Dreams of a Dark Warrior

sister?” Lucia the Archer demanded as she barged into Regin’s room.
    Though Regin had hoped to slip away this night from the manor house she shared with Lucia, her sister’s huntress senses were too acute.
    I should probably lie.
Yet out spilled the truth: “I am deciding which garments will best please a warlord.”
    Lucia gasped, her hands falling to the bow she always wore strapped over her body. As her fingers nervously plucked the string, she said, “You are seeking out that berserker?”
    She nodded. Regin would become a full immortal soon and, as she’d finally been warned, her desires were growing overwhelming.
    When she imagined fulfilling them, only one man’s face arose in her mind. Just as Aidan had predicted, she needed him now. “He’s near. His army is camped within the dark woods.”
    Over the years, as she and Lucia had sought out other Valkyrie on this plane and others, Regin had often heard tales of her berserker. He was little closer to his gift of immortality, having spent more time searching for her than for battles to win. And already he had forty winters.
    He was said to be
changed
—his beastlike nature even more dominant. He was quick to conflict, letting his berserkrage free at the earliest provocation.
    And yet she couldn’t stop thinking of him.
    “Now, shall I wear the nigh-transparent skirt”—Regin tapped her chin—“or the trews that encase me like a second skin?”
    Lucia sputtered.
    “Yes, well said, Lucia. Males
do
ogle me more when I wear the trews.” She pulled them on over her generous backside—with effort—then lay on the bed to tie the tight laces. Next she donned a sleeveless leather vest with a plunging neckline. Though it covered her breasts, the vest bared her midriff.
    Lucia had begun to pace. “We’ve talked of this.”
    “
You
talked of this,” Regin said as she braided her hair into a dozen haphazard plaits around her face. The rest she left flowing. “I averred nothing.”
    Lucia wanted her to join the Skathians—the celibate archeress order she herself had entered—but Regin was too curious about coupling, too eager to discover what the warlord’s secretive smile that night had promised.
    Yet that wasn’t the only reason she would seek him out. Though he’d been so stubborn and arrogant, he’d also laughed with her and enjoyed her humor. Over these years, men had gazed at her with lust, reverence, and even, on occasion, respect—but Aidan had looked at her as no man had since.
    With
appreciation
. He’d appreciated her exactly as she was.
    “To seek him out is madness, Regin. He believes that he alone will possess you. Like some … some
thing,
some object. He will never let you go!”
    “Then he will not have me to begin with. We willmake a bargain for three months, or for nothing.” She would explore her attraction to him, slake these drives, and loosen the hold he had over her.
    Regin dug into her copious chest of jewels—containing no glittering stones, of course. She decided on adornments of polished gold. Males grew fascinated with how she made it glow. She donned serpentine bands of it around her upper arms and a circlet crown with strands to dip over her forehead.
    “If you must do this, choose another male, any but a berserker! They’re animals, and I do not use that word lightly,” Lucia said, her eyes still haunted by her own encounter with a male nine years ago.
    The man she’d thought she loved had been a monster in disguise, one who’d turned on her, harming her in unspeakable ways.
    Regin had been right to worry—and to leave Aidan behind.
If I’d been but a single day later …
    “I cannot choose another male. Else break an oath.” It seemed her brash words from all those years ago had come back to haunt her. “I vowed to Aidan that I would be as faithful to him as he was to me. Lucia, rumors hold that he’s forsaken all others. If ’tis true …”
    Yet this only alarmed Lucia. “An insatiable beast lurks within him, one that wants only to rut and conquer and possess. I hope to the gods, for your sake, he’s not tried to leash it for nearly a decade.”
    “I am going to him,” Regin said simply as she turned toward the stairs. Her mind was made up. She wasn’t one to debate things with herself. She rarely pondered, never mulled. She acted.
    Lucia sighed, following her down to the front entrance. “Then for once, be circumspect.” At the door, she handed Regin her hooded cloak. “Survey the