Chapter Four

Chapter Four

When Finn finally opened his eyes, his first thought was that he’d missed the boat and been left behind. He’d even shouted something to that effect, and that’s when a strong hand caught his flailing arm and held it in place.

“Calm yourself,” a soft voice said in a reassuring tone. “Are you all right?” the tall woman standing beside him said, leaning down to peer into his eyes. “We were beginning to get a little worried, because you lost so much blood. Your wound has been attended to. Lie back a moment and give yourself a chance to wake up.”

He did as she asked, wondering where the hell he was. His leg was throbbing, but this didn’t look like any kind of clinic, but a high-ceilinged bedroom with white-washed walls, clean and spare. The woman didn’t look like a nurse either. She was dressed in an elegant, green velvet tunic, with dark pants underneath tucked into expensive looking leather boots. Her hair was silver-blonde and pulled away from the sharp bones of her face. In fact, though her voice was soft, it was the only thing about her that was, or at least that he could see.

“My name is Maridous. Jazdon brought you here hours ago, but I’m afraid you missed the boat you’ve been shouting about. It won’t be back until next week.”

“Next week?” He tried to jump out of bed, but Maridous pushed him back down with a casual gesture and surprising strength.

“No, you don’t understand. This can’t be happening. I’ll miss my flight back to the States!”

She didn’t offer him the comfort of a reply this time, just gazed down at him with icy blue eyes. She seemed as serene as a marble statue in a museum, with skin almost as smooth and white. She lifted one shoulder in a shrug.

“You’ll have to take another one.”

“No. I can’t afford that. Do you have a phone here I can use? I have to call the airline. Or maybe if I call the tour company, they’ll send the boat back to pick me up, and I could still make it. Or do you have a boat? I can pay you.”

“Unfortunately, a storm is coming. It may not last long, or it could be with us for a few days. No boats will venture here until after it passes. The weather can be tricky this time of year.”

She turned to look over her shoulder at another woman he hadn’t yet noticed, sitting near the window, doing needlework. Maridous spoke to her in a rapid language that may have been Icelandic but didn’t sound like it exactly and then looked back down at him.

“This is Anola. She’ll see to your needs while you’re here. I only stopped by to look at you.” Giving him another half-smile, she checked the strange old-fashioned watch she had pinned to her shirt. “I’m late, but I’ll let the prince know you’re awake.”

Once the door closed behind her, Finn sat up, feeling uneasy, and just wanting to get out of there—wherever this was. What the hell had she meant, she wanted “to look at him?” Maybe her English was off, but it seemed a strange way to put it.

And who the fuck was the prince?

Prince of what?

He put his leg on the floor to try and stand up, only realizing he was naked when he threw back the covers and the cold air hit him.

“Shit!” he said, pulling the blankets back and glancing at the old lady by the window.

What is it with these people and all the nakedness?

“I don’t seem to have any of my clothes,” he called over to Anola, who kept clicking away with her needles. “Do you think you could bring them to me?” The older woman smiled but didn’t budge from her chair.

“Let me guess. You don’t speak English, am I right?”

He got only another sweet smile for his trouble.

About the time he was contemplating whether he could wrap the blanket around himself and go see if he could find a phone on his own, the door opened again. The man who came in was the big, handsome, formerly naked guy who’d saved him from the foxes. He was wearing trousers and a shirt now, though he still looked tall and fit. When he saw Finn looking at him, he prowled farther into the room and came to stand over him, pushing a sweep of dark hair impatiently away from his face.

“You’re awake.”

“Are you the prince? That lady said she’d tell you.”

“I am Jazdon, yes. The woman who was here is Maridous,” the man said with a slight frown. “She wouldn’t like to be called a ‘lady,’ so don’t say it around her unless you want your head taken off.”

The prince—Jazdon— came closer and stood at the foot of his bed.  “You cut your leg on the rocks and nicked an artery.”

“I remember seeing all the blood, but not much of anything else.”

“Because you passed out. Our healer stitched the wound. She said that the artery was an extension of the femoral, and you might have bled out if someone hadn’t been there. You need to be more careful.”

