He nodded as if he’d known that would be my response. I pulled my knees to my chest and rested my chin on them as a cold wind stirred my hair. “I have a proposal for you,” Leif said, his voice a mere murmur at my side. “If we spend this night in each other’s arms, then I give you my word that I will do nothing but sleep beside you. The night is cold, and we both have lost so much.”
There was no manipulation in his voice. Absent, too, was his usual gruff overconfidence. In the darkness, it was merely one soul asking the other for warmth and comfort.
“Just for tonight,” I whispered back.
We lay down upon his silver wolf mantle, my back to his chest. He wrapped his arms around me, and as the welcome warmth flooded me, I closed my eyes against the tears that threatened. In Leif’s arms, I realized the turmoil and mental anguish I’d felt toward him was unfounded. Leif was a Northman, an outsider, but he accepted me more than any of my own clan ever had.
For I couldn’t help but think that no one had ever held me like that, nor had I needed them to.
But on this dark night, I didn’t dare pull away.
16
As the sun rose the next morning, the ground was cool with mist and dew, but the last wisps of smoke of the funeral pyre were still drifting to the sky. I clenched my jaw to keep the tears from flowing anew and bent to touch the pile of ash, picturing Sleipnir as he once was.
Bowing my head, I sent up a prayer for Sleipnir and even the Northmen who had fought beside me. Give me the strength to exact revenge.
We kept up a grueling pace on foot all the way to Mide. We were silent and focused, and I missed Sleipnir with every step. In spite of my pushing Leif away, like I had so many times before, things seemed to have changed between us—as though we had both bared part of our souls. For the first time, I felt a breath of hope. With our combined strength, there was little that could stop us.
Buoyed as I was by these thoughts of our near invincibility, the feeling dimmed when I thought of actually going home again. What reception would I receive when I entered the bailey? Would my father bar my entrance to the castle? More important, what would I do if he tried? I knew the answer to that; I knew that I would shout the truth about the j?tnar threat from the middle of the castle grounds if I had to. My clansmen might not believe me, but they had a right to know what would soon threaten them—if it wasn’t already an immediate threat. Again, a jolt of fear for my sisters shot up my spine. I had to see them again, exile or no exile.
I glanced at Leif running beside me, the sun turning his hair to gold, and I knew that whatever I was about to be greeted with, we would deal with it—together. He caught me admiring him and flashed a smile that I returned easily. A friendship and alliance forged by bloodshed and shared loss.
A gull cried nearby, and I slowed my pace. When I took a deep breath, the salty tang of the ocean breeze filled my nostrils, bringing forth a torrent of memories. The familiar scents of home.
Only . . . another smell presented itself—stronger than the others. The acrid smell of something burnt.
On the crest of the next hill, we stopped. My father’s castle loomed before us on the next rise, and the longing for my home struck me in the chest like an arrow.
The smell of burning in the air became stronger, and the first pinpricks of fear pierced my abdomen. “Wait for me here,” I said hurriedly to Leif. “My father would have your head on a spike.”
His jaw tightened. “I will not.”
“Leif, please—”
He crossed his arms. “Where you go, I go,” he said.
I glanced from his determined face to the outline of my father’s castle in the distance. I hadn’t the time to debate. “Fine. We go together.”
We sprinted down the hill and climbed the treacherous cliffside of my father’s castle. Only two guards waited for us at the gates, their faces gray and gaunt.
“Princess Ciara!” said the man I belatedly recognized as Faelan, Fergus’s brother. His presence was an ominous sign, as he was a farmer, not a warrior. “What are you doing here? We thought you’d been exiled.”
“I was,” I said, bracing myself for whatever instructions my father had given him in the event I came home.
“Brádan,” he said to the gaunt man next to him, “hurry and notify the queen her daughter has returned.”
Confused now that he should send for my mother instead of my father, I take a step toward him. “Faelan, where is my father?” I asked.
Faelan stilled, and the panic that had engulfed me since I smelled fire began to smother me. “Princess, it is not for me to say . . .”
His gaze skittered away from mine, back toward the keep, the wall of which prevented much of my view, but I was suddenly desperate to see inside.
I grabbed his arm. “My sisters—where are Branna and Deidre?”
“Safe, milady. With your mother in the keep—”
I strode past him, Leif following close behind. I had to see them, had to see my father, who would shed light on what had transpired.
Once we had passed through the gates, the bailey was strangely absent of life. No animals bleated, no voices carried on the wind, no people hurried about their day. As I reached the bailey’s center, it became clear where the taste of ash was coming from.
The chapel was a blackened ruin. My first thought was a Northman raid, but there were no other signs. No bloodstains or other remnants of a battle. No other buildings had been damaged, only the church.
I ran to the broken door, my heart pounding. Chains lay in a pile on the steps, links severed as though cut. I hadn’t stepped through this doorway for so many years that, for a moment, I couldn’t move. My hand shook as I pulled open what was left of the door.
Leif kept me from falling as I let out a strangled cry.
So many bodies, all men, dressed for battle. Weapons littered the floor, or lay clutched in blackened, skeletal hands. The smell of charred flesh, wood smoke, and ash was so strong I leaned over and gagged. Most of the men had died near the door of the church, as though they had attempted to fight their way out.
Shaking, and with tears pricking my eyes from the remnants of smoke, I scanned the bodies for signs of Fergus or Conall.
I stumbled forward, tripping over blackened legs and grasping fingers. Furiously I searched through the ash until my hands were black as pitch. Tears mingled with the ash until fat black droplets tracked down my cheeks. Leif stood guard at the door, his expression grim.
I found what I had been seeking on the steps of the altar. With trembling fingers I retrieved it: my father’s golden circlet.
Nearby was a corpse who had fallen still grasping his sword, and I immediately recognized the jeweled hilt. Like the other bodies, the skin had burned away from his bones, but still I knew. Unlike the others, this body had been beheaded. I touched the skull as pieces of me broke away inside. My breaths were coming faster, mingling with my trapped sobs. I clutched the circlet so hard I felt the weakened metal begin to give way.
The anger was building within me, a fire feeding on my uncontained grief. I wanted to find whoever had done this, to tear them limb from limb. I wanted to burn their village to the ground.
A soft noise came from the entrance of the church, and I turned to find my mother standing next to Leif, her face pale and drawn.
“Máthair,” I said in a rush, hurrying to her side. “What has happened here? áthair . . .”
“He is dead,” my mother said, her voice raspy and devoid of emotion, as though she had spent weeks in the throes of grief and hadn’t quite emerged as the same person. “He is dead along with some two hundred of your clansmen.” Her eyes met mine, and I sucked in a breath in pain when I saw the loathing reflected there. “And you weren’t here to protect them thanks to your faithless attack on your own father.”