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

  I blinked, and my stomach knotted.

  What the fresh hell was this?

  “Can I give you a hand with that?”

  I jumped and jerked my glittering hand behind my back as I whirled around. My pulse crashed in my ears and my eyes widened at the sight of Leif approaching my stove. The stranger I’d pegged as a warrior with a poet’s soul.

  The closer he ventured, the more his smell of salt and leather mingled with the sky’s held-breath scent of snow about to fall. Once again, I was bowled over by the feeling of both knowing so intimately and yet not knowing this man in front of me. But really? Of all the moments one of them could show up, he had to choose the one when I’d started hallucinating.

  “You’re making paint, right?” His flaxen hair fell in front of his eyes as he peered into my pot.

  “How did you know that?” I asked, once I’d finally gotten my bearings again. I snuck a glance at my hand. No sign of the earlier glimmer, but who knew if it would come back.

  Leif caught me looking and raised an eyebrow.

  “Your hand okay?”

  I tucked both hands into my apron pockets before they attracted any more attention and nodded. “You were saying. About the paint?”

  His gaze darted to my pockets once more before returning to my face. The way his gaze roamed my countenance, narrowing on every feature, I got the sense he was searching for answers, searching for something just as much as I was. “Someone I once knew—she used to make paint with sap just like that.” His eyes softened yet flashed with something sharp like he’d snagged on a painful memory.

  “Oh?”

  “The elder villagers told her it worked better to mix the sap with cooler water, but she liked to do things her own way. I think she also just liked the fire.” A wistful smile played at the corners of his lips.

  “Sounds like a woman after my own heart.”

  Leif leaned his substantial form against the half-wall flanking the stove. The axe that hung from his belt clinked against the stone. Wisps of steam curled from the pot. From this angle, they appeared to dance in Leif’s direction as if they too wanted to be closer to him and unlock his secrets.

  “She was extraordinary,” he said. The wistful curve of his mouth drifted into something bittersweet. The ridiculous flare of possessiveness at the thought of a woman in his life that wasn’t me warred with the desire to soothe any pain he was feeling.

  “Was?” I asked.

  He nodded with a tight smile.

  “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  He stood quiet for a moment, eyes turned skyward.

  I rubbed the back of my neck, not sure how to address such a loss. I was too young to really remember my own parents who died on the voyage here. And my caretakers saw me more as a commodity than someone to waste affection on. The only person I’d really cared for was Drysi. And she dealt with everything uncomfortable with evasion and humor. I decided to try that tack.

  “Did you sneak up on her when she was making paints too?”

  He huffed a small laugh. “I suppose I did.” Light came back into his amber eyes. “She made me tell her stories while she worked.”

  “Then you’d better continue in that tradition.” The tartness in my voice faded, and I bit my lip, darting another glance at Leif’s arresting eyes. “You could tell me one. If you wanted. I like stories.”

  He inched closer. Soon he stood as close as he could get to the edge of the stove without burning himself and held my eyes. A visceral heat swept over my skin in answer.

  “You do?”

  The air held its breath, and the first snowflakes drifted from above, providing cover for me to hide behind as I nodded.

  “You sure?” he fiddled with the fur-lined leather gauntlet at his wrist, revealing a symbol inked on his forearm. “The other men just humor me when I start into stories outside the campfire at night.”

  “My whole adult life has been confined to this garden. I could listen to what’s been going on in the world outside from sunrise to sunset every day and not get tired.”

  His brows drew together, and I held up a hand. “I don’t need pity. Just stories.”

  “Then you shall have them. What type of stories do you want to hear?”

  “One with a happy ending.” One that makes all of this make sense.

  “Not too many of those, I’m afraid,” Leif said.

  “I know the feeling.” My gaze roved over his generous linen-clad biceps, the worn woven leather vest that covered his torso, the long-handled axe tucked into his belt, willing any details of his fine form to trigger a hint of connection.

  “All right then. How about one that tells me who you are? How you came to be here.”

  Leif blew out a breath. “I’m afraid that might be a story for another time. And I’m not sure you’d believe it if I told you yet.”

  “Another time?” I raised an eyebrow. “Just how long do you plan to be here?”

  Leif leveled his gaze on me, his jaw set, eyes clear. “As long as it takes.”

  “As long as it takes for what?”

  “To recover something we’ve lost.”

  “I don’t suppose you’ll tell me what that is.”

  The gold rims of his eyes glimmered. “Something very dear to us.”

  “You like to speak in riddles, don’t you?”

  “Do I?”

  I groaned.

  “I want to hear about you as well,” Leif said, not missing a beat. He reclined against the wall next to the stove. “What your days are like, what you’ve been doing in this life, in this place.” He lifted an arm to the garden surrounding us with its creeping tendrils of green shrouded in mist.

  “You’re not getting away from my questions that easily.” I jabbed a finger in his direction. “But I suppose that’s fair. Not much to tell, I’m afraid. I’m confined to the garden here. I spend my days painting and talking to my dead best friend. And some days, I go up to the castle to prepare for the ceremony.”

  “What kind of ceremony?”

