Page 42 of A Shield Maiden's Earl
Astrid put a finger to her lips, urging me to remain quiet, and started down a small, hidden path cutting through bushes and ever-thickening woodland, slowing when the sight of a castle emerged in the darkness. After scanning the small distance between us and what appeared to be a back entrance, she gestured that I follow her.
Although we were in the rear of the sizeable structure, what I could see of it looked impressive, with several levels. After entering a dark hallway, Astrid lit a torch she’d pulled from a wall bracket, and we headed up narrow, steep stone stairs, climbing several floors before ascending more spiraling steps into what seemed to be a tower.
At the top, Freya opened a door and led me inside a sizeable room with a warm, inviting fire. Yet all I felt was chilled tothe bone when I laid eyes on Soren. With drawn, pale skin, he struggled to breathe, the sound shallow and labored.
My heart in my throat, I dropped my satchel, raced to his side, and took his hand.
“I’m here, husband.” Wrapping my fingers with his, I leaned close and whispered in his ear. I could feel the heat of his fever wafting against my skin as if from a fire and smell the sickness in him. “Just as I promised you I would be in our dreams.”
Nothing.
No response. No squeeze of his hand.
No stirring of any kind.
If anything, he grew stiller. Then, terrifyingly enough, as if he knew I was here, and he could finally let go, he released a long, rattling breath.
“No,” I whimpered, shaking my head, refusing to believe it. Hear it.Feelit. “’Tis not time, yet.” I kept shaking my head, and did all I could think of when my pendant and talisman warmed against my skin. “I will not allow it any more than you did.”
Removing it from my neck, I pressed it into his palm just as he had into mine years ago on my deathbed. Wrapping his hand around it, I rested my cool cheek against his hot, fevered chest and prayed for him to stay with us. Demanded it. Refused to let him go.
“I return the strength of the wolf you gave me so long ago, my love,” I whispered, tears leaking from my eyes when I no longer heard his heartbeat.
Yet I kept talking.
Pleading.
Reminding him why it was not the time to drink with Odin in Valhalla.
“And I give you the might of the bear so that it can lead you back to my shores,” I said hoarsely. “Back to your daughter so that she might know her father. Be protected by him until shesomeday grows into a fierce shield-maiden like her mother and grandmothers before her.”
I was about to go on when thunder rumbled in the distance, lightning flashed outside, and I swore I heard a thud beneath my ear, so I kept talking and squeezed his hand around the pendant and talisman.
“Come back to us, Soren,” I urged, dropping a soft kiss on his dry lips. “Come back to your daughter. She needs you.Weneed you.”
As if in response to my desperate plea, I swore I heard another thud.
Then another.
And yet another before Soren inhaled sharply, and his hand tightened around the pendant, as though it anchored him. As if he battled through a storm and refused to let go and slip beneath the water.
Cupping his cheek, I dropped several more soft kisses to his lips, pleading for him to come home to us. Stay on Midgard and grow old with me. I pleaded with such relentless fervor, I didn’t realize his eyes had cracked open a fraction until I went to press another kiss to his mouth when I saw him looking back at me. The air rushed out of me from such stark relief, it was a wonder I could find another breath. That I could even speak.
Yet I could and did, never so grateful.
Murmuring a prayer of thanks to the gods, I blinked back tears and managed a wobbly smile, knowing he would be all right now. “Welcome back, husband.”
“You came, wife,” he whispered hoarsely, worry flaring in his grayish blue gaze. “You are here.”
“She did, and she’s safe within these walls,” Astrid assured from the other side of the bed and then held a clay cup to his mouth. “Now you must drink this, Soren.”
Doing as she asked, he gulped it down, and his eyes slid shut once more. Not before he managed a small smile, though, and whispered, “Our daughter is every bit as fierce as her mother.”
Even though he must have heard me tell him about her in his fevered state, somehow, I sensed there was more to it. That perhaps he had even met her in some strange way when he hovered on the brink of death between worlds.
After he fell asleep, I noticed color returning to his face and breathed another sigh of relief.
“Praise God, ’tis a miracle,” Astrid murmured.
