Chapter 17
—Broan—
Fucking Jacob. The bastard refused to go with Broan when he offered back at the Meadstead, and he’d tried to be selfless for Kienna.
He wanted to throw himself off the mountain, thinking about it.
There was fear in his eyes that Broan could understand, though.
King Vaerin wielded immeasurable power. He never came across anyone in the Elvish city who could do what the king could do.
He hadn’t admitted that out loud, but as he climbed the uneven ridges of stairs leading up the freezing mountains, Broan had too much time with his thoughts.
It was that or think about how fucking cold he was, and he couldn’t allow that.
Behind him, Ithril trailed, covered in furs that Kaelthar had found for them back at the village. It didn’t stop the frost from clinging to the black of her tightly wound hair. Blue caressed her lips as they chattered against the cold shrieking of the wind.
“You need more fur?” Broan asked. “We can steal some from Chatterbox over there.”
Even as he said it, Kaelthar was deep into a story about his younger days in the Viking stormhold when the jarl took command from his own father and bore himself a daughter. Kaelthar chuckled. “That Ingrid is a spitfire, she is. Yer father made sure of it.”
Kaelthar carried a large pack on his back with supplies they’d picked up in the village. Broan carried one of similar size, stuffed with dried meats, canteens of water—which he hoped weren’t frozen—and furs.
Broan grunted and looked back at Ithril again. Even freezing, she held a straight face. A tough woman who let nothing bother her. When she noticed Broan fixated on her, she sneered, and he looked away, only to exhale a short laugh. Gods be with him if she kept treating him like that.
He should have been paying attention as Kaelthar started talking about Ingrid again.
Something about her being the first person he’d need to get on their side before the jarl would come around.
There was also a brother, but Broan didn’t catch his name.
His thoughts kept drifting back to Kienna’s brother.
Seeing Jacob stirred emotions in him. He didn’t even like Jacob.
The only way he could describe it to himself was by comparing it to seeing Akin’s dead face in a pile of men during the war in Dalelry.
River Storm haunted him wherever he went, and he looked right into the face of a dead man when Jacob’s hood came off.
“—and when the mad king raided our fleet, they burned our ships and tore you from the arms of yer milkmaid,” Kaelthar continued.
“Were the fleets not prepared for battle? I thought the realm was at war?” Broan asked.
“Aye,” Kaelthar nodded, climbing a rather slippery step.
He almost lost his balance before catching himself on a rock.
He dusted himself off. “We couldn’t fight magic.
Once the flames took the ship, we had to take to the báturs.
Yer mother went lookin’ for the maiden, but the timbers were already splittin’. ”
Broan cleared the slippery stone with ease.
Ithril took hold of his arm, slipping enough to bang her knee against the iced rocks.
Broan immediately clasped her wrist and pulled.
She winced and limped past him, sitting when her leg couldn’t hold the weight of her body.
Broan sat, too. He didn’t mind the rest—preferred it, really.
Kaelthar turned back, noticing he’d made it a few paces further without them and sat up ahead, picking ice away from his dark beard.
The snow softened, the wind dying as they hid behind a larger rock.
“How much longer, Chatterbox?” Broan asked, his voice carrying up the mountain.
“We should be there by afternoon tomorrow.”
Broan squinted. Afternoon tomorrow? The fuck?
Ithril’s face registered the same tension he felt.
Broan hadn’t realized they’d be sleeping in the frigid cold.
He could have done better to ask about the distance before setting out on the journey, but it did him no good now.
He imagined they’d all be shamelessly curled up next to each other, the poor Elvish woman in the middle to maintain enough heat to stay alive.
She probably realized as much as her round eyes widened.
“No one is going to touch you,” he whispered.
Ithril’s brows knitted together as she shifted to Kaelthar and then back to Broan. “Would you believe yourself in my position?”
Broan shrugged. “Sleep with your fucking arrows if you don’t believe me. Or don’t sleep at all.”
“There’s a cave up ahead if we keep goin’ a few miles,” Kaelthar said, standing and stretching the ice from his bones. “We can attempt a fire for warmth.”
“Can you walk?” Broan pointed to Ithril’s knee. She attempted to stand, then stumbled. “And I suppose you’re too proud to let me carry you.”
She peered at him as she limped up the stairs. Broan folded his arms and shook his head. A stubborn woman, like all the other women he knew.
Kaelthar led them up the mountain until the opening of a cave appeared.
It was small, only a dwelling place carved into the rock for sleeping on these journeys.
A well-mapped location to keep travelers going without the temptation of stopping frequently to find warmth.
They huddled in, and Kaelthar reached for the wood piled neatly against the back.
He dug into his pack, pulling out patches of dried grass, leaves from the forest, and small twigs.
Kneeling to lay the nest of tinder in a circle encompassed by stone, he neatly placed larger logs.
Then, he pulled out a dark gray rock and handed it to Broan.
“Use yer blade, would ye. Strike it down and guide the sparks over the brush.”
Broan scraped the stone until sparks flew.
It took a few tries, but the minute the ember took to the leaves, Broan boomed a laugh.
He could move the earth to the best of his ability, but in all his years, he’d never started a fire.
He always had someone nearby who could do it with magic. Now, he’d be lethal.
Kaelthar handed them jerky to snack on while he unraveled the furs and sleeping blankets from his and Broan’s packs. He laid them together on the ground a few feet from the fire.
