The Blood Curse (57 page)

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-SIX

A
FTER THEY’D EATEN
, Britta pushed her plate away and studied Karel in the candlelight. He looked stern—his cheekbones and eyebrows made it impossible for him not to—but he also looked relaxed. She saw no pain on his face.

Five days ago he’d been close to death, slipping in and out of consciousness. She remembered the way he’d called her name—anguished, desperate—and the utter relief on his face each time he’d opened his eyes and seen her.

“Karel?”

He glanced up.

“There’s something I need to discuss with you before we reach Harkeld.”

His eyebrows rose. “Sounds serious.” He pushed his own plate away and leaned his elbows on the table.

It is serious
. And it needed to be sorted out now, before Harkeld and Karel could step into their familiar roles of prince and armsman: one giving orders, the other obeying.

Britta took deep breath and tried to ignore her nervousness. “On the ship, you said you didn’t want to marry Yasma.”

His eyebrows rose even higher. “I don’t.”

“Is there someone at home—someone in Esfaban—who’s waiting for you?”

He shook his head.

Britta took another deep breath, and clutched her hands together, and blurted, “Will you marry me?”

Karel blinked, and his expression went completely blank, and he pushed back slightly from the table.

“Please?” Britta said.

“Marry you?” He looked away, swallowed, looked back at her. “Britta, you’re a princess—”

“So?”

“So, it’s not... it’s not...”

“My parents are dead. What does it matter who they were?”

Karel closed his mouth and frowned.

“If Esfaban is freed, I want to go back with you.”

He stared at her for a long moment, and then said, “You don’t have to be my wife to do that.”

“Karel... I love you.”

“Me?” Emotions crossed his face, too quickly for her to identify them.

“Yes. I need to know if you think you might possibly, one day... love me.”

Karel looked away from her. She saw him swallow.

“Or, if you think you never will. If you’d rather wait for someone else.”

Karel closed his eyes. What was he thinking?

Britta looked down at her hands, clenched together on the table, and waited.

“Of course I love you,” Karel said, his voice low. “I’ve loved you for years.”

Britta raised her head. Karel was looking at her, and the emotion in his dark eyes was so intense that she could scarcely breathe.

Karel wrenched his gaze from hers. He looked down at the table. “Are you sure you wish to marry? After Duke Rikard, I thought—”

“Rikard happened to someone else. It... it doesn’t seem
real
. It’s like a dream that I can’t even remember.”

“Probably the poppy syrup.”

“Probably.” But part of it was also that Rikard was dead, and that she was no longer in Osgaard, and that she’d changed so much in the past few months. She wasn’t the submissive Princess Brigitta who’d married Duke Rikard. She was Britta, strong and confident and making her own decisions about her life. And Duke Rikard had never touched Britta.

Britta pushed back her stool and walked to where Karel sat. He watched her approach, his eyes black and wary in the candlelight.

She held out her hand to him. “Marry me? Please?”

He wanted to, and he thought he shouldn’t. She could see the struggle on his face, so she bent her head and pressed her lips to his.

Karel became completely still. And then he groaned under his breath, and tried to pull back. “Britta...”

Britta grabbed his hair, held him in place, and kissed him again.

For a long, terrible moment, it seemed that Karel wouldn’t respond, and then he kissed her back. His mouth was gentle, reverent, yet also fierce. His arms came around her and he pulled her down to sit on his lap.

They kissed, and kissed some more, and then Britta said, “I want to share your bed tonight.”

“Share it?” Karel said cautiously. “You mean...?”

“I mean I want us to have sex. Because tomorrow we’ll reach Harkeld, and if he orders you to leave me, I’m afraid you’ll obey.”

“I won’t.”

“You’ve been obeying orders for eight years, Karel. And if Harkeld tells you to—”

“I haven’t obeyed every order. And I will never leave you.”

“I know.” And she
did
know it, but she also wanted to forge their bond so profoundly that no one could ever break it.
I am his, and he is mine
. And so she stood and pulled him to his feet, drawing him towards the bedchamber and the wolf skins and the clean sheets.

