Chapter 3
She could have killed him.
The little vixen could have killed him.
Egill collapsed onto his bed in the house of Svirla—an unnecessary luxury, an unnecessary distance to fade, and yet his body had pulled him here by instinct.
His mind was tearing and cracking. The damn wench—small and mortal and human, and yet nothing but her mercy had saved him from a painful death at Gothel’s hands.
So much for the champion of Linne.
So much for his cleverness.
He stared at the ceiling with unseeing eyes. Orin help him, she’d been entirely too delightful. She’d been fire in his arms and honey-sweet nectar on his tongue, and he still heard that hoarse voice echoing more …
He wanted more, too.
A curse fell from his lips.
This was nonsensical. He didn’t need fire or delight.
What he needed was fame and fortune, like any honorable alf.
What he needed was the hand of Raghnar’s daughter, a meek and well-raised girl who’d make for a suitable bonded mate, who’d never call him a jester and a boring prick and an obligatory waffler.
Who’d never shatter under his tongue with such unbridled passion, either.
He let out a groan. Fuck that. He didn’t need passion. Passion would fade, and a house of his own would last him a lifetime.
So he had to change his strategy and get the little wench out of that tower. Force wouldn’t do. He’d have to be cleverer than she was, and that might prove a challenge. But she’d saved him on this occasion, changed her mind about him at least a little. Who knew if, in the end, she might trust him?
He pushed away a sting of discomfort. Yes. That sounded good. That sounded sensible. Now he only had to figure out how to appease her again, how to avoid those cursed priestesses, and he’d get exactly what he wanted. Raghnar would just have to wait a little longer for his diamond.
It took him a few minutes too long, though, to get up and face the world again.
He left at sunrise, fading back to the tower. Now that he’d been to the place, he could return whenever he wanted—which made the prospect of a long persuasion campaign significantly less daunting.
He didn’t dare to fade into the tower itself, though. If he couldn’t leave the place, he wasn’t eager to find out what would happen if he traveled in the other direction.
Gothel and her colleagues were nowhere to be seen. He approached cautiously, just in case Rapunzel—no, Hadewych—had told them about his visit … but all was quiet as he held still at the foot of the tower.
“Rapunzel?”
The world remained silent.
“Rapunzel, are you there?” Ridiculous question. Where else would she be? “I … I’ve come back.” Not the most brilliant announcement either—she’d probably deduced that from the dulcet tones of his voice. “I’ve brought you something.”
For a minute at least, nothing moved.
Then, faintly from behind the window, she grumbled, “Your head on a silver plate?”
Egill choked on his own tongue. “I thought you’d stopped trying to kill me.”
“Perhaps I changed my mind?” She peeked over the windowsill, eyes narrowed in the most adorable and most frightening glare he’d ever seen. “You could have said goodbye, you prick.”
“I …” Yes. He could have—he should have. “You … Well, you’d just informed me my life was in danger. I was a little—”
She scoffed. “Frightened?”
“No, of course not, but—”
“Of course not, great champion!” She leaned further over the windowsill, pulling a few feet of braid along. “Humiliated, then? Even worse! Can’t look a woman in the eyes if she just outsmarted you, can you?”
He’d have liked so much to disagree with her, but somehow, he couldn’t find the lie in her words.
She snorted when he remained silent. “Your humble face is better than I expected, admittedly.”
Until today Egill hadn’t been aware he had a humble face. He cleared his throat and managed to say, “That’s why I brought you a gift. To … apologize.”
“Liar,” she said, but she did let down her hair.
Good gods. He’d be happy when all of this was over.
Really damn relieved. An alf could only stand it for so long, being mocked and humiliated, leaving his sword behind and playing the idiot in some secluded girl’s tower.
That eagerness he felt as he climbed up, careful to avoid sudden motions …
clearly it was simply eagerness to have his mission behind him.
“So,” Rapunzel grumbled as he pulled himself inside. She hauled in her hair with snappish yanks—he shouldn’t be wondering what it would feel like unbraided, how it would be to lay wrapped in those chestnut locks … “Do you want tea, too?”
I’d prefer you, he almost said, and swallowed that nonsensical sentiment. “Thank you, yes.”
