Chapter 9 Svenn #2
"But the siege on Darvan mountains left you starving," Red exhales a heavy sigh. "The elven forces blocked supply lines. You were given no path but violence."
The knight reaches into his coat and tosses a folded parchment onto the worktable. "I can arrange safe passage. You'd be gone before dawn—quietly, out of Aelfheim's reach."
The offer hangs in the air.
Hrolf doesn't hesitate. "No."
Red studies him. "You don't even need to think about it?"
"I will attend my trial."
I already knew that. I offered Hrolf the same escape weeks ago. He refused me too.
Something crosses Red's face. Then, just as quickly, the moment breaks.
"Well," Red says lightly, clapping his hands once. "Since you insist on staying to be judged and probably executed, you might as well leave behind something worthwhile."
He strolls toward the anvil.
"I need a sword."
Hrolf scowls. "Go buy one."
"I could." Red leans against the worktable. "But I'd prefer one forged by a master who is the son of Durakain."
My grip tightens on the hammer.
"I'll pay generously," Red adds. I know he has the means to make the promise. Before Garrett became Rhianelle's knight, he was heir to House Clayborne.
Hrolf ignores the request, muttering something in Dwarvish that sounds suspiciously like too many long-eared visitors spoiling good work.
I cast a glance at the assassin to check his progress.
Shade hunches further over his work, determined to ignore the interruption. His quill scratches against the parchment, leaving another ink blotch.
But the wolf…
The wolf's entire demeanor changes the instant Red speaks. Its ears perk forward, swiveling toward him with sharp attention. The sapphire eyes that had been focused so intently on the parchment now track Red's every movement with predatory focus.
Red steps further into the forge, and I notice his gaze lingering on the wolf.
"Interesting addition to your classroom," he murmurs, his eyes still on the creature. "Tell your dog to sit."
The wolf's ears flatten against its skull in aggression.
"Not mine," Shade mutters without looking up. "It's just… around."
"Then whose is it?"
"Maybe the Queen's."
Garrett tilts his head slightly. "Why is that mutt looking at me like it's calculating my weight in meat?"
"I think he likes you," Shade says blandly.
A low, rumbling growl rolls from the wolf's chest. His lips pull back in a snarl.
Hrolf has stopped hammering entirely. He watches the exchange with narrowed eyes, his bushy brows knitting together.
"The wolf was friendly earlier," he mutters. "That's odd."
It is odd.
Because I can see what Red cannot. A faint thread of light stretches between him and the wolf. I can feel it humming in the air. Fate has decided their futures are knotted together. Their paths are meant to collide.
I file the observation away for later. Whatever is happening between Red and this wolf, it's none of my concern. Unless this thing becomes a threat to Rhianelle. Then it becomes very much my concern.
"I almost feel sorry for you," Red says lightly. "Now that your wife has Blaire. Must be strange. Sharing her attention."
Shade glances up from his parchment. "Does she like Blaire better?"
"Probably," Red considers this with genuine thoughtfulness. "She has known Blaire since childhood. Those two in the same room together. The rest of us basically cease to exist."
Heat flares in my chest.
"Your wife has her person back." Red's smile softens slightly. "Came because I thought you might want the company."
"Red." His name leaves my mouth cold enough to frost iron. "One more word and I'll demonstrate what I've learned from Hrolf today. On your face. Repeatedly."
He raises both hands in surrender, but that damned smile doesn't fade. "In all fairness, she does value Blaire's counsel highly. We should endeavor to make a favorable impression."
"Noted," Shade replies curtly, without lifting his eyes from the page.
Red watches me for a moment longer. The silence stretches, and I think perhaps he'll leave now, return to whatever duties occupy his time when he's not needling me.
But he doesn't move.
I set down my hammer and turn to face the knight. "What do you want?"
"I need your help with something." His smile is completely gone now, replaced by a grim set to his mouth.
"What kind of help?" I ask, though I already suspect the answer.
Garrett's eyes flick briefly to Shade and the wolf, then to Hrolf, before whispering to me. "The messy kind."
Of course.
"I may have acted with more enthusiasm during my most recent interrogation."
That's one way to say you lost your temper and killed someone in an inconvenient location.
Red has the decency to look slightly chagrined.
"Where?" I ask.
"Lower dungeon," he murmurs quietly.
Red's whispering is completely useless with a Grimsbane assassin in the corner and a dwarf who can hear a hairline crack in steel from across a workshop.
