Chapter 6
The Grand Kyrka was immaculately kept, its stonework pristine, its windows works of art. Kyrja knew she’d entered it once as a babe, but she obviously had no memory of that visit, and Mamma had never been permitted to bring her since.
She stood on the sidewalk outside the doors and wondered what Nik would be thinking, feeling, had he stood here instead. A place he’d clearly been more eager to see than the other sights of Reykstoll.
Why? What had excited him, what drew him? If it were impressive architecture he sought, there were other buildings even grander. The palace, of course—or it had been, a week ago. The Great Council chambers. The Museum of Fjordic Art.
She pondered it for a moment, then wondered why she bothered. Why did it matter why a stranger from the domes wanted to see the kyrka?
The pain in her chest gave her the answer.
Because thinking about what Nikanor Tristansson would have thought about it kept her from wondering something far more important—what had Mamma thought, when she came to this place once a week?
When she walked these steps, so familiar to her yet utterly foreign to Kyrja?
What did she feel when she stepped inside, when the light from those colored windows washed over her?
Had she prayed for her children? For Kyrja? She must have.
And those questions were easier even than the next—what Kyrja herself felt as she climbed the white-stone steps. As she put her hand on the latch, almost hoping it would be locked. Almost deciding, when it opened easily, to change her mind anyway.
There was nothing for her to learn here, in this place. Nothing she wouldn’t have to forget again the moment she returned to the palace, turned down the wrong hallway to the wrong room and prepared herself for her new evening ritual: the debriefing.
Einar and Krystiana had undergone it for decades, but she’d never had to. Her stomach knotted at the very thought of standing before her father and going through each of her actions that day, waiting for his judgment.
What could she possibly tell him about this?
Exploring the place your prisoner wanted to see.
No, if she spoke to Fodur about Nik, she knew very well her questions and recriminations would come spilling out, no matter how her father glared at her and told her, for approximately the millionth time, that she “didn’t understand.
” She’d leave all mention of Nik out of her explanations for the day.
Seeking the truth you say you serve yet clearly don’t.
No, that was another argument in the making.
And arguments with any of the Blessed, and especially the king, were frustration and humiliation waiting to happen.
They were always so calm, emotionless—which made her pounding heart and high feelings all the more apparent.
Proving, yet again, that she was a mockery of a Blessed, more thane than Fjorder at heart, even if she was now doing the jobs both her brother and sister had done.
Verifying funeral arrangements. Yes. Yes, that would work.
She drew in a breath as she stepped inside, paused.
It smelled…it smelled like Yule, and for a moment she was back in the consort’s quarters of the palace, squealing as she raced around the lounge, Einar chasing after her with a playful roar.
Evergreen boughs on the windows and mantle, and there, in the window—a little wooden man with a little wooden pipe that smoked and smelled just like this.
Incense. Of course. The decoration had a hollow inside for a small incense cone. Mamma would light it only once a year, on Yulaften. She said it was to remind them that it was a holy night, but that had never made sense until this moment.
She eased the massive door closed behind her and padded silently through a second set of doors, these propped open, and into the enormous chamber she’d seen only in images. Wooden benches lined the space in neat rows, and she trailed her fingers over the edge of one.
Freya had wanted to marry Einar here. A true marriage, she’d said, ought to happen in a kyrka, before a dominie.
Fodur had refused. Said their arrangement was not a “marriage” in the sense of the thanes—one partner for life—but a legal contract, binding only for a set period of time.
“Once you’ve provided an heir and a spare, you will be dismissed,” he’d said so cooly when she’d been brought before the family that first day after the Test selected her.
And Freya, ever bold, had looked away from the king and directly to Mamma.
“Your consort did not choose to leave. And I will not either. You can call it what you like, Majesty—but I am a thane, and for me, this will be my marriage. The one, the only.” Then she’d looked at Einar with that same frank gaze.
