51. Harper
51
HARPER
“ W hat’s wrong?” Brand asked when he saw Harper’s frown and her distraction. “You were gone a while.”
She looked up at him but did not answer. Her chest caved in as that desire evaporated into the cold dread of reality that stole her breath for an entirely different reason. They marched to battle—to death. And she did not want to die. She wanted to live . She wanted her friends to be safe. She could not bear to see any more of the death and destruction they had witnessed already in Afnirheim. And she wanted time to explore whatever this thing blooming between her and Dimitrius was, without the threat of such dark tidings hanging over them.
“Harper?” Brand’s expression became more guarded, and his stance shifted defensively as he scanned the woodlands around them.
“Dimitrius just appeared,” she whispered.
“What?” Brand growled, his hand falling to the handle of his dagger.
“He came with a warning.” It was the only truth she could give, because the rest of it felt like it would damn her.
“Where is he?”
“Gone.” That was the truth too, she hoped.
He stopped. “Come. Tell us all.”
“Away from the dwarves,” she urged. They did not need to hear of it—at least yet. He nodded. She staggered after him, her legs jelly after what had just happened—and with the threat that Dimitrius had warned of sending her molten with fear. With every step the cold air seared her lungs and cleared her mind. She forced herself to steel—she had to compose herself. She could not admit what she had just done. Her cheeks burned with the shame of them discovering it. No matter her own murky feelings on the matter, their’s would be quite clear, and she did not need the complication.
Motioning her companions to a quieter corner of the camp, she recounted the bare minimum of their encounter, omitting how she had told Dimitrius of her heritage, his admission of stealing the Dragonheart—and that earth-shattering kiss. They were too overwhelming to mention. Even skirting around the edges of it left a raw ache in her chest. She reeled inside after what had just passed—for more details returned to her with every second of thought. Dimitrius, revealing he had stolen the Dragonheart from King Toroth! She had not seen that coming. That he had mistakenly sent it to her—which meant he was the reason she was here at all. Harper had no idea what to make of that. It complicated everything yet more. And Saradon knew she was his heir. The danger of that made her stomach roil. She dropped her head into her hands for a brief moment.
“We cannot leave them now,” Brand said. “We gave our word.”
“As I told Dimitrius,” Harper said, folding her arms so no one saw how her hands trembled. It hurt to say his name, scratching at that new rawness in her chest.
“We must tell the dwarves.”
“How? They cannot know that I met with him.” Already, guilt leeched into her very bones. She had done more than that alright—and wanted to go even further. What did that make her? She was no traitor—but she wanted Dimitrius. There was no denying it. And the fact he wanted her too only made it all the more impossible to resist.
“A vision,” said Aedon. Her attention slid to him, her expression carefully blank as she forced the writhing mess of thoughts deep down inside her and closed the door to them. “It’s the only way. You have seen a vision of a great goblin host in the valley before Afnirheim. You saw it once. You can describe it again.”
She nodded, though a coil of unease stirred. She did not want to lie—but it was the only way to pass on the spymaster’s warning without inviting dangerous questions she could not answer. “But won’t they want Vanir to verify the truth of it?”
“We are far from Keldheim now. There is no time to dally,” said Brand. “The konig will not wish to delay, lest the element of surprise be lost.”
With her agreement, they rushed to Jarl Halvar, who camped nearby with his command. When Brand murmured their purpose to him, he took them before the konig at once. Harper recounted her “vision” in short order to the konig, who did precisely as predicted—ground his teeth and vowed to press on.
“I thank you for sharing this warning with me, Harper of Caledan.” He still refused to call her by her house title, Ravakian, though she could understand why, since the name was tied to Saradon. “It changes our path not, only that we are now forewarned and forearmed. We knew there would be battle. Better it be upon the open fields where we may form ranks and sweep the blight away. If they are to be drawn from Afnirheim, it means the halls will ring empty—for our return.”
He sounded far more confident than Harper thought he ought to. He had discounted Saradon entirely, which she felt was a great oversight. Dimitrius’s unease and the open shreds of fear and doubt he had shown her were a far greater testament of the true danger of the half-elf than anything else. Did the konig realise Saradon’s power? she wondered.
Dismissed, they returned to their belongings to bed down for the night on the fringes of Korrin’s forces where their belongings marked a small camp for them. Her companions sat in a circle to talk—around where a campfire would be, were fire not forbidden—but their words were a haze. Harper mumbled her excuses and retired to her hollow in the mossy ground. They were almost surrounded by dwarven forces, but she felt utterly alone as she stared out into the forest, watching for any hint of movement—searching for those violet eyes. She found nothing. Only still darkness and unbroken silence, for the creatures of the forest fled with the size of the force disturbing their home.
Conflict raged inside her. She needed Dimitrius to return. Needed to see him again. Needed to finish what they had started. More than that—she needed answers. Her questions only piled higher, and the deserted forest gave her no reply. It was so late that her body ached and her head drooped with the weight of her fatigue. The thrill of her encounter with Dimitrius, which had chased all weariness from her bones, had faded. The excitement of that had been replaced with a constant simmering nausea that would not settle at the prospect of what awaited them as soon as tomorrow—a battle in which she would be on the opposing side to Dimitrius, and in which both of them were quite likely doomed.