I close my eyes briefly.
"And he's... well, he's not small. He's almost Darstan's size."
Fantastic.
Shade finally looks up from his parchment, his expression curious. "Who'd you kill?"
"Valorian conspirator. He'd been corresponding with the Fae King's agents and was actively plotting against the queen." Garrett's voice hardens. "I couldn't let that continue."
And there it is.
The reason I tolerate this insufferable bastard despite every instinct screaming at me to remove his head from his shoulders.
Because he does this.
Red hunts down threats to Rhianelle before they can reach her. He eliminates enemies in the shadows and handles the dark, bloody work that she should never have to see or know about.
For that alone, and his unwavering loyalty to my wife, I will always help him hide the bodies.
I sigh, long and heavy. "Give me a moment to bank the forge."
"Take your time." Garrett's relief is palpable. "He's not going anywhere."
Hrolf waves his hammer at us dismissively. "Go, both of you. Take your corpse problems elsewhere. I'll watch the students."
Shade looks affronted. "I'm not a child that needs watching—"
"You write like one," Hrolf interrupts. "Now hush and practice."
Shade bends back over his parchment without further argument.
I remove my leather apron and hang it on the peg by the door. "Lead the way, Garrett."
As we exit the forge, I catch one last glimpse of the wolf. It's watching Red leave, those sapphire eyes fixed on his retreating back.
Hrolf is right.
That is very odd indeed.
The stairs in the palace dungeon go down further than I expected. Red moves through the dark without hesitation. He has been down here often enough that his feet know the way without him.
These are his hunting grounds.
"How far?" I ask, my voice echoing off damp stone walls.
"Bottom level."
We pass through three iron gates, each one requiring a different key from Red's collection. The walls shift as we descend further, rough-hewn stone darker and older than the castle above. Red stops before a heavy door banded in black steel.
The hinges groan as he pushes it open.
This is Red's torture chamber. The room itself is exactly what I expected.
Iron chains hang from the ceiling, their links crusted with rust. The walls are lined with instruments I recognize from my own darker centuries. A table sits in the corner, its surface scarred with countless blade marks. It's stained so deeply that the original wood color is long forgotten.
This is what I am. Dealer of death, keeper of dark places. I'm not a teacher, a smith, or whatever else Rhianelle's love is trying to make me.
The body is sprawled across the stone floor. Blood pools beneath it, threading toward the drain at the center of the room.
The Grimsbane is enormous. He is easily seven feet tall, with broad shoulders and thick musculature. His dead eyes stare at nothing.
"You didn't tell Shade you were torturing one of his own."
Red crouches beside the corpse. "That would complicate things. This guy is one of Rainer's mercenaries as well. The fucked-up ones."
Yes, her uncle's hired guards.
Six of them were responsible for laying hands on Rhianelle during the battle in Tavan. My jaw tightens. Could this be one of them?
"How are we moving that?" I ask.
Red exhales. "He wouldn't fit in a sack. We'll have to roll him in the tarp."
I consider calling Coinneach. The shadow familiar answers before I speak.
No, his voice brushes my thoughts, irritated. Red is your acquaintance. I will not be summoned to clean up his messes. Call me when it concerns Nel.
He's not my fucking friend, I bite back—but Coinneach severs the connection.
So much for help.
Red reaches into the dead man's inner coat and pulls free a folded scrap of parchment. He scans it once, then tucks it into his own jacket.
"One interesting thing," he says quietly.
I turn to him.
"The Grimsbane claimed he hurt Rhianelle."
The world narrows. Heat detonates in my chest, white and blinding. For a moment, I can hear nothing but blood rushing in my ears.
"Did he?" I ask. My voice is calm.
Red watches me carefully. "I can't be certain because he was deep into Asterdust withdrawal. He wasn't coherent by the end."
My jaw tightens.
"But he said there were five of them," Red adds.
"Where are the others?"
"Buried," he says quietly. "Deep. Where we'll put this one."
I hold his gaze.
"Did they suffer?"
Red looks at me steadily. "Asterdust withdrawal is worse than flaying. I let it run its course."
Something in me settles. Not enough, but something.
"He gave me more before he went." Red's voice shifts, becomes careful. "The Aeonians have a plan for Volundr. They want Rainer Wiolant subdued, addicted to Asterdust and compliant. He named others. People already inside the court."
