Stephanie lay between Drake and Josh Wardlaw, drunk enough not to care about the mud on her skirts. She was wearing her nicest outfit for the harvest festival, and it would take a great deal of elbow grease to get the stains out later.

She laced her fingers through Josh’s and nuzzled her face against Drake’s shoulder, still bare from their earlier activity.

The problem with harvest festivals, she thought, was that they were the same every year. Every year there was a large bonfire on the edge of town. Every year, the fiddler put on a show and the rest of the villagers drank and danced all night. It was a good time… the first time. But after that, in Stephanie’s opinion anyway, each subsequent festival was more dull and predictable than the last. Nothing compared to that spark of her first glass of wine, her first harvest dance where everything was new and exciting just for the sake of it.

So if she was going to have a good time, she had to make her own fun. Figure out for herself what new things she should try, to bring back the excitement. This year, she winked at the Wardlaw brothers and led them away by the hand. Not just away from the festival but to Roderick’s farm. It was close enough that they could still hear the festivities but far enough that the light of the bonfire had all but faded.

Best of all, she knew that Roderick was home; he hadn’t been to the harvest festival in eleven years, and if he knew they were on his land he would be furious.

The thought of getting caught was enough to make her shiver. It wasn’t that she wanted to be caught. She didn’t want Roderick to see her any more than she wanted Sven to find out about her dalliances.

But the potential for it… there was a delicious spice in the possibility of total self-destruction.

She leapt to her feet and twirled her skirt. Both men watched her move, and she drank in their attention.

Drake reached for her as if to pull her back onto the grass. Stephanie danced away, making a game of it until she was balanced on a fence post giggling.

Josh studied her, a sweet look of concern on his face.

“Come down,” he said. “You’re drunk.”

“Am not,” she winked. “I’m just the right amount.” To show off, she strutted across the fence like a balance beam. He was right, of course. The wine had hit her pretty hard, but she’d been walking the fences her entire life.

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She waggled her hips as she passed, peeking through the curtain of her hair to see his expressions softening.

A loud series of pops shook the air. It sounded like fireworks, but it was way too close to be from the harvest festival.

Stephanie spun on her heel peering into the dark as if she might find the source of it. She wobbled only a little and was able to catch herself.

She laughed uneasily. “That was weird.”

The fence began to shake again, this time more violently. The pounding of hooves reverberated through the air and shook the earth, and in turn the fence. Roderick’s cows were on the move.

Stephanie slipped. The world spun in a twist of alcohol and gravity and she landed heavy on her back.

“Stephanie!” Josh lurched towards her.

A lantern flared to life in Roderick’s house and an old man stepped outside. “Hey!” he yelled. “Who’s out there?”

At the sound of Roderick’s voice, Drake and Josh turned tail and ran. They knew well his reputation against trespassers.

The rumbling hadn’t stopped. Stephanie could feel like getting louder. Closer.

In a moment it was upon her.

###

She awoke gasping on a bench. “Where am I?”

Sven loomed over her. He wore a cloak that was unsettlingly black with white lines curling around in an odd pattern, but his face was the same.

She was used to men who looked at her with desire and adoration. She collected looks like that, feasted on them. But attention like that never held a candle to the way Sven looked at her. When his eyes met hers, she became the center of the universe, the axis upon which all else spun. There was nothing he would not do for her, no edge of the world he would not burn for her.

She drank it in. They were the only two real people in the world, the only ones who mattered .

“No!”

Stephanie turned to see Emrys, bloodied and disheveled, beside a warrior woman. For the first time she noted that in a ring around her, at regular intervals, lay five corpses each etched with the same circular rune that was painted on the floor and blood.

Stephanie took all this in without reaction. “Sven?”

“I’m here, darling.”

“What happened?”

The man’s eyes darkened with momentary rage, not directed at her. Never at her.

“You died,” he said through gritted teeth. “I gathered everyone responsible, and I killed them. To bring you back.”

His eyes searched hers for understanding and she gave it. She saw Drake and Josh’s bodies and remembered the stampede. Remembered them fleeing.

She looked down at her own body, whole and hale. Her dirty festival dress had been replaced by the white robe of burial, it was clean and unmarred.

Sven did all this for her. Of course he did. There was nothing he wouldn’t do, no line he wouldn’t cross –for her. She pulled him close, hungry for his mouth on hers. His hand cradled her jaw, gently at first and then with more force as he realized how alive she was beneath his fingertips.

A fireball seared past them, interrupting the kiss.