Chapter Three #2
Einar tore his gaze from Aleksi’s to find Naia, who was pulling a fresh linen shift over her head.
He’d recognized her magic in the same way, drawn to it as if her touch in the waves held the answer to a question he’d never even known to ask.
The locals thought she was their goddess, returned to them.
A quaint superstition, for such a thing was not possible.
Was it?
“Naia, love?” Aleksi sought and held Einar’s gaze as he stretched out a hand. “Can you come here for a moment, please?”
She was grinning as she crawled onto the bed once more and pressed her cheek to Aleksi’s waiting hand. “Did you change your mind about staying in bed today?”
“Unfortunately not. I need to ask you something.”
“Anything.” She turned her smile to his palm.
Aleksi sat up, pulling Naia along with him until they were facing one another. “Has anything odd happened to you since our return to the island?”
Her smile melted away, and she bit her lip. “I was going to tell you.”
He nodded encouragingly.
Her chest heaved, and her eyes tracked back and forth between Aleksi and Einar. “The ice walls,” she said finally. “I helped control the seas in the aftermath, but I did not bring the walls down. I don’t know what did.”
The destruction of those towering, protective walls—held up with Gwynira’s magic—had been intimidating enough when Einar had thought it to be Naia’s work. To imagine someone, or something, had the power to destroy them on a whim made the trick with the fire seem like an afterthought.
Einar reached out to touch her cheek. “When you said the room was cold, the fire lit itself. With teal flames.” The color of the goddess.
Naia laughed softly. “You mean when you went to light the fire,” she corrected. “Isn’t it obvious, Einar? This island is a living thing, and it is welcoming you home.”
Could it be that simple? Was that why the magic felt so familiar? “Perhaps,” he conceded. “Whatever the reason, we have to acknowledge that something is happening here. If we can understand what, perhaps it will make the rest of our task easier.”
“Fair enough.” Naia rolled up to her knees and kissed Einar’s chin. “Do you need help getting dressed?”
He didn’t, but he was hardly going to turn down the chance to linger a few more precious moments with her hands on him. “If you please.”
He had long understood the pleasure to be had in the leisurely removal of a partner’s clothing, but he had too little experience with the reverse.
There was something profoundly sensual in the way Naia’s fingers brushed his skin as she smoothed his shirt into place, and deeply adorable when her brow furrowed in concentration as she fastened the shiny bronze buttons of his vest.
Aleksi’s gentle fingers coaxing Einar’s hair into some semblance of order was another impossible intimacy, over far too soon as the Lover turned to help Naia lace up her simple dress.
Einar took his own satisfaction in letting his hands linger on Aleksi’s body as they helped him dress—in his own stylish but relaxed fashion from the Villa instead of the stiff Imperial style—and Einar could privately admit the relief of having another chance to reassure himself that Aleksi was here and growing stronger.
That terrifying fragility of a few short days ago felt like an aberration, like a nightmare that had shattered when Aleksi had seen Naia and Einar in peril and clawed his way back to life on a wave of protective fury. Love, in its purest form—a power that dwarfed petty hatred and vengeance.
Einar doubted he had been the first to look upon the god of love and underestimate the danger he represented, but he would never make that mistake again.
Besides, Aleksi’s skills were what they needed now.
“Politics is your battlefield, Aleksi,” Einar said as he sorted through his tangle of jewelry.
Perhaps nothing too ornate today—the pirate lord, prepared to work.
He slipped on his favorite ring and glanced at Aleksi.
“How do we track down our enemies? Most of my usual methods would cause a diplomatic incident.”
“Simple. We don’t try.” Aleksi straightened his shirt in the mirror. “If we ask questions—any questions—then we risk alerting the wrong people. So we keep our own counsel, hold our tongues . . . and listen.”
Naia frowned. “You think whoever tried to kill us is just going to admit it?”
“Of course not. But the fact that they’ll also be keeping their mouths shut is something we can use.”
“I don’t follow.”
He turned and half sat, half leaned on the edge of the dresser, the very picture of relaxed ease. “People tend to notice odd things, and they want to know if other people have noticed them. Especially if no ready explanation presents itself.”
Understanding dawned on Naia’s face, smoothing away the frown. “Our enemies’ silence will create mystery.”