“I know. And thanks. But I need to get out of your way now and get back to Ísafjörður. That la—uh, Maridous said I missed the boat back, and there won’t be another one for a week. That’s just not going to work for me. I’ll miss my flight home. Can I use your phone to call someone?”

Jazdon stared down at him with the same ice-colored eyes as the woman had, the palest blue imaginable. Unlike the woman, however, the prince had onyx colored hair as black as the night sky.

“I’m sorry. There’s no cell phone service out here.” The prince shoved his hands into the pockets of his black pants made out of … was that silk? How odd. Finn shook off the thought and tried harder to focus.

“But surely you have a landline or some way to contact Ísafjörður.”

“We have a shortwave radio, but it’s out of service.”

“You’ve got to be kidding!” Forgetting his leg and his naked state, Finn jumped to his feet—or tried to. He cried out as pain shot up his leg again and he fell back on the bed.

“Fuck,” he groaned.

Jazdon looked down at him, his head cocked to the side as if trying to decide what to make of him.

“If you think I’m joking about any of this, think again,” Jazdon growled. Which was weird because it sounded like a real growl somewhere beneath the words.

“But I’ll miss my flight back to the States.”

“Too bad. But not our fault.”

“Well, no … no, of course it isn’t. I didn’t mean to imply it was. It’s just …” Finn sighed, trying to absorb this latest disaster. His credit cards were maxed out, and unless the airlines took pity on him and honored that return ticket—which was about as likely as him winning the lottery—he was fucked. Maybe he could call his credit card company and explain he was stranded…

His shoulders sagged, and he glanced up at Jazdon. His lips might normally be full and passionate, but they were in a thin line now, the corners turned down, like he wasn’t quite sure what he was looking at, but he didn’t much like what he saw. He was watching him, unsmiling, even grim. At least he was wearing clothes this time, those tight-fitting pants and a white shirt that clung to every hard line of his body. Speaking of clothes …

“Do you know where my stuff is?”

The prince called over to Anola by the window, in the same language Maridous used earlier, the one that sounded a little like Icelandic and was just as totally incomprehensible. She got up silently and went to a wooden cupboard-like piece of furniture by the door and took out his backpack and his clothes, which someone had washed and neatly pressed. Even the hole in his pants leg torn by the rocks looked like it had been mended with a row of neat stitches. She handed everything to Finn with a little nod and then quietly left the room.

“The least you could do was get me someone who could speak English. She didn’t understand a word I said.”

“Anola understands English perfectly. I guess she didn’t find your questions worth answering.”

“Nice.”

The prince just smiled at him. “I told Anola you no longer needed watching over. But I wouldn’t advise walking on that leg just yet. You lost a good deal of blood and you’re probably still weak. Don’t put any weight on it until tomorrow.”

“Sounds like there’s nowhere much to go anyway, if I can’t get out of here.”

“You can—just not yet. We need to watch the storms over the next few days. If they clear, I’ll take you back to where you came from.”

“Ísafjörður.”

“Whatever.”

Finn glanced around himself. “Where are we by the way? Is this your house?”

“I live here, yes.”

“That’s crazy. I mean, there’s nothing much out here, according to the maps I looked at before my trip. I thought the guy at the tour office said there weren’t any permanent structures.”

“He was wrong.” Jazdon stared down at him for another moment or two and then turned to leave without another word.

Rude, much?

“Wait, uh, Jazdon. Please. I know my being here must be a pain in the ass, but there’s got to be some way I can get back to Ísafjörður sooner. I’ll pay someone to take me.”

“No.”

“What do you mean, no? Don’t you understand? I’m going to be stranded in Iceland if I can’t get back.”

“I don’t mean to be rude,” Jazdon said, folding his arms and looking at him as if he had somehow seen inside his head and read his thoughts, “but why the hell would you come all this way with so little money?”

Finn considered telling the truth—that he couldn’t say no to his sometimes boyfriend, Jeremy, when he suggested this trip to Iceland months ago.

