Chapter 3 #2
I couldn’t keep my gaze from the graves as I walked by them. Five headstones, four plots of freshly turned dirt. My parents and two of my brothers, Erik and Bjorn, were buried here. Frode’s body was somewhere in the wastes, left for the scavengers and the snow. The thought made my heart ache.
Ahead, nestled in a cleared spot beside the armory, was the small section of the courtyard I’d had outfitted with training dummies and targets, so anyone could train throughout the day.
Mostly me. Despite reminding me of the Hellbringer, the heft of my weapon in my hands soothed my most frantic thoughts and kept my magic at bay.
The glide of one form to the next took the shrill tones of my mother’s lullaby and eased them to a manageable octave.
Even now, as I pulled the weapon from its sheath, the song of metal sliding against its counterparts echoing in the silent darkness, the tension in my shoulders eased slightly.
This was familiar. I was good at this. My sword, the one I’d forged into being with my own hands, would not fail me the way others had.
I adjusted my stance, breathed deeply, and began.
As my muscles warmed, his voice echoed like he was standing next to me.
No, move your foot back. Just like that.
These stances aren’t about fighting or winning—they’re about muscle memory.
Your body needs to know these positions so deeply that it’s physically impossible for you to forget them.
Then, when the moment really counts, you will find yourself with the upper hand.
I moved to the second position. My mind cleared steadily.
The voice in my head held no distortion; it belonged to S?ren, not the Hellbringer.
Tears pricked my eyes at the thought of him.
Three weeks of not seeing his face, not being able to pull him to me when I needed grounding.
He would stand behind me while I tried to stitch a country back together.
He would understand all the difficult choices I was making.
He wouldn’t hate me for being a monster.
Never fight angry.
As I swung into the next position, the memory of his words made me huff with annoyance.
How many times had he said that to me? The first time had been when I threw my freshly forged weapon to the ground in a fit of rage after he’d corrected me one time too many.
The words had felt so poignant. When I stared at the mask, I felt like he saw past the rebellious Nilurae everyone else thought I was and looked straight to my core. Right where the raw hurt sat.
Because that’s what my anger had been, back then. Hurt.
What is it now? The voice in my head was no longer a memory, but my imagination. And I knew him well enough to know it’s what he would ask if we were having the conversation.
I slid into the next position, my muscles aching from the strain. I’d come out here and run these same drills every night for the last three weeks. I didn’t know how to answer the S?ren in my head. And I wasn’t sure if I wanted to.
So instead, I thought about what it would be like to see him in the morning.
Reminded myself that the mask hid a murderer, the man who killed my brother. The man I’d loved was gone now.
He wasn’t coming back. He might never have been real to begin with—an illusion, a second mask the Hellbringer wore when he wasn’t fighting. A facade.
I trained until the pitch-black sky turned indigo, then sheathed Aloisa once more. I would need to bathe before we left, which would add time to my preparations. But before I stepped around the armory to head to the castle doors, a sound stopped me.
A faint scratching carried through the courtyard.
I frowned. We kept no guards, not when any Nilurae would be annihilated by a Lurae attacker who intended true ill will.
I couldn’t ask them to put themselves in harm’s way.
And trusting the returned soldiers to keep me safe was a laughable choice.
No one should have been puttering around the castle at this time of night.
I wrapped my hand around Aloisa’s hilt. My Lurae song trilled, alert. A thread stretched around the corner, ending somewhere beyond my sight.
I don’t know what possessed me to observe stealthily before charging in, weapon drawn. Perhaps my exhaustion had worn down my brashness for the day. But when I poked my head around the side of the building, my heart plummeted and left me frozen.
Someone was digging at Frode’s grave.
I don’t know how long I stood there, still as stone, utterly shocked, before watching the person stumble slightly with their next strike of the shovel and nearly twist their ankle trying not to fall into the pit they’d dug. “Shit.” The hissed expletive carried across the near-silent courtyard.
I knew that voice.
“Fucking ground is half frozen,” S?ren muttered, wiping sweat from his brow. He was dressed plainly, no mask in sight. I couldn’t even tell whether he carried a weapon. “Pretty sure six feet is typical, but the best you’re getting is three. We can argue about it later.”