“I pledge you my life, Highness. My heart and my soul. You may keep only a contract, if it so pleases you. But to me, it is covenant. I will love you, even if you cannot or choose not to love me in return.”
Fodur had not been pleased—not that he showed such things, of course. But Kyrja had been pierced to her core.
What courage it must have taken, to stand before the entire royal family and pledge to love a stranger.
To pledge her life, not just a decade of it.
To basically claim that her way, the commoners’ way, was more sacred than whatever rules the Fjorders had made to downplay it, and she would not be swayed.
Kyrja had known that day that Freya would be more than a sister-in-law. She would be a friend. She had known that the Test had indeed chosen well. That this woman, with her unwavering conviction, was exactly the match her brother needed.
Freya hadn’t had her kyrka ceremony, but she’d had her marriage. She’d had her love, and it hadn’t been one-sided. Kyrja took comfort in that as she slid her way up the center aisle, step by slow step.
Love was a victory in their frozen world of logic and reason.
Love was quite possibly the most elusive and most treasured victory one could ever have.
She knew Freya hadn’t regretted it, not for a moment, even when Fodur had refused her many requests to join Mamma here in the kyrka, saying when she was queen-consort, then she could do as she liked, but until then, she would obey her king.
They’d all known she would never live long enough to take that title. Fodur was still far too strong, too healthy to give up the throne during her lifetime. Not unless the unthinkable happened.
The unthinkable had. But not that version.
Even so, Freya had been happy. Not filled with regret. Kyrja knew Mamma hadn’t regretted her choices either. Hadn’t regretted trading freedom for a third child. Hadn’t regretted the years beside a man who never spared her a kind word.
And Fodur? He wasn’t as unfeeling as he claimed. She’d seen real anger in him these past four days—anger that could only be because of pain at their shared losses. Why else would he hate Nik so much on principle that he would want to forego the promised trial?
Nik’s words from an hour ago niggled. But he was wrong, he had to be. Of course thanes received trials. If they didn’t, why would they even have a judiciary? Fjorders were rarely prosecuted for crimes.
Which, now that she put it to words, didn’t seem quite right either, did it?
Though she’d met plenty of thanes over the years through her volunteering and official tours of the domes, she’d met all the Fjorders throughout Fjordlandi and knew far too well the Blessed among them.
She knew for a fact that many of them were disdainful of anything that interfered with their own designs.
They lied, they cheated each other, they ignored whatever laws didn’t suit them.
And yet she couldn’t recall a single one who had been legally punished for it.
Oh, there were consequences, to be sure.
Fodur made sure of that, as did his High Council.
They would lose favor, lose seats on the Great Council if they were a Fjorder without magic, find themselves facing a Challenge and undergoing the Proving if they were Blessed.
But was that justice?
She didn’t know. But she would have to find out. There was only her, now, to assist Fodur in his rule. Only her to stand before the Two Councils, both High and Great.
She wasn’t at all convinced she could be as strong as Freya before the family. That she wouldn’t quake and lower her eyes and give in to whatever they demanded of her, like she’d always done.
Having reached the foremost benches, she paused, turning in a slow circle to take in the play of light over dark wood and the strange, clear columns that arched to a peak at the front—though everything was cast in gloom.
What would the windows, with their pieces of colored glass that formed mosaics, look like with sunlight shafting through them?
If Krystiana would only part the clouds—
Kyrja sucked in a breath. Let the pain wash over her. And then followed it up, to the skies, to the snow clouds she’d obediently taken hold of and drawn closed again over Reykstoll, over all of Fjordlandi but for the pockets over the domes, when Fodur had told her it was her new responsibility.
One hole, that was all she allowed. Just big enough for a beam of sun to break through at just the right angle. It hit each piece of glass and sent a rainbow onto the room, one that whispered a story.
Her breath tangled in her chest. A woman in blue, cradling the broken frame of a man, limp in death. She’d only meant to hold the clouds apart for a moment, but instead she let the sunlight linger so she could study the image.
A lover? Wife?