THE SMALL VILLAGE near Freyja’s house bustled with excitement as she drove Hanna past. Dozens of nearby farmers strode about the village green, and the enormous wagon that housed the dragon hunter’s ballista loomed nearby. It had beaten her here, and so too had most of Haakon’s men. Sweat foamed on their horses’ flanks, and she saw one man leading his bay and patting its velvety nostrils as its head hung in exhaustion.

“Shame on you,” she muttered. Pushing horses like that so hard on this treacherous terrain would only end in tragedy at some stage. It wasn’t as though Haakon could mount an assault on Krafla immediately, so it made little sense to her.

The dragon hunters were clearly distinguishable from the locals; hard men, wearing furs draped across their shoulders and chain mail beneath. Clearly mercenaries Haakon had scraped together, and she had to wonder where, precisely, he’d found them. Especially when one of them shot her a dark leer.

“Mistress Helgasdottir,” someone called.

It was tempting to pretend she hadn’t heard. She kept her gaze straight ahead, wishing Hanna would move a little faster as a blur of movement shifted in the corner of her vision.

“Freyja!” the voice bellowed.

Curse him. Freyja reluctantly eased Hanna to a halt, just as Benedikt caught hold of her bridle. The young ram in the cage on the back of the wagon bleated in shock.

He wore his finest coat, but after seeing Rurik in all of his glory, it looked a pale imitation. Benedikt was tall, his muscle soft and his face pale and pampered, with round cheeks and a boyish look that did not fade with age. He often reminded her of a petulant child deprived of some toy. The problem was he and his father considered the village and its people to be that toy.

Particularly her.

“What do you think of the news?” Benedikt demanded, his eyes alight. He continued before she had a chance to reply, as usual. “We’re going to take back our lands, Freyja. Father and I intend to drive the creature from Krafla. Or kill it.”

“Let us be honest,” she interrupted, before he could descend into one of his infernal monologues. “You’ve hired a man to attempt to kill the dreki. I’m not entirely certain whether the cursed dreki will think those dragon hunters a nice little gift to assuage his temper, considering you’ve been breaking the tithe and owe him several months’ work of meat, or whether he will take serious affront at this notion, and burn our village to the ground. There’s a reason we bargained with him in the first place.”

Benedikt’s fleshy lips pursed. He might have been handsome, in a sulky way, if the interior of the man weren’t quite so repulsive. “You always see the worst outcome. At least my father and I are doing something about this menace. And I have faith in Haakon and his men.” His lip curled in a sneer. “You would too, if you knew what faith meant.”

A vague threat. Hanna jerked in her traces, and Freyja took the moment to settle the flighty mare—and her own temper. One of these days....

“Your father thinks it’s a good idea,” Benedikt continued. “I spoke to him yesterday.”

That ignited her temper. She didn’t want Benedikt anywhere near her father, where he sought to please with a honeyed tongue and silver lies. Sometimes he laughed at her, knowing her father couldn’t see her frustration when Benedikt was playing the charming local son.

“Leave my father out of this. He is not well.”

“You coddle him. He’s a man, Freyja. Not an invalid for you to siphon away his will.”

“The only leech here is the one I’m looking at,” Freyja seethed.

“Ah, Mistress Helgasdottir,” Haakon called, distracting both of them. He strode across the green. “Have you reconsidered? Are you here to inform us of the layout of the wyrm’s lair?”

Benedikt’s hand curled around Hanna’s bridle, and Hanna winced at the restriction. “You have met my Freyja?” he asked Haakon. “But I assure you she is of little assistance. Nobody enters Krafla and returns unscathed.”

“I am not ‘your Freyja,’” she muttered.

“That’s not precisely my understanding,” Haakon countered, ignoring her words, and Freyja suddenly found herself the recipient of a pair of stares—one cool and considering, and one dark with thwarted rage. “I met Mistress Helgasdottir in Akureyri, where she was concluding some business. She claimed to have entered the dragon’s lair.”

Benedict shot her a shocked look. “You entered Krafla?”

Freyja rolled her eyes. “Let go of the harness. And yes, I entered the dreki’s lair. He stole my ram and ate it, thanks to your cursed meddling.”

“Why did you not tell me?”

Hanna jerked her harness out of his grip, startled by Benedikt’s tone, and Freyja collected her calmly. “Because it had little to do with you.”

“Everything around here has to do with me,” he snapped. “Or my father.”

“So some would think.”

They glared at each other. Benedikt cursed under his breath, and backed away. “One day you’re going to regret the way you speak to me.”

