Chapter 4 #2
“You do pay me handsomely to steal your court’s secrets, Prince, but prying into the queen’s private affairs… No amount of coin can assure me I won’t end up in those cages.” His gaze scanned the leopard enclosure with a bit of terror.
I shot him a glare, jaw clenching. “They’re not vicious of their own accord.”
“It’s not their viciousness, I fear. But let’s get back to the true matter at hand.
” He lowered his voice to a rumbling whisper.
“Why are you continuing to keep Sylvi in the dark about your role in the failed campaign? You really should trust her, you know. If there’s anyone who would understand, who would fight to protect you, it’s Sylvi. ”
I scoffed. “She has enough to deal with already.”
“She has enough to deal with because of you,” he countered smoothly.
“And let’s be honest, Jack. All this brooding, it’s not just about lying to her or accepting that marriage—which reeks of subterfuge if you ask me, but I digress.
That controlled rage practically vibrating off you runs deeper than you want to admit.
” He tilted his head, studying me with that knowing amusement he was famous for.
“Things between you two are…dangerously escalating.”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
He grinned, and it pissed me off to no end because nothing got past him. “You do realize that if you two keep at this unresolved tension, it’s going to explode, right?”
I scowled, my silence a reluctant admission.
“Maybe…” he drawled, waggling his eyebrows, “you should make sure it erupts in a good way. Preferably naked.”
I groaned. “For Skadi’s sake, Ravin.”
But his words had already ignited something in me, something I had been desperately trying to bury.
My mind betrayed me, flashing back to the way Sylvi had felt beneath me in the maze, the way her thighs had locked around my waist, the wild heat in her gaze when she’d snarled at me.
My fingers twitched, remembering the shape of her hips, the taut muscle of her lithe body, the way she had pressed against me, sparking something animalistic in my blood.
I felt like one of the snow leopards trapped in this enclosure, my prey dangling just far enough from my reach.
I shoved the thought away, guilt clawing at me. I couldn’t think of her like that. Except…I already had. And I had no fucking clue how to make the thoughts stop.
Ravin laughed, stepping closer and clapping me on the shoulder.
“You can lie to yourself all you want, but sooner or later, you’re going to have to face reality.
” He lifted a brow. “And not to sound dramatic, but now that you’ve agreed to that ridiculous betrothal, you don’t have much time before you are irrevocably tied to your very distant cousin. ”
I exhaled harshly, staring up into the star-speckled night. His words lingered, heavy and inescapable, sinking into my gut like granite.
Before I could reply, he lowered his voice. “But helping you with your romantic affairs is not why I sought you out. I have news.”
I stiffened, my gaze snapping back to his. “Go on.”
“Rumors of the brewing rebellion are no longer whispers of discontent. Some of your mother’s most vocal dissenters have been gathering in secret.
A full-fledged organized group. I don’t have names yet, but they’re not just grumbling over taxes and the failed campaign; they’re planning something…
something big. There’s a meeting taking place tonight outside the city walls. Care to join me for some espionage?”
“I don’t think I have it in me tonight. But I trust you. Gather as much intel as you can. This unrest, coupled with this unplanned visit from King Maelthar…it’s a recipe for disaster.”
“He’s due in a week,” Ravin confirmed.
I smiled, not surprised he already had details regarding the king’s envoy. “I guess my coin is not as wasted as I thought.”
He smirked, but his eyes darkened. “Based on what my contacts uncovered, it’s unlikely he’s only coming to celebrate a betrothal.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I don’t think the hrímdreki simply vanished… I think they were driven out.”
“By what?”
“Not what. Whom. Rumblings are spreading across the borderlands. Sightings, Jack. When the queen poisoned the Winterbloom Woods, she awakened the buried evil of Dokkvíor. With the magic of the trees failing, the wards that kept the darkness sealed are cracking.”
I swallowed deeply, remembering the way the power in my veins had reacted, the pull I’d felt. “What kind of sightings?” I asked, though a part of me had already sensed an ancient malice had stirred deep in those woods.
Ravin drew closer, his voice lowering. “The Helvaktír.”
