CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“By all the Gods in Valhalla…”
The words left Ragnar’s mouth in a breath, and Isolda felt it land on her skin.
His heartbeat drummed slow and steady beneath her ear, and all she felt was the fierce, terrifying pull of wanting to be closer to him.
Isolda’s eyes snapped open.
Ragnar’s pupils were blown wide, his lips parted. And instead of the lazy, half-asleep smile she’d expected, her husband looked at her like she’d sprouted antlers.
She blinked, still half-foggy with sleep and something warmer. The furs had slipped to their waists sometime in the night, and the thin morning light from the narrow window fell across themess of their tangled bodies in pale, unforgiving stripes. She shifted, just slightly—pressing her hips against his thigh.
She’d been about to say something witty about his inability to keep to his own side of the bed, but then she noticed his blue eyes weren’t on her face. They were locked approximately six inches above it, growing wider by the second, and his mouth had fallen open in a way she’d never seen on the unshakeable Stag of Uist.
“Huldra,”he said, his voice rough and awed.
Isolda blinked. “Have ye lost yer mind?”
He pushed up onto one elbow, which dislodged her from his chest and gave him a better vantage point. “Ye look like aHuldra, Isolda.”
“If ye dinnae start speakin’ words I can understand, Ragnar, I swear?—”
“Yerhair, lass.”
Her hand flew up and her fingers met a wall of snarled hair. It was a tangled mess—the dark mass had knotted itself into something that defied the laws of nature, rising from her skull in a matted mess that seemed to have doubled in volume overnight.
Och, nay, nay, nae!
Ragnar sat up fully now, the furs pooling at his hips, the pale morning light catching the hard planes of his chest and the shadows carved between his ribs.
She would have appreciated the view if she weren’t busy having a crisis.
“In the old Norse tales,” he continued, “AHuldrais a spirit of the forest.”
Isolda stared at him. “Me hair feels like I’ve been dragged through a thornbush.” She said, her hands patting the surface.
“Well, ‘tis the prettiest mess I’ve ever seen.”
“Ye’re a dead man,” she told him, but the threat was undermined entirely by the smile plastered on her face as she grabbed the pillow and threw it at him.
He caught it before it made contact, laughing, the sound deep and unrestrained.
She scrambled out of bed, snatching a blanket to wrap around herself as she crossed the chamber to the polished bronze mirror mounted on the wall. The morning light was thin and grey through the narrow window, but it was enough.
It was worse than she ever could have imagined.
She turned her head left. Then right. Then left again, because somehow the left side was even more catastrophic than the right.
She caught his reflection in the mirror. He’d swung his legs over the edge of the bed and sat watching her with his arms braced on his thighs, still wearing that devastating grin.
“Dinnae ye dare say a word.”
“Wouldnae dream of it.”
She reached for the bone-handled brush on the shelf and dragged it through the first section. It snagged immediately, halfway down, and refused to budge. She pulled harder. A sharp sting lanced across her scalp.
“Ow!…bloody…” She tried again, from a different angle. Same result. The brush was now stuck, hanging from the knot like a flag of surrender. “This isnae…it willnae…move, ye wretched piece of?—”
