Chapter 12
Revna
After another sleepless night, I wasn’t sure if I dreaded seeing the morning light streaming in through the windows or welcomed it.
Still, the breathing exercises S?ren was teaching me were surprisingly helpful.
My Lurae was silent for the first time in recent memory as I descended the staircase and moved toward the castle doors on my way to another session of training with him.
Freja, Astrid, Volkan, and Halvar stood in the foyer. They cut their signing short when they caught sight of me, Volkan’s eyes wide enough to tell me whatever I’d walked in on wasn’t going to be pleasant.
The silence in my head ended as swiftly as it had begun. “What’s going on?” I asked, signing while I spoke.
It could be any number of things, but I had my suspicions.
Upon returning from Kryllian, we’d established a new tax law—one that treated all the citizens as equals instead of favoring the richest of the Lurae and no one else.
No outright pushback had happened yet, but Jac had reported whispers from some of the more influential Lurae in the city.
Had they finally organized enough to strike?
But my hunch was incorrect. Volkan scratched the back of his head. “Halvar was just telling us that the Nilurae are…unhappy with the news that you are using your Lurae more often.”
I heard the truth behind his statement: Arne had been telling everyone what happened at the ball in Kryllian.
I didn’t anticipate the realization would sting as badly as it did.
I’d expected it, after all. When Halvar frowned, I knew my wince must have been more obvious than I wanted.
“They’re afraid, Revna,” he said gently.
“They’ve been put down by the people in power for so long.
They don’t know what to do with the little freedom you’ve given them.
They think it’s going to be taken from them in an instant, with no warning. ”
Freja interrupted. “It’s time to take this to your father’s office.”
I followed her gaze behind me. S?ren had entered, his steps nearly silent. Now he raised a brow and stepped up beside me with a smirk. “Don’t stop the gossip on my account.”
His hands moved with his words. I raised a brow. He’d never mentioned knowing sign language.
Freja scowled and crossed her arms. Astrid took a step closer to her. “He’s fine,” I said. “The queen already knows there’s unrest. There’s not much more he can take to her that will make things look worse than they already do.”
“Debatable,” Volkan muttered under his breath.
But S?ren spoke up before I could acknowledge the prince’s statement. “Revna and I need to make a trip out to the northern wastes anyway. Why don’t we take a few days out of the city and train her Lurae while we’re gone? Accomplish two things with one trip.”
I blinked at him. Volkan said, “What could you possibly need to visit the wastes for?”
“S?ren has a potential lead on Valen’s prophecy about me…
and the Hellbringer.” I swallowed down the strangeness of speaking about him like he wasn’t there, even knowing the truth of the man beside me.
I’d been hesitant to agree to such a trip when there was so much work to be done here, in the city, but perhaps S?ren was right that a few days away would calm the rising tensions.
“The one they told me about before they left to join the other Seeing Ones.”
Part of me hoped the mention of Freja’s other friend from prison would soften her a bit, but her shoulders grew more tense. “You want to just leave? The Lurae will see it as an opportunity to organize an attack.”
Halvar scratched his beard. “I hate to say it, but I agree.”
The song in my head sharpened. I threw my hands in the air. “Then what do you want me to do? I’m stuck with this Lurae. There’s nothing I can do about that. Either I learn to control it or we have another incident like the one in Kryllian—or the one from the day before. Or—”
Or the one where I killed Halvar. Those were the words threatening to burst from me. I barely managed to hold them back, but the close call sent a strike of pure fear through me.
The threads appeared.
For the first time, though, the sight of them wasn’t a stranglehold attempting to drown me. Instead, I noticed the gold and slowed my breathing, forcing my shoulders and my jaw to relax. I instinctively moved into counting a steady rhythm and inhaling along with it.
The way S?ren had taught me.
In moments, the threads cooled, their color already lighter.
The song in my head dimmed. I tuned back into the conversation as Volkan said, “—be wrong. The Lurae are upset about Revna’s rule, but a few days won’t create enough of a vacuum for a coup.
Especially if we give all of them something to occupy their time. ”
“What could possibly entertain a city’s worth of bored, angry Lurae?” Astrid asked. She frowned, but I had the sense she was more genuinely curious than upset.
“They’re soldiers,” S?ren signed. “Make them fight.”
