Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
BASTIAN
Elric walked in silence towards the throne room, refusing to look at me, refusing even to walk next to me. He stayed at least a step ahead, like he was leading me to the executioner.
“Your wife teach you to throw a knife like that?” he asked without turning back.
It wasn’t the kind of maneuver taught to Saxon warriors, but it was a handy trick as a pirate, and it had gotten me out of a few bad situations.
I fought a smile, remembering the days it took Astrid to teach me how to judge the distance and flick my wrist just right.
We’d been becalmed and waiting for the wind to return to our sails, so we’d had nothing better to do than throw knives on deck until half the crew had been lethal with them.
We had to make rules about not throwing them belowdecks after our cook took a glancing blow to the ass.
He put everyone who laughed at him on half rations that night, and the offender, our carpenter, had eaten last ever since.
Cook had scowled like a proper pirate at the crew, but howled with laughter that night over ale with Astrid and me in the captain’s quarters.
Had Elric ever laughed like that with anyone?
“I learned it from my captain when I sailed as a pirate. Astrid of the Onyx.”
His neck stiffened. “You sailed for a woman?”
“With a woman. Pirates have a captain, but we’re all equals. We had many women on our crew.”
He was too rigid in his ways to even consider such an egalitarian scenario, but I couldn’t seem to shut my mouth.
I was proud of the crew Astrid and I had built together, proud of the captain she still was.
“Astrid is from Ocracoke, where all people are equal. Just as the Vikings allow women to fight and rule and do everything men can do.”
The comparison was too much for him. “You’re quite the Viking lover now, aren’t you? So enamored of our enemies.”
I exhaled my frustration. “We’re at peace with the Vikings now.”
He laughed harshly. “They don’t know the meaning of the word. It’s only a matter of time.”
That was the crux of all our issues. No one trusted that anything would hold. That Sigrid wouldn’t turn on us. That I wouldn’t run again. That the Vikings wouldn’t lull us into complacency and then attack. The tension felt like a powder keg of expectation about to go off.
“Should we get our stories straight?” I asked as the great wooden doors of the throne room came into sight.
He jerked to a halt. “Our stories? I plan to tell the truth, Bastian, as I always do. If your story contradicts that, I can’t help you.”
When he moved forward again, I put a hand on his arm to stop him. “I’m not asking you to lie. But the truth can be presented in different ways.”
He shrugged my hand away to keep walking. “Your pirate captain teach you that too?”
There was a time, so far in the past that it was hard to remember, that we’d been friends. We’d only been little boys then, too innocent to understand court politics or competition or rank. I could see nothing of that boy in him now, just a man filled with bitterness and anger.
He pushed the heavy oak doors open before I’d prepared for the onslaught of memories this would bring.
The boy Elric had been was gone, but I still felt like an overwhelmed child being dragged before my father to be punished.
I could remember the walls of the Box of Contemplation closing around me even though that chest had been destroyed years ago.
It grew hard to breathe past the tightness in my chest, hard to keep walking when my muscles tried to lock up, responding to danger that didn’t exist.
I had to stay present. What had happened on the field couldn’t blow back on Sigrid and Godwin. I breathed the way Wulfstan had taught me, slow and controlled, allowing each exhale to release some of the terror, wishing my father would breathe some of it in.
My father was seated at a long table surrounded by advisors.
His throne room looked much the same as it always had, cold and austere, with few decorations but an overall sense of power from the high ceiling and dark stone walls.
It reminded me of the man himself, who dressed himself in expensive dark fabrics and a crown bedecked in jewels.
He wore it like he was trying to make a point.
Perhaps it would’ve been heavy on another head, but his divinely ordained neck was made to carry such wealth with ease.
With a glance at Elric and a flick of his wrist, he dismissed his advisors, but not the pretty maid who was standing next to him while holding a tray of sweetmeats. The courtiers scurried past us, but I focused on the king, waiting for him to deign to acknowledge at me.
