Chapter 28 – Neve
NEVE
Ileaned back in the threadbare chair, stretching my boots toward the blazing hearth to warm my cold toes. Our mission to show Thyra our skills had failed spectacularly. After encountering Thantrel, she’d never returned to the training area. Still, I didn’t count the day as a total loss.
Many watched us spar. Some tried to mimic Vale and Luccan. Mimicry was flattery, and I was certain the rebels would talk of what they saw.
Gossip would find Thyra’s ears. Even if she was avoiding us. Avoiding him. I swallowed as I looked across the sitting area at Thantrel.
Others read and relaxed as we waited for dinner, but Thantrel stared at the fire burning in the hearth with forlorn olive-green eyes.
After Thyra rejected their bond, he hadn’t trained with the rest of us but requested to be returned to the annex.
Anna told me he’d been like this since. Sullen, often with tears in his eyes.
I supposed I would be much the same. I suspected that he’d felt his mating bond thrumming in his chest since our arrival at Valrun Castle.
He’d been acting so off that there was no other explanation.
Their bond had not yet snapped into place, and Thyra had rejected him.
Harshly so. From what little I knew of my sister; I had every reason to believe that she would not budge in that rejection.
Thantrel would be doomed to a life of agony, knowing his mate existed, knowing her and being able to see her, but never having her. Never feeling complete as I did. As Vale did.
How in the world was Thyra so bullheaded to do the same to herself? When I looked at Vale, our bond set me ablaze. Who wouldn’t want that?
And why does she think Thantrel is so bad?
He was a handful, but Thantrel possessed a good heart, and no one could deny that he was gorgeous. I sighed, knowing I would not be able to help. At least not unless Thyra and I grew closer and even then maybe not. She seemed very much the kind to keep her private life extremely private.
I can only do so much. I allowed my mind to drift to other matters until a knock came at the door. I looked at Vale, who’d been stretching on the other side of the room.
“It’s not late enough for dinner,” he remarked.
“Rynni is back?” Clem quipped. The healer worked with injured rebels all day. Apparently, they had attacked a lord’s army moving north at the request of King Magnus a day before we arrived, and many paid the price.
“Why would she knock?” The closest, Arie, opened the door. “Hello?”
“Good afternoon. Is Princess Neve available?”
I recognized that voice from last night. I rose and found Brynhild standing before the soldiers who guarded our annex.
“Hi,” I said, uncertain why she’d be present.
“Might we speak in private? Down the hall?”
“Sure.” I cast Vale a glance that clearly said I’d be fine. So far, there’d been no physical threats from the rebels—just verbal ones largely directed towards Vale, not me. I didn’t expect any sort of threat to come from Brynhild.
He nodded, and I slipped out the door and trailed behind the faerie with the wooden leg. She paused when she was out of earshot of the guards.
“Apologies if I was interrupting a pleasant afternoon.”
“We weren’t doing anything,” I assured her. “What do you wish to speak about?”
“Two reasons. The first being the most important.” She drew a breath. “Thyra has set your challenge. You will be sent to Avaldenn to access the Falk vault there and see if the Fr?r Crown is inside.”
My jaw dropped. “Won’t that alert King Magnus?”
Our visit to a coinary in the south had given away our location, and that had been risky, but to do so in Avaldenn? A stone’s throw away from Frostveil?
Utter madness.
“You will have to do so in secret.”
“A heist then.”
I’d often heard that no one could break into the coinaries of the leprechauns and here my sister set me that very task. Maybe she really did want me dead!
“Correct.” Brynhild gave me an understanding smile. “Only you and Thyra can access the vault, and she is desperate to possess and master a Hallow. Their powers increase one’s own. Or so they say. And of course, you already have one.”
“Do I now? My sword is but a memory since coming here.”
“It’s being kept safe. I give you my word on that.”
“And what if the Fr?r Crown is in the Skau vault?” I asked.
A long shot as that crown had belonged to the royal house and the now extinct Skau family had only been a member of the Sacred Nobles, but it was not out of the question. Maybe my father had transferred items to my mother’s family vault to keep things extra safe?
“Thyra will be breaking into that vault while you work in Avaldenn. A coordinated effort.”
I laughed. She had such audacity!
“That wasn’t my reaction,” Brynhild shook her head. “You two are more alike than you seem.”
I exhaled and brought myself under control, still full of questions. “The city that House Skau called home is far from Avaldenn, is it not? What is it called?”
