Poison Garden: A Fantasy Viking Norse Myth Romance (The Beautiful and the Deadly Book 1) Read online

  “Aye.” I glanced around, brows scrunching together as if I might find the person who’d escorted them in, but found nothing but the birds and flowers and mists. I exchanged a glance with Drysi, whose eyes were as wide as dinner plates. “Were you brought here?”

  “In a manner of speaking.” The leader’s lip curled on one side and my stomach swooped with a hint of impossible memory that tried to claw its way to the surface.

  “If it’s the trial you’re after, it’s not really a self-service affair. You’ll have to take that up with the castle officials, so they can prepare a ceremony.” I touched a hand to the base of my neck searching for words. It was an unconscious gesture, one Drysi like to tease me for doing every time I was puzzling over something.

  “You miss my meaning,” the leader said.

  “Who are you then? What have you come for?” I said, amazed at the steadiness of my voice, when I felt anything but.

  The warrior with the lithest build of the group stepped closer. Scant light filtered through the clouds adding luster to his long flaxen hair. Something about his bearing made the rugged lines of his face finer, like he was a warrior with a poet’s soul. “Don’t you know us?” His words were said with jest, but I sensed a current of something more underneath their lightness.

  Yes.

  But I shook my head. “H-how could I?”

  He exchanged a fraught look with the fourth warrior, before leveling me with a devastating smile laced with light and warmth and familiarity. “A man can hope.”

  What in the name of all the gods was happening here?

  “We’re seafarers from the Northern lands,” the leader said in answer to my earlier question. “What you would call the Tenth Realm.”

  “And what do you call it?”

  “Home. Or at least, we used to.” His gaze shuttered, and I sensed he didn’t want to continue that line of questioning.

  “What’s your business here?” I gripped the trowel once more before setting it down on a nearby flower bed.

  “Acquisitions.”

  I lifted an eyebrow in challenge.

  “How do you get these flowers to bloom even in the winter?” The golden-haired warrior traced a finger over a black tulip petal.

  “Magic,” I said. “And that was a convenient change of subject.”

  The leader stepped closer with mirth on his lips and offered his hand. I stared at it for a beat, the thin white scars over broad knuckles, before I realized he intended for me to take it in my own.

  “I’m Magnus,” he said.

  The moment his callused palm enveloped mine, my mind exploded in a bonfire of images and sensations, memories that could not be real, of these hands of his on my skin coaxing sighs of untold pleasures from my lips.

  My eyes bulged and I returned his grip, not wanting to let go of whatever strange connection his touch had unlocked. “Astrid,” I finally offered in return.

  An audible intake of breath seemed pulled from all four of them at once. Magnus’s eyes locked on mine while a flurry of glances were exchanged between the other three.

  Even the suspicious one thawed enough to stroke his beard.

  “Kaerstra,” Magnus breathed, looking just as taken aback as I was.

  A low growl and cutting glance hurled his way from the short-haired bearded warrior in the back.

  My brows tightened, but the word soaked into my skin like sunlight after seasons of storms, right down to the marrow of my memory.

  After a few silent beats, Magnus gestured to the poet-warrior. “This is Leif.” Leif raised a hand in greeting. “Calder.” The fourth warrior with rune-like tattoos snaking above his collar and honeyed eyes that promised trouble of the best sort approached. He brought my hand to his lips and kissed it, never breaking that smoldering gaze that captured mine so entirely. More memories stirred just out of my grasp of those clever hands and that clever mouth.

  Before letting go, Calder reached into his pocket and pressed something small and wooden into my palm with a mischievous grin. He trailed the grin behind him as he went.

  Heat bloomed in places long forgotten while entranced in that gaze. Only curiosity about what he’d pressed into my hand dragged my eyes away. I turned it over and ran a thumb over the polished wooden figurine shaped into the likeness of a dragon. The cut-wood scent filled my senses as I marveled at the intricate details of the wings. “Did you make this?” I asked, unable to keep the wonder from my voice.

