Chapter 7 #3
I stole a glance at Vetr, gauging his reaction to this revelation.
Those frost-colored eyes of his stared straight ahead.
The slash of his nose, lips, and eyes were brutal as always, carved from granite, the very mountains from whence he sprang, and yet there was something colder in his icy gaze, more brutal in the severe lines of his face, and my throat thickened.
The soldier went on. “Sometimes I was dispatched with other guards to watch over you and the other princesses on your outings.” He motioned around his hair in an almost whimsical gesture. “Your hair was in curls back then.”
I remembered those days. The picnics with our governess in tow, beneath the watchful eyes of palace guards.
After picnicking we would sometimes set up canvases on easels to sketch the countryside, which was gilded with wildflowers.
A properly genteel pastime for gently bred young ladies. A lifetime ago.
“My sister is not this princess you speak of. We grew up west of here,” Vetr interjected smoothly, placing only slight emphasis on the word princess. It was too subtle for the soldiers to take offense, but I heard the edge to the word.
The soldier straightened, eyeing Vetr scornfully. “And who the fuck invited you to speak?” He glanced to his fellow soldiers and inquired, “Did any of you invite him to speak?”
I flinched as the other soldiers chuckled and confirmed that no, they had not extended such an invitation.
Vetr stood then, the legs of his wooden chair scraping against the floor as it slid back.
All levity escaped the soldiers as they tipped their heads to look up at Vetr. Even in their chain mail, they appeared diminutive before him.
One of the soldiers let out a small whistle, his hand falling to rest on the hilt of his sword. “He’s a big ’un.”
Thankfully, no one mistook Vetr for Fell.
If these soldiers were from the City, they would have seen Fell when he arrived, after all, but fortunately the silver hair was enough to differentiate the two of them.
Anyone who knew Fell intimately would recognize Vetr’s similarity to him at once, but that was not these men.
The leader pointed to Vetr’s chair. “No need for you to stand. We’re not addressing you.”
Vetr inclined his head to me. “My sister is my concern.”
“We will let you know your concern.” The soldier’s finger made another stabbing motion toward the chair. “Now sit down, brother.”
Vetr didn’t move, and unease climbed up my throat. Tension crackled on the air, and I noticed some of the other patrons silently slipping from the taproom, the door thudding behind them. The soldiers did not spare them a glance, all their focus rigidly trained on Vetr now.
Arran reached up and gave a single tug to Vetr’s sleeve. It was a long moment in which Vetr looked from the soldiers to me to Arran … and then, slowly, he reclaimed his seat.
The soldier with the black maw for a mouth turned his attention back to me, and continued. “Tell me, Princess. How did you come to be here?”
He was relentless, and I did not know what else I could say to prove to him that I was not, in fact, who he believed me to be. Especially as he was correct.
I searched the faces of Vetr and Arran and Harald, wondering if I looked as wild and cornered as I felt, a hare in a trap.
As the fear in me grew, so did the steam, inflating my lungs, looking for a place to go. I didn’t dare open my mouth to speak for fear that smoke might escape. I inhaled through my nose and held my breath. Vetr’s gaze cut into me, telling me what I already knew. Don’t reveal your dragon.
“Princess?” the soldier prompted.
The formal title prickled my skin and triggered a surge of emotion in me—a loathing for a past I could not change.
I had never been a princess. Not really.
It was simply something to call me to justify the whippings.
An empty designation. I knew that now. A part of me knew that then, but I had been too young, too blind, too naive to face it.
I eased my lips apart, cautious that only words escaped me, nothing more than that, not steam or smoke or fire.
“Don’t call me that.” His eyes narrowed a bit, and I realized I had erred.
Whether with my words or my tone—likely both—I should not have told him what to do.
“I am not who you think,” I amended, striving for a milder manner.
His skeptical expression told me I had convinced him of nothing. “Now, I could understand why you wouldn’t want anyone to find you. The new Lord of the Borderlands isn’t too fond of you.”
