Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
BASTIAN
“We’ve been summoned to breakfast with my father,” I said the next morning, holding up a note to show Sigrid.
She’d chosen to put on a dark red gown that may as well have been a call to battle.
She looked fierce and regal in it, but I also had to wonder if she’d chosen it to better cover any blood she might end up soaked in today.
She’d eschewed the Saxon hairstyles she’d been forced to wear the last few days in favor of a complicated series of braids that merged together into one elaborate large braid that swung from the back of her head.
The style left her slender neck bare, but for her collar, and showed off her delicate ears, almost as if she were inviting me to kiss them.
Her stitches had held overnight, and her wound was already healing. Apparently, her faster healing abilities weren’t strictly tied to her berserker because they still seemed to be working.
“Interesting…” she said, glancing at the note, but her tone implied she knew more than she was letting on.
“Do you know what this is about?” I asked Sigrid.
Eleanor sat across the room on the chaise, pretending to focused on her sewing, but she was clearly listening. We couldn’t speak freely in front of her.
Sigrid’s expression was serious, but amusement lurked just beneath the surface. “Only one way to find out.”
I looked at Eleanor again. “Eleanor, we have no choice but to answer his summons. Bar the door when we leave, and don’t answer it for anyone but us.
If the king is marrying you off, it’ll be to a noble, and it would be a slight for my father not to attend, no matter how hasty the ceremony was.
If he’s dining with us, it’s unlikely this is when they mean to do it. ”
She nodded, but her expression was uncertain.
Sigrid strode towards her, and Eleanor cowered in her chair, but Sigrid only offered her a knife, held by the blade with the handle towards Eleanor. “Do you remember how to hold it properly?”
Eleanor looked conflicted, but she eventually nodded again, holding it up the way Sigrid had shown her.
Sigrid nodded in approval. “If it comes to it, you fight like hell. Go for their soft parts—they won’t see it coming because they underestimate you.”
It was the closest thing to a compliment I’d seen Sigrid give anyone since we’d been here. She bowed her head at Eleanor briefly, her matter-of-fact manner making it seem as though she thought Eleanor perfectly capable of what she was suggesting.
To my surprise, Eleanor tucked the knife into the skirts of her lavender gown and begrudgingly said, “Thank you.”
I wasn’t truly worried until Sigrid held out her arm to me and said, “Shall we?”
She willingly offered to take my arm. What were we about to walk into?
Had Sigrid done something? Had my father?
I had no choice but to steel myself, fighting back the wave of boyhood fears that assailed me with any summons from my father. Sigrid looped her arm through mine, letting her hand rest atop my forearm, and simply feeling her strength steadied me to face whatever lay ahead.
“Something’s amiss.” Sigrid said it with the same absolute calm with which she might have commented on a dropped napkin. She was subtly surveying the room, even more alert than usual, but she looked at ease as she raised a steady spoon to her mouth and ate some soup.
We’d been led to my father’s private dining hall, where he entertained more privately than in the Great Hall. A long table stretched almost the entire length of the room, and he’d sat us at almost the opposite end from him.
I couldn’t immediately spot what had spooked her, but as I forced myself to lift some soup to my mouth as well, I noticed the guard had been doubled and the door was barred. My father was sitting with his hands folded together on the table, watching us closely.
“Poison?” I whispered, rolling the remainder of the soup in my mouth and tasting for anything detectable.
Sigrid gave a tiny shake of her head. “He’s about to make a power play. If you react in any way to whatever he’s about to do, I’ll kill you with this spoon.”
“How do you know?” He could see we were talking, but he wouldn’t be able to make out what we were saying from that end of the table.
“I know monsters. I know that look when they think they’re about to toy with their meal. I will not be toyed with. You will not be toyed with. Do you hear me?”
I nudged her knee under the table with mine. “Would it kill you to just say ‘we’? We will not be toyed with.”
She sighed heavily, setting her spoon down when the servant reached to take the bowl and bring us the next course. Instead a guard approached my father and offered him a long-handled knife. From this distance, I couldn’t quite tell what it was, but the handle was shaped into something.
Sigrid tilted her head when she saw it, and the king’s smile lifted higher in response. They were locked in a silent conversation, and I didn’t understand what was happening. Were we in danger? He didn’t typically do his own dirty work, but a weapon couldn’t be a good sign.
I looked at the guards again, trying to mark which one I’d disarm to take a blade.
“Thank you for bringing this unique treasure to my attention, Princess. Would you care to tell me what it does?”
Sigrid took a dainty sip of wine. “It’s an old family relic.” Her fingers absently stroked the thin band of metal around her neck.
My father’s eyes tracked the movement. “You think it can sever the leash between us?” He stroked his chin thoughtfully.
I jerked my head to look at Sigrid. Was there such an object?