She stalked to the other side of her living room, braid dragging after her. How easy would it be to pull her closer and closer until she had no choice but to melt into his arms again?
Ridiculous thought. He did no such thing. This was a game of slow persuasion, after all, of trust, and none of that included running after her like a horny brute. So he waited at her table until she finally slammed a cup of tea before him and grumbled, “Well?”
Egill reached for his belt and pulled out the invaluable dagger he’d acquired from Ingved, the master-smith of Svirla—smooth alf steel blade, wolf head pommel. “I was hoping you’d accept this as a sign of my genuine regret.”
She was ominously silent for three long heartbeats. “A dagger?”
“Yes?”
Rapunzel cocked her head, corners of her lips twitching. “What should I do with a dagger, Lord Favorite? Fight my walls?”
“What?” He blinked. “No, no. It’s an Alvish tradition.” Fuck. Perhaps he shouldn’t have assumed she knew. “It’s … it’s supposed to be an honor, receiving a weapon.”
“Is it?” Her eyes suddenly twinkled again. “As with your swords?”
“Yes,” Egill said quickly. “Exactly. That sword is important to me—to all of us. Frankly, I’d rather lose my arm than my blade. It’s a sign of …”
“Honor.”
She still sounded far too amused. He swallowed and said, “Yes.”
“What an odd notion of honor,” she said brightly. “What point does it make—that you could kill people?”
“You shouldn’t say anything about killing people,” Egill said before he could help himself, lowering the dagger into his lap. “You tried to—”
“Not to make me feel better about myself! You were just being an ass.” She huffed, falling down into a chair beside him. “Like Aunt Gertrude.”
“Aunt … Wasn’t that an accident?”
“Of course not,” she said, scowling at him. “She was beating her dog, so I figured she could use a lesson. Sent my parents into a panic, though.”
Egill stared at her. She blew the steam off her tea, then beamed back at him and added, “I didn’t frighten you, did I?”
“Of course you didn’t.” She absolutely did.
Had he known how ruthless this little ball of freckles and hair and sensual ecstasy was, he might never have entered her tower.
“Look, it’s not about making me feel better about myself.
Just, that sword, those weapons … they create a certain sense of power. ”
“I already have power!” She rolled her eyes. “I can talk arrogant bastards into kissing me. Why would I need daggers to tell the world how wonderful I am if I already know?”
“You—”
“Don’t deny I’m delightful.” She glared at him. “You came back. Considering how much you love your own company, that must mean something.”
He hadn’t particularly enjoyed his own company last night. He didn’t think he’d ever enjoyed his company as much as … as …
“I didn’t mind about yesterday at all,” he heard himself say.
What was he doing? That wasn’t the plan. The plan was winning her trust, flattering her until she allowed him to take her outside, and then fade her into Raghnar’s greedy hands. But her eyes lit up with such vivid excitement, such warmth, that he didn’t have the heart to take it back.
It hadn’t been a lie anyway.
“We could … repeat it?” she suggested, her berry-red lips twitching into a mischievous smile so alarmingly alluring that he forgot to breathe. “That would be a better present than that dagger of yours.”
Egill glanced down. Now that he looked at the dagger again, he wasn’t sure why he had thought it worth a handful of gold.
“Clearly,” he said, shoving it aside, “it would be dangerous to refuse you anything, my little treasure.”
“Very dangerous.” She bit her lip—another gesture that really had no right looking so damn attractive. “You’d better promise to bring me something better tomorrow and make up for it now.”
He promised, in long and flowery sentences, until she swatted the tip of her braid at him to shut him up. Then he fucked her over the table until they were both breathless and bone-tired and the tea had gone cold in their cups.
He thought a little longer the next day and brought her a painting.
It was just a quick sketch of the Elderburg market square, barely worth a single silver coin.
But Rapunzel danced around the room with it for minutes and then asked two dozen questions about the tea shops and the cobblestone streets and the stands where they sold the world’s tiniest pancakes, until at last Egill couldn’t help himself in the face of so much elated joy and kissed her.
One thing led to another. He was missing several pieces of clothing when he returned home that afternoon.
