Chapter 46 Halvar
Halvar
My soldiers and Freija scrambled past, her feet flying faster than I’d ever seen before, and my focus shifted to the cretin that didn’t have long before he bled out.
Karl-Mogens slumped forward and curled into a fetal position, those beady eyes staring up at me in fear and shock. The sight sent a giddiness through my veins. It was the same adrenaline rush I got whenever I interrogated someone.
“You threatened her.” I knelt beside him and collapsed the magic stone sword. “I don’t take kindly to that.”
He spat out blood.
“No response. How wise.”
Still wasn’t going to save him. Nothing would.
I picked him up by the collar and hauled him across the garden, smashing his body against the mountainside.
Blood streamed out of his chest and marred the stone beneath him as I used my magic to pull sinews of rock to hold him in place.
Grating noises filled the air as the bands appeared and snapped across his abdomen, arms, and legs.
Trussed up against the rocky facade, he looked like a fly caught in a web.
“Why Freija?” I asked.
His head lolled to one side, blood staining his teeth as he said, “Easy target.”
“Not a good enough answer. Why Freija?”
He sneered.
I crossed my arms and sighed. “You have mere moments left. Answer my question and I will refrain from severing your cock.”
“Fine,” he spluttered. “Militia… Council… Take over…”
“So you thought you could capture or threaten Freija, remove her from the mountain, and take control of the council?”
“Yes.” The blood on his stomach darkened. He was almost out of time. He coughed again, those eyes focusing and unfocusing. “Would have w-worked if you weren’t assigned to p-protect her… and hadn’t killed all my men.”
“Hmmph.” Fools, the lot of them. “Well, Freija and I did kill your henchmen. You can go meet them and the ancestors and answer for your sins.”
“Oh, and you b-believe you are free from sin?”
“Far from it. I am just wiser than you.”
“Do you ever”—he coughed, blood spurting across his lips—“ever wonder what she tastes like?”
I tilted my head to one side. Was he really asking that? Was he really—
“Oh, d-don’t be coy, Head Guard. You’ve s-spent a lot of t-time with the lovely Freija and I saw h-how she looked at you during yesterday’s m-meeting.”
Heat flared through every part of my body as I clenched my jaw and called on a short blade. The cool stone solidified in my hand and, before the man could say another word, I rammed it into the fleshy front of his throat.
Blood burst across my arm as I growled. “Never speak of her in such terms.”
Karl-Mogens flinched, his eyes widening.
Death was here.
And it was me.
I’d planned to go slowly, carving into him and releasing one bloody droplet at a time. That wasn’t happening now.
I wrenched the blade to the side and sawed through an artery. A stream of warm scarlet cascaded from him. But I didn’t let it stop me. Continuing my ministrations, I hacked and sawed until his head popped off his neck and tumbled onto the ground with a dull thump.
“I did warn everyone,” I grumbled.
Shocked eyes stared back at me. Unmoving. Unblinking. Dead.
Now he was a headless fly in my trap. My lips quivered at the thought. He was right. I was far from sinless—lying with Freija at the top of that list—but I’d sin for her. Always.
Peering back across the trampled garden, I took in the mess. Stems had been snapped, branches broken, and scarlet stained the soil. Hopefully blood was good for Freija’s plants—considering the large amount I’d just spilled here.
Turning back to the body, I pulled on the tempest of power in my sternum and retracted the stone tendrils holding the remaining limbs. They flopped to the ground, landing in an unceremonious heap.
Letting out a sigh, I grabbed the head by its matted, white hair, wrapped my fingers around one wrist, and headed back down the trail, passing Aksel and Mikkel who I’d come back for.
Pivoting at the tree line, I aimed for the path that led north—over the craggy cliffs, across the large, fielded mountain-top, and toward the far side of the fjell.
I dragged Karl-Mogens’s limp body, letting it bump over the rock-strewn soil.
A bloody trail grew behind us, but that was not worth worrying about.
The rain would wash it away soon enough.
And if anyone questioned why there was so much blood up here, blaming it on an animal was an easy tale to spin.
If someone happened upon me, well, I’d kill them too.
Reaching the far edge of the mountain where it dipped down toward yet another fjord, I swung my arm back and tossed the head over the edge. The mangled mess sailed through the air and plummeted, lost to the uninhabited valley below.
I dropped the body and eyed it. Technically, to meet the ancestors, some of his magic and spirit—if that was even real—needed to be buried properly. Nobody had ever specified how much of the deceased was needed. With that in mind, I hunched down and set to work, carving off a piece of him.
Once complete, I nudged the body with my foot, pushing it off the mountain toward the rocky shards below. The sound of him hitting the bottom never reached my ears. All that remained of the sick creature was his hand.
Having disposed of Aksel’s body in the same fashion, I’d slung Mikkel’s lifeless form over my shoulder and strolled into the healer’s quarters, gasps filling the brightly lit cavern.
I carefully set down my soldier on one empty stone slab and dumped Karl-Mogens’s and Aksel’s hands on another open operating table.
