Chapter 53 Torben
Torben
When the guards broke up the tenth fight of the night—more brawls than any feast in living memory—Torben told Dagny in Old Norse, “We’re leaving.” He rose and offered her his hand.
Brows lifting, she replied in the same tongue, “Now? The dinner isn’t even over, and I haven’t finished visiting with my new friend.”
“It’s getting too dangerous. The mead must be stronger tonight.” Frustration coiled inside him, a restless anger, even though he hadn’t touched a drop. “Or maybe it’s the moon. But, Dagny, if one stray hit caught you…”
She chewed her lip. “Yes, you’re right. We’ll leave when Arctos returns.”
His gaze slid to Emilia, who picked at her trencher. “If she’s to be part of the clan, she can stand on her own among them.”
“What is wrong with you?” Dagny demanded with her own frustration. “She’s not immortal yet.”
He gripped her arm and pulled her to her feet. “Now, mate.” He spotted Arctos then, weaving back through the unruly crowd. His cousin looked as impassive as ever, but Torben doubted the queen had warmed him with friendly conversation.
Now will you see? Tomorrow he would press Arctos again.
Dagny told Emilia, “I need to go instill some manners in my husband. Will you be all right?”
“Oh, yes,” Emilia said quickly, having also spotted Arctos. “Thank you.”
Dagny squeezed the vampire’s shoulder, gentle despite the tension. “We’ll talk later then.”
Outside in the frosty air and howling winds, Dagny adjusted her cloak with jerky movements. “The hells was that, Torben?” she snapped. The storm seemed to mimic her feelings.
“You’re angry that I wanted you and our child out of danger?”
“No. I’m angry that you were rude. Truly, absurdly rude!”
He had been rude. He wasn’t polished on his best day—an admitted hothead—but tonight had been worse.
Back in their den, she threw her cloak aside. “You’ve been horrible to Emilia and to Arctos!”
“Oh, I’ve been horrible? If only you knew…”
“Then tell me!”
When he hesitated, she gave a growl. “Stop treating me like I’m breakable. I am strong, and I’ve faced countless foes. Pregnancy is nothing compared to a dozen strigoi attacking as one.”
He raked a hand through his hair. “It’s not you I’m worried about.” His gaze dipped to her belly—large, taut, full of the life he’d been terrified to hope for. “We’re so close.”
“So now you admit to worrying about the babe? You wouldn’t before. I saw you meet gazes with Hulda tonight. She feigned a smile for you. Feigned it, Torben!” Dagny was usually slow to anger. The pregnancy must be affecting her. Or maybe she’d been moonstruck as well.
He tried for lightness. “For all we know, Hulda was suffering heartburn from all the mugs she quaffed.” One time, out of sight of Dagny, the woman had slid him a look, a godsdamned sad look.
Recalling it made his fury spike even more.
“She shouldn’t even have been there! And she never should have hurt you with her words.
Her little ‘foretellings’ were a curse!” When Dagny’s eyes went wide, he forced himself to breathe.
“Look, it’s done, and we’re almost home, just days from meeting our child. We need to be rational about this.”
She stiffened, her muscles seeming to lock. “So the pregnant female is irrational?”
Oh, fuck. “That’s not what I meant. But maybe right now I see things more clearly than you can.” Oh, fuck. “I’m just saying I don’t feel half of the aches and pains you do. So you can rely more on me.”
“You already seem to carry the weight of the world. Which you’ve refused to share with me!”
“I’m not saying anything right tonight,” he muttered with a groan. And she was taking everything wrong! Realizing this exchange wouldn’t magically take on a productive note, he said, “I need a minute to cool off.”
“Good idea.” Her expression couldn’t seem to decide between relieved and heartbroken, but her body quaked. “Go.”
At the door, he hesitated, confused and furious all over again—at himself more than anything. They never fought. He let her see his bewilderment.
“Go,” she repeated, pointing. “Take more than a minute.”
He stepped out into the storm and paced along the deserted ravine, letting the freezing wind scour his thoughts. One question beat like a fist against his skull: Why did I fight with her? This was the last thing she needed!
Maybe Arctos was right, and the pregnancy had strained Torben more than he’d known. His face flushed at his thoughts. More than poor Dagny who carried the babe?
He was turning back when another question struck him—
Where is Yrsa going?
Her cloaked figure hurried toward a twisting ravine, alone, her guards nowhere in sight.
If she wanted privacy, she could retire to her chambers, the choicest of all the dens in Ravinelun. Why sneak out into the maze of canyons?
Anger leaned into vigilance. He followed.