Karel resisted. “Maybe we should wait.”

“Why?”

To her surprise, Karel blushed.

“Why?” she asked again.

“Britta, I’ve never lain with a woman. It was either bondservants or whores, and I didn’t want either. And... I’m afraid I’ll
hurt
you.”

“You won’t.”

Karel looked at her, and she saw the conflict on his face—wait; not wait—and then he swung her up in his arms and carried her into the bedchamber.

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-SEVEN

T
HE TENT WAS
empty when Jaumé woke. He yawned and rubbed his eyes and crawled outside. The sky was blue and the snow bright white. A large, silver-pelted wolf lay by the fire. It raised its head and looked at him with yellow eyes.

“Petrus?” Jaumé said cautiously.

The wolf winked at him, and stood and stretched and shook itself from head to tail, like a big dog, and changed into Petrus.

Jaumé ate breakfast, and helped Petrus gather more firewood, and then they went across to the creek and checked on the horses. The animals had found the grass beneath the foot-deep snow and were grazing. Mid-morning, the prince emerged from his tent. He was less tottery than yesterday.

Jaumé kept sneaking glances down the valley. When would Princess Britta and her soldier arrive?

Innis patrolled as a hawk, and came back an hour later.

“How far?” Petrus asked her, in a low voice.

“End of the road,” Innis whispered back, and went to sit beside the prince at the fire.

Petrus searched through the packsaddles for a needle and thread to mend a hole in his shirt. Jaumé went to help him. When he looked up, the prince had his arm around Innis and they were leaning towards each other, their heads bent close together. Petrus caught his elbow. “Let’s give them some time alone.” His voice sounded funny. Jaumé looked at his face, and thought his expression was funny, too, as if Petrus didn’t know whether he was happy or sad.

T
HEY STAMPED DOWN
a large patch of snow, and Petrus gave him his first wrestling lesson.

“Size and strength matter, but so does this.” Petrus tapped his forehead. “You want to be fast, and you want to be
smart
. You got to be thinking two steps ahead of your opponent.”

Jaumé nodded seriously.

“But first, you have to learn the moves.”

Petrus was teaching him how to grapple, when he suddenly stopped and looked down the valley. Jaumé stopped, too. “Is it...?”

Two riders had come into view.

“It is.” Petrus put a hand on Jaumé’s shoulder, and turned towards the fire, where Innis and Prince Harkeld sat, and called, “Here they come.”

H
ARKELD LOOKED UP
. Was it Rand and Serril? Already?

But the smaller rider was too small to be Rand, and the larger one wasn’t quite large enough for Serril. “Who are they?” he said, baffled. He looked at Innis. She was grinning. So was Petrus, and so was Jaumé.

The riders drew closer, and they were wearing cloaks with hoods, and Harkeld couldn’t see their faces, no matter how hard he stared, and then the smaller rider halted and slid down from his horse and ran through the snow towards him, and his hood slipped back and—

“Britta?” Harkeld stood so fast that he almost fell over. “
Britta?
”

Britta flung herself at him and hugged him hard, and Harkeld hugged her back, dizzy, more confused than he’d ever been in his life, and he said, “What?” and then, “What?”

Innis and Petrus were laughing, and Jaumé was laughing, too, and the second horseman dismounted and pushed back his hood. Harkeld stared at him, recognized the dark face, and grew even more confused. “What?”

Petrus laughed even harder. “You look like a fish with your mouth open like that.”

T
HEY SAT AROUND
the fire, and Harkeld held Britta’s hand tightly. Questions tumbled in his mind. He didn’t know where to start. Something had happened to Britta, that was obvious. Something momentous. She wasn’t the girl he’d left behind in the palace. It wasn’t just the short hair that was different. It was her face, her manner.

“What are you doing here? What’s happened?”

Britta and her armsman exchanged a glance. The armsman had altered, too; he was thin, almost gaunt, and a long, fresh scar tracked across his forehead.

