Page 134 of Edge of the Wild

“No, I didn’t think he was.”

In the cold quiet of the middle of the night, candle flames wavering and steadying around them, Revna was suddenly, intensely glad for his presence. Birger was warm, and loving, and gave excellent advice, had a wealth of experience to draw upon – but staring at Birger as she stared now at his younger brother didn’t leave her belly tingling with something like eagerness.

She was opening her mouth to say the sort of thing that shouldn’t be said lightly, and couldn’t be retracted…when the horn sounded.

~*~

The glass was cold, but Rune was warm, where she sat cradled between his legs, leaned back against his chest and encircled by his arms, despite her worry that she was hurting him, somehow. If he’d winced or grimaced, she hadn’t been able to see it, and he had insisted that he was fine, that, as he had said before, she couldn’t hurt him. His chin rested on the top of her head, and his every breath stirred her hair. Beyond the window, the snow-covered fields lay bathed in moonlight, like intricate silver engravings.

The dark, the lateness of the hour, the way his callused fingertips skated up and down her arm, where he’d pushed up the sleeve of her robe: all conditions that stripped away the veneer of etiquette and convention and left her staring at the simple truth.

“I can’t marry Leif,” she said, quietly.

Rune’s hand stilled – and then resumed, fingers tracing the knobs of her wrist, the tender, soft inside of her forearm. “I’m not trying to pressure you.”

“You aren’t. This is about me. About what I want. I’ve already failed to do what my mother sent me here to do–”

“You haven’t failed at anything.”

“–so I might as well do what makes me happy. If Ollie can, then so can I,” she said, firmly, though butterflies beat furiously in her chest.

Then a thought occurred. “Unless you don’t want–”

His hand closed around her arm, squeezing lightly, tendons leaping in the back of it. “I do want,” he said, voice strained, almost desperate. “I want that more than anything.” She heard him swallow. Felt his lips as he pressed them to the crown of her head. Quieter, just a murmur: “Gods, Tessa, I never thought–”

A horn sounded. From somewhere above, its call ringing out across the cold, still night. A sharp blast – and another – and another.

Rune sat up straight, pushing her forward, his breath quickening. “That’s the alarm.”

Her pulse leaped. “What does it mean?”

“Someone’s coming.”

~*~

“My lady!” No sooner had she left the study, Bjorn close and huge behind her, than a guard came pelting down the hallway toward her, mail chinking. He was young, she saw, his face flushed with excitement, his eyes shining with fear. Beneath a patchy beard was the countenance of a lad who’d never seen battle, and who was terrified now of the prospect of it. “My lady, a runner came from town. A shipmaster’s boy.” He had to pause and gulp a few breaths, leaning heavily on the spear he carried.

“What is it?” Revna recognized Rune’s voice, with a start, and glanced over the guard’s heaving shoulder to see her son limping far-too-quickly out of the library.

With Tessa in tow.

“What in the bloody–”

“Perhaps now’s not the time,” Bjorn cut in. He stepped around her and laid a hand on the guard’s shoulder. “What is it, lad? What’s happening?”

Rune and Tessa joined them, crowding in on the guard’s other side. Rune looked alert and ready. Tessa, Revna noticed, looked worried…but resolved, too. Their gazes met, briefly, and Revna could only approve of the determination she saw there. Tessa had made a decision, and she wasn’t going to back down.

Good girl.

The horn sounded again, three more sharp blasts.

The guard said, “There’s ships coming into the harbor – a whole fleet of them!”

“Ships?” Revna frowned, even as her heartbeat quickened. “The harbor’s frozen over.”

He shook his head, wild-eyed. “They’re cutting through. They’ve got blades on poles, and some sort of device on the front of the ship, at water level.”

Revna’s heart stopped – and then burst into a gallop. Her whole body flashed cold. “What sort of device?”

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