At dinner he told Raghnar about his valiant efforts to lure the little diamond out, the riches he’d seen, the wars she could win them …
but the next day he brought her jars of scented honey from the phoenix markets on Phurys, and licking the fragrant sweetness from her fingers was entirely too enjoyable to bring up the topic of leaving.
He gave her another painting the next day and made sweet love to her as she mused on ocean landscapes.
He brought her flower crowns from the nymph isles and found her in nothing but a flower crown the next morning.
He showed her blood amulets from the vampires on Rhudak and ended up being chased around the tower, trying not to trip over her braid or choke on his laughter as she threatened to bite him, too.
She did, in the end, and he didn’t mind much.
And with every day that passed, going home seemed a little less relevant. With every night that passed, the stories he spun Raghnar tasted closer to lies.
After a month and a day, he felt it for the first time. A little tug at his chest when he climbed out, like his heart skipping a beat in the wrong direction—the sensation small enough for him to tell himself he’d never felt it at all.
It didn’t return the next day, and he congratulated himself on having imagined it. But two days later it was back, a scratch on his heart when he left for another evening of lies and betrayal, and blaming his own imagination became significantly harder.
He still managed to ignore the matter for an entire week. He made sure to be lucky, after all, and this … this would be some terrible luck.
But eight days after that first disconcerting flutter—after a most enjoyable morning spent tying Rapunzel’s hands to a bedpost with strands of her own hair—the yank on his heart was so violent that he winced in the windowsill and nearly dropped eight feet into the grass.
“Egill!” The concern in her voice was worth another sting of pain. “Are you hurt?”
Oh, fuck.
“Nothing worrisome,” he managed. “I think I strained a few muscles on the stairs yesterday.”
She giggled, blushing rosily at the memory. “I’ll take good care of you tomorrow, then.”
Tomorrow.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
He faded while he grabbed his sword from the grass and stumbled straight into a bedroom wall at home.
That gnawing at his heart. A feeling he’d never felt before, that he didn’t recognize …
but it was described in such painstaking detail in every alf ballad ever composed that he didn’t need anyone’s confirmation to know what was happening.
He was bonding.
To her.
Which would have happened sooner or later, of course, if he’d continued these tower visits—it was the nature of alves to end up irreversibly linked to any partner coming close enough.
But in a month? Bonding took years. Decades, sometimes.
Hell, Raghnar’s bloody daughter inspired such an utter lack of interest in him that it might have taken centuries and several heirs. For this to happen so soon …
Orin help him. She had to be perfect.
She was perfect. He rested his forehead against the wall and drew in the scent of pine and resin—the bloody gods knew she was not so much delightful but rather delight itself, his precious little nemesis, his most beloved downfall.
But if he bonded to her, if he allowed himself to follow that insistent tug that would always lead towards her …
There would be no way back.
He’d be a lost male without her—that, too, was the nature of alves.
He wouldn’t be able to stand Raghnar using her for his selfish ends, wouldn’t survive it, perhaps; wouldn’t look at the bride he’d been promised ever again.
Which would make him a dishonorable bastard at best and an oathbreaker at worst.
The gods-damned opposite of what he had set out to be. Of what he’d given his heart and honor to become: head of his own house, commander to his own warriors.
Why would I need daggers to tell the world how wonderful I am?
He reached over his shoulder without thinking, settling his fingers around Heartfall’s familiar hilt, the leather shaped by his fingers over the years. Naming that sword, still young and reckless, he hadn’t assumed it was his heart that would be falling.
But all wasn’t lost yet.
He repeated that to himself, gripping his blade like the last log of driftwood between him and drowning—there was a way out of this mess.
If he put a stop to it now, if he simply ceased visiting that bloody tower and told Raghnar that Gothel had been too cunning …
well, he’d still not have his bride and his house, but at least he wouldn’t be the laughingstock for generations to come.
He’d find another way. He’d find his luck again.
If he went back to Rapunzel’s tower, on the other hand …
He was in too deep. He could feel it in his bones, that truth he’d tried to deny—so, so close to falling and never getting up again. A single day more might be too much.
Hell. He had to think. Had to make some hard and clear decisions and make them fast, because if he continued like this … the decisions would soon make themselves.