Chapter 18
"He’s out of his mind.”
“He has the law on his side, that contract is watertight.”
“Offer him that Ulna woman from the old High Council—she’d probably love to be a queen. Free up a prison cell.”
“The other nations wouldn’t actually come, would they?”
Elianne ignored the chatter buzzing around the plateau halfway up the face of Helviti.
They’d stayed in the dining room only until the Ellesians had left the palace—none of them, it seemed, could stand to be cooped up inside tonight and were too worked up to eat.
She, Dae, Nick, Perla, and Kyrja had all stormed up the mountain, making it through the cloud bank before their frustration bowed to the impractical shoes the two royals were wearing, then they’d thrown themselves to moody seats on this small level outcropping.
Elianne sat on a rock with her back to the mountain, her feet in the snow, and her face tilted up to the night sky, where the aurora danced in shades of green and pink, here above the clouds.
She hadn’t forgotten the beauty of a clear sky at night.
It had been a memory she’d brought out over the years, whenever she needed a reminder of what life was supposed to be.
The sight might have been rare in Reykstoll, but over the domes, they usually had clear skies that showcased the beauty of their northern world.
The stars, gleaming in their galaxies like diamonds.
The pulsing lights of the aurora. Moonlight gleaming on the snow outside the domes.
She could still remember walking hand in hand with Tristan on a night like this, when they first started courting.
The way her heart had pounded at the feel of his fingers woven through hers, the occasional brush of their arms against each other.
She had felt so alive back then. Excited for the future. Certain that the man beside her would be the one she’d walk through life with. She’d loved him with every breath of her lungs, every pulse of her blood, every wish upon a star.
Perhaps she should have mourned him long ago.
Twenty-six years apart, and he was twelve years older than her.
She should have tried to count those passing years, to realize that while she still looked to be in her twenties, he would have been sixty-five now—and in the life of a thane, that was old.
Few lived past seventy under the domes, where life was primitive and hard and inoculations against the many diseases that ran rampant were halted at age fifty—because, the Fjorders had reasoned, why waste resources on someone who didn’t have much longer to work anyway?
But she hadn’t ever mourned him. Only now, when he was truly gone, did she realize she hadn’t.
That some part of her had still been in Harroby Dome, time frozen at the moment she’d been taken away.
She had still been waiting for Tris to rescue her.
Imagining little arms coming around her neck, a little voice crying, “Mamma!” Clinging to the future that had become the past, without her in it.
She didn’t need to lower her gaze to be aware of Nik, leaning against another rock on the opposite side of their circle.
The snow under him had already melted to a puddle, the puddle had sizzled off, and the basalt had cracked and grown soft.
Her baby was still there in his face, hiding behind his father’s features.
She’d catch a glimpse of little Niki here and there, now and then, when he smiled or laughed. Never for her, but that was all right.
He was here, with her, and that was a blessing. Well, for her a blessing—her son, her heart, her life, back at her side, even if Tristan was gone. For him? She was just a complication.
She saw what he was still trying to deny.
The way his gaze always drifted to the queen.
The way the queen always drifted to his side.
How within a few minutes, they’d be touching.
Innocent touches—the brushing of hands or arms or even feet.
Friends, they’d call themselves. Allies in a world where neither knew who else to trust. Two people who had run into a fire together to save others and had been forged together in the heat.
But it was more than that. She knew it because she remembered feeling it herself within days of meeting Tristan after she moved to his village to help care for her ailing aunt.
The magnetic draw to his side. The way their gazes would meet.
That knowing deep inside that insisted that, though maybe it wasn’t love yet, it could be.
It was the seed of it, ready to spring up and bloom if only it got a bit of water and a few hours of heat from the sun.
The thane in her said it was a bad idea, one that needed to be stomped out here and now.
As an heirless monarch, Kyrja would have to undergo the Test soon, as would both Fjorders and thanes, to see where her best match would lie.
Perhaps with the thanes, like her brother—but Nik was no longer just a thane.
He was Awakened. And in Fjordlandi, two Awakened had never produced a child with strong magic.
