Chapter 1 Astrid #2
“I’d say it serves you right for sneaking out and ditching your pendant.” Her personal guard, Jessa, strides into the forest clearing, looking murderous, the handle of her golden whip in one hand, its tail snaking around her hips, the pendant that allows her to track Astrid in her other hand.
“Well, that explains the music,” Astrid rasps.
Jessa’s Witch Gift is her song—her power able to lull anyone to sleep.
Astrid shakes off the grogginess. The magic hadn’t been directed at her, so she wasn’t hit with the full force of it, but she still feels like she could sleep for a week.
Or maybe that’s because she was strangled.
“Gods, you’re a mess.” A look of concern breaks through the anger in Jessa’s spring-green eyes. She bends down and grasps Astrid beneath the shoulders, heaving her up. Astrid gasps, wobbling on her ankle. Her broken arm is at an odd angle.
“I’m sorry.” Astrid winces.
Jessa quirks a brow. “Are you?”
“Of course I am. I just”—she sighs—“I needed this. Needed one last night in these woods before… well, you know.” Jessa’s expression softens, and Astrid can’t bear the pitying look she’s giving her. “Your timing is impeccable, by the way. Was that to teach me a lesson?”
Jessa snorts. “Hardly. We came as soon as Quince picked up the guy’s scent.
” She nods to her fox. This is why having a familiar like Quincy would be so useful.
Not only because of all those sharp teeth but because he’s a tracker, his senses amplified by his Gift.
He can hear the flapping of a tern’s wings from half a mile away.
“Never seen the beast move so fast. I started singing and then Quincy finished him off.”
Quincy’s voice is gruff as he says, HE TASTES AS BAD AS HE SMELLS.
“Then why did you eat— Actually, never mind,” Astrid says, fighting the nausea as she notices the man’s intestines strewn across the ground.
“You know Quince. Always hungry,” Jessa says.
Astrid tentatively strokes her neck. “How bad is it?”
“Not as bad as your face.” Jessa cups her cheek and a warmth spreads through her as Jessa mutters, “Helbre,” a healing spell that Astrid hasn’t quite mastered—not that she needs to when she can brew the most powerful healing solution in Arturea.
Next Jessa heals her arm, ankle, and finally her neck, the evidence that someone tried to kill her now only a few yellow bruises.
“Did you even try to cast?” Jessa asks.
“Of course I did.”
“And?”
“And nothing. Not a whisper.” Astrid just can’t get past this block on her power.
It’s as if when her dad died, her ability to battle cast died with him.
General spell work—or craft casting as they called it—no problem, even if she isn’t the most powerful witch.
But ask her to cast any offensive or defensive spell, it’s like someone’s turned off the faucet and stopped all the magic flowing.
“Why didn’t you use your vials?” Jessa picks up Astrid’s cloak and fixes it around her shoulders.
“They’re at the bottom of my pack, which is somewhere in those bushes.”
“Until we sort your battle casting out, and while you continue to make stupid bloody decisions, they never leave your person—you got that?”
Astrid nods, and Jessa opens her mouth to continue, but Astrid interrupts her. “Please stop. I know, alright?”
Jessa crosses her arms. “Fine. Quince, find her pack.” The fox slinks into the undergrowth, retrieving Astrid’s pack a moment later and dropping it at her feet.
She thanks him and scans the ground until she sees her grimoire, damp from the snow.
If Gram was alive, she’d kill Astrid for treating her precious tome this way.
Astrid grimaces as she casts a dry heat spell over it, hoping the moisture hasn’t gotten into the delicate pages, then slots it inside her bag.
She pulls out a leather strap and ties her hair up in a high ponytail, the wet navy strands looking almost black.
Jessa’s hair, naturally dandelion yellow, is dyed navy blue to match Astrid’s. Though the roots are poking through.
“What is it?” Astrid asks at the look on Jessa’s face.
“Your mother just got home.”
“Ah, so that’s what he meant.” Astrid gestures at the dead man. “He said we’d gotten sloppy. He must have followed Mum through the tunnels.”
“Let’s agree not to share that tidbit with the queen, seeing as how we’re leaving anyway.”
“We’re leaving now?”
“Tonight.” Jessa clasps her shoulder. “It’s time.”
Astrid’s hands drop to her sides.
It’s time. Time to leave Isfjell, to sail for Vatra and its capital city, where—in seven weeks—she’ll duel Prince Zryan.
To the death.
All to decide whether Arturea or Vatra will lay claim to the Heart—the infinite source of the land’s magic.
When she was eight years old, her parents sat her down to explain what the duel was and what was expected of her.
After the initial shock faded, after all the crying and yelling, denial and fear, Astrid finally asked a coward’s question.
What if she didn’t fight? What if she forfeit the duel?
It wasn’t as if Arturea relied on the Heart, not when they hadn’t taken guardianship of it in centuries.
But her mum squeezed her eyes shut—a rare moment of vulnerability—and told her the terms of the Covenant wouldn’t allow it.
An heir could not forfeit. An heir could not run from it.
Then she’d said the five words that would shape the rest of Astrid’s life.
You duel, or you die.
Astrid heaves a breath. It’s time.
She lifts her pack and retrieves one of her claws, looking for the other until she spots Quincy holding it in his mouth.
She takes it, avoiding the gore, and ruffles his coarse fur in thanks.
She’s the only other person allowed to touch Jessa’s familiar.
The only person who would keep her hand after doing so.
“I suppose twenty-four is not so young to die,” Astrid finally says.
Jessa grabs her by the cloak. “Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare say that. You’re not going to lose, do you hear me?” Jessa’s eyes are bright with emotion. It makes Astrid’s chest ache.
“Oh, Jess,” she says, taking her friend’s hands. “However much we wish it so, we both know that’s not true.”
Because Jessa knows as well as Astrid does that she has no hope of winning this duel to the death. Not when her opponent has a massive Hel-damned dragon.