The Aeonians are supplying the rebel orcs with Asterdust, breaking the court from within. They mean to push Rainer toward dependency—to feed him until his judgment fails and his authority crumbles. It will destabilize Volundr piece by piece.
Red hesitates.
"The Grimsbane also said Rainer struck Rhianelle." Red watches my face. "Punched her during his Asterdust rage."
My vision goes red.
Rainer Wiolant.
The person she trusts without question, who held her when she wept, and calls her family. I want to end that bastard. I want to tear his throat out and let the city watch.
"I know." Red's voice is flat. "I wanted to kill him the moment the Grimsbane said his name. But Rainer is powerful, and if we move wrong the Aeonians succeed anyway. Volundr falls without a fight."
I breathe through it. Calm down.
"Rhianelle loves him. Whatever he's done, she loves him," Red says under his breath.
I force the rage back down where it belongs.
I will come back to Rainer.
We wrap the corpse in the tarp as best we can. It does little to disguise what we're carrying. Together, we hoist the massive body. The corpse is unwieldy and the weight distribution awkward.
"Next time," I grunt as we wrestle him up the first flight of stairs, "choose a better killing ground."
The climb back up the steep stairs is torturous. Each level requires maneuvering through narrow passages and tight corners.
Red and I work in grim silence, punctuated only by occasional grunts of effort. We reach the ground level, having to tilt the body sideways just to fit through the doorframe. One of his arms catches on the doorjamb and I have to wrench it free.
"Careful," Red hisses. "We're trying to be discreet."
We're carrying a seven-foot corpse through the castle. I think discretion sailed away the moment he decided to interrogate a prisoner in the palace's dungeon.
We are halfway to the outer corridor when—
Footsteps echo toward us. They're getting closer. We stand exposed in the center of the passage with nowhere to hide.
Damn it.
Let it be someone weak. A young knight. Someone Red can silence with a bribe or I can threaten. I do not want Rhianelle to know.
Do I kill whoever rounds that corner?
We are past that, the Noble Wolf growls in my mind.
The figure rounds the corner.
Blaire.
She stops dead in her tracks, her blue eyes going wide as they take in the scene. Me gripping a dead man's shoulders, Red holding his legs, both of us frozen with a tarp-wrapped body suspended between us.
For a moment, nobody moves or breathes.
Blaire looks at the corpse and the blood still dripping from a wound on his side. She's not screaming or running for guards yet. The girl is Rhianelle's closest friend, the Maiden of Arawynn. She is chosen by the Goddess of Love herself. This has to be terrifying for her.
Blaire takes a slow breath.
"Is that a body?" she asks. Her voice sounds unnervingly composed.
Red and I exchange a look.
"Yes," he admits.
Her gaze travels over the corpse, lingering on details I would expect a sheltered temple maiden to recoil from.
"You questioned him first," she observes.
"Thoroughly," Red confirms.
"Did he tell you everything?" she asks.
"Everything he knew," he replies. "Which was considerable."
She lifts her eyes to us again.
"The well behind the south tower. Dispose of him there."
We stare at her.
"It's been dry for decades," she continues calmly. "No one checks it. It's deep enough that no one will find him quickly. By the time anyone thinks to look there the evidence will be… compromised."
She chooses the word delicately.
"More importantly," she adds, "it's close."
This is not the reaction of a soft temple girl confronted with murder.
"You're leaving a blood trail," she adds, gesturing to the corridor behind us.
I look down and she's right. The carpeted floor is marked with drops of blood, a breadcrumb path leading directly to Red's torture chamber.
Blaire moves to step around us, then pauses.
"You'll want to clean that up as well," she continues.
Red looks like he's been struck over the head.
"Use cold water." Her tone takes on the same instructive quality I imagine she uses when teaching temple acolytes. "There's a cleaning solution in the temple stores that will remove the staining. I'll have someone leave it outside the knights' quarters."
She continues down the corridor and her footsteps fade into the distance.
Red and I remain frozen. We're both staring at the space where Blaire had been standing.
After she's gone, Red exhales. "Did that just happen? The maiden told us to throw the body in a well."
"Come on," I grunt, shifting my grip on the corpse.
"She gave us detailed cleaning advice with temperature specifications," he whispers. "Fuck, she's scarier than you."
A strange bewilderment settles over me as we make our way toward the south tower. It seems that my little fawn has more than one monster at her side.