The worst was over and she was still breathing.
Right then, something whizzed past her ear so close, it stirred her hair.
So much for the worst being over.
Brit went for her.45 as she dropped to one knee. She had the weapon half drawn when she heard a hiss and a thwack. Something punched her in the left shoulder.
An arrow! Wide-eyed in sickened disbelief, she stared along the shaft, following it to the head, which was buried in layers of fabric. Blood bloomed high on the front of her jacket. She could feel it spreading, warm and wet, under her sweater.
The good news? She felt no pain. Beyond the shock of impact, the wound itself was numb.
Also on the plus side, she wasn’t dead yet.
She scanned the land before her, seeking her attacker—there. Stepping out from behind a big black boulder not fifty feet away. Some guy—way young, seventeen or eighteen, max. Long, tangled gold hair. Rigged out in rawhide leather with a mean-looking crossbow. The crossbow was pointed right at her. But she had her SIG out by then. With some fumbling, as her left hand didn’t seem to be working too well, she levered the safety back—at which time, her left hand went limp. Very weird. But she was dealing with it. Nice thing about the SIG 220. The kick wasn’t all that bad. She could shoot it one-handed. She took aim.
It was a Mexican standoff—until everything started spinning.
Now it was her damn right hand. Something wrong with it, too. It had gone heavy. She couldn’t hold it extended. It fell, nerveless, to her side, the pistol dropping to the rocks.
Well, okay. Now she was dead.
But just before the arrow took flight, as her body gave way and she began a strange, slow, nerveless slide to the ground, she heard a gunshot. Her too-young would-be assassin grunted and jerked back. The arrow meant to pierce her heart went wild.
And Brit was flat on the ground—drugged somehow. From the arrow in her shoulder? Must be. She wasn’t out yet, not exactly, but hovering in some hazy, halfway place between waking and nothingness.
She lay on the rocks, the wind whistling overhead. She could see that hawk she’d heard before. It soared high up there, in the distant, cold blue yonder, dark wings spread against the sky.
Footsteps came crunching toward her across the rocks. A man was bending over her. An angular, arresting face. Deep-set, hypnotic gray-green eyes. She knew him from the pictures that sweet old Medwyn had made a special point of showing her.
He was Medwyn’s only son, Eric Greyfell, the one she’d come to see.
And there. At Greyfell’s side. Another. All in black. His face hidden behind a smooth black leather mask.
The things you see when you’re probably dying…
And her eyes refused to stay open any longer. They drifted slowly shut.
There was silence.
Peace.
Oblivion.
There was a time of purest silence and velvet darkness.
Then came hot delirium. She burned within, her body ran with sweat.
And there were dreams.
In the dreams, she had visitors. Elli first. Elli was her middle sister. They were three, the sisters, fraternal triplets born within hours of one another: Liv then Elli then Brit.
“Oh, Brit.” Elli wore her Viking wedding dress—and her most patient expression. She carried her wedding sword out before her, point down, jeweled hilt gleaming. She floated above the ground, surrounded by light as golden as her hair. “What have you gotten into now?”
“Ell, you look fabulous.”
“You don’t.”
“Well, it’s just… I’m so hot. Burning up…”
Elli made a tsking sound. “You should have gotten your degree at least, don’t you think? Or maybe finished one of those novels you’re always starting, before you went off and got yourself killed?”
“Not dead. Uh-uh. Not dead yet…”
“Didn’t I warn you?” That was Liv, dressed for success in a cream-colored ensemble and those Miki-moto pearls that Granny Birgit had given her. Liv was bending over Brit, looking down, a scowl on her face, blue eyes narrowed, smooth blond hair falling forward against her cheeks. “Our dear father, His Majesty the king, has the whole palace bugged. Spies everywhere. How can you call him Dad? He as good as abandoned us, the daughters he didn’t need… until both his sons were lost.”
“He is what he is….”
“You should have kept your promise to Mom and come home with me in the first place. Then you wouldn’t be here. Sweating and delirious. Dying.”
“Hot. So hot…” Brit shut her eyes.
And when she opened them again, she could see her father. He seemed far away, standing behind his massive desk in his private audience chamber at the royal palace, Isenhalla. But at the same time he was there. With her. Looming over her, looking down at her. Firelight gleamed in his silver-shot dark hair and flashed off the ruby ring of state. Blood-red refractions danced everywhere. “Brit. Be strong.”
“So hot…”
“Fight. In your veins runs the blood of kings. I have big plans for you. Don’t you dare to die and disappoint me.”
“No, Dad. I won’t die. I swear I won’t….”
But her father only shook his head sadly—and disappeared.
Her mother stood in his place, tall and beautiful and thoroughly exasperated. “What are you doing, Brit? What were you thinking?”
“Mom,” she cried, reaching, crying out again when pain lanced through her shoulder. “Oh, Mommy, I’m so sorry….” But like the others, her mother had vanished.
Gentle hands guided her back to lie among the furs. An old woman with kind eyes bent close and whispered coaxingly, “It’s all right. Rest. You’re safe here.”
And there were other voices, soft voices. They whispered of the poison that burned through her body, they murmured that now they could only wait and watch and keep her as comfortable as possible. They spoke to her soothingly. They bathed her sweating face with cool wet cloths.
And then, within the swirling, firelit twilight…
The one whose picture she carried with her, in her pack. The dead brother she’d never know.
Valbrand.
A hot bolt of fiercest joy shot through her. Not lost! Not dead, after all.
Oh, she had known it, though until this moment she hadn’t quite dared to admit
