Chapter Four
Before the Great War, royal marriages between kingdoms was not necessarily common, but indeed encouraged when two kingdoms were fighting over something.
It was the simplest way to calm the waters and avoid bloodbath.
Most didn’t like it, but dealt with it silently.
However, the witches always refused. They would not bind themselves to a foreign line.
It somehow amazes that they never saw the betrayal gathering against them.
Tabitha Wysteria
Ylva awoke, as she always did, beneath the fragile shelter of a tent woven from leaves and found, as always, a beautiful Fae man waiting for her just beyond its threshold. She had asked him countless times why he lingered there, as though he feared she might dissolve into mist if left unattended.
He never answered. He would only offer that insufferable, self-satisfied smile she loathed.
They had been on the road for days, drawing ever nearer to the village where the wolverian castle loomed in wait.
The air itself seemed taut with unease, a tension that had not been present before.
Their journey had stretched far longer than expected, for at every hamlet they were forced to halt, to mend what ruin the witches had left in their wake.
By firelight Ylva had listened as the Fae whispered their thoughts: Princess Rio Hawthorne, who led them, believed the witches had not pressed beyond the castle walls, that the northern villages would remain untouched.
Yet the truth along their path was cruelly plain.
Every living thing between here and the royal seat had been extinguished.
Ylva often caught the weight of Fae stares upon her.
She yearned to ask what it was they saw, but each time she opened her lips some unseen force urged her to silence.
She glanced down at her arms, traced in pale runes almost invisible against her white skin.
Yet when she moved beneath the sun, they shimmered faintly, as though her flesh itself carried a secret light.
‘Good morning to you too,’ Arden said, biting lazily into an apple. ‘As radiant as ever, I see.’
Ylva grumbled in reply.
‘Tell me,’ he pressed, amusement flickering in his tone, ‘is it customary for valkyrians to be so impossibly unapproachable at dawn?’
She finished braiding her long, white-grey hair as she strode through camp with purposeful steps.
‘You ought to eat something,’ Arden persisted.
‘Not hungry.’
She ignored the strange glimmer in his deep green eyes, something she could not name, and instead made for her white horse. A smile almost betrayed her when Arden wordlessly pressed a bag of carrots into her hands.
‘Does it have a name?’ he asked.
‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘You ought to give it one.’
‘Fae seem rather obsessed with naming everything.’
Arden only shrugged, taking another bite of his apple. ‘A name matters. It lends a thing its sense of self, its measure of worth. Strip away a name, and you strip away a part of the soul itself.’
Ylva regarded him for a long moment, wondering whether his words held some hidden meaning. She did not ask. Her gaze shifted instead to the small tent nearby, within which the body of Kage Blackburn was kept.
‘It will start to rot,’ she said quietly, ‘and smell.’
Arden stiffened, his eyes following hers. ‘We are using Fae magic,’ he said carefully, ‘to keep it… to keep him preserved, for as long as possible.’
Before Ylva could answer, a vast wolf padded to her side, nudging her gently for attention.
A smile touched her lips despite herself.
She had never asked why the creature had run to her on her first day in camp, nor why it kept vigil outside her tent each night.
She did not ask whose companion it was, or why its presence made something within her ache with a strange, unspoken bond.
For every time she tried, a sharp pain twisted inside her chest.
‘He likes you,’ Ylva remarked with a smile as the wolf—Ghost, as she had lately learnt—turned its luminous glare upon Arden.
‘It only favours me because I keep feeding it,’ he said with a laugh, tossing the wolf the remains of his apple.
‘Either way, he likes you.’ She reached up to stroke the beast’s thick fur.
‘If only every wolf I crossed paths with returned the sentiment.’ His eyes lingered on her, that mischievous smile curving his lips once more. Ylva cleared her throat and looked away, feigning absorption in her winged horse.
‘You are rather obsessed with wolves,’ she muttered, offering the creature another carrot, refusing to look at the tall Fae who edged ever nearer.
‘I have grown rather fond of them lately.’
‘And why is that?’ She felt his nearness like heat, and turned, only to find him directly behind her.
‘There is something striking about them, don’t you think?
’ His smile deepened as she instinctively pressed back against her horse.
He reached forward, tucking a stray lock of her white-grey hair behind her ear with careful fingers.
‘They are born of ice and snow, yet within them burns a fire untamed.’