Who the hell was he talking to?
My hand remained tight on Aloisa’s hilt. But I didn’t move.
He set the shovel down, his form still swathed in shadow. Stepping past the mound of dirt next to the hole, he leaned down and picked up…
I swallowed, throat tight. He carried a body wrapped in white cloth. That doesn’t make any sense, I told myself. It can’t be Frode.
But logic had no place here. My chest ached as the thought hit me: my brother’s body was returned home. Offered a proper burial. The peaceful resting place it deserved, far from the front lines of the war he’d hated.
It wasn’t enough.
As S?ren gently laid the body in the grave, the song in my mind soared to new volumes. My hands shook. Breaths came in ragged gasps.
Don’t. I forced it back, willed the thread to disappear as it grew brighter, more visible. If he knows you’re here, you’ll have to talk to him. You’ll have to look him in the eye and hate him at the same time.
I pressed my back against the wall, the cold shocking me to my senses as I sank down, pulling my knees up to my chest. The emotions cycled viciously.
Grief to loneliness to sorrow to anger to ice-cold fury.
How dare he bury the brother he’d killed only a few weeks ago?
Was this some kind of trick—an attempt to sway the negotiations in Kryllian’s favor tomorrow?
Did he think I could possibly forgive Frode’s murder with the simple act of laying him to rest?
I’d planned to bury him myself, once everything calmed. Once I’d had the chance to return to the wastes and seek out his body. And now I wouldn’t get the opportunity.
The song turned shrill. I covered my ears with my palms, attempting to block it out. The threads seemed to pull at my limbs, whispering that I should stand and confront him. Hurt him.
Part of me wanted to. The other part of me wanted to collapse in his arms and cry. And I wasn’t sure which part would emerge if we stood face-to-face.
So I sat and forced myself to breathe and think of anything but him. When the thread finally slackened its hold and I peered around the corner, the shadowed figure was gone. All that remained was a freshly dug grave covered in smooth dirt.
“How do I look?”
I turned back to see Freja and Astrid emerging from the castle doors.
Freja’s lilac dress was sleeveless, the fabric starting just below her collarbones to leave her shoulders and neck bare.
It clung to her figure, accentuating her curves and wrapping around to tie at her waist. A matching shawl covered her arms. Freja clutched it tightly, hunching in on herself.
Snow fell from the sky in lazy spirals. The wind was frigid.
We were all dressed for Kryllian weather.
I offered her the brightest grin I could muster. “Beautiful.”
Astrid stood next to her. She was not dressed as formally as Freja and I—where we wore dresses, Astrid had chosen functional garb with light armor overtop.
She’d followed me around like a bodyguard since saving me from the assassin yesterday, ignoring Volkan’s pleas for her to rest while she finished healing.
Her chin-length hair was braided back on one side and pinned behind her ear, showcasing the sharp line of her jaw.
A thin line of dark makeup stretched her narrowed eyes into a cat-eye shape.
I noted the expression on the teleporter’s face as she studied Freja.
There was something awed there, the kind of emotion friends were unable to muster for each other.
I had wondered yesterday, when the two spent more time at dinner absorbed in their own conversation than in anything the rest of us signed, whether there might be more behind Astrid and Freja’s shared camaraderie from being imprisoned together. Now it seemed obvious.
“What do you think?” I signed, catching Astrid’s attention. My gestures were still slow and clumsy, but even one day of practice had brought back much of the sign language I had forgotten. “How does Freja look?”
Astrid’s face flushed.
“Beautiful.” There was no hesitation in her response. “Freja is always beautiful.”
I stifled a grin. Oh, how oblivious I’d been.
But Freja’s widening eyes and long blink told me perhaps I was not the only one.
Volkan emerged from the castle then, dressed in neutral colors.
While Freja and I had chosen to honor our hosts by wearing Kryllian purple and gold, Volkan had opted to show no true allegiance with his clothing alone.
“Can you imagine if my parents thought I was trying to initiate an alliance with Kryllian?” he’d scoffed when we discussed our attire a few days ago.
“I’ve been ‘forbidden from making any political moves’ since our disaster of an engagement. ”
Now he smiled, though I could sense his anxiety beneath the expression. He looked me over. “That dress is stunning on you.”