso hadn’t made her move. Each day that went by with no retaliation only caused Baba’s anxieties about it all to ratchet up more, which was probably the whole point. No one could play mind games like the gods. That was for sure.

Tomorrow, she dueled with Fiera, Calypso’s sister. And deep in her gut, Baba suspected that would be when the goddess finally made her move.

“Silver for your thoughts,” Freyr said.

She glanced up, not realizing she’d been staring hypnotized into the dragon fire.

She shook the gloom loose like rolling marbles. “Just thinking about revenge.”

“Sounds dire.” He took a huge bite of apple.

When he’d said he liked apples, she hadn’t realized how much. The deer she and Freyr had managed to bag on their first night was the only meat they’d found.

Clearly, it’d been gifted to them by the goddesses to use as food and shelter because there was nothing more to be had. They’d walked the flatlands extensively for miles in every direction, and there wasn’t even a trace of scat on the ground.

Thankfully, she was a hoarder by nature and had saved two of the apple seeds from before. She’d planted them in the ground beside the waters and pushed a little earth magick into them. Overnight, they’d grown into towering trees ripe with new fruit.

“Yours or—” He tipped the hand holding the apple toward her.

She shook her head. “Calypso’s.”

“Ah, yes. Well, you know it’s coming. Just be on guard for it.”

Baba gave him a
no-really
look. “Knowing something’s coming but not knowing what can be as dangerous as not knowing at all.”

Finishing his fifth apple with one final, large bite, he tossed the core into the flames. It sizzled for a second before turning into black dust.

“Tell you what”—he leaned forward on his palm, looking her in the eyes—“if I see something, I’ll yell.”

The way the firelight danced across his razor-sharp features made her heart flutter. In the daylight, Freyr was an attractive human, but at night—oh, at night—he was more like a demon of lust come to snatch away her soul.

She wet her lips. “What will you yell?” Baba didn’t move away from him, even though his face was scant inches from hers. She’d never been one afraid to dance inside the fire.

“
Fell-lay-she-oh
.” He drew out the word, making it sound far more naughty than it already was.

Baba had come to recognize something lately: that strange queerness she’d assumed to be magick leeching onto her after her battle with Fable. She now knew it to be not only desire, but something even a little bit deeper.

Her lips curled into a slow smile.

His irises flared, a sure sign of desire. Maybe she wasn’t the only one feeling this discombobulation. One thing Baba was, was smart. She’d never been one to deny the obvious, even when she wanted to. She was learning Freyr, learning and studying him the way she would any enemy, except he wasn’t her enemy.

Try as she might, she found it was impossible to dislike him. He didn’t need to know it quite yet. His ego was the size of the cosmos, and she’d not be adding even a farthing to it.

He cleared his throat and pulled away from her, looking deeply into the fire as she had only moments before. His eyes took on a faraway look of concentration.

Baba knew something else too. Freyr didn’t like what was happening any more than she did. When he’d come to her, he’d been little more than a cocky, arrogant god who thought to woo, tussle, and leave her. Hers was another little heart to conquer and crush, another mark to add to his incredibly long list of conquests. Except that wasn’t what was happening.

For a god of fertility and lust, he’d hardly touched her. And the only kiss they’d shared had been the one she’d forced upon him. She smirked. She might not have lust magick at her disposal, but she was far from a regular mark either.

She was Baba Yaga.

Picking up the scrying bowl she’d set aside earlier, she stared into it, studying the fire goddess inside. Tomorrow, Baba would battle her. Every other time Baba had fought, she’d fought to protect Freyr, not because she’d really wanted to—although she did but not out of any true sense of love or devotion—so much as because it was a requirement of the games and her obsessive need to win at all costs.

But tomorrow would be different. Tomorrow, she wouldn’t only be doing it because she hated to lose but because the thought of losing him was a sacrifice she was now unwilling to make. Humming softly to herself, she pretended not to notice Freyr’s quiet look of curious restlessness.

From here on out, Baba was going to play a very different game.