  Calder’s eyes gleamed with satisfaction, and he nodded.

  “It’s beautiful.”

  “I enjoy working with my hands.” His sensuous lips curled and bronze eyes glowed. “I have many talents.”

  My lips curved to match his before I could think better of it. “Do you now?”

  “Careful or you’ll make his head even bigger than it already is,” Magnus said shaking his head, but there was affection in his voice that made my insides bubble with warmth. Even the stone-faced one cracked a ghost of smile at that.

  Family. That’s what these men were to each other, even if not by blood. It was in the way they held themselves. Four parts of one unit, oriented around each other. The kind of unit I’d never been a part of, not really.

  “And you, what’s your name?” I turned my gaze on the tallest one who looked like he’d been carved from a block of granite with tenderness. Something about the way he guarded himself, kept his emotions from spilling out where someone could take advantage of them, made looking at him feel like staring into a mirror. What had this proud man endured before he put up this wall?

  He shifted, strong arms still crossed, but his intense slate grey eyes raked over me with a restrained curiosity. “I’m Stig.”

  “Well, it’s nice to meet you all, but I still don’t understand how you got past the gates,” I murmured, my gaze moving from one man to the next drinking them in as if this was my first and last opportunity to do so.

  “We have our ways,” Magnus said with a grin.

  “Who cares about understanding?” Drysi, who had by some miracle remained quiet until now, swept around and mimed squeezing Stig’s rock-hard bicep.

  “I can’t decide which one of your gentleman callers is the dreamiest,” she said, moving on to bat her eyelashes at Calder.

  “I like your friend already,” Calder said in his rich voice.

  Both Drysi and I started and exchanged a glance. “You can see her?”

  “Why shouldn’t we see her?” Magnus raised a scarred eyebrow.

  I spluttered. “No one does. No one but me anyway.”

  “Well, except the other ghosts. But they’re no fun, are they?” Drysi said.

  I thought back to my first impression of their ethereal forms in the curls of the mist that still clung to our calves in the garden. Were they spirits? That would explain their ability to break into a locked garden with impossibly high walls lined with barbs.

  But then the sensation of Magnus’s rough palm in mine came back to me. And Calder’s. Not to mention that they were here in front of me in bracing, beautiful color.

  “We think it has something to do with the garden,” I said.

  Drysi raised an eyebrow and floated up to rest her head on Magnus’s shoulder. “Or perhaps being connected to someone connected to the garden.” Her ethereal eyes glittered in the pale morning light.

  The men exchanged another look between them, and I could not stop myself from staring, from drinking in the details of their rugged, bearded faces, their sturdy bodies that seemed honed to be at once weapons and comfort and bedtime stories.

  Nothing about this made sense.

  I’d long ago resigned myself to the idea that a life of desire and connection were only meant for those who didn’t have poison on their lips. But with these four standing before me, equal parts familiar and strange, emotion tumbled at my heart, slipping past the bars of its cage as deftly as these men had done to the garden gates. I had so many questions. So much I needed to discover.

  But m
ovement on the hill leading to the castle drew my attention. Two men weaved their way down the path, shouldering a stretcher between them that would retrieve the corpse in my bed. In their wake came three women laden with buckets of water and rags to clean my room. Among them, I spotted Alis, and my blood ran cold. At one time I’d hoped we might be friends. Perhaps in a different life if we hadn’t been consigned to our respective destinies, but in this one she delighted in reporting my slightest transgression to the queen. The scars on my back tingled unpleasantly at the reminder.

  Right now she was preoccupied in conversation with one of the other chambermaids. But all it would take was a lift of her chin to put us all in her sights. And this time I wouldn’t be the only one to pay the price of her over-vigilance.

  “Come on, you can’t be found here,” I said. My gaze darted around for a hiding place large enough to conceal all four of them. The hedge maze would be ideal, but it was too far off with no cover along the way.

  Each of the men shifted their stances, muscles going taut, reaching for the axes at their belts, keen eyes following my gaze.

