A Solstice Journey Read online

  She narrowed her eyes at him in clear annoyance, and I wondered what exactly he was trying to say. It was subtle, but he might have been saying he wasn’t into guys.

  “Your squire is engaged in other matters,” she said briskly. “And so it will be I that will help you out of all that metal.”

  Celyn laughed. “It sounds like you never had to wear armor. Gunnar, Llinos is a fierce warrior and her husband was a lucky one when he married her.”

  I nodded at that, because I didn’t know what to say. She wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. I vaguely thought that was more of a modern custom.

  Celyn then leaned over in front of her, like he was bowing. I was wondering what he was doing when she took the back of his chain mail shirt and started to roll it up slowly and neatly, until it was rolled up tight and Celyn could slip it over his head. He straightened up with a smile, straightening out his tunic slowly.

  “And I doubt that anyone would be willing to be with one who has a tongue like yours,” she scolded. “And poor Gunnar must think we have no hospitality, as you have dragged him off to your room, without a morsel of food in sight!”

  She turned to me with a smile. “As soon as Celyn is unarmored and remembers his manners, we will go to the hall to eat. I don’t doubt that you are starving, since walking between the worlds will drain you.”

  “I feel fine,” I said, despite that even if this was some sort of weird dream, I really felt tired, more like I had gone for a long, steady run than anything more strenuous. “Seriously, I could be freezing to death in the Public Garden instead of being here. I’m grateful that you found me. I didn’t think that anyone was going to.”

  It hit me, just then, that I could have died out there. Not because I had been careless or stupid, but because I had gotten trapped in some sort of freak snowstorm. I wondered how many other people had gotten trapped like this and if anyone had rescued them. I walked over to the bed and sat down, shivering, and I didn’t think I was going to be able to stop.

  “Gunnar?” Celyn asked, walking over to the bed to sit beside me. He put his arms around me and then laid his head on my shoulder. It should have felt weird or pushy, but I just leaned into him, wanting his touch, because he saved my life, because he felt warm and supportive. “Truly, you are safe now.”

  “Other people?” I asked, my voice rough and hoarse.

  “None of the other patrols found anyone,” Llinos said softly. “We usually don’t, no matter what the day.”

  “What were you thinking of?” Celyn asked softly. “When we found you.”

  After hesitating for a moment, I said, “Home. Home and the first Christmas that we all saw snow. Most of the time, we were someplace warm for the winter. Or it was one of those years that it was cold and rainy, never snow for Christmas.”

  “How old were you?” Llinos asked.

  “Eighteen,” I said. “My birthday’s at the end of October. I came home from university at the break. I was always teased by my friends for being so uncool because instead of partying with them, I wanted to be with my parents at Christmas. Because I always wanted to be there for the whole holiday, as soon as exams were over. This is the first Christmas that I haven’t been home. It’s stupid. I’m thirty-three, and I’ve never been alone for Christmas before. I told my mother that I was all right with it, but I hate it, because it doesn’t feel like Christmas since I’m not home with them.”

  “You are overtired,” Llinos said in a comforting tone. “Lie down.”

  And I did, because she had that mothering tone that made me want to do what she told me to. I didn’t miss that it was Celyn who drew a quilt over me and smoothed down my hair, kissing me gently on the forehead before I closed my eyes and the world drifted away.

  I DON’T know how much later it was when I woke up. I felt much better. Celyn was sitting beside the bed, reading a scroll.

  When I shifted, he looked over at me with a smile. “It hasn’t been long,” he said. “No more than a candle width.”

  “What?”

  “The candles mark the hours,” he explained patiently. “And you have only been asleep for one.” He stood up and stretched. “Idris wishes to see you.”

  “Who?”

  I wondered if he thought I was an idiot. All I could get out were one-syllable words. I wasn’t one slow to wake up. I usually jumped out of bed in the morning with a lot of energy.