“Come on, Finn,” Jeremy had said. “When are we going to get another chance like this? My dad wants me to go to law school and join his firm, and you’ll be stuck in a classroom somewhere for the rest of your life. When do you get to live a little?”

“We don’t all have rich fathers.” Some people, like Finn, had no father. His parents had died when he was pretty young, and other than a few foster families that never seemed to work out for long, he didn’t have any family at all.

“It’s not that expensive,” Jeremy had said.

“Not for you, maybe.”

“Look, it doesn’t have to be first class.” Then he’d leveled those baby blues at him and stepped in close, his breath gusting gently against the side of Finn’s face. “It might be our last chance to be together. C’mon … give in. You know you want to.”

Finn did want to—right up until Jeremy ditched him and their plans at the last damn minute. He should have cancelled at that point but decided to go ahead anyway, as it was the last vacation he was likely to be able to afford for a long time. Considering the disastrous state of his finances in general, he still should have known better.

Even if Jeremy was an inconsiderate prick, he’d been right about one thing. This might be his last real chance for an adventure before he graduated and was trapped in a boring classroom teaching English to indifferent students. Teaching had always been his fallback job, a last resort if he couldn’t find a position on the editorial side of one of the big publishing houses in New York. That had been the dream. That hadn’t happened, though he’d haunted the publishers’ websites and sent queries and resumes to all their HR departments. In the end, he’d settled and signed a contract at his hometown high school.

“Don’t bother trying to come up with an answer,” Jazdon said, as the thoughts raced through Finn’s head. “It’s not any of my concern.”

“Wait—what kind of prince are you?”

Jazdon turned to look at him. “What?”

“I said, what kind of prince? What are you a prince of? Iceland is a republic, so I know it’s not that. Some European country?”

“Something like that.”

“Oh yeah? Which one?”

“That’s none of your concern.”

The prince turned to leave again, and Finn muttered softly under his breath. “Okay, so you’re not rude; you’re just an asshole.”

Jazdon stopped dead still and turned to glare at him, his eyes flashing. He looked surprised and a little pissed off. God, how good was this guy’s hearing, anyway?

“What was that?  Did you have something further to say?” One dark eyebrow lifted over a piercing icy gaze.

Finn met the man’s gaze defiantly but felt his cheeks get hot. “No,” he said. “I guess not.”

“That’s what I thought. Get some rest, Mr. Johansen. Someone will bring in a tray for you in a while. Until then, if you need something, pull the sash over your bed and someone will come.”

Jazdon left, closing the door firmly behind him.

Just how the fuck did he know Finn’s name? Had they gone through his pack? He scrambled for it, but his passport was still inside, along with his wallet. Everything looked perfectly intact. So, he was probably being paranoid. But the most alarming thing, beyond being stranded or someone going through his stuff or even the prince’s surly behavior had been the sound of the lock on his door, as it clicked firmly into place.

****

By the next morning, Finn’s leg felt much better, enough that he could get to his feet and walk over to the window to look outside. The only thing that met his gaze was a high, sheer drop down to the gray and choppy sea and jagged rocks below. The clouds overhead loomed dark and low on the horizon and were as leaden as the sea, so maybe Maridous and Jazdon hadn’t been kidding about that storm coming in. The window wasn’t the kind that opened, so he tried to crane his neck to see something of the building he was in but could only get a glimpse of dark stone, the color of the cliffs, stretching out on either side.

Damn them for locking him inside this fucking room. What the fuck was their deal anyway? He had plenty to say about it, but so far he’d only seen Anola, and she either couldn’t or wouldn’t tell him anything. He thought about overpowering her when she left after bringing him his breakfast, but she was old enough to be his grandma. She gave him that sweet smile and he just couldn’t do it.

Lucky for both of them, he had another plan. As soon as she left, he dug through his pack to get to a more or less hidden pocket inside and pulled out his old Swiss Army knife. He breathed a sigh of relief that no one had found it.  It was a cheap model he’d ordered from Amazon when he was sixteen, but it had a screwdriver, and a strong blade, which was all he needed.

