Chapter 45 Freija
Freija
I spun to my feet, grabbing the dagger at my waist. Sucking in a breath, I scrambled backward, away from Hans’s guard.
“It’s about time you returned here,” Aksel said and threw his bloody blade past my head.
It clattered against the mountainside. Damn, I was cornered. Like a doe being hunted, I had nowhere to run. In one direction was a cliff face that I’d need to climb and in the other was a sheer drop into the woods. The only way I was getting out of here alive was to go through my attacker.
“What do you want? Why did you kill him? Why are you still…” I internally gasped. “I was right. We should have questioned you further, shouldn’t we?”
The figure behind him slunk back several paces from the traitor.
Aksel sneered. “He was in the way. As for what I want, Your Majesty, three bushels of gold will do nicely.”
“For whom?”
He smirked, and a shiver slid up my spine like an eel. “The people need help, Your Majesty. They need funding. Feeding. While you sit up here in your mountain castle, they need your help before the humans overrun them.”
He had no idea what I did, on a daily basis, to help my people. The lengths I would go to to protect them.
“If you come with me,” he said with open bloody palms, “I can make this… nastiness… go away. You can return to your garden once this is all sorted.”
That I highly doubted. All this for three bushels of gold? No, it didn’t make sense. Not if that Forest Fae who mentioned leadership was to be believed.
“Come, now.” Aksel slid one foot forward, and I bent my knees, ready. “Give me what I need and I won’t hurt you.”
“How can I trust that? How can I trust that you won’t just kill me and use Nora as your next target?”
“She isn’t of high value.”
Oh, I hoped she never had to hear words like that.
“And…” he sighed. “Don’t make this difficult. Just come.”
“No.”
“You stubborn bitch.” He took a step closer and pulled another metal blade out of the straps across his chest. Ancestors, that was a lot of weapons. One, two, three… fourteen. He had fourteen blades. “You’re just like that guard of yours.”
I pointed my own blade at him and drew on my stun magic. A sparking orb of light appeared in my free palm. “Have you done something to that guard? To Hans?”
“The former is busy dealing with the cave-ins from your absence and a few that I may have contributed to this morning.”
Damn. That was another downside to being gone from the mountain.
This particular range, due to its housing the Temple of the Fae, needed a monarch in residence or our caves and tunnel system would start to crumble.
The monarch’s power was entwined with the well-being of the mountain.
If I survived this situation and received the full monarch power from the ancestors, I’d be tied to this location for the rest of my days.
I took a deep breath and settled into a better battle stance. “What about the latter? Where is Hans?”
The hooded figure’s shoulders shook as if they were snickering, and I kept one eye on them and the other on the man decked out in weapons. Aksel flipped the dagger in his hand and caught it again as if it were some sort of parlor trick. “Sent him home.”
“In one piece?”
He tilted his head from one side to the other. “For the most part.”
I launched my stunning orb at him. He dodged the blow and tsked. “Now, now. I didn’t hurt your beau.”
“He wasn’t mine.”
“Ah, yes, you have a thing for generals.”
I clenched my jaw, unwilling to rise to the bait. “What is it you truly want, Aksel?”
“You.” He lunged and I parried away his first strike, shoving him toward the cliff edge. His eyes widened in panic, his arms whipped around to regain his balance, and he let out a growl as he repositioned himself at the head of the trail. “You bitch!”
“That’s no way to talk to your Queen. Are you working with anyone else?”
“My… friends.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
His nose wrinkled. “I work for the highest bidder.”
Suspicion confirmed. He wasn’t the mastermind, but he was part of this mess. “You greedy bastard.”
The hooded figure had vanished back down the trail, but I doubted they’d gone far.
“All I need to do is put a knife to your throat, remove you from the mountain, and I finally get paid.”
“Not if I have anything to say about it,” I mimicked and launched another volley of magic at him.
He pivoted to one side and threw himself at me. Twin blades, one in each hand, aimed at my legs and I batted them aside while pushing more stunning power into my own blade. The magic ricocheted into his daggers. He yelped and dropped them, then lunged for my feet.
Hands latched around my ankles and I went down like a sack of grain. My head slammed against the soil and trailing plants, and I whimpered. My vision blurred momentarily, wispy clouds staring back at me.
Calling on my Fjell powers, I withdrew shards of stone from the mountain to my right and launched them at him. They whistled through the air like arrows, honing in on their target. He released his hold and jumped to his feet, allowing me to scramble out of his reach and reposition myself.
A stone shield started to form against his upturned arm, but it wasn’t quick enough. The projectiles cut across him, lancing through his clothes and leaving thin red lines in their wake, one marring his pale cheek.
My chest heaved, heart hammering, as I climbed to my feet and stared at my battered attacker and, devastatingly, my equally battered garden. I needed to push now while he was distracted, before he could do any more harm.
I pulled on my stunning powers, and with a roar, launched an orb down my arm, out of my blade, and toward his chest.