“From the beginning,” the armsman said, and Britta nodded and said, “You tell it.”

The armsman told the tale sparsely. Harkeld listened in growing horror. “Marry Rikard?” he said, and then “Invade Lundegaard?” He didn’t say anything when he heard his father was dead, but he said “Execute the boys?” with such panic that Innis reached out to touch him, at the same time that Britta said, “Don’t worry, we got them out.”

He felt Innis’s healing magic slide under his skin, and his heartbeat steadied. “You did?”

The armsman nodded and continued the tale—the escape from the palace, the voyage to Lundegaard—and then the story veered sharply. Harkeld stopped asking questions and just listened. Britta had been abducted by Fithian assassins? He flicked a glance at Jaumé. This was what the boy had been skirting around when he’d told his tale. The armsman filled in the gaps, and added his own story, told of Prince Tomas’s death, and then he said something that focused Harkeld’s attention absolutely. “One of the assassins said that Jaegar’s been poisoned. It’s slow-acting. He’ll be dead in three months.”

Harkeld stared at him. “All-Mother...” And then, urgently, “We
have
to get back to Lundegaard! Tell Magnas! If Jaegar dies...”

“We know,” Britta said. “Civil war.”

Harkeld frantically worked out the distances in his head. “If we leave here tomorrow—”

“We’re hoping Magnas can claim Osgaard in the boys’ names,” Britta said. “Act as regent for them.”

“He’ll try,” Harkeld said. “I’m certain of it!”

“And if he’s regent, he’ll break Osgaard up again, won’t he? Give back the annexed kingdoms? End bondservice?”

“Of course.” Magnas would rebuild Osgaard—
if
he had the opportunity. “We have to get back! The sooner Magnas knows, the better chance he’ll have!” And then Harkeld’s urgency deflated. “I can’t go to Lundegaard with you. I’m... Did Tomas tell you I’m a mage? A witch?”

He looked at Britta, expecting to see fear and revulsion. “He told us,” Britta said. She didn’t pull her hand free.

“Magnas said that he regrets he can’t offer you a home in Lundegaard,” Karel said. There was no revulsion on his face either. “But you’re welcome there for a time. He’ll give you gold, if you need it. And he said... that in his eyes, you’re Harkeld before you’re a witch.”

Harkeld’s throat tightened. He looked away from the armsman, blinked, swallowed.

“So, that’s settled?” Britta said, squeezing his fingers. “We’re going to Lundegaard?”

“Yes.”

“I’d like to bury Tomas and the armsmen,” Karel said. “Speak the words to the All-Mother for them.”

“Yes.” Harkeld felt grief sting his eyes. “I want to say words for Tomas, too. Ah, All-Mother... it’s going to be hard telling Magnas his son’s dead.”

“It’s going to be hard telling all their families,” Karel said soberly. “They were good men.”

I
NNIS MADE HIM
rest, and then Harkeld talked with Britta and her armsman again. He might be a little shaky on his legs, but he wasn’t blind. Britta was luminous with joy, and the armsman had the dazed, incredulous expression of a man who’d had an unattainable dream come true. It was obvious the pair were in love. Deeply in love. And if they weren’t already having sex, he’d eat his saddle, buckles and all.

Harkeld looked across the valley and tried to decide how he felt about it. Britta, and an Esfaban armsman.

He’d wanted her to marry Tomas, but Tomas was dead, and if Karel had done even half of what he said he’d done, then...

There is no one who deserves her more
.

Harkeld studied the armsman’s face. It was a strong face, made almost harsh by the scar. He’d seen Karel fight in the training arena, knew he was smart and tough, not a man to go up against. But there was clearly a lot more to Karel than just his ability to fight.

The armsman met his eyes. “Highness?” he said. “There’s something—”

Harkeld held up a hand, halting him. “Harkeld. Not highness, not sire, not prince. Just Harkeld.”

The armsman closed his mouth, and then opened it again. “Uh... Harkeld, sir—”