The Monster's Lover Page 5

  I stumbled out of the trees, breathless and panting. I hadn’t heard another sound, but the hairs across my neck prickled. Ma leaned heavily on her good leg, the lantern at her feet, Da’s rusty broadsword clenched in her fists.

  “Sol!” she cried. “Oh, thank the stars!”

  The orange flame at her feet cast crazy shadows across the contours of her face as I fell into her arms. My entire body trembled.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. The words spilled from my lips as choked sobs. “Sorry. So-sorry.”

  “Shhhh, gentle now. Gentle. Let’s get inside.”

  I reached for the hilt of Da’s sword, but Ma shook her head, so I took the lantern instead. Tears rolled down my cheeks, blurring my vision, and my arms and legs trembled as though I really had been running for my life.

  “I fell asleep,” I stammered, picking my words carefully to avoid outright lies.

  “It’s fine.” Ma moved slowly, limping on her leg and keeping her eyes on the dark shadows under the Ironwood. “It’s just fine, Sol.”

  I shook my head. It was most certainly not fine, but what could either of us do?

  OUR NIGHTS GREW COLDER, and the low clouds threatened rain for days. Egren and Jael had yet to return from the Ironwood, and I’d had no sign of my demon in the dozen days since our last meeting. Ma and I were both wound tight as springs, quick to snap at each other and slow to forgive.

  I told her this morning I was going to gather mushrooms. She nodded in response. I’d spent half the night staring at the darkness between our roofbeams, trying to think of another excuse to visit the Ironwood. To wait for my brothers, I told myself, although the throbbing ache between my legs told a different story.

  The demon said one last time. And I should hope he didn’t lie. Demon or not, he’d spilled seed inside me. If that seed took root before King Nøkkyn claimed me, I’d hang, and my family would receive no refund for the damaged goods they’d traded.

  I scowled at the gray sky and kicked a rotting stump. It exploded in a very satisfactory manner.

  I wasn’t just waiting for my brothers, or pining for my demon lover. A bag of beetroot, rags, and an iron pan hung heavily over my shoulder and thudded against my hips with every step. At the Harvest dance last year, I’d overheard two village girls talk of how to convince a new husband that a maidenhead was still intact. Most of it, I gleaned, came down to behavior and blood. Just lie still and look terrified, the older girl said. Afterward, he’ll check the sheets for blood.

  I didn’t remember blood when I gave myself to the demon, although for several days afterward I’d had a strange ache deep inside which filled me with equal parts fear and elation.

  Biting my lip, I tried to reign in my wandering mind. I had no doubt I could lie still and look terrified for King Nøkkyn. I was already terrified of him. And the necessary blood, I hoped, could be supplied with beetroot dye.

  That wasn’t the kind of thing I could count on making in the castle. I knew nothing about my quarters, or what limited freedom I’d be allowed. No, the dye I’d have to make here, now, and carry with me to the castle to spread between my legs before my new owner claimed me.

  A raven called. Its sharp voice shattered the still air, and I shivered. Ma said ravens were harbingers of death and, as much as Da insisted they were just birds, I couldn’t quite shake that fear.

  “Stop being stupid,” I hissed under my breath.

  I turned north, pushing ferns out of my way as I followed the cheerful chatter of the Lucky river. I was headed for a huge, half submerged rock, where the dark waters of the Lucky pooled and swirled. I planned to build a hidden fire in the lee of that granite boulder. With a little luck and a lot of patience, I’d be able to boil the beetroot juice until it was the color and thickness of blood.

  The Lucky came into view, its waters dancing in the sunlight. Little orange insects were hatching across its surface and struggling toward the beams of light that managed to filter down through the pine boughs. They seemed hopelessly vulnerable, so terribly unprepared for what awaited them in the forest. For some reason their halting upward motion made me want to cry.

  “Sol.”

  I jumped, spinning away from the water.

  He stood behind the boulder, naked as always, his hair a messy tangle above his pale face. My breath caught in my throat. I stepped toward him without thinking.

  “Hello,” I said.