He spun at the last minute, narrowly avoiding it.
I lunged after him, and landed a punch to his stomach.
Breath flew out of him and he bent in half. I swiped my blade at his face. Right before it met his cheek, his hand whipped out and latched on to my wrist stopping its advance.
No. He increased the pressure of his hold and I winced, then swung my free fist at his face. He grabbed that one too, leaving me stuck in his hold. A slick grin slowly appeared.
I was going to wipe it away if it was the last thing I did. Nobody threatened me. Or my mountain. Or my people.
Using his hold to my advantage, I kicked as high as my skirts would allow. My foot made contact with his stomach again and he let out an oomph.
Damn, that was a little too high.
He released his grip, and I scrambled back, crushing the herbs and launching another volley of stunning magic at him, using all of my training lessons.
He flew to the right, tucking and rolling, before landing in the flower bed and trampling the remaining flowers. The purple buds crumbled beneath his boots as he let out another snarl.
No!
My heart clenched.
“You really are a nasty bitch,” he spat as thin lines of blood trickled down his arms and cheek from where I’d injured him.
“Say that again a little louder!”
Anger pulsed through my magic as I crafted and launched a sharp spear of stone at him. His eyes widened, his mouth open as if to say something, then he gasped as my weapon lodged in his stomach.
Blood spurted from the wound, and he dropped to his knees before flopping onto the ground.
Oh my ancestors… I killed someone.
I swallowed hard, my chest rising and falling at a manic pace. I’d killed someone. Better him than me though. Now, I just needed to focus on—
“What a shame. He’d been doing such good work for me,” a familiar male voice said and the dark figure appeared at the top of the trail. He slowly lowered his hood revealing pale skin, white hair, and a face I’d grown to loathe over the years. “Far better than those Forest Fae imbeciles down south.”
“Karl-Mogens.”
“Why do you have to be so difficult?”
I called forth my magic, stones swirling in one palm, light in the other. “It’s been you all along.”
His lips kicked up at one corner and he cocked his head. “And it will be when you are gone.”
“What do you want?” What could he possibly want? He had a seat on the council, had shelter within the mountain, food on his table. “What could you possibly need gold for or to kidnap me?”
“A militia comes at a price,” he sighed. “One the Council would need when the royal line abdicated and became redundant.”
Part of me wanted to throw my magic at him, but the other knew I needed to keep him talking and get as much information out of him as possible.
Like, who else he might be working with or how long this had been in the works.
“We have a strong military. What would you…” The pieces clicked into place one by one. “So they answered to you.”
“You always were an intelligent woman. Shame you don’t listen, though.”
I grit my teeth and the magic in my palms swirled faster. “You want a council-led government, don’t you? And let me guess, with you at the head of the table.”
He gave me a wicked grin. “Like I said, intelligent woman.”
Ancestors. He’d been masterminding this from the inside all along. I wanted to shove stone shards down his throat until he choked on them. But there were still a few questions I needed answers for. “The ear and the kidnapper?”
“Me.”
“The weakened tunnels?”
“Me with a little payment to Foreman Fredrik for his assistance and cooperation.”
“The push to have me marry?”
“Me, my friends on the council, and a little pressure on your parents.” He shifted his stance, crouching slightly and opening his palms. I was going to have to fight and kill him too, before he did more damage to my mountain and the Fjell Fae. “Nora was the easiest piece.”
I stilled.
“Ah, yes. With her constant misbehavior it was easy to convince your father to have her sent away for a while. A lot less mess than killing her outright.”
If he was behind Nora’s trip overseas… He’d been working on this for ages. I swallowed hard.
“She’ll be easy to remove again. As will your mother.”
My heart galloped in my chest, and I narrowed my eyes at him. “Don’t you dare touch them.” With that I launched my magic at him, light to blind, then shards to maim. He batted the latter aside with a quick shield, but blinked back the bright blast to the face. He stumbled back a few steps.
I only moved faster. Another volley launched, then another, each one expertly dodged, but I kept moving, kept up my assault to wear him down.
He rushed forward with a metal sword, blade arcing through the air. I grabbed my dagger from Halvar and fashioned my own shield just in time. Metal clanged against stone and I pushed him back.
He stutter-stepped and grunted in annoyance.
Was that it? Did he have no other attack maneuvers?
I huffed and bit back a smile. Of course… He’d used others to do his dirty work for him. Now, here he was facing me, who had been trained by the best.
A blade flew past me and nicked my cheek, leaving behind a sharp sting.
I whirled, dagger at the ready, and—
A stony blade protruded from his chest and his eyes went wide.
My body trembled at the sight. Blood bloomed down his front and he dropped to his knees.
Who had…
Halvar stood behind the fallen man, chest heaving, and bellowed, “Get her out of here!”
A group of guards ran forward and grabbed me by the arms. “We need to call a council meeting!” I yelled. “They need to know!”
“Oh, they will,” he said, sounding like death himself walked this earth and his name was Halvar.