the temple is missing. I need only to know if she is here.”
“I see,” the guard said. He turned and rapped on the door, calling out as he did. “Liis of Leok is g-gone, Majesty. The Highest Keeper has come to see you.”
A moment later, the king wrenched the door open. His tunic gaped and his pants hung low on his hips like he’d hiked them up to attend to the interruption.
“Where is she?” he asked, as though the Highest Keeper was just there to torture him.
“We do not know, Highness,” Ivo replied, his voice level, his hands folded beneath the long sleeves of his robes. “You did not summon her?”
“I did not,” Banruud grunted. His jaw hardened, and his eyes swung to the sentry, who stepped back in fear. He began to snap orders, sending his men running.
“Tell Balfor. Alert the watch. Rouse the chieftains. Ring the bells. Get my bloody horse. Find her.”
When they returned to the temple, Master Ivo expelled everyone but Dagmar from the sanctum and drew a seeker rune in his blood on the fleshy part of each of his palms.
“We should not use the runes to gain information we can achieve by using our own two feet, Dagmar. But now that we know she is not on the mount, we must do what we can to find her quickly and find her . . . first.”
“Yes, Master. I agree.”
Chanting Liis of Leok’s name, Ivo pressed the runes to his closed eyes, but after several slow breaths, he lowered his hands, frustrated.
“That is not her name,” he whispered. “She is not Liis of Leok. Not in her bones or in her blood. The fates will not honor my request.” Crimson streaked his hooded lids.
He washed his hands and face in the basin of water beside the altar. In fresh blood, he drew the runes again and pressed them to his eyes once more.
“Show me . . . the Songr of Temple Hill,” he muttered. “Show me the little Songr.”
Dagmar waited, barely breathing.
“Ahhh.” Ivo leered. “The Norns like specificity.” But within seconds, his grin became a grimace and then a hiss. “She is in the Temple Wood. In a clearing . . . and she is . . . lying beneath . . . Desdemona’s tree. The very same tree where your sister gave birth to Bayr.”
Dagmar inhaled sharply, but Ivo was frozen, observing what the rune chose to reveal. He was silent for too long.
“Is she hurt, Master?” Dagmar cried, impatient.
“No. She is with . . . a man,” Ivo whispered, his obvious horror raising the hair on Dagmar’s neck. “She is with a man. He is lying . . . beside her. He is holding her. And she is . . . holding him.”
The Highest Keeper lowered his hands and looked up at Dagmar, blinking like the blood burned his eyes, and his lips trembled with his next words.
“She is with . . . Hod . . . the blind supplicant.”
From the chatter of the birds in the treetops, Hod presumed the dawn had broken; the light never changed for him, but the air did. The sound did, and he knew they were out of time. They’d fallen asleep wrapped around each other, sated and exhausted, and even still, Ghisla slept deeply, her head tucked against his shoulder, her body boneless and warm at his side. She’d pulled her robe over them at some point, and his was rolled beneath his head.
He should wake her. They would need to make a plan. But he did not move. He did not even adjust his aching arm. The ache was too sweet. A moment more would make no difference, and he could not part with her yet.
He had endangered her. If a child grew from their union—the thought made his heart swell and his loins tighten. Their union.
If his child grew in her womb . . . he would . . . he would . . . he would . . .
His mind had ceased to function at all. He was caught up in the remembrance of flesh and feeling and euphoria, and he could think of nothing else. Not while Ghisla still lay beside him, smelling of woman and seed and warmth and hope. And the idea of a child made him more ebullient.
There is no joy but this, Hody. I have no joy but you.
He could not find it within himself to regret his actions. Not yet. She was a woman, protected by the