“Strange, isn’t it? A seafaring people building homes in stone and frost.” The fire hit the gleam in his eye as he chuckled. “Best we sleep now. If those clouds hold outside, a blizzard’s coming, and we’ll want the mountain behind us before it breaks.”
Ithril shivered as she fixated on the blankets. Broan watched her through the fire, the wrestling thoughts playing out on her face as she grimaced. “You’re blue, Tightstrings.” Broan stood and tossed the rest of his dry meat into the fire. “Try to get some rest.”
Kaelthar settled in on the fur furthest from the flame. “Best if she lies between us to avoid frostbite.”
Broan extended his arm out. “Climb in.”
Ithril limped forward with her bow and found a spot next to Kaelthar, climbing into her own sleeping sack.
By the time Broan found his, Kaelthar was snoring.
He held in a laugh, but the bastard was so oblivious that he couldn’t help but release a snort.
He turned his back to Ithril, though she shifted constantly, squirming as if the air from her lungs was scarce.
She did this dance for at least an hour, as if all she wanted was to come up for air.
“You awake, Tightstrings?” Broan whispered, watching the fire dance along the cave wall.
“Did you think I wouldn’t be?” she asked, pulling her arms closer to her.
She was probably pulling her arrow closer.
Broan pitied the woman. The thought never came up until now that they’d have to swarm in a cave for warmth.
The raw, animalistic fear that bounced off Ithril since learning the situation made him shift a few times as well.
He tried to scoot away from her to create more space, but in the end, he got up to sit by the fire.
Ithril sighed with relief, following him. “Do you blame me for being uncomfortable?”
“Seeing as Chatterbox is already snoring, and I’d rather be by the fire…” Broan stoked the flames as Ithril adjusted her furs and scooted even further away. “I don’t know you, Tightstrings. I won’t even waste my breath convincing you that you’re safe. Whoever hurt you took that from you.”
Ithril froze as if swirling ice outside reached her bones and set in.
She didn’t respond. She didn’t have to. Broan saw that wild-eyed stare plenty of times.
Soldiers in River Storm elicited that same fear and shame from the girls in the orphanage.
It made him angrier in his youth. It was that and the injustice of never understanding why he was so different from everyone else in the city.
They laughed at him relentlessly, although he could rip them apart if he wanted to.
That period brought him shame now, but he was grateful to Danek for grounding him.
“Talk to me about the River Storm soldier,” Ithril said, staring deeply into the fire.
Broan’s shoulders lifted. “The boy is bait, nothing else. I’m more concerned that the king knew to place soldiers in that small village and not somewhere of more importance.”
“Bait, how?” Ithril asked.
After Broan pulled Jacob aside to chat, all Jacob could get out was that Kienna should never know, which only told Broan that King Vaerin wanted her to know.
She’d go to him immediately if she did. “The king is aiming for Kienna. Aside from the fact that he’s her uncle, he seems fucking fixated on whatever she has to offer. ”
Broan tried to understand it himself. The familial connection cleared up a lot of his bitter feelings toward her when she got higher praise than everyone else.
Aside from that, she didn’t have anything special to offer the king.
Unless it had to do with the cursed bond he had placed on her magic.
Was Kienna stronger than they’d realized?
She did some freaky shit now and then and saw weird visions that never came true, but she’d almost matched his strength at the barrier in River Storm.
Probably would have pummeled him into the very stone he controlled had she not passed out from it.
“Do you find it weird that the girl shares blood with the Dark King?” Ithril asked after the crackling fire filled enough of the void.
Broan grunted. “About as weird as I find her sharing blood with your Ice Queen.”
“Her connection to the soldier complicates things.”
“I’d say so. That’s not our problem.” Broan stoked the fire again. “How’d you become a soldier, Tightstrings?”
Ithril let out a bitter huff. “It was that or be pushed further south.”
“What’s further south?”
“Exile.” Ithril chewed against her cheek. “Past the mountains where our people push the creatures they find have no use to the realm.”
Broan hadn’t seen anything further south than the hidden forest. He hadn’t even realized there were mountains surrounding them in that direction either.
He needed to find a map. His lack of education in River Storm made Broan feel incredibly stupid.
He hated feeling stupid, and now he wanted to smash into something or rip the rocks up.
Instead, he squeezed his fingers into his palms and exhaled harshly, the cold wind blowing a cloud of frozen smoke into the air. “What does Alistile encompass?”
“We are surrounded by mountains. Whiteridge to the west, where we are now. The Elvish mountains to the south. The Northern Mountains in River Storm—”
“And to the east?”
“The Malintilian Mountains. Our realm ends at the mountains. Beyond that is not our concern—unless you’re the Vikings.”
Broan ground his teeth together. “Why?”
“They like the sea. They will never be powerful in Alistile, so they venture back to Skalavian lands for power. Mainly to pillage the poor.”
He tried not to express disappointment in this practice.
Broan hoped the Vikings were fierce warriors, fighting against tyrants like King Vaerin.
These were facts Kaelthar failed to mention in his stories.
He spoke so fondly of Viking history. Not once did he mention that their people raided villages that barely had anything to give.
He didn’t bother pretending he knew anything about Skalavia, but he figured he’d feel the same, regardless.
“You know Alistile well?” Broan asked.
“Well enough.”
“I’d like to learn.”
Ithril squinted, her brows moving down like a caterpillar. “Learn what?”
“The geography. The political structures. I want to know how every single town operates, so when I’m called to war again, I understand what I’m getting into.”
“The flint,” Ithril said, pointing to the gray rock near the fire. “I’ll start by drawing you a map.”