The door handle was European style, so actually easier to remove. By using the blade to pry off the cover plate behind the handle, he found the mounting screws and loosened them enough to remove the handle. It took him only fifteen minutes to get it off, and then he stepped out of his room and into a long hallway.

He was at one end of it, with a stone wall on his left. On his right, though, distant voices drifted toward him, along with a sound like metal clashing again and again.

What the fuck?

He followed the noise down the hallway, meeting no one along the way. Making a few turns, he limped along, getting closer. He could hear an occasional laugh or shout as people called out to each other. They sounded close by.

A heavy door blocked the far end of the hall with a steel bar across the middle of it. Finn pulled up the bar and tried the knob, expecting it to be locked. Instead, to his surprise, he was able to ease it open and peer through a crack to look inside. This was definitely where the clashing noise was coming from. A group of some twenty or more big, powerfully built men and women were inside, fighting with fucking swords.

They were spread out around the big room, some watching or calling out an occasional comment in that odd language. Some were fighting in pairs, wearing face guards, but no other protective equipment. The fighting was savage and bruising, with no one appearing to be holding back. The metal tips on the swords were the only thing preventing bloodshed. The women were tall and athletic, like Maridous, and the men were all muscular and built on huge frames, like Jazdon.

He must have made some kind of sound, because suddenly a woman near him glanced right over at him, shouting something that sounded like, “Hi thu!”

She took off running toward him, with others falling in behind her, all of them yelling at him. The furious expression on her face was all Finn needed to convince him to slam the door and pull down the bar across it, locking them in.

He turned and ran as fast as his leg would allow him to, leaving the sounds of threatening shouts and loud banging on the door behind him. He took a left turn at the next hallway and came to another heavy door. He yanked on it, praying it led outside.

He slammed the door behind him and turned to see a vast, rocky tunnel, open to the sky that soared overhead. The sheer walls carved from the cliff stretched some hundred feet long and at least that wide. The sky overhead was fifty feet straight up the sheer walls of both sides, and the floor consisted of a cement slab built over the rocks.

At the far end he was aware of men wearing uniforms shouting and running toward him but that wasn’t what drew his immediate attention. The huge, winged creature that suddenly flew in the opening of the tunnel, past the running guards and straight toward him definitely did.

Shocked and disbelieving, all he could do was gasp in awe. It was maybe an incredible forty feet long with a massive wingspan and a long tail curled over its back. Arching its big head up, it opened its mouth and roared at him, spewing fire and black roiling smoke as it hurtled through the tunnel toward him.

Holy fuck, he was looking at a fucking dragon!

It had to be a dream or a nightmare. He’d wake up in a second or two and find himself back in his bed in that cool, white room. He was vaguely aware of the door flying open behind him and loud voices shouting at him. Strong hands pulled him violently around.

He was face to face with the people he’d seen fighting with swords. They’d somehow gotten out of that room and followed him. One of them, a tall, fierce man with long, dark hair, leaned down to growl in his face, grabbed his arm and shouted at him in what he thought was Icelandic.

“Hvert ertu?”

“Let go of me, damn you! I don’t know what the fuck you’re saying!” he yelled back and tried desperately to yank himself out of the guy’s grip.

This time he shouted at Finn in heavily accented English. “I said who the fuck are you?”

Another man grabbed his shoulder from behind and jerked him back around. “How did you get in here? Tell us who you are!”

Using both hands to shove that fucker away from him was out of the question because the guy was so much bigger than Finn. Instead, as the guy loomed over him, shoving his face down into his, Finn instinctively head-butted him as hard as he could, catching the man in the nose and making him grab for his face and howl with pain. While Finn had that slight, momentary advantage, he grabbed the same man around the neck and slammed his head down while he rammed his knee up to meet it. The man’s nose made a loud cracking sound and he dropped to the ground like a rock. Before he could celebrate, someone else jerked Finn back around and pulled back his fist. Finn dodged the blow and turned to run—right into another strong fist to the jaw that knocked him out cold.

He never even saw it coming.