  They moved wordlessly until they encircled me, like four points of a star. Familiar again. I nodded in the direction of the hedge behind my greenhouse, the only place that might provide the cover we needed. If Alis and the others didn’t pay much attention to what lay beyond the window.

  “I need to go back inside,” I whispered once we were all safely crouched behind the hydrangea hedge. The jade green light from the greenhouse walls cast its jeweled veil over the mist.

  “Will they punish you if they find us here?” Magnus asked.

  I raised an eyebrow at him. “I won’t be the only one. You don’t know much about this place, do you?”

  “Only that you’re here,” Magnus said, his voice imbued with a tenderness that I wanted to lean into like a flower to the sun. He brought my hand to his lips and brushed a kiss over my knuckles. “Go. Be safe. We’ll find you again when we can.”

  The hour under Alis’s scrutiny seemed to last an eternity. The way her face pinched together every time she stole a glance my way made it clear she found me even more distasteful than the blood-laced vomit she mopped up.

  I tried to appear bored lounging in the corner picking at a half-worked needlepoint, but every time she or one of the others twisted toward the glass wall behind which my warriors were hiding, my heart raced. Cold sweat trickled between my breasts.

  When all three were occupied and the body had been removed, I stole another glance beyond the milky jade glass at the head of my bed. Everything beyond was distorted and shrouded in mist, but still I caught signs of movement. Shoulders shifting, flashes of golden hair.

  Alis looked up at me, her face locked in a scowl, and whipped her head toward the glass. I looked down and gripped the cloth in my hands until my knuckles went white.

  “What are you looking at out there?” Alis said in her honeyed voice. She dropped her rag and the tang of vinegar hung in the air.

  “Nothing. Just staring into space.”

  Her eyes narrowed. She marched up to the glass, and my insides contorted. “Did you see that?” She motioned to Heledd, the graying chambermaid whose gaze skittered away like a spider every time it accidentally wandered my way.

  No.

  I scrambled for a distraction. My palm closed around the perfect dragon statue in my pocket, a Calder original. I closed my eyes against the impending loss, but let it clink forward on the stone floor.

  Alis’s head whipped back in my direction.

  “What’s this?”

  “Nothing.” My shoulders sagged with every step as she moved from the window. “Just something discarded in the garden.”

  “Right.” Alis arched an eyebrow in disbelief and her gaze darted back to the dead man’s discarded cloak. “Isn’t killing them enough? You have to pick their pockets too?” Contempt pulsed from her entire being. “The queen might find your little habit interesting.”

  I couldn’t help my flinch when she stuffed the tiny perfect creation into her apron pocket. My fingers itched to snatch it back. A gift given only to me—the only one I could recall since my caretakers lived, and I’d held it barely a moment before it was gone again.

  Jabbing my needle at the cloth, I yanked the thread through to restrain myself from clawing at her awful lovely face. I’d no more coveted this position than she’d coveted hers. Why she abhorred my existence so completely was beyond me.

  My thoughts veered back to the first time she’d come here to clean all those years ago, and I jabbed my needle through once more. How excited I’d been to have a real live girl my own age around. How foolish. The first day she’d seemed to share my enthusiasm. But the next time she came back with wary, shifty eyes, wincing and holding her back with a strange stiffness. I’d asked after her, but from then on, she’d only glared at me and grew crueler by the week.

  “There it is again. That sound in the hedge,” Heledd said. She and Agatha crowded around the headboard of my bed and peered out.

  “Probably just the birds. There was a whole flock of them out that way this morning,” I said, infusing my words with as much boredom and carelessness as possible.

  Alis leaned on her mop and studied me, her eyes gleaming like she’d caught me red-handed. My stomach lurched.

  “Let’s see about these birds, shall we?”

  I shot to my feet, and my fingernails pressed crescent moons into my palms. They trooped out, and I prayed to every old god that might be listening that Drysi had been eavesdropping and bought the men time to move.