As he turned and stalked across the grass, she pursed her lips. One day she was going to spear him with a stab of lightning and watch his boots smolder, and feel nothing but satisfaction.

As if the sky heard her, a distant rumble of thunder shook the horizon.

Haakon patted Hanna’s flank, his lips quirking in an almost smile. “I see your winning touch extends to the gentlemen of your village, mistress.”

“I see no gentlemen here.”

“Touché.” He didn’t bother to plead his innocence. “There’s been no sign of the two dragons.”

“Dreki,” she corrected, almost absently, and for a second she heard Rurik’s voice in her mind. “Perhaps they flew south, over the glaciers? There’s nothing for them here.”

“Nothing but death and carnage.”

She didn’t like the way that sounded. “The dreki is dangerous and powerful, but he causes us little grief, Haakon. If you do this, you might only stir his rage. There are people here who cannot fight against that.”

“I don’t intend to fail,” he replied. “And you seem rather sympathetic toward a monster.”

“Maybe I know what is like to be an outcast,” she murmured. “All he wants is something to eat once a week. He’s never caused us any other trouble. I see no monster there.”

“Not everyone feels that way. Tell me, what was it like?”

“He was curious, more than anything. And he laughed at me, as though he considered me little threat. I don’t think he ever intended to truly hurt me. But he could if he so chose.” Freyja shivered, recalling the enormous teeth and the impenetrable scales. “He looked like he was covered in gilded armor, and the weight of his power nearly crushed my lungs....”

“I have iron and steel, Freyja. I will pierce his hide.”

She shivered at the tone of inevitability in his voice. “Then we are done here. I will not help you, nor will I accept any blame for your deaths because I refuse to aid you. You’ve been warned, and you will not accept that.” She gathered up Hanna’s reins, easing the mare away from him. “I hope it is worth it, when the dreki is picking his teeth with your bones. Come, Hanna.” She cracked the reins on the mare’s shaggy hide.

Hanna leapt forward, and Haakon stepped out of the way.

“Be careful, Mistress Helgasdottir,” Haakon called, patting Hanna’s shaggy flank with a parting pat. “One might suspect your sympathies lie with the wrong party here.”

A shiver ran down her spine. She didn’t think Haakon would hurt her, but then she’d thought the same about Benedikt when they were younger and he’d first set his sights on her. It was only once she’d said no the ugly side of his nature emerged.

I am not without my defenses, she told herself again as she drove off.

Even if her powers set her apart and left her standing in a world alone, at least she could never be forced into something she didn’t want.

* * *

The first sign something was not right at her home started when she saw all of the ewes huddled in their stone pen together, big eyes wide with fright. The bleating set her nerves on edge, but she couldn’t see anything to cause such distress.

Leading Hanna up the lane, Freyja frowned. “What has my ladies in such a dither?” She couldn’t resist scanning the skies. Evening fell like a curtain of inky shadows from the east, with paler golden tones lingering in the west where the sun took its time to descend. A few stars sparkled in the night sky.

But no dreki.

A shiver ran through her as she put her new ram and Hanna away, tending the sweet mare and slipping her a slice of dried apple she carried in her pocket. She had the same feeling in her stomach that she’d felt in Akureyri when she bid adieu to Rurik.

Fate, he whispered in her memories.

“Foolishness,” Freyja muttered, and shut the stable door behind Hanna.

Wrapping her shawl around her shoulders, she scurried toward her father’s house with her basket of goods. Night had finally vanquished day, but light glared from the kitchen window and the small sitting room next to it. What was her father thinking? They barely had enough kerosene to spare, and she hoarded it like the dreki in Krafla protected his gold.

“Father?” she called, pulling the door shut behind her and dragging her shawl off her shoulders. The heat inside the house enveloped her like a warm cloud. Good grief, he had the fire blazing as well. The dwindling woodpile in the corner of the kitchen looked alarmingly low. “Father, where are you?”

“Through here, Freyja,” he called from the sitting room, and her heart skittered a beat at how well he sounded.

Thank goodness. Freyja squeezed her eyes shut, then let out the breath she’d been holding. Leaving him alone for a time was always a worry.

“Have you had dinner?” She could smell the lamb stew she’d left in the cool room simmering in a pot on the stove. “I’ve bought fresh bread all the way from Akureyri, and a wheel of cheese.”

“Ah, leave all that!” her father called, “and come in here. I have a guest who is waiting to meet you.”

