Prologue #2
“They didn’t move on, but you’re pretty terrifying. They’ll keep their distance for the time being,” a laughing voice said.
The spirit stood on my left, staring out into the distance. I wondered, not for the first time, how he and Revna had come from the same parents. They looked hardly anything alike, though they did have the same eyes.
I sighed. “Frode. I’ve been listening to them harass me for twenty minutes while I dug around for your body. And the entire time, you were right there? Unwilling to be helpful?”
“Helpfulness isn’t my best quality,” he offered.
When I made no attempt to reply, he continued, “It was actually because I was so curious about the seeing-spirits thing. I’d wondered if that’s what was happening when we were fighting and I was listening to your thoughts—but I wasn’t entirely sure.
Thought I’d let you wander around for a bit while I observed. ”
“And you’re Revna’s favorite sibling…how?” I asked. Gods above, this man was frustrating beyond belief.
“Not like she had many better options.” But at the mention of his sister, he lit up. “How were the Trials? Those were a couple of weeks ago, right? I’ve been trying to keep track of the time, but it’s been difficult. Everything feels a bit warped without a body. Did she win?”
“She did.” I attempted to keep my voice level, but a hint of pride slipped through. “They immediately launched into a rebellion. I didn’t stay for that part, but they were successful. The priests have been run out of Bhorglid.”
Frode visibly relaxed. “Thank you. For training her.”
I hummed noncommittally. “She’s only alive because of you.”
He shrugged. “I know.”
Neither of us made another move to acknowledge what had happened here a short time ago: the terrible choice I’d been forced to make, the clear solution Frode had offered at the expense of his own life.
He might be annoying, but he bought me enough time to continue searching for Sonja—to avoid making the impossible choice between the life of my sister and the life of the woman I loved.
Love.
I knew Frode couldn’t read my thoughts anymore, but his shit-eating grin made me wonder. “I’m here for your body. Do you know where it is?”
He led me to a shallow crest in the snow, identical to all the others around it. Crouching down, I began digging. By the time his unseeing eyes stared up at the sky, my fingers were numb, wetness seeping through my thick gloves.
“I’m almost afraid to ask what you’ll be doing with it.”
I rolled my eyes before remembering he couldn’t see it. “Taking you home. Burying you next to your brothers.”
His face fell. “Jac?”
“Wasn’t at the Trials. Deserted.”
Frode’s expression somehow conveyed both confusion and frustration at the same time. “That bastard. He left Revna to fend for herself?”
I shrugged, reaching down to haul his body up by the armpits. He was far too light, and I recalled Revna telling me about the food shortages Bhorglid was facing. “Seems like it.”
“Have you told her yet?” When I remained silent, pretending not to know what he was talking about, Frode sighed. “You haven’t explained to her what happened out here?” He swept his arm out, gesturing to the icy remains of the battle we’d fought.
“No.”
I hoisted his dead body out from the snow, resting it in my arms. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Frode fidget.
He had something to say about my decision, and I had no interest in hearing it.
“My teleporter will be back any minute,” I said.
“You should go. No point in staying here any longer.”
“But why?” he said, exasperation obvious in his words. “Why haven’t you told her? She would understand.”
I scoffed. “And then what? We live happily ever after, the queen and the monster? No. It’s easier if she hates me—kinder to her, even. She deserves far better than me anyway.”
“Hjalmar’s tits, you’re depressing.”
Gods above, Mira needed to get back here now. “I’m well aware. Do you plan to pass on, or sit around staring at the snow for the rest of eternity?”
Frode glanced out at the wastes. “I stayed hoping someone would come back with news about the Trials. I wanted to know whether Revna won before I moved on. But I heard you mention an arch and…well, the archway disappeared shortly after I arrived here.” Worried eyes met my own. “Should it not have?”
“Disappeared?” I couldn’t hide the incredulity in my voice. “I don’t know. I’ve never been able to see the archway, only the spirits. Maybe you’re not looking hard enough.”
Frode glared at me. “Hellbringer. I’m not talking about a tiny little thing anyone could misplace. It was right there.”
He pointed, but the landscape appeared unchanged to me. “I don’t know what to tell you. There’s supposed to be an archway, and once a spirit goes through it, they leave this life.”
“And I’m saying there was an arch, but now it’s—”
A resounding crack echoed across the wastes. I turned to face Mira. “Finally. Let’s—”
At the expression on her face, I froze. Mira was rarely afraid, but terror was written in her every feature. “You have to come back to the palace. The queen is looking for you, trying to get into your quarters.”
“My quarters?” Fuck, the queen had never once come to my quarters before. There was always someone lowlier to do that for her, to summon me to the throne room. If she was searching for me there…
“When I left, she was screeching about finding someone to bust down the door.” Mira shook her head. “She’s in one of her moods.”
I held in a groan. I knew exactly what the queen’s moods meant: more assignments for me, each more difficult to accomplish than the last, and harsher punishments when I wasn’t able to perform them exactly to her specifications.
I hauled Frode’s body over my shoulder. There was no time to make a stop in Bhorglid to drop him off until I could return there to bury him; he would simply have to come to Kryllian. I grabbed Mira’s outstretched arm. “Take me.”
Frode’s cry of “Hey, wait!” rang in my ears as we landed with a thud in my living quarters. Without a second thought, I dropped Frode’s frozen body onto the bed. Thank the gods for insomnia. It would give me a chance to have the bedding washed before I made my next poor attempt at sleeping there.
Mira hadn’t been lying. A fist hammered incessantly on the door, accompanied by a screeching voice I rarely heard without a semblance of composure. When I turned the knob, Mira was already gone.
