Chapter 15 Alarik
Alarik
The wrangler was expertly playing along with his diversion, reeling off all the training exercises she had been working on with his beasts. Alarik found himself leaning closer, drawn to the spark in her blue-grey eyes and the way her full mouth moved, fast and smiling, as she spoke.
Tor had been an exemplary wrangler – and a formidable soldier – but in all the time he had spent at Grinstad, he had never spoken about the beasts with such fondness.
It was infectious – her unbridled enthusiasm – and what had begun as a ploy to ignore Lief soon became a conversation that Alarik wanted to pour himself into, just to hear her speak.
Across from him, Captain Vine and Princess Elva were engrossed in their own conversation about Halgard, leaving Lief to harrumph loudly as he shuffled through his satchel.
‘It’s elk, isn’t it?’ said the wrangler, in a conspiratorial whisper. ‘Weaver elk from Halgard. That’s what’s in the grazing fields.’
‘I wanted it to be a surprise,’ mused the king, but now that he could see the way her face lit up, he was glad she had figured it out.
She bounced in her seat, straining to see beyond the cresting mountains. ‘I’ve always wanted to see a weaver in the flesh. My father says they can run faster than a leopard on the hunt.’
‘And can skewer an armoured soldier with the point of their antler,’ said Alarik, with the same gleaming enthusiasm. ‘The mere tips of their horns are so poisonous a single prick can prove deadly.’
Her face fell, and he regretted his casual bloodlust, a thing that came naturally to him, but that he could see made her uncomfortable. These past few weeks, he had come to realize that while his wrangler loved his beasts, she did not care for his wars.
‘Ahem.’ Lief pitched forward in his seat, waving a limp bouquet of flowers back and forth. ‘I don’t mean to interrupt—’
‘Yes, you do,’ said Alarik, flatly.
‘But now seems like an ideal time to discuss centrepieces,’ he went on, valiantly undeterred.
Alarik frowned. ‘I don’t even know what a centrepiece is.’
Lief made a cry of alarm, startling Captain Vine and Princess Elva from their conversation.
‘A centrepiece is a statement, Your Majesty. A specially curated decoration around which your wedding guests congregate, a thing that echoes the beauty and grand majesty of your wedding. Your very union!’ He shoved the flowers forward.
A petal tickled the underside of Alarik’s chin.
‘I was thinking orchids. Classic, timeless. Or, if you want to add a little flair, I suggest midnight lilies would work rather nicely.’
Alarik batted the flowers away, decapitating half of them. ‘How about we use the skulls of our enemies instead?’
Beside him, the wrangler stifled a horrified gasp.
Captain Vine sighed. ‘Why are you like this?’
‘What, Gevran?’ Alarik retorted.
‘Just say candles.’
‘Or antlers?’ suggested Princess Elva. ‘Our weavers shed theirs twice a year.’
‘Poison-tipped antlers? I’m afraid the dowager queen would have a conniption,’ said Lief. ‘You might as well fetch a witch to curse the entire union.’
‘Now there’s an idea.’ And it certainly wouldn’t be the first time Alarik had been cursed, though thankfully he had managed to free himself from that particularly unfortunate bind.
He exchanged an amused glance with the princess.
Without a shred of true love between them – or the intention to kindle it – wasn’t their union already cursed?
Elva turned to the wrangler. ‘What do you think, Greta? Skulls or antlers?’
Greta shifted in her seat, a frown tugging at the sides of her mouth. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, with a little shrug. ‘This isn’t really my area.’
‘Do you have a betrothed back on Carrig?’ said Elva.
The king stilled, staring hard at his wrangler.
She shook her head, chewing on her lower lip.
A dangerous heat curled in Alarik’s stomach.
‘What? Not even a lover?’ Elva pressed.
That heat grew to lick his ribcage. A nobler king and a better man would have ended the conversation right there, told Elva his wrangler’s home life was none of her business and that these questions were clearly making her uncomfortable, but Alarik was not a good man, he was a Gevran, prone to brutality and possession, so he said nothing, clamping his lips together and letting the silence swell until she filled it with her answer.
Because he wanted to know it.
‘There aren’t many, um, options … for me … on Carrig,’ she said, muddling through her awkwardness. ‘Unless you count the fishermen, I suppose.’
Alarik decided he hated the fishermen of Carrig. Then scolded himself for the thought. It was protectiveness, that was all. Wariness borne of his responsibility to Tor, his best friend and brother in arms.
‘My sister, Kindra, is betrothed to a fisherman,’ she added, as an afterthought.
‘Ooh. Is he handsome?’ said Elva, greedy for more.
