“You’ll be warmer in bed,” her father butted in, entering the sleigh.
He pulled the furs off her and put his hands under her arms, lifting her up.
When he had her close, she tucked her face in his neck, wrapped her arms around his shoulders and her legs around his waist.
He looked down to me but I was already staring up at him.
Every time I saw him with his kids, holding sleepy Élan close, smiling as Chris chattered at him, I thought he’d never looked more beautiful.
Including now.
“I’ll take her in. Stay close to Draven, poppy, until you get in your room,” he ordered quietly.
I nodded.
He walked his daughter to the front door of the inn and I saw Christophe and Hans standing there, Chris holding the door open for Bella to precede him and keeping hold on the door so his father could do the same.
I looked away and aimed my eyes forward and up.
I’d seen it from a distance and when I did, I was glad that Élan had already fallen asleep.
This was because Brunskar was not like Apollo’s home or any of the finer homes we’d slid by on our way.
Brunskar was creepy as all get out and scary as hell.
Of course, it was dark but the front of it was lit up by what seemed like hundreds of torches, even some on its face up four stories and more on the roof.
Its stone looked black against the gloomy firelight and its white backdrop of snow. Its lines were straight and aggressive with five towers spiking into the air. Many of the windows were lit, likely because they had guests for the gale, and those windows, too, seemed aggressive. Whereas the windows at Apollo’s house were rounded in attractive trefoil arches, the windows of Brunskar were cut into spiked ogee ones.
And the castle (it had to be a castle, no other building had that shape) was set high into what appeared from the dark peaks that stood black against the starry midnight blue of the sky, to be a rather impressive mountain range. And in this world that didn’t have motorized cranes or excavators, it was set surprisingly high into the face of those mountains in a way that it seemed to watch over the village below (also named Brunskar), and that way was not a good one.
It must be said I did not get a happy feel from the place. This was weird since I wasn’t superstitious and I’d never felt that way about anywhere I’d been before except, say, when I was walking into a room Pol was in. But that was learned behavior. This wasn’t the same.
I just didn’t like it there.
And worse, I didn’t have a good feeling about how things were going to go down there.
One thing Apollo did share during pillow talk was the fact that Frey was not Head of the Drakkar House, although he should have been, even if his father still lived. He just didn’t want to be and I could understand that.
He had his hands full. He commanded elves and dragons, was a raider on the high seas (in other words, kind of like a pirate…well, actually a lot like a pirate, it was just that Apollo told me Frey’s kind was the “good” kind, however that would go) and was married to a princess.
Alas, Apollo also shared that after the war that reunited Lunwyn and Middleland, Eirik, Frey’s father, had been relieved by Frey of his responsibilities as Head of the House. Frey had then given these to his brother, Calder.
This had not made Eirik or Frey’s mother, Valeria happy.
And intelligence had come to Apollo that one, the other, both or another member of the Drakkar family were in cahoots with the evil Minerva, her malevolent witch sidekicks, Edith and Helda, and the dastardly Baldur.
Therefore, Apollo reversed his decision not to attend their gale as he had been doing, but only since Calder and his wife Melba took over the House. He packed us all up and here we were.
And I didn’t have a good feeling about it.
Any of it.
Especially that castle.
What I did have was Apollo as well as Draven, Hans, Alek, Remi, Gaston and Laures, not to mention Quincy and Balthazar, and they were armed to the teeth. I’d seen what lay under the green tarps in the back of the sleigh Loretta, Meeta and Bella were in so I knew they understood the dangers and were not messing around.
Luckily, the kids didn’t notice this but I was thinking even if they did, they wouldn’t care. This was because Apollo had clearly created a close relationship between his men and his children and it was obvious the trust the kids shared with Apollo’s boys was absolute.