Her voice was far too shrill, her hands strangely clammy as they dragged down her face. And when she whirled around to glare at Gaelfr, she couldn’t at all read the look in his eyes as he gazed back. Suspicion, maybe, or disapproval, and Raye gritted her teeth, shook her head.
“It’s not that I don’t want to help,” she said thinly. “You should know by now that I’ll do everything within my power for him, don’t you? Gods, I’ve already sworn that vow to you both, I’m doing absolutely everything I can to keep it, even giving you anotherson, and I just…”
Her shoulders sagged, and her gaze dropped to the floor, while something inexplicably prickled behind her eyelids. “I just wish,” she continued, quieter, “I just wish you could…trustme.”
It came out sounding frail, foolish, because of course Gaelfr still didn’t trust her, and maybe he never would. She was stillbound by his conditions, by that too-strong awareness that he could just leave, if she failed. And he’d never once pretended to claim otherwise, had he? He would stay, but only if she behaved. If she kept her vow to Kalfr. If she granted them that son.
A sudden image swarmed into her memory, still far too strong and clear. Gaelfr growling at her, stalking toward her, his eyes burning with hatred and contempt.I should never have dreamt he could find worse than you.
And gods, how did she keep forgetting that? Especially after Gaelfr had openly planned to have her bear that son for them? She would never be able to trust him, and he would never be able to trust her, and why did it still hurt so much, why were her eyes still stinging like this…
She had to turn away from Gaelfr again, stare unseeing out the window, fight to catch her breath — when suddenly she felt warmth behind her, and the feel of a familiar big hand, slipping around her front. “I am… sorry,sæta,” came his voice, quiet. “Will you grant me leave to begin this again? Please?”
The question clutched too tightly in Raye’s chest, but she jerked a shrug. And she could feel Gaelfr’s answering nod against her hair, his deep intake of breath. “I should have said,” he began, halting, “Kalfr will need even more of our comfort and pleasure and hope these next days, if he is to hold fast against our enemy, and keep his vows to us. Will you help me in this? Of your own will?”
The question hovered in the air, quivered through Raye’s chest.Will you help me. Of your own will. And she was already nodding, rapid and fervent, even as the stinging inexplicably sharpened behind her eyes. He was meeting her. Trusting her.
“Of course, Gael,” she whispered. “I will. No matter the cost.”
51
For the next few days, Raye held to her word, and focused on supporting Kalfr, with all her strength. Meeting him. Trusting him. Finding her way forward with him, together.
And in truth, it wasn’t at all difficult, or unwelcome. Because — she wanted to kiss Kalfr. She wanted to smile at him, and touch him when he walked past, and curl up in bed in his arms. And she desperately wanted to take her pleasure with him, to offer him all the power and command he needed — and to feel her own quiet whispers of power in return. Whether she ended up riding him in bed, like she had the first night, or waking him up with her mouth, like she had the next morning. Or even kneeling for him out in the darkened garden, like she had the next day, sucking him with feral abandon, whimpering as she’d dripped her own slick hunger all over his boots.
Of course, Gaelfr had been there throughout it all, urging and encouraging them, and offering Raye his own constant feeding, too. “Good,sæta,” he would say afterwards, as he proudly caressed her belly, which seemed to grow slightly softer andfuller with every passing day. “Our mate is so sweet and pretty and hale, ach,ástin mín? She greatly pleases you, does she not?”
Every time he asked it, Kalfr’s answering nod and smile came easier than before, and he would caress Raye’s belly too, or kiss her lips or her nose or her forehead, or inhale deeply at her throat. Suggesting that once again, Gaelfr had been right, and Kalfr wanted this. Needed this, from her. And in those moments, she felt almost drunk with her own pleasure, her own simmering power, her quiet conviction of the goddess’ blessing upon them.
But just as lovely, just as rewarding, was her regular work with Kalfr, too. They’d continued their daily morning surveys of thebyrgi, walking and chatting together, discussing priorities and projects. And Raye was still pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to talk to him, how he always seemed to consider and appreciate her input, even if he didn’t agree. And how easy it was to stray into other topics, too — their shared appreciation for hard work and ingenuity, their love of nature and the outdoors, the way they’d both had lonely upbringings with unwell parents. And though Raye could tell Kalfr still didn’t enjoy talking about his father, or his childhood, he slowly began telling her bits and pieces, more than he ever had before. About some of the battles his band had fought in the war, how he’d taught himself to speak and read common-tongue, how Gaelfr had always been the only reliable constant in his life.
“Gael was always there for me,” he told her, the third morning after Sybil’s portrait had arrived, as they walked through the garden together. “Ready to rage and fight for me, and run off with his axe wherever I pointed him. If not for him, I ken I should have been killed a dozen times over. Or aught worse.”
