Chapter Three
Scandinavia
–Katana–
ICOULD NOT help but wonder whether things would have turned out the same way if I had never mentioned the silver crown of darkness around Torsten’s head on the shore of my Maine chalet.
Would he have used some sort of divine power to break through my defenses, toss me over his shoulder, and whisk me back in time, nearly landing me in another man’s arms?
The enemy’s arms, despite how drawn I'd been to him?
The answer was yes.
Things would have been the same, no matter what.
I knew it the moment we touched, however infuriating and awkward it was to be tossed over Torsten's broad shoulder.
The fire that blazed through my veins at the mere feel of him told me I was right where I was supposed to be.
Right where some part of my soul had yearned to be for longer than I could remember.
That became even more apparent when I saw the silver crown of darkness on his head transform into one of light and realized the man I had long dreamed about was not one but two, trapped within the same gorgeous form. When that happened, I crossed a barrier between us and saw his other side clearly.
And he confirmed it after he surfaced.
“I couldn’t say how you did it any more than I know how your friend and my soon-to-be queen does it,” he confessed, “but you were able to pull my better half to the surface in a way no one else but Marjorie can.”
My heart leaped into my throat when he confirmed my friend was safe and sound.
“Where is she?” I asked, grateful for the cool, blustery wind given how overheated he’d just made me, and for the chance to take in the strange, desolate crevice between towering mountains where we had ended up.
It seemed to stretch on forever in both directions.
“And where are we?” My heart raced as I looked around again, hoping to see Taro.
“And where is my friend?” I thought of the beautiful but vicious woman who had fought alongside Torsten. “Is he still with that Viking woman?”
Taro could fight better than most, but she clearly could too, just like Torsten, who had more than held his own against us.
“I don't know if my sister, Frey, is still with Taro, as you call him, or not.” Far more proper than his other half, Torsten turned his back and chanted me into an outfit more suitable to this era, then handed me one of his daggers, hilt first. “Nor do I know precisely where we are, so you'd best stay alert and carry some weapons.”
How comforting. Yet I appreciated the gesture, so I nodded and looked over my new outfit, complete with a black tunic cinched at the waist, linen trousers, sturdy walking boots, and a warm black fur cloak over my shoulders.
Once I stopped overheating from being so close to Torsten, it would come in handy against the constant wind.
Based on the scent of sea salt in the air, we were relatively close to the ocean, and given the fresh, vibrant green moss growing on the rock, I'd guess it was springtime.
“Should I be concerned about your sister hurting Taro?” I asked, preferring to be honest if possible. “Though you should know it could go the other way if she keeps fighting him like that.”
I sheathed the blade he gave me in the belt at my waist, grateful when he handed me another small dagger that I slid into one of my boots, still trying to come to grips with how different he was now. How much safer I felt with him compared to how terrified I had been with his darker side.
Or so I told myself.
The truth? A small part of me had been just as attracted to his other half.
Too attracted to his dangerous taunt to take me here and now.
Of hoisting me into his arms and claiming something I knew deep down I would have willingly given him, knowing without a doubt it would have felt like nothing I’d ever experienced.
How else could it be when, with every second that ticked by between us in those steamy moments, I could barely breathe with want of him? How else, when a throbbing pleasure had blossomed between my thighs so swiftly, I almost hoped he would do what he craved? We craved?
“Frey will not harm him unless she has no choice,” Torsten said, bringing me back to the here and now. His tone was one of assurance, despite the troubling nature of his words. “Or unless she’s ordered to.”
I thought about the stunning woman with her big, smoky gray eyes, creamy tanned skin, and a thick mass of long, crimson-tinged dark-brown curls, wondering vaguely whether Taro would be able to keep his wits about him in her presence, since I had sensed the shift in him when he looked at her.
More than that, I recalled how attuned he was to their arrival, sight unseen.
Or, more specifically, to her arrival, if I were to guess.
“Why would she be ordered to harm Taro?” I shot back, not liking the sound of that. Nor did I like being unable to warn him about how vulnerable he was.
