Chapter 19 #2
Kyrja stared him down. “I make no excuses for what one man chose to do. But I also do not judge an entire people based on his actions. Moreover, after giving careful review to the many, many forms, complaints, requests, and supplications he filed in perfect order and which were summarily ignored for decades, I have decided that if my father and the Two Councils had adequately done their jobs in serving all of Fjordlandi, a group like the Red Hands never would have had to exist. We were the terror-makers long before Tristan ever built his bomb. Isidor, Axel before him, and each and every member of either Council who voted to ignore the pleas of our people. We are to blame. Not Nik’s father. ”
She stopped, let that sink in. Watched the faces of everyone in the audience—the students, the commoners, the Blessed—to see their responses.
“Those policies—the ones that degrade thanes into animals—are the things we’ll no longer negotiate with.
A new Fjordlandi begins today.” She turned, caught Sven’s eye, and nodded.
“And I’d like one of our kingdom’s most esteemed professors to begin by sharing the ideas for the future government that he and his students have been debating for years. Professor?”
With a smile on his face, clearly unbothered by the glares many of his own peers and at least half the Blessed were sending him, Sven stood up. And launched into his vision for how to change the world.
She would give them credit. They listened. Perhaps for some of them it was only to make a list of arguments, but they listened without interrupting for the extent of Sven’s speech. And when he finally fell silent ten minutes later, it wasn’t Ivar who immediately protested the plans.
Daemon shifted in his chair and glared. “It’s never going to work. As long as there are any Blessed on the High Council, they’ll use their influence to return us to the dust again. We can’t trust them.”
Now Ivar scoffed. “In case you can’t count, there are six of you beasts now on the High Council, and with our new queen apparently in your pocket, that gives you a majority. Even when the rest of the seats are filled with the rightful Blessed—”
“The queen is in no one’s pocket.” Nik snarled the words, the room heating twenty degrees in the space of two seconds, though no flames licked over his skin, nor did his veins glow.
He moved his furious gaze from Ivar to Daemon.
“And if the Blessed are not given a voice, tyranny will continue, just flipped. That is not the Fjordlandi we must build. We must unite, be one. One people under the Giver, or we’ll fall right back into the same hatred that has divided us for centuries. ”
Daemon snarled at Nik. “You’re a na?ve child, if you think we can ever be united with these unfeeling, frozen—”
“Stop!”
Kyrja had been ready to interject too, but Dania beat her to it.
Her best friend had pushed to her feet, and she held her arms up.
Turning in a circle, she must have been meeting the eyes of at least some of every people group.
She definitely caught the gazes of first Daemon and then Nik as she reached the front again.
When she lowered her arms, it was to clasp her hands together and press them to her chest.
“We are better than this. We can be better than this. My grandmother was the daughter of a Blessed and a Fjorder, no magic in her veins—but she remembered her own grandmother, the woman taken from the domes to bear a child to the favored Fjorder selected for the honor. A woman who chose to stay in Reykstoll rather than return home after her contract was up, to become a servant in my grandfather’s house so that she could be near her son.
Be the nanny to his children, including my grandmother and her brothers. ”
She turned toward the Blessed. “Every one of you has thane blood.” To the Fjorders. “All of you do too, at some point in your family’s history, just like me. We are the same, beneath the skin.”
Daemon stood too, veins aglow. “We are not.”
“We are!” Dania met his heated glare without flinching.
“What is it you desire, my lord? Freedom. Fairness. Family. The things we all crave, if we are honest with ourselves. Things my people have hoarded for centuries, claiming that only we deserve them.” She spun, faced the cluster of her patients.
Her friends. “It is a lie. You deserve them too. You deserve security and equality.” Back to Daemon.
“I am glad, so glad the Giver has given a gift just to the thanes, since the Fjorders have used this first gift so poorly, used it to freeze their own hearts. You have the fire we need to melt those centuries of ice. So let us, my lord. Let us be warmed. Let us thaw. Let us melt. Do it not to destroy us but to save us.”
“Save us?” Ivar leapt to his feet too. “We do not need saving by the likes of them.”