  “Idris is my king,” Celyn said. “He is curious about the Álfr that we found in the snow and would like to speak to you.”

  “I’m not an elf,” I repeated, sitting up. “I think that my parents would have told me that. They did tell me I was adopted.”

  I rolled out of bed, standing up and stretching, feeling much better after my little nap. I didn’t miss the fact that Celyn was openly staring at me. Not quite ogling, but not hiding the fact he liked looking at me. But getting laid wasn’t on my agenda for now. I wanted to get home—or at least wanted to wake up, because this was something out of a dream. A hot guy wanted me in some sort of strange fantasy setting? Conan the Barbarian, I was not. I wasn’t going to get the guy, because I wasn’t good-looking enough for him.

  “They did?” Celyn asked.

  I nodded, vaguely remembering even though I had been so young. “It wasn’t something that they couldn’t not tell me. I figured it out, kind of, because I didn’t look like them, and everyone we met had to point it out to us, like my parents hadn’t figured it out before.”

  Celyn laughed and I joined him after a second. He had a nice laugh, one that made me want to laugh too. I had sounded… not annoyed, but perplexed by the stupidity and nosiness of people in general.

  “They look like you,” I said.

  He laughed some more. It wasn’t at me. He just found that statement funny. But one didn’t look at me and think I was Icelandic.

  “Blond,” I elaborated. “Blue-eyed, and tall. My sisters said that I was really their brother because I had blue eyes like them. And I’m tall too, but other than that, yup, I’m adopted.”

  While I really didn’t look like my parents and sisters, I also didn’t look like any one ethnic group. Even after all the traveling, and later, the searching I had done online, I couldn’t easily point to a racial group and say, “Hey, I’m one of them.” I was a mixture of all of them. It had bothered me when I was younger, but when I got more comfortable with myself, when puberty was over, I accepted it. I just was different, and that was all there was to it.

  “They are striking,” he said quietly. “Your eyes.”

  I didn’t know what to say about that, but I smiled, since he was trying to be nice. And it was nice that he seemed to be interested in me, in the same way I could be interested in him.

  “But unfortunately, we need to talk to Idris before anything else.”

  “Business before pleasure,” I said lightly.

  His eyes lit up when I said that, so he knew I wasn’t averse to what he was hinting. Celyn made a sweeping bow and gestured toward the door.

  “Off to business, then,” he said grandly. Then his voice dropped to a husky, sexy purr. “And then, more about this pleasure that you want to talk about.”

  I swallowed hard and hoped my dick twitching wasn’t too noticeable—that voice had gone right to it. All of a sudden I didn’t want to leave the room.

  Judging by the slight smile Celyn wore, he was pleased with my reaction. But he made a shooing gesture to get me out the door. I didn’t think I was going to be able to move, but I did, walking across the threshold and hoping I didn’t look like too much of an idiot because I wanted to be going in the other direction: back to bed to get naked and sweaty.

  CELYN LED me into a huge hall. The walk had been mostly silent, the quiet broken by Celyn pointing out various pieces of art along the way. I had given up trying to track where we were going, since the castle seemed to be all twisty corridors of stone and a large number of heavy wooden doors. Nothing actually stood out, and I didn’t think I could find my wa
y back to Celyn’s room if my life depended on it. By the time we arrived, it felt like I had been walking for ages in those winding halls, and I had seen no stairs, so as far as I could tell, this entire place was only one floor, with a very impressive front wall.

  A large number of people stood around in groups talking in the hall. All of them were dressed in the same tunic and pants Celyn and I wore, in various colors, embroidered in different patterns. Everyone we passed stopped and stared at us. Celyn nodded at several of them, and I started to wonder who exactly he was. I hadn’t thought about it before, because of everything else that had been happening. But corporate politics had taught me how to read a room, and I was doing it now. Celyn was someone important, more important than the horse and the armor told me. Now it was evident because he was being treated like he was a director conducting a tour of the office. People acknowledged him, and while they weren’t bowing, he was being treated with respect. They all seemed surprised to see me, so I guess elves weren’t too popular here.