‘Have you met so many wolves, then?’
‘No, not many.’ He shrugged, his eyes never leaving hers. ‘One was enough.’
‘It must have been a very special wolf.’
‘She was.’
Ylva bit her lip, words deserting her beneath the weight of his stare.
He looked at her as though he might kiss her, as though the world were not crumbling around them, as though war were not pressing at their heels.
He looked at her as if she were the only thing that mattered, as if the whole of creation stood before him and wore her face.
She cleared her throat, desperate to steady the wild tempo of her heart.
‘We ought to help,’ she said. ‘We’ll be moving soon.’
Arden chuckled softly but made no move to leave.
Ylva found her eyes upon him again, something she had been doing far too often lately.
It was difficult not to. Arden Briar was, without doubt, the most beautiful man she had ever seen.
Tall and strong, though not with a form that threatened or overwhelmed.
His black hair was drawn into a short ponytail, several strands adorned with beads that caught the light.
His skin was a rich, dark hue, so striking she wondered what it might feel like beneath her touch.
His eyes were the greenest she had ever known, deep and endless as an ancient forest.
And then, the antlers. She should have grown accustomed to them by now, surrounded as she was by Fae, but still they struck her with awe. Magnificent, regal things. So strange and so beautiful that it was sometimes impossible not to stare.
‘You ought not stare so much, little wolf,’ he said, stepping back with a half-smile. ‘You might fall in love.’
Ylva rolled her eyes. ‘Don’t be absurd.’
‘Stranger things have come to pass.’
She brushed the notion away with a dismissive flick of her hand, but he caught it mid-gesture, his thumb tracing the delicate skin of her wrist. ‘I daresay many would fall to their knees with but a single glance at you.’
Ylva snatched her hand back. ‘Are you a poet by trade? You sound well-practised at it. Do you offer such nonsense to every woman you encounter?’
Arden laughed, low and warm. ‘No. I do not.’
She rolled her eyes again. ‘Of course.’
‘You don’t believe me, do you?’ His smile widened as he matched her stride, following her through the bustle of camp where preparations for the day’s march were already under way.
‘I hardly know you,’ she retorted. ‘So no, I don’t.’
‘Then I shall have to prove myself to you.’
‘No. Don’t do that.’
‘And why not?’
‘Because…’ She faltered, frowning as if the words themselves resisted her. ‘I’ve no time for romance. I am valkyrian, a warrior. I am here to fight, to help. Not for…’ She gestured vaguely at him. ‘Whatever it is you intend with me.’
Arden laughed so heartily he doubled over.
‘I didn’t mean that as a jest!’
‘I know,’ he replied, still chuckling, ‘and that is precisely why it’s so amusing to hear you say it.’
‘Pardon?’
‘An inside joke,’ he said with a wink.
Ylva sighed, exasperated. ‘It’s reassuring, at least, that in times such as these you can still find cause for laughter.’
‘It is in times such as these, little wolf, that we must laugh hardest of all,’ he said gently. ‘For if not, then what is the point of any of it?’
Ylva opened her mouth to answer, then closed it again, the words refusing to come. At last she gave a small nod and said, ‘Then tell me a jest, Arden Briar.’
His eyes gleamed with mischief. ‘Alas, I cannot.’
‘And why not?’
‘Because every joke I know is far too indecent to utter.’
Ylva’s lips curved despite herself. ‘Why does that not surprise me?’
‘Yet I made you smile,’ he said lightly. ‘Surely that must count for something.’
Her smile deepened before she could stop it, and she turned her face away to conceal the betrayal of her lips. But the moment dissolved as both caught sight of Rio Hawthorne striding towards the centre of camp. Their banter fell away, and they hurried to hear what the Fae princess would declare.
‘Before we set out, I would send two scouts ahead,’ Rio announced, her voice ringing clear. ‘Let them see what lies before us.’
Ylva could not help but look upon the princess with awe.
She appeared scarcely younger than herself—perhaps nineteen summers—but carried the gravity of one who had lived centuries.
Her form was slender, yet Ylva knew there was honed strength beneath the fall of her green robes.
Her antlers, though not yet as tall or splendid as they would become when she wore a crown, still lent her a quiet majesty.
Her dark dreadlocks were shoulder short, granting her the freedom to fight without hindrance or so Ylva had heard.
And her eyes…
Deep green.
So very like Arden’s.