He thought about asking Arctos to back him up, but his cousin would just try to talk him out of spying on the queen. No help there.
Wherever Yrsa was heading, she wanted no one around. The deeper Torben tracked her, the more his suspicion burned. Nothing about her made sense anymore.
She must be deliberately undermining her people. But for what reason? If he could figure this mystery out, he could convince Arctos to act. Together, they could defeat even the first channeler.
But his private investigation into the queen had uncovered one contradiction after another.
He’d even contacted Inkletter’s new partner—the vampire Nadje—in secret, asking her to look into the castle’s blood “donors.” This was a perilous step; should Yrsa discover his meddling, he’d pay with his life.
Yet with his child almost here, he couldn’t ignore his instincts any longer. What kind of future would he provide his family if he failed to act?
Miles passed beneath his feet. Ravines branched endlessly. He kept her trail—then lost it. Tracks vanished under windblown powder.
Damn it.
He chose a ravine, raced through, doubled back, checked all offshoots. Nothing. Sweat dripped despite the cold.
This far out, the weather began to clear, snow clouds giving way to the moon. Shafts of light beamed over the ravines, illuminating their striations like a kaleidoscope.
Some impulse told him to turn back—might Dagny need him?—but the odds of her going into labor on the one occasion he spent an hour away were slim. And just as pressing was the feeling that he was about to catch out his queen and uncover the secret to this mystery once and for all.
Years had gone by as he’d held reservations; months had gone by since he’d become convinced she was compromised.
He turned left into another ravine. This one ended in a sheltered spot with an overhang, a place for illicit affairs.
Footprints. One set? Was a Berserker lover following behind Torben, hurrying to meet the queen?
Raised voices drifted from deeper inside. Yrsa must be quarreling with someone! Torben caught the names Neculain and Emilia.
Sword in hand, he charged into the grotto. Moonlight struck the scene:
Yrsa. Alone. Vampire bitten. Incense lingered in the air.
“Torben, thank the gods!” She’d backed against the stone wall, trembling. “I’ve been attacked!”
Torben scanned the area. “My queen, who did this?”
Tears streaked her face. “A vampire. He traced when he heard you coming. Look what he did to me.” She tipped her throat to show pierce marks. “Oh, Torben!”
Her eyes glimmered with remembered gentleness, like the female who had soothed him and Arctos. In that instant, he understood Arctos’s protectiveness of this female.
But it didn’t lessen Torben’s own instincts about her.
He stood his ground and didn’t sheath his sword. “Why were you talking about Emilia? Did he want her location?” Torben needed to get back and warn Arctos.
“Hmm? Him?”
“The vampire?”
“Yes. Yes. But enough of this charade. I’m simply hopeless at it.” Her tears abruptly disappeared, a smile widening across her face, like a bear about to feast. “He has her location. He’s known it for some time.”
“How could a vampire know our village?”
“Because I taught him the ravines. Night after night, I dismissed the sentries while my clan slept. You never knew what lurked in your midst.”
Cold flooded Torben’s veins.
“So your lover is…Prince Co?tin?” Torben guessed. When her amusement deepened, he dared to ask her, “How long have you let him sway you?”
Yrsa’s eyes took on a crazed glint. “Sway me? I control him! He’d frittered away his birthright before I took control of him and shaped his destiny.”
“Birthright?”
“The General of Nothing will rule over a legendary Horde once more. I taught him how to secretly build his army, washing the brains of the weak and training lethal soldiers.”
My gods. Torben felt something in him fracture. He decided her fate then: I kill her tonight.
He stalked closer, keeping her talking. “Why would you help him?”
“He’s my mate.”
“You haven’t made his heart beat. All accounts say he isn’t blooded.”
“I might not be his, but he is mine. He thinks his sister is his vampire Bride, but she never blooded him either. When Arctos first gave me the information about her, I decided to take Emilia for him.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I saved her from Neculain’s crypt,” Yrsa said.
Madness or confessional kept her talking, words she seemed relieved to vent.
“Placed her with my most trusted warrior, a male who could never desire her and one she could never desire either. But they’ve grown close—I saw it tonight—close enough that he will fight for her.
I offered him an annulment this very eve.
You see, I don’t want to have to kill Arctos. ”
She’s insane. “Emilia won’t blood Co?tin. She would have already.”
“I know,” Yrsa said with a shrug. “Once he finally has her and she fails him again, he’ll kill her and free himself of this obsession.
” Her head tilted and she parted her lips, as if her next sentence would be particularly tasty.
“Then he’ll beg for my favor—just as he begged for his life from your parents all those years ago. ”