Chapter 15 Alarik #2
‘I can’t think of a less romantic setting,’ muttered Iversen.
Alarik huffed a laugh. ‘Are you sure you’re Gevran?’
She gently swatted him. ‘Keep going.’
‘The Vaskan king tried everything to woo the Gevran queen. He called off his troops. Ceded the Blackspires to her. Even promised a peace treaty for a hundred years. But the queen remained unmoved. Growing desperate and still hopelessly enamoured by her, the king of Vask gifted her his last dragon.’
The wrangler beamed. ‘And she fell in love?’
‘With the dragon, certainly,’ said Alarik, chuckling at her surprise. ‘Not with the old fool who gave it up! I can only imagine Vask is still smarting about that. I hope it haunts Regna every time she falls asleep.’
‘So, the queen kept it?’
‘Of course,’ said Alarik. ‘She and the dragon bonded at once. Not just friends, but allies. They shared a soul-connection, borne of power and royalty. The queen rode the dragon into every battle for the next sixty years and won every single time. Until the night Vask sent its mercenaries into our kingdom.’ An all too familiar story.
He suppressed a shudder. ‘By then, the old king was dead, but his people had not forgotten his foolishness. His son intended to reclaim his father’s dragon and restore Vask to its former glory.
But first, he had to break the bond between queen and dragon. ’
The wrangler gasped. ‘He killed the dragon?’
‘He killed the queen.’ The wrangler paled. ‘In her own bedchamber, as she slept. An easier target, I expect.’ Alarik’s lip curled. ‘Vaskan cowardice at its finest.’
‘This is quite an unsettling bedtime story,’ she murmured.
‘It gets better,’ he assured her. ‘When the dragon felt the severing of their bond, it incinerated the snivelling Vaskan prince where he stood. And his mercenaries for good measure.’
She stared at him blankly.
‘That was the happy bit,’ supplied Alarik.
She remained unconvinced. ‘What became of the dragon?’
Alarik drew a breath. This was the part he was afraid of.
Would she laugh at him, or think him foolish?
‘My father used to say it retreated deep into the mountains. Cowed by grief and pain, it grew angry and restless, and so the soldiers at Grinstad had no choice but to keep it there. Trapped.’ He swallowed.
‘Eventually it fell into a slumber, sleeping deep and undetected as the ice crept over it and froze its thundering heart.’
There was a long, interminable silence. She pressed her lips together, taking in the weight of his words.
‘It’s just a theory,’ Alarik felt compelled to say.
‘Over a year ago, there was a great quake here at Grinstad. We pulled an ancient witch from one of the mountains. She had been slumbering there for a thousand years. I can’t help but wonder what else might have awoken during the avalanches that followed. When the deep ice began to melt …’
Frowning now, Greta looked past him, towards those unknowable snow-swept mountains. ‘I don’t know what a dragon feels like.’ She rubbed the space above her heart. ‘I’ve never … well, I have no experience …’
‘You don’t believe me mad for thinking it?’ he said.
She looked at him again, sincerity in that stormy gaze. ‘No,’ she said, quietly. ‘And that’s the trouble.’
Well, indeed.
‘If there is a dragon in those mountains, I’m afraid it’s very much awake. It’s trapped.’
‘Good,’ he said. ‘I don’t relish the thought of being eaten while we’re on the verge of war.’
‘Do you think Regna knows about it?’ she asked.
Another thought that kept him up at night. Did the queen of Vask have a spymaster skilled enough to rival his own? ‘I don’t know. Though I can’t imagine she’d have the courage to do anything about it if she did.’
The wrangler returned her gaze to the mountains. ‘Is there a way to get inside?’
‘Only the old mining tunnels.’
‘I could go in. Try and find it. Perhaps even try and wrangle—’
‘No.’ The word was sharp and fast, and utterly final. ‘No.’
Had she lost her senses entirely, or was this some misguided attempt to impress him?
He cleared his throat, reaching for his composure. ‘It’s too dangerous.’
He would not risk it. He would not risk his kingdom. Not while there was war to consider. They had enough enemies to worry about, without adding a raging dragon to proceedings.
And even if the beast could be wrangled, she was Tor’s little sister.
He wouldn’t send her into those cruel, cursed mountains to chase a thing they knew nothing about.
Better to keep it trapped. It was safer that way, smarter.
‘Put it out of your mind for now. Devote your efforts to my beasts. The ones we can use against Regna.’
She swallowed, fighting the words she no doubt wanted to say, quelling that indomitable spirit that made her reckless in the face of her king.
