Chapter 20 Greta
Greta
As the ballroom descended into chaos, Greta picked up her skirts and fled.
The grazing fields were burning, and the palace beasts could smell it.
They were yowling in terror, as anxious and frightened as the noblefolk inside.
Her heart ached to comfort them, her slippered feet barely touching the floor as she ran.
Only moments ago, she had been waltzing with the king of Gevra, secretly pretending she was a princess.
When the music began, she had practically melted into his embrace, her skin tingling at the brush of his warm breath along the shell of her ear.
It was a perfect, fleeting deception. Now, the first stirrings of war had come to Grinstad.
Queen Regna had launched a surprise attack, sending armed gliders over the mountains to rain down fire on the king’s weaver elk.
And now they were suffering, trapped and burning in fields not far from the palace.
The cruelty of it pricked tears in Greta’s eyes as she hurried towards the forest, wading through the thickening snow and swirling mud, drawn to the keening distress of her animals.
She went first to the ice bears at the back of the woods.
She could sense their anxiety like a hum in the air, her own chest tightening in response.
She sang as she neared them, reaching for a lullaby her father had taught her when she was a girl.
Greta’s chattering teeth added an unexpected staccato to the melody, but after a few moments, she felt the bears quieten.
Her chest loosened. She went from pen to pen, slipping inside to soothe the animals.
She combed her fingers through their fur, softly singing them to sleep.
She tried not to let her thoughts wander back to the king.
It was hard to believe the warrior riding bareback into all those spitting flames was the same man who had held her tenderly on the dance floor, whispering and laughing as though they were the only two people in the world.
It was a kindness, she knew. Alarik Felsing had seen her upset and sought to distract her.
Perhaps out of some misplaced loyalty to her brother, or to stop his prized wrangler from blubbering in front of his guests.
Whatever his reasons, Greta had found peace in his arms and joy in the unrestrained howl of his laughter.
She was smiling as she slipped out of the last pen, leaving Baldur and Nel snuggled up together.
Her crown of braids had come undone, and her sodden skirts gathered dirt as she made her way up to the wolves.
They were still wide awake. She spotted Tollo and Gale sitting at the front of their pen, growling at the sky.
‘It’s all right,’ she murmured, but the wolves’ eyes were wide and glowing. Tollo’s hackles rose, and Greta felt the spike of his fear like a shot of ice in her blood.
She turned just as a slew of gliders emerged from a low-hanging cloud and soared right over the treetops, towards the king’s beasts.
Towards her.
She opened her mouth to scream, but the sound was lost to a thundering crack.
The world erupted in firelight. The trees hissed as they burned and the beasts roared as one at the gathering smoke.
The gliders disappeared somewhere in the trees, but Greta’s eyes were on the flames racing menacingly towards the pens.
Her head throbbed with one single, pounding thought: save the beasts!
As guards flooded the courtyard behind her, she picked up her skirts and ran, into the raging heart of that terrible inferno.