“’Tis hard to say.” Torsten shrugged, then seemed to realize how much that upset me, and his expression softened. “Though improbable, as he hasn’t harmed me or mine yet, despite fighting us when there was no need. That alone could be probable cause for—”
“He fought you because he was defending me, and don’t tell me you didn’t realize that, no matter which personality was at the forefront,” I interrupted, putting my hands on my hips and frowning at him, even though he seemed distracted, trying to figure out where we were.
“And if Frey doesn’t realize that, I want you to take me back there now. ”
“I would if I could.” He sighed and shook his head, looking in both directions down the long paths that seemed like endless tunnels of rock, overlooked by an increasingly stormy sky.
“Yet without a Yggdrasil to travel through, I fear we’re trapped in this century, with no choice but to walk in one direction or the other. ”
“A Yggdrasil,” I murmured, understanding what the old ash in front of my chalet was now.
A portal, seemingly straight out of Norse mythology, that allowed Marjorie to travel back in time.
“Where is Marjorie?” I asked him again, baffled by what else he had called her. “And why is she soon-to-be a queen?”
While I could assume she was about to marry a king, I had a feeling that, in this strange place of leaping portals jumping from tree to tree, anything was possible. And anyway, it went against my grain as a journalist to assume anything.
“She will soon be my queen because she’s destined to marry Blaze, her fated mate and my liege.” Torsten gestured for me to follow him in the direction he seemed to favor. “That will make her queen until the time comes for another to replace her.”
“Why do I get the sense you think that will be sooner rather than later?” I said, keeping pace with him as best I could, given our height difference.
“That is what Blaze and Marjorie alluded to when the prophecy began.”
He went on to explain how the gods would truly be among his people again when a seer born of evil ignited the Realm of Fire prophecy, coming forth from the mists of time with a whisper of her lover’s dragon fire, showing her the way.
“That would be Marjorie,” I assumed, knowing enough about her family history in Scotland to know her father and grandmother had sounded pretty darn evil.
“And the whisper of her lover’s dragon fire,” I went on slowly, understanding dawning as I said it, “that was the red sash I caught on the wind the day she left, wasn’t it? ”
“’Tis,” he exclaimed, as surprised as I was that somehow I knew that.
“Long story short, ‘twas Blaze’s dragon breath, and Marjorie who passed the trials fate laid out for her. Now we have no choice but to navigate the prophecy. ‘Twill mean keeping the Valkyrie’s Viking blade away from a darkness determined not just to possess it but to destroy the Realm.”
“The only place left in this century where dragons can be dragons,” I murmured, seeming to catch more with each passing moment.
He stopped short, eyeing me. “Ja, that’s right...mostly. There’s the Dragon Lair, too, but ‘tis not part of the prophecy.”
The Dragon Lair? That sounded like somewhere darkness would prefer, but evidently not.
“And all of this is coming to me, how?” I wondered, though I suspected I knew, judging by the flare of Torsten's dragon eyes and the way even his kinder side couldn’t hide the desire in his gaze when he looked at me.
“I think you know how,” he said, seemingly caught off guard by how quickly things were progressing between us, despite the long history of dreams we shared, perhaps because of how his darker half had behaved.
“’Tis our dragons bonding. The more time we spend together, the more you will understand things you would not otherwise.
‘Tis also why you were likely able to pull my true personality to the surface so swiftly.”
While tempted to counter that his other half probably felt he was the true personality, now wasn’t the time.
“I would have thought it was the change in your crown that helped me pull out this side of you.” I eyed him curiously.
“What’s that all about, anyway? Why do you sometimes wear a ghostly silver crown that clearly shifts with your personality?
” My gaze dropped to the crown tattooed on the side of his neck.
Though I was tempted to touch it, just to feel his warm skin beneath my fingertips, I refrained.
“Does it have something to do with your tattoo?”
Confusion knit his brow. “Whilst Marjorie has claimed she’s seen the crown on my head, too, she made no mention of it changing.”
“Yet it does,” I replied. “When this side of you is out, it’s less sinister. Shinier.” I shook my head. “No dark sparks.”