Raye shot Kalfr a searching sidelong look — there were fates worse than being killed a dozen times over? — and found him eyeing her in return, his gaze carefully blank. It was a look shewas coming to recognize, one he seemed to particularly wear whenever he spoke to her about Gaelfr, or about his and Gaelfr’s history together. As if he was maybe still thinking of that long-ago night in her garden, and waiting for Raye to remember her jealousy of Gaelfr, and throw them both out of her life forever.
But instead, Raye gave Kalfr a sad smile, and squeezed his hand. “I’m so glad you had Gael with you,” she said, and she meant it. “The goddess was watching out for you both, I think. She knew how much you needed each other.”
But at that, Kalfr’s eyes angled away, his swallow bobbing in his throat. Maybe due to Raye’s mention of the goddess, because though he’d kept joining her for prayers these past few mornings, he’d still only spoken short prayers of his own. Or maybe — Raye studied his taut profile for an instant longer — maybe it had to do with Gaelfr again. With… whatever it was, between them.
Because over the past few days, Raye had found herself increasingly suspecting that something still wasn’t… quite right, in Kalfr and Gaelfr’s relationship. Something that went deeper than just her, or that night she’d thrown them out of her garden. Something around why Kalfr had kept her and Gaelfr apart in the first place. Why Gaelfr had told her, after their first round at the altar, that Kalfr had hidden Raye from not only him, but all their kin. And why even now, beyond that memorable early night here, Kalfr and Gaelfr had never again attempted to take each other in bed, despite the obvious hunger and pleasure in their touches and kisses, their deepening teeth-marks on each other’s throats.
And that tension spread to the ongoing, ever-whispering possibility of another son, too. The night after they’d prayed for that son together at the altar, Raye had been genuinely astonished when Kalfr had nudged her onto Gaelfr’s lap on the sofa, guiding Gaelfr’s thick cock up between her thighs — andwhen she and Gaelfr had both stiffened at once, Kalfr had looked toward them with this same careful, distant blankness on his face.
“What is amiss?” he’d asked, his voice unnaturally steady. “You still do not wish to enjoy your own mate thus, Gael? Nor to help us make our son?”
Raye had glanced uncertainly between them — Kalfr still wanted that? — while Gaelfr had stared unblinking at Kalfr’s face. “Ach, but Iamhelping,” he’d replied, patting Raye’s belly. “With all my good care and feeding. Am I not?”
Kalfr had kept looking straight back, his obvious disbelief deepening with every breath, and Gaelfr had squared his shoulders, and let out a heavy exhale. “It only — pleases me so greatly, to see and scent the two of you, thus,” he’d added, quieter. “It… soothes me, to deepen and nurture your bond, and to offer you my good care and pleasure and healing, after I failed in this, for so long.”
It was similar to what he’d said back on the altar, and it sounded true, enough to quiver oddly in Raye’s chest — but it didn’t add up with what Gaelfr had told her before, did it? No. He’d told her he wanted their son to be Kalfr’s. He thought the son should be Kalfr’s issue, and Kalfr’s due. He expected it as part of Raye’s vow toward Kalfr, and her penance.
And while Kalfr had easily nodded at Gaelfr’s explanation, that careful distance hadn’t faded from his eyes. As if he’d known Gaelfr had been lying, too. But he hadn’t argued, hadn’t made the slightest suggestion since. And though he and Gaelfr had kept showing every indication of thoroughly enjoying all their pleasures together, Raye could sometimes feel that question, that faint wrongness, hovering in the air between them.
And if Kalfr knew Gaelfr had been lying to him, what else did he know? What other secrets were they keeping from eachother? Could Kalfr still be planning that sacrifice, now only seven short days away?
“Is everything… all right, between you two?” Raye cautiously asked Gaelfr in bed that night, after a thrilling session during which Kalfr and Gaelfr had both knelt over her facing each other, Kalfr buried between her legs, Gaelfr in her mouth. And in the glimpses Raye had caught of them amidst it, there had again been something in the way they’d kissed each other, in how Kalfr had growled and used his teeth, how Raye had instinctively known it was Gaelfr’s blood, dripping on her belly. And how afterwards, Gaelfr had tended not only Raye, but Kalfr too, kissing him and praising him with palpable devotion, until Kalfr had fully fallen asleep beside them.
“Ach, naught to fuss over,sæta,” Gaelfr said, as his warm hands drew her closer into his side, draping her against him. “Kalfr and I are only learning each other again, also, and I wish to grant him whatever he needs from us.”