“Yes. We do.” Not Dania this time—it was Laila who stood.
Stood and…was she wiping tears from her cheeks?
“Perhaps we are not alike yet, as the primal claims. But we should be. We need to be. One people, as Lord Nikanor has said. As our new queen is endeavoring to make us.” The Blessed faced Kyrja, and she bowed at the waist. “Ask us to rise to the occasion, Your Majesty. Demand it. Call us to be better, to put our strength, however much of it we have, to this cause. Let us come alongside you in this fight. Not for a seat on the High Council, but because it’s the right thing to do. ”
Laila shifted a bit, eyes fluttering closed, and it took Kyrja only a second to realize what she was doing. What half the Blessed in the room were doing—easing their magic into hers, out there in the world. Fortifying her hold on the clouds, the seas, even the springs that fed the prison.
Laila’s brother, Magnus, stood too. “You have been doing the impossible these two weeks, Your Majesty. Sustaining all of Fjordlandi on your own, as no monarch has done before you. If we doubted your strength before, we can do so no longer. You are truly the anointed of the Giver. The strongest ruler Fjordlandi has ever had. And you are using it not to dominate but to serve—a lesson I know I needed to see with my own eyes in order to believe it possible.”
Then…then Magnus did something unexpected.
He knelt, as did his sister beside him. All around the room, those Blessed who had woven their magic through hers did the same.
“Two weeks ago, we bent the knee to your show of strength,” he said, “but we didn’t know what it meant.
Now, Your Majesty, we bend the knee with full understanding.
We bend it to your mercy. We bend it to your vision.
We bend it to the Giver, who has poured out his spirit upon you. ”
“Have you all gone mad?” Ivar’s face actually contorted with rage, much like Fodur’s had done since the attack. Ice breaking up, not because of the Aflame’s heat at all, but because of the fires of their own hatred. “Fjordlandi is built on ice. The rule of the Blessed—”
“Fjordlandi has never been only ice.” Dania motioned toward the window.
In this wing of the palace, they looked out not on the city but on the mountain.
“We have always been equal parts ice and flame. And it’s high time we embrace that.
Embrace all that we are, not just part of it. Aflame and Blessed. Fjorder and thane.”
Ivar shook his head. “Ice and flame do not mix. They destroy each other if they try.”
The way Daemon twitched, Kyrja had to wonder if he agreed, though he’d never admit it.
Dania gave that smile Kyrja had seen countless times on her face.
The one that said sometimes healing required pain.
“Maybe. And maybe the melting ice will water our hearts. Maybe the banked fire will nourish the seeds of peace and love. Maybe, when our extremes destroy each other, it will be to the benefit of us all.”
Kyrja searched each face, trying to gauge how her best friend’s words landed. Not at all surprised by the range of emotions—and lack of them—she saw in her people. At the hope in Nik’s eyes. The disbelief in Daemon’s. The uncertainty in Arne’s. The excitement in Sven’s.
Last, she looked to Perla. “What do you think, Your Highness?”
The princess’s smile, this time, didn’t have the lighthearted quirk of a grin.
Just a serious, somber note. “We all know that magic comes only in the meeting of the worlds—when a bridge is built between two opposites. When two magics meet? I think that’s when we see miracles.
” She leaned back in her chair, somehow making the utilitarian seat look like a recliner.
“I think Fjordlandi is on the brink of something grand. And I am incredibly honored to have a front row seat.”
Her new friend’s words warmed something inside Kyrja that had gone cold when Stefanos stepped into her palace.
Faith. Faith that it would work out, somehow.
That this, too, was part of the Giver’s plan.
She drew in a breath. “I know we’ve given everyone much to think about.
I suggest we adjourn today, return at the same time tomorrow.
Bring your concerns. Bring your questions.
Bring your ideas. Let’s dream up a new Fjordlandi together. ”
Seeing the many smiles in the room, Kyrja felt true hope build. At least until she saw Elianne rise from her chair and stride for the door.
If all went to plan tonight, Nik’s mother wouldn’t be here to see the change. It didn’t seem right, didn’t feel right. But Kyrja had no idea how to fix it without bringing war down upon her people.