I’d seen it on the map, but not been that far east. Nor had Clemencia made me memorize anything about it, as House Skau was long gone.
“Bitra is many days’ ride. We’re working on the schedule now.”
If any one thing went wrong in the plan, that put my potential relationship with Thyra at risk. My sister might despise me, but I didn’t feel the same. Plus, I’d just found her. I didn’t want to lose her to a heist gone wrong.
Then, it hit me.
Bitra was presently the seat of House Riis, not House Skau. Over time, Luccan had created gateways between all his family’s properties, including the brothels and taverns his father owned. It made checking in on the lord’s establishments far easier than riding for days and days.
Luccan would likely have created a gateway to their castle, as he had one tucked in the basement of his home in Avaldenn.
Add that to the fact that we’d been in Vitvik, where Lord Riis owned a brothel, also boasting a hidden gateway, and this heist got far easier.
Part of it, anyway. We could ride to Vitvik, which I’d heard was a day’s ride away from Valrun, and from there arrive in Avaldenn and Bitra within minutes.
But that would mean outing Luccan.
My teeth dug into my bottom lip, and Brynhild let out a sigh.
“You don’t have to decide now, but soon.”
She’d mistaken my reaction. Not that I wasn’t worried about a heist, but it was concerning to force a friend to tell their secret. To rebels, no less.
“Thank you.” I needed to discuss this with those I’d arrived with. “I won’t be alone if I decide to do so, will I?”
“Of course not. Groups will form. Some rebels will go with each, but you can take your friends too.”
“Thank you.”
She said she had more than one matter to discuss and now that she’d delivered my mission, she appeared more anxious. What else could be so harrowing? “You wished to tell me something else?”
She swallowed. “I wished to share this with you at dinner, but Thyra requested my silence in the matter.”
Would what Brynhild was going to tell me be equally impactful as simply learning that Thyra existed? I didn’t see how it could.
“I was the maid that ran with Thyra from Frostveil Castle the night the two of you escaped.” Tears shimmered in the older faerie’s eyes.
“I was one of the people who used to care for you and your sister as babes. Since Thyra and I were turned away from the noble house your family believed would take her in, I’ve viewed her as a daughter.
More than anything, I hope the two of you can reconcile.
Your mother and father would have wanted it. ”
All the breath left me. Brynhild wasn’t just an advisor. I suspected Thyra considered her a surrogate mother.
“I’m so sorry for what happened to you, Neve. I wish I could have taken you both. I wish that you and Segla did not come across such trouble. I often wondered what happened to you. Is Segla still alive?”
“Segla? She was the maid who took me?”
“Yes. We were good friends.”
I hated saying the next words. “The vampire who owned me found her in the snow with a toddler in her arms. I think maybe she got lost when we fled the Lisika Castle.”
“Lisika?”
“She either fled there or they captured us,” I explained. “They planned to use me as leverage. To wed me to Roar when I came of age and then use that power. Though I don’t know how, I’m sure it would have been easy. I was a youngling.”
Brynhild scowled. “The last Warden of the West was a vile sort of fae.”
I suspected she didn’t know half of it. Not that Roar’s father was a gatemaker who lured humans into slavery and sold them to the vampires. That was part of how his house had remained wealthy for so very long.
“His son is no different,” I replied. “Where was Segla to take me?”
Brynhild shook her head. “It matters not. That family no longer lives. Your mother didn’t know, but I later learned that they were dead days before you would have reached them. An arsonist—likely one loyal to King Magnus’s rebellion—set fire to their manor. All died.”
My hand strayed to my chest. Sympathy for the many fae I never knew bloomed inside me. It was a strange feeling, but long overdue. Had they been alive, had Segla reached them, they might have taken me in. I might have had a loving family. Not my own, but a family of Winter’s Realm.
My parents might have been wrong though. Doubt played games with my mind.
Brynhild had told me that Thyra got turned away. My heart clenched for my sister and Brynhild. Where had they lived all these turns? What had they resorted to doing to survive? We’d all been through more than a soul should have to bear in a lifetime.
“I’m sorry that you lost Segla,” I murmured.
“There was so much loss during that time. Whole families exterminated.” Brynhild looked at me, her expression woeful.
She reached out and took my hand. She trembled, and I felt that she meant all she said.
“I’ve wept for you and Segla often, believing you both dead.
It’s my greatest wish that you and Thyra bond.
That you become the sisters you once were, so happy and full of sunlight. ”
My throat caught. “I wish for the same.”