“Mmm. And a court loves nothing more than intrigue.”
“So we listen to them gossip.” Definitely not Einar’s favorite way to spend an afternoon, but undoubtedly Aleksi and Naia would bear the brunt of it. Even without his terrifying pirate outfit, most of Gwynira’s court was still too afraid of him to make casual conversation.
“It’s merely our opening gambit, darling.
” Aleksi crossed to Einar’s side and surveyed the jewelry before lifting a hammered wrist cuff that sported a massive black diamond.
Dianthe herself had given it to him on his two-thousandth birthday, claiming she’d salvaged it from deep in the ocean, from a rock that had fallen from the stars when their world was still young.
Einar held out his wrist, and Aleksi fastened it in place with a smile.
“Worry not. We’ll be laying our traps soon enough. ”
Well, at least one person in the court would no doubt be eager to corner Einar. “I suppose I can let Klement rattle on at me. He does love to talk.”
Naia slipped into a fur-lined overdress so reminiscent of the local fashions that the servants must have made it for her. “I can mingle with the nobles, though I’m a curiosity to them, at best. The palace staff, on the other hand . . .”
“Brilliant.” Aleksi lifted her chin and kissed her lightly. “Leave the nobles to me.”
With their respective battle plans in place, Einar squared his shoulders and opened the door, gesturing for Aleksi and Naia to precede him.
The corridors of Gwynira’s icy palace were mostly empty at this time of day, with the bulk of those who made up her court no doubt gathered in the ballroom where they whispered and plotted and vied for Gwynira’s favor—or tested her patience.
But every servant they passed inclined their head to Einar before bowing deeply to Naia.
She seemed to be growing used to their deference—or at least comfortable enough with it that the smiles she offered in return held genuine warmth.
There was a rightness to her in this place that defied explanation, a belonging that sank into Einar’s bones and made him think about his first mate’s words on the night they’d left on this journey.
When I look at her . . .
Petya had not finished the thought. She hadn’t needed to.
Petya gazed upon Naia and saw the goddess she had worshipped for endless centuries—the Mother of Rahvekya, who had once walked the shores of a tropical island and loved its people so dearly that she’d traded her own immortal life for their safety.
The servants they passed saw their goddess returned. For the first time, Einar wondered if they could be right. Or if their belief could make them right, for was that not the way of their world? Dreams came true, quite literally.
How many generations had dreamed that a goddess with a love for the sea would walk these shores again and protect them? Dozens? A hundred?
Enough to make it come true. Naia did not even need to be the goddess of their myths to be the fulfillment of three thousand years’ worth of dreaming. And they would love her for it.
The doors to the ballroom were thrown wide, the murmur of voices audible as soon as they turned the final corner. Gwynira’s court enjoyed casual midday meals, circulating between heavily laden buffet tables while the Ice Queen herself stayed safely ensconced on her throne.
She was there now, the three steps up to her dais discouraging casual conversation almost as much as the hulking presence of her personal guard at their base.
Arktikos had the rare talent of looking forbidding even with a perfectly pleasant expression fixed on his handsome features—or perhaps what Einar felt was an entirely rational wariness of a man who could change into an enormous polar bear in the time it took to blink.
He wasn’t the only one whose presence prickled warning down Einar’s neck. A second throne had been added next to Gwynira’s. Isa perched there, her odd, steel gray eyes sweeping straight to Einar and his lovers as they entered the room.
She still made Einar uneasy, even from across the room.
He could recall her abrupt arrival too easily.
Appearing from nowhere and tumbling to the floor naked should have been the oddest part, but what loomed large in Einar’s mind was how she’d immediately lashed out, pinning him to the wall with shadows that felt like the Endless Void itself.
He’d only seen Zanya wield magic like that, and she was the Endless Void—or at least the manifestation of it, born into the body of a woman with shadows in her eyes and murder in her heart. There were few things that Einar feared, but weapons forged from the Void were one of them.
At least Zanya’s ties to the High Court were unshakable. Einar didn’t understand the allegiances of this strange woman, except that she was clearly devoted to Gwynira—and Gwynira to her.
If only Einar could be as confident as Naia and Aleksi that Gwynira was a friend to be trusted.