  I frowned. Like he didn’t know. Everyone who came here knew of the trial one had to survive to assume power over the kingdom. “I kiss men who wish to be king, and they die from my poison.”

  “That sounds delightful.”

  I snorted a laugh, grateful he’d reached for humor rather than more pity. “Very.”

  I eyed him again. Though there was a lightness in his voice, I didn’t miss the flash of concern that creased his brow.

  “Where does the poison come from? Do you drink it? Does your body make it?”

  “There’s a mythical flower that makes the poison for the trial. It needs a feminine vessel to ignite the magic that tests the worth of would-be kings.”

  “And it doesn’t harm you in the process?”

  “I’ve lasted longer than most of the poison mistresses. When I was thirteen, a poison plague swept through the slums where I lived. I was the only one in the hovels who survived it. So the queen brought me here and offered me the job. I’ve been trading deadly kisses for my keep ever since.” I stirred the bubbling mixture.

  Leif edged closer to me until his leg almost touched mine. The nearness scrambled my senses, so I prattled on.

  “The hemlock sauce on the pheasant isn’t so great, but if you ever get granted poisonous immunity, the nightshade tea is delicious.”

  He caught my eyes with his golden gaze. I don’t know why I kept going, but I did. “I never tasted meat until I came to live in the garden. If I ever caught a bird or a rabbit when I hunted, my caretakers took it and traded it for spirits.”

  Leif slipped his hand into mine. I swallowed at the way the simple pleasure of skin touching skin warmed me to my core. How long had it been since someone living had touched me with anything approaching tenderness? Thirteen years? More? I didn’t ever want to let go. It didn’t feel like pity coming from him, only that he saw me. Heard me. Understood what I’d been through. But that wasn’t something that could last. Not with som
ething like me.

  “What I don’t understand is why men from other realms bother with the trial at all. Where I come from, neighboring tribes take what they want by force. Why do these men bother with a trial that might kill them?”

  I frowned. “You tell me.”

  “I’d like to hear your take.”

  “Our army is ten times as large as the other realms’. The Second and Seventh have tried. But any attacks have been stopped before the forces got anywhere near the castle. The past kings have made it clear—you want our kingdom, you’ll do it through our traditions.”

  Leif nodded, his gaze going far away again. “And you’re in the Queen’s employ here now. If you wanted to leave, could you?”

  I lifted our joined hands and ran a finger over the nub of my ring finger. “That’s not really an option.”

  Four

  “They did this to you?” He gaped at my finger that ended in scar tissue at the first joint. Leif let out a low growl and his nostrils flared.

  My jaw flexed with the shame this always brought, and I shrugged.

  Leif’s eyes blazed with unshakable emotion. But why did it look like he blamed himself?

  “Okay. Enough about me.” I unlaced our fingers and went back to the paint mixture. I wanted desperately to turn back to happier subjects, to recover the magic that had bled into my bleak existence when they’d appeared. “I believe I was promised a story.” I peered up at him with pleading eyes.

  He shook his head as if trying to steady himself and nodded. After a moment he spoke again. Finally with the details I craved. “We come from the North. From a village on a fjord near the coast. A harsh land, but beautiful. Mountains and glaciers so blue they looked like they’d been painted to resemble the iris of a god’s eye. They stretched across the horizon as far as the bird could fly.”

  His homeland—was this my homeland too? But before I could ask for more details to sate my endless curiosity, he added, “But that’s not where our voyage began this time. We haven’t been home for a long, long while.” Sadness laced his words.

  “I feel that way too. Maybe I haven’t ever been home.” The desolate realization struck me, and I let the thought sink in. “Do you miss it?”

  “Everyday.”

  “Will you go back? After you finish retrieving what you need here.”

  “I’m not sure the place I remember is there to go back to.”

  Perhaps these men were as adrift as I was.

  “In my experience, you can make a life almost anywhere if you have the right companions.” I thought of Drysi, the way she had swept in and brought color and laughter to a life that was so often gray.

  “Pray that I find the right ones then.”

  “Haven’t you already?”

  “Most of them. Still room for one more.”

  He shifted closer to where I stood, and my cheeks heated.

  “You and the other men—you seem close. Like family.”

  He nodded. “We’re like brothers. In every way that matters. Though we’re not above a little familial bickering. Especially on long journeys in close quarters.”

  “But you’re not actually brothers, are you? How did you come to know each other?”

  Leif’s smile broadened and he leaned closer until our shoulders almost touched. “We all fell in love with the same girl.”

  I snorted. “How did that turn out?”

  A smile twisted his lips, and he laughed. “Better than you might imagine, actually.”

  The sound of his laughter loosened something inside of me. A flurry of images and sensations. His laughter from another time and the feel of strong arms around my waist. The taste of the salt sea on my tongue. A sail on a longboat. I shook my head against the onslaught: these fragments of a story, both mine and not mine. My brows knitted together.

  “You okay?” Leif asked.

  I nodded, not wanting to lose the thread of the story. Maybe it would shake something else loose.

  “How so?”

