Death Blow Read Free

one who has seen the Lady Nyssa. She is not as tall as a warrior, nor stout. She is petite, comely, and womanly.”
    Nyssa chewed the inside of her cheeks, turned her back to him, and squatted next to the fire-pit. The insult bit her to the quick. Fighting the tears welling in her eyes, she blinked and stared at the smoldering fire.
    She knew the all of her female faults. Aye, she stood head and shoulders over most men, and she had not an ounce of spare flesh on her body. The loose robe she wore served to cover the bags of gold siphoned from the siren’s treasure hordes, but made her appear square and thick from neck to chest. Gold coin needed to restore Castle Caerleah to its former glory. Gold coin to free her from marriage to any man, including this one.
    “Believe what you may, Viking. I am who I am and naught will change my name or my lineage.” She blew on the stacked timber and the dying embers glowed and burst into a flicker of a flame.
    Once again he picked her up, turned her around, and brought them face to face. His eyes glittered like chips of frozen loch ice, deep blue and fathomless, and his lips thinned to a stubborn, grim line. “Lie to me and you will regret every breath you take for the rest of your life. I ask again, who are you?”
    She lifted her chin and met his stare. “I am the Lady Nyssa, heiress to Castle Caerleah, daughter of Rán and Rurari. Do not test me, Viking, for not only am I of warrior size, I have the strength of my jötunn mother.”
    His gaze flickered from her shorn hair to the coarse garb “borrowed” from a sleeping priest, to the tattered leggings, and her shoddy boots. “Though you be tall, you have not the height for the daughter of a giantess.”
    Nyssa sneered. “How many jötunn goddesses know you?”
    His jaw worked back and forth. He tightened his grip on her arms, and she bit back a protest. “You will cease answering a question with a question.”
    She did not bother to hide her grin. “Pray tell, what question did you ask?”
    “By Odin, you are insolent,” he murmured so softly she had to strain to hear him. All at once the fierce frown he wore lifted and his lips curved.
    Dread slithered across her nape.
    “I have heard of a mark stamped on the Lady Nyssa.”
    Her throat and face heated. “I have such a mark.”
    “I will see it.” He carried her to the cave’s wall and pushed her back against the cold stone.
    “Nay.” She could barely think for the shame scalding her flesh and the musk-laden male scent of him filling her nose. “’Tis not your right to view.”
    “If you are who you say you are, then you are my betrothed, and I have such a right. Show me the mark. I tell you this once and once only.” He dropped his hold on her and crossed his arms.
    Where was Mús when she needed him? But Nyssa knew well Mús would not interfere in matters ’tween male and female. The cat was infuriatingly dominant and believed women were born to submit.
    “So be it.” He grasped the neck of her robe, and before she could regain her senses enough to thwart him, he ripped it open from neck to frayed hem.
    Nyssa shuttered her eyes when she heard his swift indrawn breath. Gold, she had learned, turned saints into sinners and a godly man into the devil himself.
    “Take them off.”
    Her stare met his.
    The Viking waved at the sacks tied around her waist.
    “’Tis my gold.”
    “I care not for your coin. I will see the mark.”
    He stood so close to her his warm breath tickled the jagged ends of her hair. For a moment panic welded her feet to the ground even though every instinct told her flee, race, and never stop.
    “Needs I do the deed myself, woman?”
    Fingers trembling, she fumbled to unstrap the burlap bags and let them fall to the ground. The coins never clinked for she had packed them in the fine sand from the sirens’ enchanted beach. The four sacks thudded to the dirt-packed pebbled floor, one after the other.
    The first thwack echoed. The second