  “Don’t worry,” Celyn told me with a smile as he slipped his arm around my waist. We were the same height, so it wasn’t awkward, but it felt odd because I wasn’t used to such public displays of affection from someone who wasn’t family. “You have nothing to fear because you are with me.”

  “Are you going to tell me that I’m under your ‘protection’?” I asked dryly, looking at him.

  Then I noticed the huge cat in one corner of the room, licking its paws and acting like a housecat… except it was the size of compact car. I shivered when I realized what it was: the Yule Cat, straight out of the Icelandic legends. That was the cat that was supposed to eat you if you weren’t wearing your new clothing on Christmas Eve. It yawned, showing its long and sharp teeth, and my stomach did a slow roll. I wanted to blurt out that I had new clothing, and it couldn’t eat me.

  Celyn saw where I was staring in horror and then laughed, the asshole. “She’s harmless.”

  The cat looked over at us, and I didn’t believe she was harmless, even as she purred loudly, sounding like a car with a bad muffler. She was glad to see Celyn, at least.

  “She eats children,” I hissed.

  Celyn laughed again. “She steals children to bring them to a better place,” he corrected. “But she hasn’t been able to do so in ages. I fear that it’s because she is fading in the world of menskr.”

  I shook my head. “My parents still send me something new to wear every Christmas to make sure that I’m not eaten by her, even at my age.”

  Celyn looked at me more closely then. “Your parents keep the old ways. With the coming of the White Christ, the poor kǫttr has faded.” He paused and looked at her again. “And shrunk too. But Math is friendly, and I grew up with her. She made a very nice pony to ride when I was younger.”

  If she was shrunk now, I wondered what she had looked like before. Celyn walked us over to her and, before I could freak out too much, scratched her under the chin. She closed her eyes in pleasure and purred even louder at his attention.

  I had to admit she didn’t look that dangerous in this situation, but I still told Math, “I have new clothes for Christmas.”

  She opened her eyes, and for a second I would have sworn the look in them said, “I don’t steal Álfr.”

  I ignored that look and let Math sniff my hand a bit before I petted her too, scratching behind her ears so I wasn’t near her teeth. I could feel the eyes of the other people in the room boring holes in my back.

  “Math usually isn’t very friendly, is she,” I said to Celyn, considering the reactions I sensed behind us.

  He laughed. “Math is just picky about who she lets pet her. Many a noble or their children have found that out, much to their dismay.”

  I almost pulled my hand back, but I figured that Math had had a chance to bite it before this, and she wasn’t going to do it now.

  “Nobles?” I asked him quietly, hoping he would know what I was talking about.

  “We have a king, so of course there are nobles,” Celyn explained. He didn’t sound too amused or patronizing. “Is it not the same way in the world of menskr?”

  “Not where I am from,” I said. “And actually, most of the world is the same way.”

  “And how are you ruled, then?” he asked me in amazement.

  “We elect our own officials,” I said. “It’s called democracy. It works for the most part, but that could be said for a monarchy too, so let’s not get into a debate about politics.”

  He laughed again, and I could hear the people behind us talking, the buzz of their voices as they wondered what we were talking about, who I was, where I came from, why Celyn was enjoying my company.

  “And I take it that you’re a noble?” I asked Celyn, even if I could guess the answer. He was someone, and I just had to figure it out.

  “You might say that,” he teased, showing me a sexy smile. “But it isn’t different among the Álfr, either.”

  “Which would mean something, if I actually was one,” I pointed out, trying not to sound too annoyed. He opened his mouth, probably to protest, and I talked over him, not trying to be rude, just trying to explain. “I may be one, but I’m not one. I was raised as a menskr, and you can tell me that I’m not one of them, but that’s who I think I am, and that is more important than the genetics of the whole thing.”

  “Genetics?” Celyn asked.

