Where in Odin’s name is she?
“Claricia?” He strode through the adjoining chamber, anywhere she might have stepped for a moment.
Erik ran back down, where he encountered two of the guards he’d posted.
“Where is she?” Each word came out deliberate and dangerous. “Where’s me wife?”
The older one paled. “She… me jarl… she asked fer a walk in the gardens. Said she needed air. We followed at a distance like ye ordered, but?—”
“But?” Erik’s voice dropped to something lethal.
“But when the alarm rang, everyone scattered tae their posts. We tried tae get her back inside, but in the chaos—” Finn swallowed hard. “We lost sight of her, me jarl. Just fer a moment.”
Erik didn’t wait to hear the rest. He was already moving, taking corridors at a dead run that would have been undignified if it hadn’t been fueled by terror he refused to name.
She’s in the gardens. She’s safe. She has tae be safe.
“Find her!” The roar came from somewhere deep in his chest as Erik burst through the hall. Warriors froze mid-stride, turning toward their jarl with expressions ranging from surprise to alarm. “Search every corner of this cursed castle! I want me wife found. NOW!”
Men scattered immediately, years of training overriding their confusion. Erik kept moving, headed for the gardens, for the most likely place she’d be.
The gardens stretched before him in the late afternoon light—autumn-stripped trees, herb plots going brown for winter, the stone fountain with its carved wolf’s head still trickling water despite the cold. Beautiful and peaceful and utterly empty of the one person he needed to find.
“Claricia!” Her name tore from his throat, raw and desperate. “Where are ye?”
No answer. Just the sound of water trickling and wind rustling through bare branches and his own pulse roaring in his ears.
Erik forced himself to breathe. To think instead of simply reacting. Claricia had been there when the alarm rang. Theguards had lost her in the chaos. Which meant she’d either run for the castle like any sensible person would, or?—
Nay. When she’s frightened, she daesnae run toward walls.
Erik’s gaze swept the gardens again, this time looking for hiding places instead of obvious paths. And there, in the far corner where the castle walls met at a right angle, half-hidden by overgrown rose bushes that no one had bothered to trim?—
A flash of fabric caught his eye, the edge of a shawl.
Relief and fury crashed through him in equal measure, hot and cold and vicious enough to make his hands shake.
Erik crossed the distance in long strides, boots on crushing fallen leaves, to find Claricia curled on a stone bench. A book clutched against her chest like armor. Her head was bent, chestnut hair falling forward to hide her face. She didn’t look up at his approach.
“Claricia.”
Her head snapped up at his voice, and the expression on her face—terror giving way to recognition giving way to something that might have been relief—made his chest tighten painfully.
“Erik.” His name came out breathless, shaky. “I?—”
“Ye should have stayed where I could bloody find ye.” The words came out harsher than he intended, edged with the fear still coursing through his veins like poison.
She flinched at his tone, and part of him immediately regretted it. But the part that had just imagined a hundred different ways he might find her hurt or worse couldn’t seem to gentle his voice.
“I didnae think?—”
“Nay. Ye didnae.” Erik stepped closer, looming over her without meaning to, his shadow falling across her face.
Claricia stared up at him, and he watched understanding dawn in those blue-green eyes like sunrise breaking over the sea. Watched her see past the anger to the fear underneath. Watched her expression shift from defensive to something softer, something that made his breath catch.
“Ye’re angry,” she said quietly, her voice steadier now, “because ye were worried about me.”
“Of course I was bloody worried!” The admission tore from him, raw and unfiltered. “The castle’s been breached, there’s a dangerous bastard loose somewhere in these walls, and ye—” He dragged a hand through his hair, the gesture violent with frustration. “D’ye ken what went through me head when I found that empty chamber? Every possibility, every cursed?—”
