I gasped at his beauty for surely no mortal man could look so lovely and so yet terrible. His short hair and beard shed water, darkening his already black hair and the strange blue-grey of his shadowed beard. Despite its color, his face was not old. Nor was it young, though I felt like I once knew it younger than this.
It had an agelessness that could have been thirty or fifty or perhaps five hundred and fifty and his eyes were the eyes of cats. The pupils dilated as they came to rest on me and a thrill of fear shot through me for he was naked to the waist and had the build and crisscrossed scars of a feared warrior.
On his head, the twisted crown looked more like thorns than anything else. In one hand — marked with a ragged hole in the center — he held a rib stained with white and in his side where that rib might have originated was a thick knot of scar and a hole that seemed to be punched straight through his body though it was neither bloody nor gory.
He did not remain still. He was striding from the river to me and to my shock he threw himself to the ground on one bent knee and lowered his glorious head.
“Oh,” I gasped, stepping backward in my surprise, “Sir, your obeisance is not warranted.”
“Speak to my riddle,” he said and the face he turned up to me was twisted as if he mocked me, and yet his eyes shone with a joy so bright and full, that it hurt to watch it. I had to look down and bite my lip for a moment lest I be swept into any machinations he might please, for I was powerless beneath both its intensity and the desire to share in so great a joy. “Speak to my riddle, you stern visage, you startling aspect. Who has walked the Path of Princes? Who has broken the curse of the rib and set free the blood of nations? Who has flown with the Arrow? Who has danced with the Sword? Whose heart lay bleeding in the barrow? Who now — tell me who, if you can — has died side by side with her Lord in the realms of death, beneath his feet and his dominion.”
I swallowed, my mouth and throat suddenly dry. “I know not, my lord.”
The twist in his mouth turned to a smile of devastating triumph and he stood, suddenly, catching my hands in his and leaning down in a predatory way that made my mind scream at me to run, and yet, I held fast and met his eyes with my own.
“One last choice remains to you, Izolda, and I must ask this with you blind to the consequences. You have behind you all you once held dear. Mother, father, brothers. Hale and happy they are. Soon enough, your father will ride to the capital and find for you a good husband who breeds lovely horses fit for a king. And soon enough you will give to him fat babies and live out your life in simple satisfaction.”
“If you say so, my Lord,” I said, blushing at his implications. His hands on mine felt so familiar. As if they were a matching set, a team of horses trained in draft together.
“Or,” he let the word hang in the air and I waited, swallowing. “Or, you can leave all that behind and come with me … one more time.” He leaned his forehead against mine in a way far too familiar for a stranger and there was a vulnerability in his eyes and a softness to his voice as he lowered it to speak this last part. “And this time, fire of my eyes, I will not bid you descend with me into the grasp of hell but instead help me birth, into the fresh age, a paradise beyond anything you’ve ever tasted.”
I swallowed. I did not know this man. Or at least, I did not think so.
And then he lifted my hands, bringing the knuckles up to where his lips grazed them lightly as he spoke, his warm breath sending little tingles down my hands and wrists and arms where gooseflesh broke out. My heart began to race again, not out of fear or danger but out of a sudden, overwhelming attraction. I swallowed and without meaning to, I stepped forward, causing his lips to curl slightly as he kissed my knuckles and whispered.
“Heart of my own heart, fall what may. I have bought you by oath and blood, and made you my wife, and though you have been snatched from me by the currents of time and washed up upon this shore, my vows to you remain. Stay here if you wish. Enjoy the life you might have had apart from me. Or come with me now, and take your rightful place at my side, be queen to me and cherished wife, until the sands of time have all run out, and the earth has rotted away like spoiled fruit, and Death himself is so long past that the stars have burned to dust.”
“I don’t know what any of that means,” I said, and yet … I could feel some tug to him. It was something that went beyond my attraction to this man I’d never met, beyond how he spoke to me with such intimacy. It was something deeper and longer though I could not have guessed what it might be.
He bit his lip looking up at the sky, releasing my hands with a frustrated huff, and then turned to me with his fists on his hips. I worked very hard to keep my eyes up on his face. He cut a very fine figure. Enough to make a girl of nineteen blush.
“Speak to my riddle, wife,” he said.
“Wife?”
He made a brushing gesture as if his title for me did not matter. “What is better? To lose without knowing, or find you have gained too much?”
“To lose without knowing,” I said firmly. “If I must lose, then I shall bear it, but woe to the man who takes from me without expecting me to notice.”
“Ha!” He laughed as if I’d solved a problem and the fretful worry on his face evaporated as he snapped his fingers.
I blinked.
And my memory was restored.
With a gasp, I turned to him and for the first time since the joust, he watched me with uncertainty in his eyes as if he did not know whether I might attack or smile.
“Do you remember, my wife?” he asked hesitantly.
“Everything,” I whispered and I did not wait a moment more to claim what was mine. I strode forward with certainty, took his bearded face between my hands, and fed myself on his kisses, taking them with softness at first, and then with greater hunger and deeper intensity. Did he truly think I would choose a life without him given the chance? Did he truly think it was a mercy to leave me bereft of him?
I pulled back from him long enough to gasp, “And I choose you every time, Lord Riverbarrow.”
His laugh of triumph made my heart sing.
CHAPTERTWENTY
“I hopeyou do not set much store in titles, wife,” Bluebeard said, pausing to lean once more and take for himself a swift, almost violent, kiss. “For that one is passing away now that I have claimed by blood and life the title of the Bramble King.”
