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“Wake up, child,” the queen said. “If you understand the rules of the game, we will begin tonight.”

With a start, Gytha woke and tried to gather her scattered, fuzzy thoughts. “Neither you nor the bear will pressure me to make a decision?”

“The bargain requires a free choice,” said the queen with stern dignity.

“What if…what if I can’t sleep because it’s unsettling to have a stranger in my bed?”

The queen’s lips curled in annoyance. “If you pass the night without looking or touching, then it counts for the purposes of the magic.”

“Can I talk to him, even if he can’t answer?”

Her eyes narrowed, and she hesitated a fraction of a second before saying, “That is permitted.”

Gytha turned everything over in her mind. “Thank you,” she said at last. “I am rather tired. Will I see you every day?”

The queen gave her a cool smile. “Not every day, but as often as I wish.”

Drowsiness pressed upon Gytha, and she nodded again. “Thank you.”

At the queen’s gesture, the servants bustled Gytha out of the great hall, down the hall, and into her room. She let them stir the fire but protested their help getting undressed. She finally shooed them from the room so she could change in privacy.

She found the soft silk night shirt and silk trousers from the night before and pulled them on before slipping into the covers. She lay on the very edge of the pallet, nearly touching the wall.

Then she waited.

Nervous tension curled in her stomach, but she was too tired for it to keep her awake for long.

Chapter 5

Aslight shift in the pallet woke Gytha. She hadn’t slept alone since Sigrid was born, when Gytha had been barely two years old, and her sister’s movements had never kept her awake. Somehow this stranger merely lowering himself to the bed brought her to sudden, wary alertness.

The stranger froze, apparently having perceived that she had woken. The fire had died to low embers, and the room was far too dark to see anything, not even a darker shadow among the shadows. Gytha stared upward, not looking in his direction but not looking away, either.

“Good evening,” Gytha whispered cautiously. She clenched the covers, trying not to tremble.

What had possessed her to do this? Surely there was an easier way to repay Alexander for his kindness! What purposecould this ridiculous bargain serve?

The queen’s words turned over in her mind.

He’ll eat you, of course, but he wants you fattened first.

He could have eaten her earlier.

Gytha did not trust the queen.

But here, in the dark with a strange man, she was not sure if she trusted him, either. Was he handsome prince? If so, was he a silver-tongued liar, deceiving her for his own gain?

After some time, when Gytha said nothing else, the visitor lay down, every movement slow and cautious, at the very far edge of the pallet.

Gytha twisted to face away from him. If she looked toward him, even in darkness too deep to see anything, would that break the bargain? She was not willing to risk it. He probably faced away from her, too.

Without meaning to, she let her eyes close, and she drifted into sleep again.

When she woke again, she was alone, and she felt as though it must be well past dawn, if the sun had dared peek above ground so far north. She dressed and sat in front of the fire.

She needed some sort of schedule for her days, because in the darkness, it was impossible to guess how much time had elapsed. She wanted to know how many days and nights had passed, and how many still had to pass before she could return home.

Moreover, she did not want to drift into some sort of strange, disordered rhythm in which she stayed up or slept too long out of loneliness or boredom. She would be diligent in some way, even if she didn’t know how yet. There must be a way tohelp her family, even from here, and even if her help could not reach them yet.