I peered into the hallway. Besides the queen, her normally perfect hair disheveled, her eyes gleaming with madness, and her clothes soaked through with blood, the passage was empty.
“There you are.” Her grin was manic. “Let me in.”
I froze, grateful for the helmet obscuring my features. “In my quarters?”
She pushed past me into the space.
The queen was petite, smaller than Revna.
It would have been impossible for her to overpower me, and yet…
with every demand she made, Sonja’s face flashed before my eyes.
I knew the queen better than I knew my own sister at this point.
And I knew my monarch would not hesitate to slide a blade along the throat of every person I loved until there were none left.
The fear was her efficient way of keeping me docile and obedient.
So I allowed her inside. The same way I allowed her everything.
I waited for her to see Frode’s body and pounce—after all, the bed was in her line of sight, pushed up against the wall. There was no canopy to hide him, only the hand-carved wooden frame adorned with my early attempts at whittling, an adequate mattress, and dark sheets.
But she made no comment about Frode. When she began to pace, hands moving wildly in front of her as she muttered to herself, I studied her more closely.
She was dressed in fighting attire instead of a gown; an infrequent but not uncommon occurrence.
What truly concerned me was the blade sheathed at her hip, clearly designed for someone twice her height.
The hilt was unique, made of gold and fashioned elegantly. And even beyond the unfamiliar weapon—
“Why are you covered in blood?”
She laughed, as if the question was ridiculous. But she stopped pacing, her icy-blue eyes connecting with my own as she fired back her own query. “Where were you when I knocked?”
I stiffened. Her calm, collected composure was back, as if she hadn’t been nearly manic mere seconds ago. It was unnerving. “I was here. When you knock on the Hellbringer’s door, the Hellbringer has to answer. Not S?ren.”
“Take off the mask,” she demanded.
I swallowed my protests, swallowed my fear.
Often, I’d wondered if sensing emotion was the queen’s Lurae.
No one knew what her true power was, but she was overly adept at noticing my tells: the slight tremor in my fingers, the pale red flush in my cheeks.
I reached up and removed the mask, setting it gently on the side table next to the door.
If I faced the bed, she wouldn’t see the corpse when she looked at me.
Her frenetic energy was unusual, but perhaps I could use it to my advantage—distract her from the dead body of my lover’s brother resting there like a morbid doll.
The queen studied my face while I stared straight ahead, refusing to make eye contact. I’d learned long ago there was no point in trying to understand what she was looking for in my expression. But it was difficult to fight the terror so deeply ingrained from when she’d studied me in the past.
I may have been a monster, but the queen knew better than anyone how to make me feel like a frightened child again.
“Your sister is well,” she said without preamble. “I received a report from my spies earlier this morning.”
I kept my face carefully blank. The queen knew exactly how to get under my skin, exactly how to manipulate me. And the reminder of Sonja was the perfect way to do it.
Because I had no idea where Sonja was. Five years ago, Sonja had escaped the prison beneath the Kryllian palace and run away, leaving the queen—and me—behind. But the queen was no fool. She had Sonja followed by spies and kept an eye on her whereabouts from that day forward.
All it would take for her spies to kill my sister was a single slipup from me.
Maybe Sonja had found her freedom. But she’d tightened the queen’s leash on me even more by fleeing. Despite my complicated feelings on the matter, my sister’s life meant more to me than a life outside of the mask.
I stared straight ahead when I said, “I’m glad to hear it.”
“Prepare for the Bhorglid delegation’s arrival tomorrow,” she ordered. “And supervise the returning troops as they arrive in the ports.”
I bowed my head. “Of course, my queen.”
Despite my confusion and my worry for Revna, a glimmer of hope swelled in me. The queen moved for the door behind me, reached for the knob. She hadn’t seen the body. Perhaps one thing would go right today.
And then she turned for one last glance at my quarters and her greedy eyes lit with excitement.
Doorknob forgotten, she strode to the bed as dread set into my limbs. “And who might we have here?”
“I—” Any truthful answer I gave would be used against me; used against Revna. But she spoke again before I could fumble my way into a suitable lie.
“The brother.” My heart sank. Not only had she discovered him, she recognized him. “The one you killed in her stead. You thought his death would appease me when I had ordered hers.”
Silence encompassed the space around us, filling my lungs like smoke.
“We both know how that went,” she murmured, tracing a finger down Frode’s pale cheek.
I was grateful his spirit was tied to the place he died and not to his body—no doubt he’d have excessive commentary about this interaction.
“You’ve become sentimental, S?ren. We’ll have to work on that.
You’re lucky that this time, your sentimentality has proven useful.
Go back to Bhorglid. Bury him with the rest of his family. Remain unseen.”
My mind whirled. Had I been any less shocked by her orders, I would have needed to bite my lip to keep from snarking back at her. Remain unseen while burying a body. How simple.
She strode to the door, throwing it wide on her way out. I shut it quickly behind her. Perhaps the queen didn’t care for the secrecy of my identity anymore, but I knew the risks of anyone seeing my face and identifying the man behind the Hellbringer mask.
I took my time dressing in plain clothes.
For this job, I wanted to be myself. Revna—and Frode—deserved as much.
Mira reappeared, and I knew from her expression that she wanted to discuss my interaction with the queen.
But she didn’t say anything as she transported me away, back to Bhorglid with Frode’s body once more.
It’s for the best, I reminded myself as the world went dark for a moment. Revna is better off without you.
At least Frode would get the burial he deserved, I supposed.
Only as I shoveled in the darkness and blisters formed on my palms did I stop to wonder whose blood the queen had been covered in.