He held the knife up so I could see it more clearly. The handle was shaped like a raven, and Viking runes had been stamped into the blade. “Do you know the story of Odin’s ravens, boy?”
I shook my head, fighting to breathe normally as I waited for the axe to drop. Whatever story he was about to tell would have an ending we didn’t like.
“Huginn and Muninn fly throughout the world, then whisper to Odin upon their return of all that they saw. I have some little ravens of my own, you know. Ravens who’ve been whispering interesting tales today.”
Sigrid was perfectly calm. Her shoulders relaxed and her breathing even. I was certain she knew what he was about to reveal.
Two platters with domed silver lids were set in front of me and Sigrid, but nothing was put before my father.
Sigrid reached for one of the lids, but I whispered, “Don’t lift it!” From the smile on my father’s face, we weren’t going to like whatever was beneath. I feared it was some part of one of her brothers or Thorin’s mate.
Sigrid gritted her teeth angrily. “Which part of ‘you will not be toyed with’ was unclear?”
She smiled at my father like she was eager for the next course and removed the lid with a flourish before handing it to the servant.
In the middle of the silver plate lay a human eyeball, grotesque and still leaking fluids. I’d been in enough battles that I had a strong stomach for gore, but something about an eyeball on a dinner plate made me want to shove my chair back and vomit.
I locked down every muscle in my body and forced my expression to go blank. I thought of the sea, of a billowing sail, of waves crashing against the rocks. Anything neutral to wipe the impact of that sightless amber eye from my mind.
An eye with amber pupils. I’d only ever known one person with eyes that color: Father Benedict.
The king steepled his fingers in front of him on the table, letting his smile drop. “One of my little ravens whispered that another raven had found a new master, that he planned to steal from me and fly back to her.”
The room felt unsteady, and blood rushed in my ears. The tension felt ready to snap, and I still didn’t understand what was happening.
Father Benedict was one of my father’s most loyal dogs, but Sigrid had somehow convinced him to steal this relic? That must’ve been where she’d gone the night before when she disappeared.
Sigrid looked over at my father with a huge genuine smile. “Majesty, you spoil me with such a rare delicacy!” She picked up her utensils, stabbed the fork into the eyeball, and sliced straight through the middle of it with the knife.
When the eye made a popping noise, the king jerked so violently that he knocked his wine glass over, and a servant ran to mop it up before it reached his robes.
My father’s smile dropped, replaced by a look of utter horror—horror that turned to dread as Sigrid picked up a dripping chunk of eyeball on her fork and paused to inspect it.
She won’t.
She can’t.
Oh, bloody hell, she’s going to…
She parted her beautiful lips and popped it into her mouth before moaning and closing her eyes with pleasure as she chewed.
A guard behind us vomited onto the stone floor, which started a chain reaction of others following suit.
My father knocked his chair over and staggered away from the table, running from the room without another word.
The guards and servants followed, rushing to be free of the stench of vomit and the sound of Sigrid chewing.
Now that they’d gone, I fully expected her to spit it out, but she looked straight at me and swallowed before daintily wiping her mouth with the napkin.
I looked from her to my father’s empty chair and back again, at a complete loss for words. “You just…beat him at his own game.”
Her blue eyes were cold and distant. “Your daddy was cruel to you growing up to make sure you feared him. Mine was cruel to make sure I feared no one. If your fuck of a father wants to scare me, he’s going to have to do better than parlor tricks.
I’ve already seen them all.” She tossed the lid from my plate back, revealing a severed finger that held Father Benedict’s ring.
“Pity,” she mused. “The priest is still alive.”
“How do you know?”
“Because the king would’ve put his head on a platter if he’d had that option. The fun I could’ve had with that…” Her eyes flashed like she was relishing this, but I could see it for what it was.
“You don’t scare me, Sigrid,” I said softly but with certainty.
She gave a half-hearted snort of laughter. “I could make you fear me. Someday soon I’ll be reconnected with my berserker, and she’ll whisper to me exactly which threads to pull.”
“You don’t need extra senses. Do you want me to tell you what scares me?”
Losing you.
“As usual, I want you to put your fucking feelings back in a box and focus. Dear old daddy lost face just now. He’s run away to lick his wounds, but he’ll find a way to lash out and restore his reputation. There’s only a brief window before that happens.”
She pushed back from the table and glanced with disgust at the vomit all over the floor.
“But how will we free your berserker without the relic?”
She laughed. “That knife doesn’t have any power.”
I slid my chair back, carefully avoiding the mess. “Then why did you send Father Benedict to retrieve it?”
She pinned me with a pitying look that said I was being naive.
I could only blink at her in awe for a moment. “You set him up. Set my father up to turn on one of his most trusted advisors. How do you know he won’t punish Layla for it?”
“This was personal, and he’s just cruel enough to want to handle it himself.”