The wrangler wrinkled her nose, neatly skipping over the truth, which was plainly that he was not.
‘Mikkel is a good man,’ she said, diplomatically.
‘He’s kind and dutiful. And he does his best to keep us fed—’ She stopped abruptly.
Her cheeks heated and she looked away, to where the mountains spilled out on either side of them, the glassy road narrowing as it led them through the pass.
‘Why does he need to keep you fed?’ said Alarik, quietly.
She turned back to him. ‘That came out wrong. I didn’t mean it that way.’
‘How did you mean it?’
‘Just … that he’s good to us,’ she said, a dent forming between her brows. ‘He brings us fish.’
‘Do you need fish?’
‘No.’ She shook her head, her throat bobbing. What a poor liar.
Alarik’s frown deepened. He willed her to look at him. She would not. ‘Iversen.’
‘No,’ she said again. Another lie. Why was she lying to him? ‘Not fish.’
‘Enough about fish,’ said Elva, flopping back against her seat. ‘Back to love!’
‘Back to centerpieces!’ said Lief.
‘No. Love,’ said the princess firmly. ‘Do you plan to marry, Greta?’
‘These are … difficult questions,’ she said, her cheeks turning an absurdly alluring shade of pink. Stop that. Alarik pinched the back of his hand until it stung. ‘Can’t you ask me about beasts instead?’
‘Well, you can’t very well marry a beast,’ said Elva, with a crowing laugh. ‘Perhaps you might find yourself a nice soldier here at Grinstad …’
Alarik shot her a blistering look. ‘Iversen came here to work.’
‘Sure, during the day,’ she said, smirking. He knew she was teasing him – testing that possessive streak – and it made him want to growl at her. Which meant he was failing. Ugh. ‘But the nights here are so long, Alarik. And cold. I would know.’
The wrangler looked up, confusion pinching her mouth as she glanced between them, no doubt piecing together where the king preferred to spend his nights – alone, in his own bedchamber.
‘Oh, I know! What about dried flowers?’ said Lief. ‘That has a sense of the macabre about it, and will still manage to keep your mother happy …’
And just like that, they were back to mindless tedium.
The mountains crowded in on them, the air warming as the world got smaller, closer. Nestled in the narrow pass, Alarik’s skin prickled with a familiar awareness. He looked past Lief, watching the craggy rock face rise and fall.
Instinctively, he whirled around, looking to his wrangler. Her eyes were closed, her mouth downturned in concentration. She gasped, soft and low, her eyes flying open to meet his.
The others were talking among themselves, oblivious to the thread of awareness that went taut between the king and his wrangler.
‘Can you feel it?’ he said, in a whisper.
She nodded slowly. ‘There’s something in the mountains.’
He tried not to hint at the fear coiling in his gut, but the last creature his soldiers excavated from these mountains was a terrifying undead witch who had nearly razed his palace to the ground and then started a war that decimated his army.
He did not like to imagine there was something else hiding in there. Something even more dangerous.
‘I believe so,’ he said, uneasily.
‘It feels wild and … ancient,’ she whispered. A pause then, her breath quickening as the sled picked up speed, trundling towards the end of the pass. ‘I think it’s frightened.’ She closed her eyes again, the breeze toying with the loose strands of her hair. ‘I can feel its heartbeat rattling.’
‘Perhaps it’s angry,’ said Alarik, darkly. After all, it was trapped. And despite his growing awareness of it, he had done nothing to free it. Rather, he feared the very thought.
She opened her eyes, curiosity shining there. ‘What do you think it is?’
He had a theory, not that he had ever dared to voice it aloud for fear Vine would think him mad.
And yet there was something about the wrangler that made him want to confide in her.
In this matter, she was his closest ally.
A confidante who could sense the same strangeness – and more – in his mountains.
He leaned in, keeping his voice low. ‘When I was a boy, my father used to tell me bedtime stories about a snow-swept land, full of dragons.’
Her eyes went wider still. ‘A Gevra of long ago,’ she said, smiling a little. ‘My father used to tell me the same stories. I was so enchanted by them I would try so very hard not to fall asleep.’
Alarik smiled to find themselves on common ground.
Whispers of the same bedtime stories, of the fathers who sat at their bedside and regaled them.
Magical, half-forgotten tales of the northern continent before the last great thawing of the ice thousands of years ago.
A time when dragons filled the skies, painting the clouds with their fire.
He went on. ‘There was one story in particular that my father favoured. Or perhaps it was the one I always begged to hear. It was the story of the Last Dragon. It belonged to the king of Vask, a covetous, war-hungry man who went to battle against Gevra only to fall in love with its queen.’