King Stefanos had been right at the last—Kyrja wasn’t just a person. She was a queen. She didn’t get to make choices like an ordinary person.
The mother in Elianne wanted to tell her boy he should win Kyrja’s heart if he could—fulfill Isidor’s goal for Fjordlandi and be happy in the process.
Merge the Blessed blood with the Aflame and see if this alliance of Awakened could do what two Blessed had never achieved, like Isidor had seemed to believe they would.
But also to warn him that the weight of the crown would change her from the sweet girl she was now.
Harden her. She’d grow cold simply from the necessity of holding ice in her veins for decade after decade.
The Blessed weren’t capable of love, not in the long term. It might spring up now and then like a snowdrop at the first hint of sun outside the dome, but then the new snows would come, the clouds would gather, and it would wither and freeze.
It would break his heart. Maybe years from now, but it would happen. Wouldn’t it be kinder to break it now, before the seed had even germinated? To pluck it up before it could send out roots?
A better mother would do it. Would know him well enough to find the words to say, the warning to give.
She’d never had the chance to be that mother. Instead, all she wanted to do was see him smile again. Make him happy, if only for a minute. Coddling, she knew that’s what it was, and still she couldn’t beat back the urge.
Kyrja had been pacing but sat now on the rock that Nik leaned against. What a coincidence. She pulled one knee up, let the other leg dangle. A single shift from Nik—there it was—and his shoulder touched her ankle. “I can’t believe my brother witnessed that deal. And he didn’t tell me.”
She stared out at nothing, making no attempt to cover the pain of the betrayal in her voice. She wore her emotions like her mother had—like a thane.
It wouldn’t serve her well as queen. Not with the Blessed, not with the Fjorders, and not even with the thanes, who expected strength from their leader. And that Ellesian? She’d be crushed in the gears of his war machines and left in pieces on the other side.
Elianne turned her face toward Dae, waiting for him to give this young queen the same advice he’d shoved at Elianne time after time, year after year. Let it go. Burn the past—it doesn’t exist anymore. You are something else now. Someone new.
Dae said nothing. Maybe it was because he didn’t consider Kyrja to be one of his people—fair enough. But he hadn’t pressed Nik to choose a new name, either. Hadn’t said a word to him about letting go of the past and resigning himself to eternity.
Perhaps because time existed again. The future and hence the past. For the first time since any of them were tossed into Helviti, they had a life beyond the lava flows. Possibilities.
“Maybe Einar was the one to insist on the equivalency clause.” Perla scrolled through the written agreement on the little crystal reader she’d brought with her.
“It would have been a viable out before you proved yourself without an equal. Any other Blessed woman would have sufficed. And for that matter, it was a reasonable match. Logical. Right? Here, you were third in line and, so far as they knew, too weak to ever rule unchallenged. You’d have been given in union eventually to some Fjorder to whom your father owed a favor, perhaps even another Blessed, but your branch on the royal family tree would have pretty much been snipped off. ”
The princess had a point. “She’s right,” Elianne said. “Your father’s plan made you a queen, established a blood tie between the royal families of Fjordlandi and Ellas, and even made certain you’d be cared for after the terms of the union expired.”
Nik glared at her, and the ground beneath him steamed. “Stefanos is a monster.”
“We’re all monsters!” She called to the lava behind and below to prove her point, brought it spurting up.
Her son’s expression hardened still more. Flames, but he looked like his father. “He traded her for a ship.”
“Which gives Fjordlandi access to technology and naval might every other kingdom in the world has coveted for centuries.” Elianne dismissed the lava with a wave of her hand.
“It pains me to give Isidor credit for anything, and I certainly didn’t like the way Stefanos asserted his superiority tonight.
I’m not saying you should marry him, Kyrja, but this is a deal that will never come around again.
You can’t let it slip from your hands. And you certainly can’t let Fjordlandi be the victim of a war against the rest of the world.
We’d never survive it. It would be our end. ”
“I would not bring war upon us.” Where Nik’s voice had been hot with anger, Kyrja’s was cool with dread. “I’ll find an answer.”