Freja scoffed. “That’s a terrible idea.”
“Maybe not,” Halvar said slowly. Volkan nodded, running his palm over his mouth. I heard Jac’s strategic expertise when Halvar said, “Can we get them to…I don’t know, compete? Have them spar to keep their training fresh?”
“And only one can be the true victor.” Volkan nodded enthusiastically. “You’re brilliant.”
Halvar’s face flushed, but I didn’t dwell on it because Freja stomped her foot. “We’re going to treat them like children? They have the power to kill us all if we aren’t careful, and your solution is to give them a game to play?”
“I know it sounds strange, but they’re used to having a routine,” I said with an apologetic look.
“If they’re bored, they’ll plan an attack.
If they’re too occupied with small things to realize the changes we’re making are for the better, they won’t fight back.
There are certainly some who crave power, but most of the Lurae are followers.
They care more about feeling secure than anything else. ”
The next moment happened so quickly it caught me off guard. I reached out to put a reassuring hand on Freja’s shoulder.
She flinched away.
My hand froze midair. The next two seconds felt like an eternity of stillness and silence and anguish. The lullaby, once quiet, now roared in my ears like the rush of a river.
I lowered my hand, and the moment passed like a heartbeat. I wondered if I was the only one who had truly witnessed it.
“You really think there’s information about this prophecy in the wastes?” Volkan asked.
S?ren leaned back against the wall, hands in his pockets. “It’s just a hunch, but I feel it’s worth looking into. Revna told me the queen knew she had a Lurae even before the Trials, and if she somehow had access to this prophecy it might explain some things.”
“Why do you care?” Astrid asked, eyes narrowed. “Anja is your ruler. Shouldn’t you care more about pleasing her than anything else?”
S?ren offered a serene smile. “I am a scholar. While I live in the queen’s court and abide by her rule, I worship only one god—knowledge.”
If I hadn’t been drowning beneath waves of hurt, Freja’s reaction playing on a loop in my mind, I would have rolled my eyes. It was, somehow, the haughtiest thing I’d ever heard S?ren say.
“And if you’re killed?” Freja asked me, her voice almost as stiff as her posture. “If your scholar is more foe than friend, and you’re murdered and left in the snow, what then?”
Had she used that imagery on purpose? Frode’s face, frozen in death, flashed before my eyes, and my hands curled into fists so tightly, I wondered if my fingernails had made my palms bleed. But even as the song gained momentum and the threads gained substance, I forced myself to breathe through it.
My body calmed. My magic calmed.
My fury, however, did not.
I knew the grin stretching across my face did nothing to hide the way I was feeling—hurt and frustration and betrayal simmering just beneath the surface.
They could hear it all when I snapped, “Then pick some strangers off the street, toss them into the arena, and make them kill each other until the last is crowned queen. Or put the crown on your own head and call it a day. If I’m dead, it won’t be my problem anymore. ”
My best friend and I stared at each other, and when I saw the resentment lurking beneath her facade of indifference, my breath stuttered.
Watch them turn against you, my thoughts whispered. You’ve committed to being better and it isn’t enough. Freja already hates you.
“Sorry.” I forced a chuckle, looked away from her, put a palm against the back of my head like I could wipe the sinister thoughts away. “Sorry.”
“It’s settled then,” S?ren said. “We’ll leave first thing in the morning.”
The others headed back into the castle, but I left through the front doors. I took my time descending the mountain path until I found the familiar patch of slightly trampled foliage that marked the way to the small clearing where Arne, Freja, and I had once practiced our swordfighting together.
Every step weighed more than the last as I replayed the moment stuck on repeat in my mind. When Freja had flinched away from my touch.
She was afraid of me too, now. They all were.
And they should be. These thoughts weren’t tainted by the too-quick breaths and flickering threads of my Lurae. They were entirely my own, plucked from a place in my chest that ached and ached and wouldn’t stop. You’re afraid of yourself.
I stumbled into the clearing and fell to my knees. The afternoon sun cast its pale glow over me. Was there no way to sink beneath the surface of the earth until everything had gone dark and quiet? Couldn’t I suffocate the part of me with a Lurae until I was myself again?
The earth was still damp from the most recent snowfall, though it had all melted away now. I dug my fingers into the dirt, watched handprints appear.