Chapter 5 #2
“What are you doing out here?” I asked finally. I wasn’t sure what kind of mask I needed to wear for this conversation. Anger still simmered low in my gut, fueled by the knowledge that he’d told the queen about our relationship.
He smirked, and it rankled at me. “Not exactly any of your business, is it? What were you doing following me?”
I scowled. “You looked suspicious. And I know the kind of damage you’re capable of.”
My words struck true, and he winced. The movement of his face was so slight, anyone else might have missed it. “Why don’t you just kill me now, Princess? Get it over with.”
Now I laughed. What a joke. Did he think I was an idiot? “Sure, and play right into the queen’s hands. We’d be prisoners, never to return to Bhorglid.”
Despite my own protests, I acted on instinct, pulling my dagger from its small sheath at my hip. We were too close for me to draw Aloisa, and the dagger felt better in my slightly shaking hand anyway. I pointed it at his chest.
Maybe I should kill him. The thought was far more ambivalent than it had any right to be, the apathy like a drug. Would Arne and Freja forgive me if I did?
“Playing into the queen’s hands?” S?ren repeated my words slowly, studying me. “You know what she’s planning, then.”
I inhaled sharply, hoping my surprise didn’t show on my face.
Of course we didn’t know—but this was confirmation that S?ren did.
“What is she planning?” I pushed the dagger against his skin, feeling it give slightly.
He hissed, the linen of his shirt darkening in the moonlight as it streamed down between the leaves. “Tell me.”
“I don’t know,” he snapped. S?ren took a step back, out of range of my dagger. “I was hoping you did, because it’s driving me up the wall trying to figure it out.”
I rolled my eyes, belatedly realizing he likely couldn’t see it in the darkness. I didn’t believe him for an instant. “You’re telling me the general doesn’t know the queen’s plans?”
“Hush,” he hissed. “Did it not occur to you that the point of a secret identity is to keep it a secret?”
“We’re alone.”
“You can’t know that.” He glanced around, eyes wide. “The queen is certainly planning something, but I’m no closer than you are to discovering the details. She doesn’t trust me these days.”
Lies. All of it, lies.
I decided to pull on the single thread I knew might have some give in this tangled web. “How did the queen know about my Lurae?”
“I don’t know.”
“Of course you know,” I hissed. “You’re the one who argued with me about it in the prison!”
“I told you then, and I’ll tell you again,” he said, “she didn’t answer any of my questions about the source of her knowledge.”
“You’re lying,” I said through gritted teeth.
“I’m not.” His whisper was harsh. “She believed me when I came back and told her you didn’t truly have a Lurae. But…”
I waited a moment, but he didn’t continue. I stepped forward again, this time leaving the tip of my blade a few centimeters from his chest. “But what?”
Now when he met my eyes, his face awash in moonlight and shadows, there was something hesitant there. It made me want to run, to escape before whatever it was caught up with me.
“You deserve to know,” he finally said, and it sounded like he was trying to convince himself. Was I imagining the tremble in his voice? “Why I did the things I did, that day in the wastes. I owe you the truth, at least.”
I inhaled sharply and pressed the knife to his chest once more. My heartbeat pounded in my ears, a thunderous accompaniment to the lullaby’s accelerating tempo. Did I want to know?
No, part of me screamed—the part that sounded suspiciously like my Lurae. You hate him. You know enough already.
“You need to know,” he said, whispering this time. I froze when he wrapped a hand around my own, pulling the blade slightly away from his chest. “And after, you can run your pretty blade through my decaying heart. I promise.”
I didn’t move. If I did, the risk of crumbling was too great.
Because part of me desperately craved the missing pieces of what had happened the day Frode died.
The same part of me that lay awake listening night after night as it screamed, What could I have done differently? What if I could have saved him?
“You and I had a fight,” S?ren said finally. His fingers around mine were steady. An anchor in the storm. “You’ll remember the one—I accused you of hiding a powerful Lurae, and you told me the truth. That I was an idiot.”
I did remember the fight. But most of what still haunted me about it wasn’t the fight itself. It was our conversation afterward, when we’d imagined what life might be like if we’d met under normal circumstances. As two people at the market, and not the Nilurae princess and the Kryllian general.
The question of what could have been often threatened to overwhelm me.
He continued, “I knew you were telling the truth. Shortly after I returned you to your family, I made a report to the queen, who demanded to know what state your magic was in. I told her you didn’t have any and…
she believed me. I was shocked, considering how adamant she’d been.