  I slipped out in their wake. Alis and Heledd stormed into the hedge and I froze.

  That was it, then. All the time I’d have with them. All of my questions still unanswered. Their freedom taken from them for their transgression.

  A flock of birds burst from the hedge branches, each one a gray shade of the oppressive sky. They warbled as they launched, their bellies full of poisonous berries.

  My eyes locked on Alis, breath stilling. But her gotcha-sneer turned to confusion. She searched the territory and beyond. Heledd and Agatha shrugged.

  I swiveled around as casually as I could manage, searching any place they might’ve moved but found none.

  Had they gotten away? Or vanished as mysteriously as they had come?

  Alis and the other ladies made their way back up the steps of the greenhouse.

  I folded my arms over my chest and directed a smug smile at Alis. “Find anything interesting?”

  “Birds.” Agatha shrugged and went back to her bucket.

  Alis’s nostrils flared and when Agatha and Heledd were safely out of the way, she turned on me.

  “Don’t worry. Whatever you’re hiding out there, I’ll find it.”

  Three

  Vanished.

  I had no idea how they’d accomplished it, but they had.

  I pummeled nightshade berries with my mortar and pestle—color for my paints—to quell the restlessness brought on by their disappearance. As soon as the castle doors had closed behind Alis and the others, I’d turned the garden upside down in search of my bearded strangers.

  Surely they’d be tucked away underground in the ossuary or in forgotten nooks of the hedge maze. But no.

  Not a single trace of them. It was as though they’d walked through the walls.

  Grinding the berries again, my brow creased and my fingertips stained crimson in the process.

  They’d evaded Alis’s wrath. That means they’re safe. Free, I reminded myself as I tended to the fire at the outdoor stove.

  Whoever they were. I just wished they hadn’t evaded me so entirely as well.

  Turning my focus to something I had dominion over, I stirred the cherry sap and water mixture that would make my paint base bubbling on the stove top. Sweat beaded on my forehead and a flash of heat crawled over my skin with an intensity that made me wince. I shucked my cloak and tossed it on a low stone wall. Probably just the fire. But come to think of i
t, I’d been running hot all day despite the gray clouds threatening snow. Perhaps it was the burn of curiosity keeping me warm.

  Then Magnus’s last words played in my mind once more. Only that you’re here, he’d said. Go. Be safe. We’ll find you again when we can.

  Like they weren’t here for the trial at all, but inexplicably for me.

  It was dangerous to entertain that notion, but there it was. And then there was that word he’d called me that woke up something inside of me: Kaerstra. What did it mean?

  I withdrew my shell from my pocket, holding it to my ear while I stirred as if it could whisper the answers I sought. The soft susurration filled my ears, and I sank back into my visions that had been made flesh today. That searing ache stirred in my chest as I struggled to puzzle out the threads that tethered me to these warrior men.

  Were these visions I experienced scenes of a future yet to come? Had I been gifted with prescience along with immunity to poison by some capricious god?

  I pursed my lips. That didn’t quite fit. The visions felt plucked from a time of old.

  A bird cawed, ripping me from my thoughts. I gasped, sending both the shell and spoon slipping from my fingers. With a plop, my shell landed in the pot. Boiling liquid spluttered and enveloped my most prized possession. Curses flew from my lips.

  Reaction preceding thought, I plunged my fingers into the molten liquid and closed them around the shell. A gasp escaped when my thoughts caught up to my actions. Good thing it was going to snow. I’d need the cold to soothe the coming burns.

  But for the moment, there was no pain. Only a beckoning warmth that seemed to seep through my skin. Shock—it must be.

  I withdrew my hand and wiped it on my apron, steeling my stomach for the red scald marks and blisters that were surely forming. But when I held up my hand to examine it, my heart jumped into my throat.

  My skin shimmered where it had touched the liquid. In place of redness and blisters that should have been present was a scaly sheen. Pearl white and lavender fire—like the fire opal pendant I’d once found after a garden party—danced across my skin as I turned my hand.