  He shook his head. Dark circles spread below his haunted eyes. I took another step toward him and realized he was trembling.

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  He laughed. It sounded rusty and hollow. “No. No, damn it, I’m not all right.”

  My heart ached, and I reached for him. His entire body shook when I touched his cool skin.

  “Can I help?” I asked.

  He sighed and closed his eyes. “It’s even worse now,” he whispered. “Sol, I...I can’t think. I can’t sleep. Everything speaks of you, and...”

  His voice broke as he met my eyes.

  “I need you,” he said. “I need you the way I need air. More. Sol, being apart from you, it’s like... I feel like I’m dying.”

  My heart thundered against my chest. I know, I thought. Yes, I know exactly how you feel.

  “My poor demon,” I whispered.

  His head dropped to my shoulders and his chest rose, almost touching my breasts as he inhaled. His hair brushed my collarbone and I shivered, almost afraid to move, lest I shatter the moment.

  “May I?” he whispered. His breath sent sparks skidding across my neck and dancing down my back, tightening the soft places deep inside me.

  “Please,” I sighed, leaning against the solid strength of his chest.

  The bag slipped from my shoulders as my leg climbed up his thigh. I pulled up my dress, bunching it around my waist as I spread my legs.

  I gave him the comfort of my body.

  He entered me quickly, filling me with a shock of pleasure so sudden it made me cry out. Then he was inside me, lifting me, thrusting against me. I staggered backward until my shoulder blades pressed against the cold granite of the enormous boulder, and I arched my back, offering myself to him. His breath hissed against my skin, whispering my name over and over as his hands sank into my hair. He wants me, I realized. He needs me.

  Stars, the power of it! To have this beautiful man naked before me, aching for me. I closed my eyes and, for a moment, I was a queen, the most powerful woman in the Nine Realms, with all my subjects spread before me in supplication. I pulled him close, the sweat on our bodies slicking our thighs as our hips moved together.

  Pleasure built between us like a fire, starting as a slow flicker and growing larger and larger until it raged beyond control, until he drove my hips into the rock and I dug my heels into his back, screaming for more. It was never enough with him, never, never enough—

  My back stiffened, and the world exploded in ecstasy. He groaned above me, shoving me against the boulder as his cock throbbed inside me. His chest fell against mine, squeezing me between the cold granite and the heat of his body. I ran my fingers along the hard planes of his back and up his neck, sinking them into the tangle of his auburn hair.

  “Better?” I whispered.

  He shook his head against my neck. “No. Sol, I’ll wake up tomorrow, and you’ll be—”

  He froze, then pulled back so suddenly I stumbled forward. His arm caught me before I could fall flat on my face.

  “Someone’s coming,” he whispered.

  Panic surged through me, hot and sudden. I held my breath. The Lucky clattered over rocks and hissed past fallen trees. Wind hissed in the high branches and, somewhere far away, another raven called.

  “I don’t hear anything.”

  “Shhhhh.” He placed a finger on my lips, his eyes going soft as he looked over my shoulder.

  I frowned, concentrating. This time I did hear something, like a distant echo. Voices. Two voices, raised in harmony, singing to keep the monsters at bay
. My heart leapt.

  “Egren and Jael! Oh, it’s my brothers!”

  “Shhhhhh,” he said again. “If we’re quiet, they won’t hear us.”

  I frowned at him, wondering if that was meant to be a joke. “They’re my brothers. I haven’t seen them in over a month.”

  The demon blinked at me, his eyes clouding with confusion, and tight knot of fear bunched in my stomach. Was the demon going to try to stop me? Was this when he dragged me to Múspell? I stepped away from the cold stone pressing into my back and smoothed my skirt over my thighs.

  “They’re my family. I’m going to them,” I said, defying him.

  The demon’s brow furrowed into his usual frown. He clenched his fists, looked away, then turned and kissed me softly, his lips just brushing mine. My heart fluttered, and I wondered that such a small, tender kiss should start such a fire inside me.

  “Go,” he said, staring at the dirt between his toes.