Healers in aprons flitted around between lines of other stone tables in the smooth-walled room.
At the back of the space, stretching from floor to ceiling, was a shelf with all manner of bottles on it.
“Where’s Trygve?” I asked, searching the room for the young healer.
“H-here.” The young fae appeared in a bluster of herbs and bandages. “Are you hurt?”
I shook my head and pointed to the hands.
Trygve’s eyes widened and more gasps reached my ears. Someone retched nearby. Probably a patient. Not my problem.
Trygve’s eyes shifted to Mikkel. “Fallen in the line of duty?”
I nodded. “Protecting our Queen.”
He gasped, as did a few others nearby who were pretending not to eavesdrop.
With a quiet reverence I only reserved for those who deserved my respect, I gave my fallen man a head bow and silent thanks for his service.
Trygve turned to the lonely appendages next to us. “Who do they belong to? Do they need help?”
“Ah, two different people. Their lives took a tragic turn when they decided to open their mouths and threaten the Queen.” I leveled a glare at the healer, and he squirmed.
“Ah, I see.” He wrung his hands, swallowing hard. “We can complete the burial ceremony without, erm, the rest of…” He let the sentence hang, motioning for me to end it.
“Aksel, Hans Fredrickson’s guard.”
Trygve squirmed again. If it weren’t for his talents in the medical wing, I would not have placed him in a leadership role down here.
“And Council member Karl-Mogens.”
The room stilled and blinking eyes turned in our direction.
“The Councilman has died?”
“Threatened the Queen. Forfeit his life for doing so.” I could loop Trygve in on the details, but for now we needed to keep the true reason behind Karl-Mogens’s death a secret, lest it alert any other accomplices.
“Very well, very well.” Trygve pointed to one of the hands. “And has Hans Fredrickson been informed of this… ill-fated event that has befallen his guard?”
“No.”
“Would you like us to inform him?” Trygve asked.
I shook my head. “That needs to be done diplomatically. The Queen or Council will contact Hans.” And then I would be interrogating the bastard until he begged for mercy to see what he knew and when.
“I see. Well… Erm… Thank you for bringing this to us.” Trygve looked far from thankful, but this was part of his job—giving last rites and coaxing magic from the deceased to be recycled back into the mountain for the ancestors to decide how to redistribute it among the fae.
“I will leave you to it.”
With that, I spun and headed for the woman I’d almost lost.
I needed to see her. Make sure she hadn’t been injured physically or mentally. Although, having been attacked in a space where she found peace would no doubt cause some mental anguish.
With lengthy strides, I made it to the corridor that housed Freija’s chambers in good time. Three guards stood watch along the hallway, with another two stationed outside her door. Good.
A slip of a woman with long, black hair piled on top of her head stepped out of Freija’s chambers.
“Alva,” I said and she startled as the door bumped shut.
“Ah, General.”
“Where is the Queen?”
“She is inside, but requested not to be disturbed.”
“What do you mean?”
“She sustained no injuries, but has requested not to be disturbed,” the attendant repeated.
I didn’t like that. Not one bit. I wanted to check on her, make sure she wasn’t injured, brush the hair back from her face and tell her the villain was gone. “Very well,” I said.
Alva nodded at the dismissal and disappeared down the hallway in a flurry of skirts. Once she’d rounded the corner and was out of sight, I spun to the door and let myself in, quickly shutting it behind me before any of my soldiers decided today was the day to speak out of turn.
“Knocking is not your strong suit,” Freija said, and I turned to face her.
She was in a robe sitting at her dressing table, a bath cooling off to the side, a fire roaring in the hearth.
She turned to face me and pulled her brush through her hair, and the fabric on her shoulder slid down slightly.
I cleared my throat. “Are you well? Not hurt?”
“I’m fine. No injuries of note aside from a scratch on my cheek.”
Yes, but she’d been through an ordeal. “Karl-Mogens has been dispatched.”
Her eyes flicked to mine. “How? No, wait, let me guess. Dismemberment.”
She was very observant. I nodded once, and she let out a sigh.
“Oh, come on, princess,” I said. “Do you really think I’d let someone who’d threatened you continue to breathe?”
She shuddered, and it took every ounce of control not to rush across the room and pull her into my arms.
“We will see to it that Hans and his father are informed of the infiltration in their own ranks. I will draft the correspondence tomorrow.” Her eyes fluttered in a sign I recognized from my time on battlefields as exhaustion.
Not just physical, but mental. The kind that needed to be slept off for as long as possible.
“And I’ve already called for a council meeting this evening. ”
With her cheeks pinked, those lips gently parted, the sight was enough to have my breath stilling in my lungs. Ancestors, she was beautiful. I wanted to crawl into that bed, hold her until she fell asleep, and be there when she woke.
“Freija.” I cleared my throat. “There is something I’d like to discuss.”
Her eyes widened with something akin to hope and the steel armor that had lived around my heart shattered.