  “She wanted all of us. It was part of her nature. Of what she was. Though none of us had ever encountered anything like her at the time.”

  My hand stilled in the stirring. “What do you mean, what she was? Was she not a woman?”

  I thought of my own avaricious nature, the way I snatched up found trinkets like a magpie and horded them away, and the shimmer of my skin after touching the boiling mixture. Tingles erupted along my spine.

  Leif opened his mouth to speak but shut it again, as if thinking the better of it. He winked at me. “Part of that story for another time.”

  My nostrils flared. “You’re a tease. You know that, right?”

  His eyes gleamed and crinkled at the corners.

  “Okay, so back to this woman—who may or may not have been more than a mere woman. She wanted you all. And you were all okay with that?”

  I abandoned the pot on the stove and swept over to stand on Leif’s other side against the wall, imagining the possibilities. And the way my body responded now to his nearness, the salt and leather wafting off of his skin. The way my body had responded to each of them in kind in the garden earlier.

  “Like that idea, do you?” A sly grin. Leif elbowed me gently in the side.

  Heat crept up my neck. “Go on with the story, Mr. Storyteller.”

  He chuckled again. “Not at first. There were some blows exchanged, if I recall correctly. Especially in the early days. But that was before we truly understood the nature of what was happening between the five of us.”

  My eyebrows shot up again. “So do you—were you and the other men all involved with each other too?”

  “Not in that way, no. But we did become a family. Her mates.”

  “And then what happened?”

  He sighed. “This is the part that does not end well.” He looked up and held my gaze. “But there were many happy days in between.”

  “She’s the woman who made the paint, isn’t she?”

  A rueful smile.

  “The one you lost.”

  A nod.

  “I’m sorry.” I wiped my hands on my apron. “I’ve brought you back to painful memories again.”

  “It’s okay. You remind me of her.”

  A fluttering warmth filled me at the comparison to someone who had obviously been so important to him. To them all. But I hated the sadness, the loss at the mention of her. I bit my lip, unsure what to say. “In my defense, I did ask for a story with a happy ending.”

  He laughed.

  “Our story may still have one yet.”

  I swallowed. Our? As in his and the other men’s or as in our our?

  Snow began to fall in earnest, lacing Leif’s beard and the nearby rosary peas.

  His gaze roved over my features like a golden searching caress, like he was asking himself the same question.

  Snowflakes dusted my eyelashes and I shook them off. I stuck my tongue out to catch one in my mouth. The icy chill contrasted to the heat everywhere else. Leif laughed, a low rumble that reverberated pleasantly in my chest.

  Then his gaze stilled. I followed its trail back to my arm where snowflakes sizzled away on my bare skin. That was new. Emotion flooded his gold and amber eyes. “Where’s your cloak?” he asked, his voice raw.

  “I’m not cold.”

  “Aren’t you?”

  I shook my head and closed my eyes. I opened them again to find Leif close to me, so close looking at me with darkening eyes. Strands of sun-bleached hair fell forward as he leaned closer yet.

  I wondered what it would be like to touch him.

  You already know.

  I reached up to stroke the fur that lined his vest. I closed my eyes and took in the downy softness so near to the solidness of his chest.

  He caught my hand in his and pressed it close to his fast-beating heart.

  My breath hitched. With his other hand, he grasped my waist and pulled me against him. Warmth lanced through me at every spot our bodies joined.

  I swal
lowed and lifted my chin, my breath gone shallow.

  His eyes hooded as he pressed me closer. Every tiny bit of friction sent fire pulsing between my thighs. I arched into him. How I wanted him to stoke that flame.

  He reached up and ran a finger along the line of my jaw. I leaned my cheek into his touch and let my eyes fall closed.

  “Your skin is so warm,” he said, his voice low and rumbling and steeped with emotion. An aching wistful look cut through the intensity. A thought tickled the back of my mind. There was something here. Some connection. But it was gone before I could grasp it.

  “Must be the fire,” I murmured. Or the way my body responded to his nearness.

  “Mmmm.” His chest rumbled against mine with the word.

  A bird call rang out through the air. Repeated. But it didn’t sound like any bird from these parts.

  Leif groaned. His head dropped forward until his chin rested on my forehead.

  “What is it?” I asked. Snowflakes hissed away on my arms.

  “I’ve been summoned.”

  Five

  “Is it me, or does the world look brighter today?” Unable to stop my grin from spreading, I juggled the canvas and easel threatening to slip from my grasp and approached the central fountain. From each tier stone angels reached from its icy waters, straining for the heavens.

  Drysi perched on its edge facing away from me. Her long, ghostly hair floated in the breeze, her focus tipped skyward.

  She didn’t answer. I circled around, and my heart squeezed at the sight of her. This was the third time in as many weeks I’d caught her staring up above with a storm brewing in her far-away gaze.

  “Drys, are you okay?” I asked gently.

  She startled. “Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?” She smoothed her hair and flashed a dewy-eyed ghost of a smile.

  But it was hard to miss the way her gaze was pulled back to the sky. As if whatever lay beyond the clouds called to her the way the sea and the thought of a home called to me.