Freyja set her basket of produce on the table, and crept toward the sitting room. Who would be visiting them out here? Benedikt and his father were in the village, as well as Haakon and his men. There were few others who would willingly step foot in her household, even with the iron horseshoe nailed upside down over the lintel.

“A guest?”

The chair creaked as her father levered out of it, and she caught sight of his shadow on the wall. Another shape shifted beside it, a tall man sitting in the armchair by the window, by the look of it.

Freyja stopped dead as she entered the room. “Rurik?”

What was he doing here?

Rurik sprawled in her father’s second-favorite armchair, balancing an old chipped teacup in his hands with feigned nonchalance. Everything about his posture screamed he intended to pose no threat, but his eyes flared amber the second he saw her, and everything in her body screamed at her to run.

“Mistress Freyja,” he purred. “I was just telling your father here about our meeting in Akureyri. He has some interesting stories about dreki, which I am collecting for my book, if you remember?”

Book? He hadn’t said a blasted thing about a book.

“What are you really doing here?” she mouthed.

“Freyja!” Her father looked up from the small platter of honey cakes he’d been destroying. Those filmy eyes turned vaguely in her direction, and he smiled.

He looked well.

Freyja scurried to his side, pressing a kiss to his brow in a surreptitious way to measure his temperature. “Where did you get the cake from?”

“Master Rurik bought it in the village as a gift.” Her father hugged her. “He intends to do some research in this area, and someone directed him to my door.” Pride swelled his chest. “He wants to learn about the local dreki, and I know all of your mother’s stories. I offered her books to him, and offered him board for a few weeks.”

Weeks?

“You shouldn’t have,” she murmured to Rurik, embarrassed he’d noticed their poor plight enough to bring a gift of food with him. The little house no doubt looked like a hovel in his eyes, with its thatch of grassed roof, and the bare necessities were all that remained of their furniture. The house was spotless, and the furniture gleamed with beeswax she’d lovingly rubbed into it, but she’d been forced to sell pieces of it over the years, and empty spaces gaped where stuffed chairs had once stood. Even her mother’s precious books had thinned out over the years as one catastrophe after another—their crops failing, or the fence breaking and precious lambs going missing—had struck their little farmstead. She’d never even told her father she’d sold some of them, and he’d clearly not noticed.

It would have broken his heart.

“We don’t have a spare room,” she told him bluntly.

Her father sucked in a sharp breath. “Freyja—”

“That’s quite all right,” Rurik replied, lazy-lidded in front of the fireplace. He looked like he was soaking up the heat of the flames. “It wouldn’t be right for me to share a roof with a young unmarried woman anyway. So I bargained with your father for room in your stables. I can pay good coin.”

In the stables.... For a moment she almost felt guilty. But then he gave her that faint smile that rubbed all her hairs the wrong way, and guilt evaporated.

“Freyja will see you to the stables,” her father agreed amiably, leaving her with little recourse. “Won’t you, Freyja?”

She’d see him to the door, in any case. Freyja jerked her head at Rurik as he stood, and then tried to paste a smile on her face for her father. “I certainly shall.”

After all, she couldn’t say what she really wanted to say with her father in the room, could she?

* * *

“What are you doing here?” Freyja whispered harshly, the second they were inside in the barn. “And don’t feed me that lie about a book.”

“Who says it was a lie? I am considering writing a book. There are too many wrong stories about dreki in circulation.”

She ground her teeth together. “I’m not an idiot. And I detest it when men think they are smarter than I am, and try to smugly protest otherwise. If you continue to pretend you have not a single ulterior motive in being here, at my home, when last I saw you was many miles to the north, then I will be done with you.”

Rurik paused, assessing her face.

“Why are you here?” she demanded. “Truly?”

“You’re right. I didn’t come here for a book. I came here for you. Fate, Freyja.” He stepped forward, touching her cheek. “That’s why I’m here.” His breath warmed her lips as he loomed closer, and her heart gave a kick behind her ribs as he smiled at her. “Our destiny is incomplete.”

Rurik’s fingers tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. Freyja froze. She’d thought what happened between them at Akureyri was simply a result of the storm pounding through her veins, igniting the passionate fury in her blood. But the second his touch landed on her skin, her blood seemed to fire again, and a shiver ran through her. A distant storm, but one that could be stoked with but a few simple touches.

“Oh no, you don’t,” she muttered, ducking beneath his arm and whirling in a storm of skirts.

The damned man simply stood there with a smile, crossing his arms over his chest.

His rather impressive chest.