~*~

Freyr

Baba had walked from their tent an hour ago, to bathe, as was her nightly ritual. Freyr munched on another apple as he stared at the dancing shadows moving across the dirt from the flame’s glow. She’d said very little to him tonight—not unheard of the night before a big battle. She was studious and quiet as a mouse, he’d learned, focused like a beam on her opponent, learning all the intricate nuances of how they fought, what made them tick.

She’s bested all of them easily and not by magick alone, though her magick was substantial. The shrew was sharp as a whip. Not only did the body fascinate him, so did that brain of hers. He’d never really been one to notice a woman’s intelligence. Freya was smart, but she was his sister and immune to his fertility charms. Therefore, she didn’t count. Every other woman would turn into a dithering airhead around him whenever he’d flash a smile or crook his finger. Baba did none of those things. She gave as good as she got, sometimes even better.

The light sound of her feet returning snared his attention, and he looked up only to have his stomach bottom out and his jaw to plop open. He’d seen naked bodies aplenty. Breasts were breasts, and vaginas were a dime a dozen, except there was something hypnotically arresting about her creamy skin beneath the pale light of the moon and the glow of their fire. Her wild brown hair haloed her elfin features, making him wonder if there was elfin blood in her. She glowed like the peoples of his own
Alfheim
.

“Oh, come on, Fellatio. Don’t tell me a bit of jiggly female flesh is enough to make you lose your tongue.” She chuckled, sidling in next to him, so close that he smelled the scent of her rose-hip shampoo. Leaning back on her hands, she stretched her long legs out before her, crossing them at the ankles. She looked like a goddess in repose awaiting a master painter to immortalize her likeness.

Every other night when she’d gone to the river to bathe, she’d stayed out there until she’d dried off and only returned when fully dressed. He swallowed hard, scrubbing his jaw with his hand. She had shell-pink nipples. And she must be a tad cold because they were little nubs that seemed to beckon to him.

Freyr cleared his throat as the blood that’d coursed so smoothly through his body suddenly raged like an out-of-control wildfire full of heat and want. Damn it all to the pits of Hel.

Her red lips stretched into a long smile as she peeked at him from the corner of her eyes. The wench knew exactly what she was about. “Time for bed, don’t you think, idiot?”

He was beginning to think that Baba called him an idiot not because she hated him, but as a term of endearment. What a very backward female she was. It simply boggled his mind that he didn’t dislike her. She was rude, sometimes crude, and made his heart beat like the thundering hooves of wild stallions.

Bloody hell. He shoved at his now very uncomfortable, hard cock. But she’d not caught it because she’d shoved him down onto the floor, tossed her leg around his hips, flung an arm across his chest, and very promptly passed out. Her snores followed soon after.

Freyr stared up at the skins, unblinking. This was going to be a very long night.

~*~

There was something different about her the next day. It’d been some hours since she’d first stirred, getting up to go do her morning necessaries. Baba had moved very little during the night, using his body as her pillow. Only once had she rolled over, and it was because he’d shoved a finger into her spine to her make her do it when her snoring had begun to sound like a wild boar rutting.

Not that he minded, to be honest. Though they’d lain close together the past two weeks—apart from that one disastrous night after she’d kissed him, and why hadn’t she kissed him since was what he really wanted to know—but last night had felt intimate in a way it hadn’t before.

Freyr scraped the recesses of his extended memory banks and couldn’t actually recall a time when he’d ever simply slept with a woman without at least getting to stick his cock in her first. He’d thought he’d wake up grumpy at the very least, but her moss-green eyes had sparkled when she’d stared down at him and a whispered, “Good morning, Fellatio,” had been all he’d needed to get over his discontent.

Scratching the back of his head, he found himself dumbfounded all over again by what all of this might mean. Shouldn’t he feel at least a little cranky or put out?

The lilt of her laughter was what finally brought him out of his own head. She stood beside him, speaking in quiet tones with Peabrain. Baba was dressed once more in those damnable scraps of fabric she called clothes. More and more, he was coming to resent the notion that as he got to enjoy the sight of her shapely flesh, so did the other males when she walked into battle.