  He stepped away from me, his shoulders slumped, and his eyes darkened. I hesitated. He looked so sad and small, standing naked and alone in the filtered light of the Ironwood.

  My brothers’ voices came again, rising and falling together in song, and my heart ached. They lived. Jael and little Egren had survived. Thank the stars.

  When I turned back to collect my bag, my demon had vanished. Soft ferns waved under the trees, every frond unbroken, leaving no hint as to where he’d gone.

  “Goodbye,” I whispered.

  The Lucky River chattered in reply.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The closer I got to my brother’s voices, the more frantic and rushed they sounded. A heavy knot of worry settled on my chest as I rushed toward their echoing refrains. They were singing an old logging song, but they were singing it too quickly, almost breathlessly, as if they were running.

  Had there been a problem? An accident?

  I tried to ignore the tightening in my chest. I could hear both voices singing, Jael’s deep baritone and Egren’s lighter, younger tenor, but that didn’t mean they were both unharmed. Egren’s little body flashed through my mind, my baby brother climbing high into the purple oaks, a shimmering blade tucked under his arm.

  “Egren!” I yelled. “Jael!”

  The singing paused.

  “Sol?” Jael’s call echoed back to me, ringing through the tree trunks.

  My heart leapt, and I raced through the forest, ignoring the little branches that pulled at my clothes and tangled my hair. Several paces later, I crashed through ferns as high as my shoulders and almost plowed into Jael’s broad chest.

  “Sol!” he cried.

  He blinked at me for a moment before shrugging off the sledge’s shoulder harness and wrapping me in his enormous arms. He crushed me to his chest, and for a heartbeat I was so strongly reminded of my father that it made my heart ache with a vast, echoing loneliness.

  “By the stars, Sol, what are you doing here?”

  He pulled back, holding me at arm’s length, and I saw the tight lines around his mouth, the tense knot of his shoulders. Beside him, Egren’s little upturned face was pale, his eyes wide. But the sledge was loaded with fine, straight purple oak limbs; they should have been joyful, not terrified.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Shhhh. Sing.” Jael’s eyes jumped from me to the darkness of the forest, and immediately he and Egren began the third refrain. It was Da’s song, the one he always told us was magical. To keep the monsters of Ironwood at bay.

  My poor brothers. They had no idea I was under the protection of a demon, a protection I was certain extended to them.

  “We’re fine,” I said. “You don’t need to worry. My lov—”

  A branch snapped in the woods behind us, and I clamped my mouth shut. Stars, what had I been about to say?

  Jael’s hand tightened on my shoulder, and I winced.

  “Sing,” he hissed.

  I nodded. “From the darkness comes the light,” I sang, joining the chorus. “From our softness comes our strength.”

  “From the darkness comes the light,” Jael echoed, gesturing to Egren.

  Egren moved beside him, linking hands with Jael. They both stared at me.

  “From the black earth grows the sun-wheat,” they sang.

  “From the ashes springs the fire,” I added.

  Jael nodded as he pulled the harness back onto his shoulders. The thick mud behind him squelched as the sledge slid reluctantly forward.

  “So from the darkness,” we sang together, “comes the light.”

  I followed Egren and Jael, looking back over my shoulder. The branches swayed behind us, but whether it was our motion or the movement of some unseen figure making them dance, I could not have said.

  “SOL GOES INTO THOSE woods.”

  I jolted awake at Ma’s voice. I’d been dozing by the fire, my arms wrapped around Egren’s chest. He used to sleep with me as a baby. Now, I could scarcely believe his lanky little body belonged to the same boy I’d once nuzzled as an infant. Egren had gone from a chubby, cheerful toddler to a tall, serious child. It was as if my father’s death had brought old age to his young frame like frost settling on the crops, shriveling and blackening them.

  Jael was all smiles once we emerged from the Ironwood, and he refused to answer my questions about what had them both so scared. It was just as well, I slowly realized, as I could scarcely explain my similar insistence that we had nothing to fear.