His dark hair had some grey at the temples, but besides that, he’d aged very little in the time I’d been gone. He still commanded the room with only a gesture, still made me feel small without even glancing at me. Or maybe it was because he wasn’t looking at me, like I was beneath his notice.
“What now?” he drawled to Elric with a frown.
Elric bowed, then stood at attention. “The prince killed a soldier at training, Your Majesty.”
No mention of the man’s attack, but no mention of Godwin either, so he’d chosen a sort of compromise, the bare minimum truth that neither absolved me nor condemned my allies.
The king finally let his eyes slide up the filth of my uniform to the bruise that was surely blooming on my cheek from Sigrid’s backhand. With a look of distaste, he commanded, “Explain yourself, boy.”
I bit back what I really wanted to say. “The man shot an arrow at my wife’s back. He attempted to murder a member of the royal family.”
At that, he raised an eyebrow and turned back to Elric like that was all he wanted to hear from me. “But he missed?”
A line formed between Elric’s brows. “He wouldn’t have, Majesty. But the Viking caught the arrow.”
“Caught it?” he asked skeptically. “With her shield?”
“No, Majesty. With her bare hand.”
The king processed that piece of information with a bemused expression. “So she was no longer in imminent danger when you retaliated, but you still chose to execute a Saxon subject without so much as a trial?”
I tried to keep feeling out of my tone, lest he hear that the only remorse I had was that I killed the bastard too quickly. “He was guilty. Everyone saw. He was a danger to my wife, and the killing was justified.”
He was a danger to her solely because she would’ve disemboweled him with her bare hands and faced the consequences.
Anger sparked in the king’s eyes, revealing something of the viciousness that lay beneath his regal exterior. “And what was your wife doing in the training ring to begin with?”
I didn’t look directly at Elric, but I still saw the tension snap tighter in his shoulders. This was the moment. The moment when I could try to build some trust with my enemy or instead throw him to the wolves and hope my father’s wrath ended up being concentrated on him.
The temptation to point out that Elric had insisted on her participation nearly won out, but he’d held his tongue about Godwin, so I could compromise too. But how to explain it without giving away my feelings for her?
“She’s a warrior, Father. You never expressly forbade her from training with the men. It seemed better to keep her where I could watch her.”
The king rounded on Elric. “And you allowed it?”
“Aye, Majesty. I thought the men might be motivated to train harder if they saw what they might one day be facing on the battlefield. I underestimated how it would provoke them.”
Had he underestimated it, or had he been the one to instigate the attack? His face gave away nothing.
The king looked at the ceiling, then flicked his wrist to dismiss Elric. The captain gave me an unreadable look before marching out of the throne room, leaving only the stone-faced maid standing next to my father.
The king dropped all pretense of civility. “The men think you’re a coward, none of them trust you, and your answer is to knife one of them in the chest on your first day of training? I didn’t bring you home to have you divide the kingdom even further!”
At this shout, the maid jerked her hand that held the tray, spilling sweetmeats onto the floor.
It was easier for me to weather his tirade than his quiet anger.
His calm was like boarding an innocent-looking ship, only to have a well-trained crew ambush you from the hold.
At least this let me see what I was really dealing with.
“Why did you bring me home, Father? Why make this deal with the Vikings?”
The maid scrambled to the ground to clean up the mess she’d made. He kicked at her, and she scurried back. He glared. “If you can’t clean it up properly, you’ll have to clean it up like the dogs.”
She blinked at him with huge terrified eyes. “My lord?”
“Go on,” he snapped. “Clean it up like the dogs would.”
With dawning horror, she got onto all fours and leaned down to pick up a sweetmeat with her teeth. The king nodded his approval as she humiliated herself. He did it because of me, testing to see if I’d come to her defense. Much as I wanted to, I also knew that would only make it worse for her.