And then, of course, she declared you useless to her plans.
” S?ren shook his head, eyes unfocused, like he was remembering the moment.
“She said the next time I saw you, I was to kill you.”
My hand shook, something I noticed only when I blinked back to awareness.
Part of me had been listening, and another part of me had been far, far away—alone on the wasteland plains, covered in snow and blood.
But what S?ren said confused me. “After you spent so much time training me…she ordered you to kill me?”
“That’s what I told her, too,” he said with a sigh. “At the very least, it was such a waste of time and potential. But she didn’t care. Said it had to be done.
“I hoped you’d win the Trials before we saw each other again. But when we caught Jac in camp that morning, I knew exactly what was happening. If I didn’t obey the queen, she would kill my sister—the threat she’s held over my head every single day for the past seven years.”
I swallowed as understanding took hold. S?ren had seen me on the battlefield and been faced with a decision: me or Sonja. Only one of us could live.
“I couldn’t kill you, Revna. But I couldn’t make a decision that would kill Sonja either.
” The shadows cast over his face, darkening his expression.
“I didn’t know what to do. I panicked. I told myself I had to do it, I had to end your life.
I could have, too. But…it would have broken something in me, I think.
My thoughts were chaos, and I was desperately trying to think of a solution, of a way out.
“And then I found myself wondering…whether killing another heir might be enough to satisfy the queen.”
Horror and dread in equal measures suffused through me. The lullaby, which had been absent since I began following him, chimed. I wanted to scream, but the only noise that emerged from me was a pitiful whimper. “You killed Frode—killed my brother—rather than let your own sister die?”
It was simple to see the desperation on his face. “I didn’t want to kill Frode. I knew how much he meant to you. I thought maybe I would have time to get to Erik, or even Bjorn. Because that would have at least been helpful to you in some way.
“But every time I looked over, it was the three of them standing back-to-back: Erik, Bjorn, and your father. Killing one would have been a possible substitute the queen would allow. I could play dumb to a certain extent. But all three? No. She would have known, and the consequences would have been the same. There wasn’t time to get all the way to them, kill just one, and then leave with my soldiers.
Because they were dying in droves as well.
I had to retreat lest the innocents under my command lose their lives while I tried to make my choice.
“Frode heard my thoughts. Do you remember what he said, right before he died? That he understood? That’s what he meant. There was no other way. Not that I could see.”
Was there a knife in my chest? Surely that had to be why I hurt so damn bad. Like the grief of watching Frode’s sightless eyes was fresh all over again. Like I was the same woman screaming for Erik to put me down so I could bring Frode’s body back with us.
The lump in my throat refused to be dislodged. I swallowed again and again, as if it would make a difference.
“Revna?”
I thought about laughing. Had the fierce Hellbringer ever sounded so tentative before? Would he ever sound so tentative again? Or would this be the final extent of whatever vulnerability I seemed able to pry from him on occasion? “Tell me what you’re thinking, Princess.”
“I hate you.”
The words flew from me, impossible to take back once they’d been said. I couldn’t look at him, couldn’t bear the ripping and tearing in my chest I knew would follow. So instead I stared past him at nothing, like it would ease the pain.
How had I managed to fall into an unfairness so deep it was a wound? S?ren’s sister got to live, but at the cost of my brother. At the cost of my best friend, the truest companion I’d ever known.
Once, I’d thought perhaps S?ren’s companionship could rival the way Frode knew me. But what the Hellbringer and I had was built on lies, and lies were always destined to crumble.
S?ren’s hands curled into fists, his knuckles whitening. He took several deep breaths and slowly relaxed his hands before he said, “I know.”
The other things crowding my mind threatened to escape. I should kill you for what you’ve done. Maybe, when our countries are finally at peace, I will. Maybe I’ll end your life like you ended his. You would deserve it.
But here, alone in the woods…anyone could be listening without my knowledge.
Even this short conversation was a risk.
What if someone was hiding in the shadows?
It was entirely possible. The alliance—what little possibility of an alliance was left, at least—would crumble if the right ears overheard this conversation.
If someone from my party discovered the Hellbringer’s true identity.
If a passerby loyal to the queen returned to her with news of S?ren’s tiny rebellion in the wastes.
With every second I remained, the risk grew. I pulled my blade away, unwilling to carve the final mark on him. Not now. Without another word, barely holding on to any semblance of control, I walked away.
Back to the Kryllian palace.
Back to my rooms.
To my solitude, where I was destined to remain.