Dark, Devastating & Delicious!: The Marriage Medallion / Between Duty and Desire / Driven to Distraction

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 it even to herself.

Yet it had been there, against all odds, deep in her most secret heart. No one had really believed she would learn anything new when she said she would find the truth about what happened to him—well, okay, her father believed, at least a little. And Medwyn. After all, they had sent her here to find out what she could.

But no one else had any hope. Not her mother. Not her sisters. Not even Jorund Sorenson, the ally she’d cultivated at the National Investigative Bureau.

They all told her the truth was known already: Valbrand had died at sea.

She’d told herself they were probably right, that she only sought Eric Greyfell to understand better how her brother had died.

But still, she had known

And she’d been right.

She tried to say his name. But words wouldn’t come.

Valbrand. Tall and strong and so very alive. Standing right there, next to where she lay. He was dressed all in black, like the masked figure she’d seen in the heart of the fjord as she stared up, numb and fading, from the cold, rocky ground.

Had that been him, then—the masked one, in the fjord?

Valbrand was looking at Eric Greyfell, who stood beside him.

Eric warned her brother, “She sees you. She knows you. You shouldn’t be here, not without the mask.”

One of the soft-voiced women who tended her whispered, “She knows nothing. She’s trapped in her world of fevered dreams….”

Her brother, still looking at Greyfell, smiled. His smile was rueful, sad and teasing all at once. “The littlest of my little sisters…”

Not so little, Brit thought, irritated. Just because she was the youngest by barely two hours didn’t give anyone—even her long-lost and recently dead brother—the right to call her “little.”

She tried to tell him that, but again the words would not take form. Valbrand was still looking at Eric, still smiling fondly. “Your bride,” he said. The two words echoed. They bounced off the rough wooden walls.

Your bride, your bride, your bride, your bride…

Greyfell’s expression gave away nothing. “If she lives.”

“She’ll live,” said Valbrand. “Thor and Freyja protect her equally. Hers is the thunder, hers is love.” He chuckled. “And war…”

And then he looked directly at her. She saw that something terrible had happened to the left side of his face. It was crisscrossed and puckered with ridges of white scar tissue, the flesh between ruined, ranging from angry red to deep purple. What could do such a thing to a man?

Acid? A blowtorch?