  “Blood and family,” I answered. “It’s a complicated thing with a lot of science that I don’t understand, but basically genetics is the science of who is related to who.”

  It was actually an issue in Iceland because of the small population. There was even an app for your smartphone linked into the national genealogical database so you could check to see if your casual hookup was a relative, since Icelandic last names were patronymic and not family names.

  “Family is important,” Celyn said solemnly.

  “Which is why I want to get back to mine,” I said. I turned and looked at him, ignoring the attack cat with us. “You can get me back, right? That wasn’t a one-way ride, was it?”

  Celyn was looking at me as if there had to be any place else but here to have this conversation. There probably was, but it had just dawned on me that I might not be able to go home. I hadn’t thought about it before, because I had been in shock about almost dying.

  “If we were not able to patrol our lands and slip between the worlds, do you think that we would?” he asked.

  “When you found me, you told me that I was here, in Sút,” I reminded him. “So I was already here, and I don’t know what happened or how it happened.”

  “This is not the place to discuss this,” Celyn said.

  “But this is the time we have to talk about it,” I insisted. Then I stopped, a thought striking me. “You weren’t going to try and trick me into staying here by having me eat something and then telling me that because I ate your food I have to stay here?”

  “No!” Celyn exclaimed.

  Dead silence filled the room for a moment before people started talking again. Math looked at me like I was an asshole, and I felt like one, but I wanted to know what the deal was. Celyn was cute, and I would like to make time between the sheets with him, but not at the cost of never seeing my family again.

  Celyn escorted me to a small alcove half-hidden behind Math. She got up and stretched, even as she was looking at both of us like she thought we were idiots, before moving to block the sight and sound of us from the rest of the room.

  “Where do you get such strange ideas?” Celyn asked me with a pained smile. “What do the menskr say about us?”

  I flushed and looked at my feet. “Um… Greek mythology. Nothing to do with elves or dwarves.”

  He shook his head and didn’t say anything. But who would blame me for thinking about the myth of Hades and Persephone right now? Okay, Celyn didn’t exactly grab me and carry me off, and I do admit that getting lost in the snow and being rescued by him was very different, but I wasn’t thinking qu
ite logically at this moment in time.

  Celyn opened his mouth to say something and then shut it again. I decided I couldn’t make a bigger ass out of myself if I continued to run with the scenario. “So it’s okay to eat the food?” I asked.

  “Why do you think that it’s not?” he demanded hotly.

  “There’s this Greek myth about a goddess who has to live in the underworld with a god after he kidnapped her and she ate some fruit.”

  Celyn just stared at me in disbelief, and I smiled weakly. “I know. Crazy Greeks. And I know that you didn’t kidnap me, and I don’t think that you’re a bad guy, but I want to be able to go home. I have a family that I love and a job that I enjoy.”

  “What do you do?” Celyn asked. I knew he was trying to distract me. It was sort of working. I was calming down, thinking again, not panicking.

  “I’m an accountant.”

  “A what?”

  “I do work on certain accounts for a multinational company,” I explained. Celyn still looked blank, but when it came to my job, it was something I was used to. Very few people actually knew what an accountant did besides the obvious. “I track money.”

  He blinked and laughed. “You have the look of a warrior.”

  “I thought that I was an Álfr?” I asked.

  Celyn shook his head, more comfortable with this question than the others. “They are fierce warriors.”

  “You people aren’t at war with them or something,” I asked with a tinge of dread. That could have been part of the reason I was getting odd looks from everyone. Would it get me tossed in the dungeon?

  “We are not,” he assured me. “There was actually supposed to be an alliance with them, sealed upon my marriage with their king’s heir.”

  “That means that you’re Idris’s son,” I stated, things mostly clicking into place. “And what about Llinos?”

  “She actually is Idris’s favorite,” he explained hastily, holding out a hand as if to stop the idea. “Idris has no children, none of his wives could.”