Freyja growled under her breath, pressing her fingers to her temples. She didn’t want to examine her anger too closely, just in case it wasn’t entirely anger. Fluster might come closer. “You have your head in the clouds. Fate and destiny... what a jest. You’re no better than any skirt-chasing scoundrel, though your words might be prettier. My mother would have liked you.”

“You like me,” he pointed out. “Or else you would have thrown me out the second you saw me inside.”

“I didn’t wish to cause a scene in front of my father,” she retorted. “That’s the only reason you’re still here. He believes in guest right still, and expects me to uphold it.”

Rurik’s biceps flexed. “You are a most vexatious female. Why can you not admit you want me here?”

She refused to look at his bulging biceps. Simply refused. “My mother taught me never to utter a lie.”

Slowly he prowled around her. “You liked my kiss. You begged me for more, and curled your fists in my hair. I do not understand what you find so distasteful about the idea. You wanted me. You still want me.”

Every word drove straight through her abdomen, bringing little hammer-flashes of memory with it; the dance of raindrops on the roof; the feel of that hard body driving her into the wall; the lush stroke of his tongue against hers. “I often want things that are bad for me—ginger cakes, ale, books I cannot afford.... It doesn’t mean I give in to the feeling.”

He took a step toward her.

She took one back.

Rurik froze.

“Perhaps I enjoyed your kiss, but that doesn’t mean I will lie with you.” She could see from his expression he did not understand. But then, he wasn’t the one who might risk being left behind with a bastard child and a ruined reputation—what little there was left of it. “You’re persistent, I shall give you that, but all men want the same thing.”

“Your heart?” he challenged.

“A swift tumble in the hay.”

“I am not all men,” he replied. The shadows around him seemed to lengthen. “And you know little of what I want, Freyja. The second I saw you, I wanted to possess you—body and soul.”

“You’re being ridiculous. All these words—”

“I am bound by every word I utter,” he told her, and this time when he stepped toward her, she let him.

Treacherous heart, beating swiftly in her chest. Unfaithful body, wet with anticipation, and trembling with desire. Freyja swallowed hard and shut her eyes. All she had was her faltering will. Her steadfast nature.

“When have I ever lied to you?” Rurik whispered, as though sensing her hesitation. His fingertips skated over her cheeks again.

This time she let him.

This time her shoulders sank and she finally lifted her eyelashes to look him in the face. Some part of her wanted to believe him, to lift her mouth to his and offer herself up to him. But the warier part of her, the part that remembered Benedikt’s subtle viciousness, stayed her hand. “Why me?”

“Oh, precious Freyja.” His breath shivered over her skin. Rurik cupped her face, callused thumbs stroking gently against her cheeks. “You are a fascinating contradiction. Barely afraid of me when you should be, but frightened of me when I am at my least dangerous. Every second I see that flash of fire in your eyes ignites something within me I have not felt for a long, long time. Your very contrariness captures me, your intelligence, your fierceness... and the gentle nature that hides within. Shall I go on?”

“You see this as a challenge.” And she knew men played to win. “That is all.”

“The fact you challenge me is part of the attraction,” he breathed. “I’ll concede that point. What man or woman does not care to be challenged within a relationship? If you agreed with me all the time or kissed my shoes, then you would be quite uninteresting.”

“I will never kiss your shoes.” The very idea offended her.

A slow smile spread over his lips. “I know.”

“I will rarely agree with you.”

“Even better.”

“I am stubborn, and angry, and not very good at conversation,” she said, giving in to exasperation. “I am not beautiful—”

“There you are wrong.” He cupped her cheeks in both hands and tilted her face to his. “Every inch of your skin pleases me. Every time our eyes meet, I want to consume you. You have lightning in your veins, precious Freyja. And when you kiss me it feels as though I can taste that lightning too. There is something between us that cannot be denied.”

“Fate,” Freyja whispered. She still didn’t believe in the word, but there was... something there. In that he spoke the truth.

Her heart kicked a little faster behind her ribs, the treacherous organ. There was a part of her that knew he was going to kiss her again, and this time she didn’t think she’d push him away. Even just the rasp of his thumb against her jaw felt so good, a renegade pleasure she could barely admit to.

Just who was she lying to? Him? Or herself?

“I don’t know if I believe you,” she admitted.

“Then set me a challenge. How shall I prove my intentions are true? How shall I win the heart of fair maiden?”

He was mocking her.

“Give me my heart’s greatest desire,” she shot back, dashing his hands from her face and darting for the door, “and I shall give you my heart.”

Rurik stilled. It felt almost as if an enormous tail lashed behind him suddenly, like a cat about to pounce, and then he smiled. “So be it.”