He was looking for weaknesses, the worst of which was kindness. To be kind to this woman would be to show him that he could hurt me by doing worse to her. I stopped watching her, forcing myself to pretend she really was nothing more than a dog.
The king narrowed his eyes, annoyed I hadn’t fallen for his old tricks. “You know why I made the alliance with the Vikings. There’s peace between the kingdoms now.”
“I don’t believe that was your entire motive. Why Sigrid?” It was the most I’d ever spoken back to him, so I was on thin ice, but this whole situation didn’t make sense.
“The Shrikes are practically at my front door, and the people are frightened. I can’t afford to fight two wars at the same time. We need peace with the Vikings to get our own affairs in order.”
“Why have you let the Shrikes to go unchallenged?”
He slammed a fist down on the arm of his chair, making the pitiable woman yelp and drop more food. “All you need to worry about is producing an heir, which won’t happen if you don’t actually fuck your wife.”
I stiffened, letting him have exactly the reaction he was looking for.
“I know everything that happens in this castle, boy. If I don’t have word of an heir by the next moon, I’ll know it’s for lack of trying. Berserkers are more fertile than normal humans, and you’re in your prime.”
I opened my mouth to argue with such a nonsensical timeline, but he held up a hand.
“We already know you’re a coward. Are you afraid of your wife?”
“How can you expect me to bed her, knowing the things she’s done?” I let the disgust I felt for him come out in my tone.
“Are you somehow incapable of completing the act? Perhaps you should prove you’re able to rise to the occasion.” He looked meaningfully at the woman beneath the table.
“There’s nothing wrong with my prick.” You sick fuck. Nausea swirled in my stomach. It wasn’t an idle threat. He’d done worse.
“If you can’t complete the act, I’ll be forced to do it myself. I’ll have a royal heir from the bitch one way or another.”
Fury churned in my guts, murderous, bloodthirsty fury that made my hands shake, revealing exactly what I’d been trying to conceal. He couldn’t know my true feelings for Sigrid.
Cruel laughter rolled out of him. “Oh, you don’t like that idea, do you, boy?”
I didn’t mean to expose the depth of my feelings, but I couldn’t stop the trembling rage that coursed through me. “She’ll kill you.”
Now he truly laughed. “She can’t.”
Alarm swept away my rage. The certainty with which he said it, the way he fingered the cuff on his arm that linked him to her, the dark amusement on his face. What exactly had he done when he leashed her berserker?
He flicked his wrist, dismissing me just as easily as he had his advisors, like he hadn’t just revealed the full extent of what he’d taken from Sigrid.
Like he hadn’t just threatened to force himself on her.
“Get out while I decide whether to punish you for your unlawful killing. One more step out of line, and I’ll have to send a messenger to the Viking king, let him know the two of you aren’t fully cooperating. ”
I closed my mouth and bowed, knowing better than to argue with that tone. He’d follow through on his threat and make sure something brutal happened to Layla.
I was a warrior and a pirate, the former quartermaster of the Onyx, one of the most notorious crews to ever sail.
I could lead my crew and defend my friends without fear…
but this man, this monster who wanted us to believe he was a man…
he struck terror into me, not for myself, but for everyone I cared about.
Because that’s what truly made him monstrous. He was a master at hurting people via their loved ones rather than hurting them directly. There was something twisted about living with the guilt of the awful things he did to people and wishing he’d just done them to you instead.
By the time I got back to our chamber, it was well after supper. I could see they’d sent an elaborate meal up to our rooms, as I’d asked, but it was untouched, and Sigrid was nowhere to be found.
Did she escape?
Did someone harm her?
She was in a court swarming with enemies, and even if she could handle herself in a fight, she’d be expected not to harm her attackers.
Panic was a vise around my chest as I paced the room, wondering if searching for her would only alert others to her absence.
If she was still in the castle, she could be anywhere, but if someone located her, they’d look for me here.
The best I could do was wait and be ready for whatever chaos she was sure to be stirring.