And yet a part of Alarik enjoyed it – how obvious that struggle was, how it made her squirm in frustration.
She opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again—
‘Don’t ruin a perfectly good day by arguing with me, Iversen.’
‘I could help it,’ she said, anyway. ‘Maybe it could even help you—’
‘If you want to be helpful, turn your thoughts to today’s task.’ Something they could control, not some unnamed, hidden creature that might devour her. His eyes flicked to those silver scars on her left cheek, curiosity mingling with unease. ‘The matter is closed.’
She turned away, tugging her hood up to hide her face, and he regretted his obviousness just now, and worse, that she might think he was judging her.
‘Pardon my intrusion,’ Lief piped up, reminding Alarik of his very existence. ‘But I couldn’t help but shamelessly eavesdrop on some of your conversation. Without overstepping—’
‘You are already lunging,’ interjected Alarik.
‘I would just like to say that if there is a dragon hiding out around here somewhere, I would very much like you to keep it out of sight for the wedding. For one thing it would completely ruin the ambiance.’
‘And it would probably eat all our guests,’ Elva chimed in.
Lief let out a cry of alarm.
Captain Vine frowned. ‘What’s all this about a dragon?’
‘Nothing,’ said Alarik, smoothly. ‘It was just an old bedtime story.’ He glanced pointedly at his wrangler.
She forced a laugh. ‘Nothing to get worked up over.’
‘And you should thank your lucky stars, Lief,’ added Alarik. ‘Because if there was a dragon around here somewhere, I’d make sure you and these hideous flower arrangements were its first meal.’
Lief quailed.
For a brief moment, there was blessed silence.
Then the conversation turned again, the steward boldly launching into an out-of-tune bridal march as the pass widened and the mountains fell away, taking their hidden beast with them.
The sled emerged into a sprawl of frosted fields.
They stretched on and on, spilling into a glorious patchwork of skeleton trees and silvered grass.
And there, grazing just up ahead, were hundreds of magnificent weaver elks, a mere fraction of the beasts King Nilas had promised as a wedding gift to Alarik and Elva.
‘Holy snow!’ The wrangler hopped to her feet, propping her leg on the bench to steady herself.
The sled jerked at a dip in the road, and she yelped, losing her balance.
Alarik lunged to steady her and for one thundering heartbeat, she stood flush against his chest, his arm tight around her middle, cradling her body in the heat of his own.
He heard the soft pitch of her surprise as she searched for breath, smelled the jasmine in her hair and on her skin, felt the supple curve of her hips as they swayed against him. A groan gathered in his throat.
She pulled away, slumping on to the bench and gripping the edge to steady herself. ‘Pardon me,’ she said, not quite looking at him.
‘That’s all right,’ he said, not quite looking at her.
And then, all at once, they had arrived, the sled coming to a stop at the first frost-kissed meadow.
‘Tell us, Greta,’ said Princess Elva, as they disembarked the sled. ‘Have you ever wrangled a weaver elk before?’
‘Not yet,’ said the wrangler, rolling her shoulders back. ‘But I’m certainly up for the challenge.’
The weaver elk were huge – each as tall as a fully-grown ice bear, and larger even than the wild moose that roamed the untamed reaches of Gevra.
Their bronze coats were short and shiny, save for the coarse woollen shag that clung to their necks, lending the impression of a heavy winter scarf.
Their gold-tipped antlers protruded in menacing points, each tip as sharp as a blade and filled with the strongest poison known to man.
But more impressive than their natural weaponry was the speed with which they charged, moving so fast and deftly through the towering oak forests of Halgard that they had earned the name weavers.
‘I want to see them run,’ said Alarik, as they slowed to observe one grazing nearby.
Elva snorted. ‘I’m afraid our elk are wilfully stubborn. You’ll have to make it worth their while.’
‘Shall I pat that one on the rump?’ suggested Vine.
‘Only if you want to lose your hand,’ said Elva.
‘Let’s give them something to chase.’ Alarik looked over his shoulder, to where Lief looked up from his corner of the sled, eyes wide. ‘I have someone in mind.’
‘Just don’t touch the tips of their antlers,’ warned Elva. ‘And keep your gloves on at all times.’
‘Gladly,’ mused Alarik, imagining all the damage they could do in war.
His wrangler, meanwhile, was a world away, assessing the creature before them in contemplative silence.
She circled the elk, chewing on her bottom lip.
He hated when she did that, finding it unreasonably distracting.
He was still watching her from the corner of his eye when she dipped her chin, her shoulders stiffening as she came to some internal decision.
He drifted towards her. ‘Don’t do anything reckless.’