I worked my throat, swallowing a lump that went down like burning coal.
“He’s saying all kinds of things about you,” he added. “Strange things.”
I suddenly felt lightheaded and woozy, the world slipping away from me, as insubstantial as water sliding through my fingers as I digested that, knowing at once what strange things Stig was saying.
One of the soldiers leaned in closer and eyed me warily as he asked, “Jorgen, what if it’s true? The things he says about her?”
Jorgen rolled his eyes and sent a scathing glance at the man. “Are you daft, Ari? Does she look like a dragon to you?”
Dragon.
The word dropped like a hammer, a heavy and clanging sound that sent ripples eddying out in every direction.
The air hissed from my mouth. Of course Stig had told everyone that he had seen me transform into a dragon.
I didn’t dare look at Vetr or the others. I felt their astonishment like a dousing of frigid water over me—felt my own panic rising as a tide inside me, the word dragon bouncing all around us.
I eyed the soldiers with renewed caution. If they knew of Stig’s claims, they did not appear to give them any credence. If they thought I was this most terrible creature, reviled by man, they would not be talking to me so calmly.
They stared down their noses at me rather smugly, as though they knew what I was and it could not possibly be anything so powerful and terrible as the long-gone dragon.
I was but a whipping girl fed to the Beast of the Borderlands, the scraps from King Hamlin’s table used to satisfy an unworthy suitor.
They did not know me. No one did. Not any member of the pride.
Not Vetr, who perhaps should know me after a year.
If I let him. If he even wanted to know me, but I had to face it—he didn’t.
He’d made no move to get to know me better.
He didn’t press me with questions. There was no prying or delving into my past. It didn’t matter to him. He didn’t care.
Perhaps there had been one who knew me, in Fell.
But not anymore.
The soldier named Ari looked me over dubiously. “Well, we can agree she is no dragon, but what are we going to do with her? Our liege lord would not—”
“We will bring her to him. Naturally. Let him see for himself that she’s just a woman. Cursed hair or not, she has tits and a cunny like any other woman.” He guffawed at his joke, that toothless maw gaping wide.
I flinched at the coarse words and dropped both hands to my lap, clenching them tightly together as I choked back a sound of distress.
Jorgen reached for my arm and pulled me to my feet. We were of like height and eye to eye now, his fetid breath in my face.
“You’re making a terrible mistake.” It was the only thing I could think to say. “I’m not who you think.”
He canted his head, considering. “He’s been looking for you. I’ll likely get a promotion for bringing you in.”
The words sank into me like fangs, tearing and deep, and I knew then this situation had become desperate. I was in a pit, sinking fast into the quagmire.
“Maybe he will finally stop with all the fuckin’ expeditions into the north now that we’ve found her,” the soldier named Ari muttered with an eye roll. “My brother lost a foot from frostbite in one of those excursions. Now he hobbles around on a crutch.”
“Aye,” the youngest among them opined. Like most human men, the boy was shorter, reaching only to my shoulders, and he regarded me with apprehension.
“Maybe he’ll even send us home. I’ve had enough of the Borderlands.
I’m tired of freezing my cock off. It’s too cold up here.
I’d like to feel the sun on my face again. ”
Jorgen started pulling me toward the door.
I looked back to Vetr, Harald, and Arran.
They watched me with varying expressions. Harald perplexed. Arran worried. Vetr …
Vetr looked ready to kill. It was in the ice of his eyes, the flex of his shoulders, the opening and curling of his long, tapered fingers at his sides, as though he felt his claws there, unseen swords at the ready.
He appeared far more animal than man, than these men, his gaze stabbing, his features sharp enough to cut glass. Despite that … he didn’t make a move to come after me as I was led away.
Angry and ready and patently able to do harm, and yet he held himself still and stoic as he watched the humans he professed to hate walk me right out the door.