The Hel-Woken…
Despite his attempt to whisper the word, the shadows in the enclosure seemed to recoil at the mention of those creatures. All young Skadgardians are taught of them in our history lessons, about a dark epoch known as the War of Four Kings.
Fifteen thousand years ago, the Shadow Court ruled over Nykraveld—a land nestled between all the Northern Kingdoms and what was now the lost eighth realm of Nordveld, our continent.
It was a land that had throbbed with a darker and more sinister version of the unseelie’s already cruel magic.
Its skies used to be eternally veiled in twilight and storm.
Its ancient groves of withered ash-trees, whose bark bled black resin and whose roots coiled like serpents, had pulsed with a sentient mist that had hidden not just the monstrous creatures sheltered within, but the black-glass citadel of Dokkvíor.
Back then, the Shadow Court had launched a brutal campaign to conquer the entire continent of Nordveld, not for land or gold, but for dominion over the very essence of our world’s elemental magic.
They sought to bend every realm to their will, remaking them into a kingdom of eternal mist and darkness.
At the head of their war machine stood The Seven, a group of unseelie fae warriors of unimaginable power, chosen for their ruthlessness and bloodlust, their names whispered with fear across the north. Entire cities fell under their command, conquered and burned to ashes.
Skadgard’s own legendary general, Eirik Draugathal, had led the Wyrmhost, a legion of hrímdreki promised by oath to the Frostbound Court, against the Shadow Court, but the enemy proved too strong.
They hunted the dreki, slaughtered their young, desecrated the hatching grounds, and the dreki were forced to flee into exile.
But for all their power, the Shadow Court met its reckoning.
Despite centuries of disunity, four of the Northern Realms formed an alliance forged in desperation.
Skadgard, Wysterlind, Yulreth, and Verrindor fought side by side, led by Skadgard’s High Frost King.
The Seven were finally defeated, ending the war in the Siege of Dokkvíor.
Rather than kill them outright, the Frost King and his allies cast a binding curse, one meant to deny them death, deny them rebirth, deny them peace.
No longer fae, The Seven were twisted into wraiths, their physical bodies stripped away, their souls locked in shadow-forged bindings that tethered them to Dokkvíor’s ruins for eternity.
What remained of them became known as the Helvaktír—beings of pure darkness and cold.
If they had in fact awoken and their prison was failing… Well, then we had bigger issues than a rebellion.
“What makes you think Maelthar’s visit has anything to do with the Helvaktír?” I asked.
“Everyone knows the Shadow Court was once a scion of the Unseelie Court. And while Verrindor joined the North against them in the War of Four Kings, the bloodline remains.”
“The Shadow Court broke away from Verrindor long before the war. Despite Verrindor’s notorious past, they fought with Skadgard to defend Nordveld against the Shadow Court.”
“True. But it can’t be a coincidence that after centuries since your mother married into the Frostbound Court, Verrindor’s king is suddenly seeking another marriage alliance, precisely when our realm’s magic is failing and the ancient evil buried in the Wildlands is reaching a hand out from the grave. ”
I nodded grimly, though a part of me still hoped he was wrong.
But how could I deny the fact that I’d felt the breath of that evil scale down my back?
How could I deny the absence of the dreki?
And just as Ravin had said, this betrothal was also perfectly timed with the poisoning of the trees.
If the Unseelie Court ever wanted to forge an alliance with the hopes of overtaking our neighboring realms, right now would be it.
And if the Helvaktír had indeed awoken, it would explain why the dreki had fled their hatching grounds to protect their young.
“Jack,” he said strongly, his hand gripping my shoulder.
“The queen, your mother, tried to reclaim the magic of the solstice. Why, after centuries of peace, would she break our treaty with Yulreth, a kingdom that hasn’t raised an army against us in two hundred years?
It doesn’t make sense. The magic of the solstice, while powerful in its time, has faded into the sands of history.
We no longer need it for our survival…our people and land have evolved without it. ”
“She did it to weaken their realm, not to make ours stronger.”
“Precisely,” he said, eyes growing wide as I proved his point.
“Though that’s not what she fed our people.
She promised them that with the magic of the solstice restored, she would be able to make our kingdom the strongest of the Northern Realms, and that prosperity would trickle down to everyone.
Instead, all the other kingdoms now have their swords pointed in our direction.