  They had found a beautiful purple oak, he recounted over the dinner table. Egren limbed the top branches, Jael cut them into usable lumber, and now the tree was ready to fell. With any luck, Jael said, they would be able to load three or four sledge loads of lumber before the snow fell. But I noted the tightness in his shoulders as he spoke, and the hard glint in his eyes. Something had happened to them in the shadows of the Ironwood. Something my brothers refused to mention at the dinner table, or after. But now the fire was low, and Jael had every reason to think I was sleeping.

  “I know,” Jael said, his voice low and thick in the darkness of our cabin. “What in the Nine Realms was Sol doing so deep in the Ironwood?”

  Ma made a thick noise deep in her throat. “Leave her be. She’s little enough time to enjoy her freedom.”

  “But it’s not safe, Ma,” Jael pressed. “I saw the tracks myself. They were longer than my forearm. And they were fresh.”

  “On the old road?”

  “And the new. And the path by the Lucky as well.”

  Ma hissed through her teeth.

  “The tracks are on all the trails,” Jael said, dropping his voice. “That monster Fenris is circling this house.”

  I opened my eyes slowly, focusing on the flickering embers of the fire. Egren sighed in his sleep.

  “But, what can we do?” Ma said.

  Jael grunted. The bench creaked beneath him as he leaned back. “There’s not a damn thing we can do. It’s not like we have the money to move, is it? And I’ve no wish to be sold into slavery like Sol.”

  “Hush! You know she had little enough choice. And just imagine the mess we’d be in if she’d refused!”

  Jael sighed. “Stars. I don’t like this any more than you do.”

  They both fell silent. A small flame leapt from the ashes, reached for the darkness of the chimney, and then fell back, extinguished by its own desire.

  “I can go see the witch-lady in the morning to beg some protection,” Jael said. “And we need to keep Sol close.”

  I bit my lip, trying to keep my breathing even while my heart thundered against my ribs. I’d seen no tracks, nor any sign of Fenris the monster wolf. But I didn’t doubt my brother’s words. We’d both been raised in the shadows of the Ironwood. Da claimed he’d once seen the Light-elves a-hunting in the deep forest, and Ma had seen the sprites. As a child, once, Jael had taken me into the forest to show me the tracks of a were-bear.

  And hadn’t I taken a demon lover from Múspell in the darkness of the Ironwood?

  Tears bi
t behind my lids. My demon wanted me to call him Fenris, the silly thing. But if he met the real Fenris, the monster wolf who stood as tall as the trees, my little demon wouldn’t stand a chance. His muscular, naked body filled my mind, his delicate fingers and burning, pale eyes. He was strong, and I didn’t doubt he was brave, but against the monster of the Ironwood?

  I pictured his beautiful body broken, pierced by teeth bigger than broadswords, and I had to feign a coughing fit to hide the sob that choked me.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Fear kept me awake.

  Fear, and the image of my lover’s beautiful body, bloodied, broken, and flung to the forest floor. Ma and Jael talked some time longer, speculating about what the family would need to survive the winter and how much they could spare to give the witch-woman in exchange for protection from the Fenris-wolf. When they said there would only be three mouths to feed that winter, my gut twisted into a tight, angry knot. They wouldn’t need to worry about me when the snow fell; I’d be a pampered whore in King Nøkkyn’s harem come winter. My mouth tasted bitter as I struggled to keep my breathing level and even, as though I were still asleep.

  Finally, the benches creaked and scraped as Ma and Jael lay down in their sleeping furs. I waited and waited, watching the fire’s embers die slowly, one by one, and listening to the steady hiss of their breathing. Only when the cottage was entirely dark did I dare to ease my arm out from under Egren’s head and come to my feet.

  Enough moonlight fell through the doorframe to reveal the huddled shapes of my mother and brothers curled on the floor. Jael was snoring, the rough timbre of his breathing so like my Da it almost pained me to listen. My heart raced as I backed away from their prone figures, treading lightly and hardly daring to breathe.

  It was cold when I stepped through the door. The swollen moon hung low over the trees of the Ironwood, bathing our dooryard and kitchen garden in an odd, pale light which made the whole world look like it was underwater. I marveled that the yard I’d known all my life could look so strange.