Promised to the Swedish Prince - Sasha Cottman Page 0,1

the lunatic was still looking for a way to overtake his brother.

With the wind whipping through his fair hair, he looked every inch the wild, untamed Viking. His strong arms held the reins under his command.

“Hold on tight. I am going to make this next turn at speed,” said Christian.

“Oh, sweet lord,” she muttered. So much for him being careful.

Erika would have made the sign of the holy cross if it hadn’t meant letting go of the sleigh’s top rail. She sent another silent prayer to heaven.

“Ya!” he cried, urging the horses on.

A large elm tree loomed into view and Christian turned the horses’ heads to the left. They were going to go around it. She hoped.

Up ahead of them, Prince Gustav appeared to have brought his sleigh back under his control and had slowed into the turn. Tracking wide of the trees, he successfully avoided a ridge of sharp rock which jutted out of the ice.

Christian pulled hard on the reins and a loud thwack cracked through the air. One of the reins had broken and it flew out of his hand. “Herrejävlar!” cursed Christian.

They were headed straight for the rock. The sleigh raced at a punishing speed. At the exact moment Erika realized that they were going to crash, time slowed to a crawl. She saw everything in slow, sickening detail as the disaster unfurled around her.

She pushed her boots hard against the bottom of the front piece of the sleigh, while one hand gripped hard to the top rail. Her other hand searched for purchase on the edge of the seat.

“Erika!” Christian cried.

The horses leaped over the stone, but the front bar of the sleigh smashed headlong into it. When they hit, they went in hard. Erika’s world descended into chaos.

She was thrown clear—her body cartwheeled through the air. There was a momentary glimpse of sky before her field of vision was flipped and filled with the white of ice and snow. The ground came at her in a furious rush.

This is going to hurt.

She landed with a sickening thud on the ice, her breath whooshing out of her lungs. Pain tore through her body.

Ooh, my god.

If she could have sucked in enough air, Erika would have screamed. Instead she lay on her back, stunned and winded on the hard ground. Every inch of her body was on fire. Even breathing was agony.

When she opened her eyes, her sight was filled with the grey snow clouds which hung overhead. The dark sky gave her a moment’s pause.

Am I dead?

There was a scuffle of boots on the snow.

“Erika, dear lord, are you alright?”

A familiar face swam into view. Blue eyes full of concern stared down at her. Christian. He was such a divinely handsome man. If she had died, then at least she had gone to heaven.

“Please say something. Anything. Tell me where it hurts. What can I do?” he pleaded.

She sucked in a short breath, then took in another deeper one. Tears sprang to her eyes.

“I hurt everywhere. I think you might already have killed me, so I would suggest you have done more than enough,” she replied.

Fingers raced all over her body. Touching, prodding, poking. She was peppered with a constant stream of “Does it hurt here?”, followed by “Please don’t die on me.”

She suffered his attentions. “No. No. Ow!” she cried, batting his hand away.

He stopped. His gloved hand settled back gently on her left knee. “I think you might have broken something.”

She winced in pain. “I think you are the one who did that—I was just the passenger. Well, I was until the moment I became a bird.”

He mumbled something that might have been an apology, but she didn’t quite catch it. He went back to touching and asking her where else things hurt.

“I can’t see any other obvious injuries,” he said finally.

As the shock began to subside, and only the pain in her left knee remained, Erika’s head cleared. Her breathing slowly returned to something close to normal.

Christian kept running his hands up and down her arms. He pulled off her gloves and squeezed each of her fingers.

“None of them are broken,” she reassured him.

Of all the many times I have wished for you to touch me, why did you have to wait until you had smashed me onto the ice?

He sat back on his haunches, shaking his head and muttering words indecipherable.

“Do you think you might be able to stand?” he finally asked.

He gave her the gloves, and she slipped them onto