Chapter 11
Idon’t know what possessed me to search the palace grounds for a man I could barely stand, in the middle of the night, but I did it anyway. It was fairly easy to sneak past the guard at our door, but then I was standing in the stone hallway, unsure of which way he would have headed.
I’ve been here for a season, but I realized that I haven’t taken any of that time to know the man I was bonded to.
It made sense, of course, that I wouldn’t be bowing at his feet and catering to his every need, but I should have at least known where he went when he left our bed in the middle of the night.
After several moments of contemplation, I hedged a guess and walked toward the door that led to the pond where we’d had a special moment during the dying season, when I’d first come to Malheim. The place he’d confessed to being during my attempted kidnapping.
Sure enough, he was there, his dark silhouette visible in the glow of the twin moons as he stood by the lake, his foot shuffling against the surface of the ground.
“Why aren’t you in bed?” I asked as I approached, watching as Leif jolted in surprise.
His head turned to me, sadness rolling off of him. He faced the water once more. “I’m sorry, Runa.”
My spine chilled at the words I was hearing for the second time that night, from a man I held complex and unexplainable feelings for. This time, though, I said nothing, waiting for him to elaborate on his own. I wrapped my arms around myself, even though I wasn’t cold.
“I think I made a mistake.” He clasped his hands behind his back, his chin trembling as he stared at the smaller of the two moons. “I never should have forced you to bind with me.”
A shock went through me, and I was rendered speechless. I sank down into the grass, needing something to ground myself before I said something I would regret.
He sat down next to me, careful to leave some space between us. “I think . . . I think you losing the pregnancy is my punishment. From Hel . . . for . . . for what I did.”
I listened, fighting to keep my mind on the present and not on something Otho accused me of on another plane.
“Runa . . . talk to me.”
I peered over at him, biting my lip as I fidgeted with the edge of my dress. I’d fallen asleep before changing into my nightgown. If Leif noticed, he didn’t point it out. I sighed. “I don’t really have anything to say, Leif.”
“Tell me you hate me, that you’re angry, that you accept my apology—anything,” he pleaded.
“Unfortunately . . .” I paused, taking a deep breath.
“It’s too late for that, Leif. I was angry at you.
I did hate you . . .” His eyebrows shot up in surprise.
“For a time,” I amended. “Now . . . now I’ve just come to accept it.
” It wasn’t a lie, not really, but it wasn’t the full truth either.
Something in me still burned deeply, but with the potion, the fight I’d had with Dream Otho, and the reality that Leif and I would never have a future no matter what he said, meant there wasn’t more for me to say to him.
Everything else in my heart was just for me.
“I wish things had been different, Leif . . . that day in Ralheim. But they’re not.
And now we have to live with the consequences.
There is no going back. I will never love you, Leif .
. . not like I once did. But I do still care for you in some regard, even as I beg my heart to stop.
” I pinched the bridge of my nose, embarrassed by my confession.
He ran a hand through his blond hair, his lips twisting at the corner. “We aren’t weighted, are we?”
I shook my head still aghast he was just now realizing it. “No, Leif, we’re not.”
He nodded, his gaze focusing on something I couldn’t see over the lake. I rose from my sitting position, brushing off my dress.
I’d never been prepared for moments like these. Hel, my parents hadn’t even prepared me for dating. What did one say when the man who’d forced them into an arranged marriage apologized at last after keeping them like a captive for a season?
That despite everything, I felt shame for being the cause of his hurt, even though he’d done terrible things to me?
I didn’t know for certain, so I chose the easy route, leaving him there on the edge of the lake as I strode back to our room.
Leif didn’t return to our room that night, and sleep continued to evade me. Instead, I decided it was time to work on my magic.
Taming the whispers was harder than expected.
Although the potion that I’d come to consider a power-dimming potion helped, every time I tried to remove the walls around the magical thread, there were too many whispers to distinguish even one.
I would immediately become overwhelmed, unable to think or breathe until I replaced the wall.
I wasn’t even sure why I was trying again when the past three attempts had failed, but I knew, without a doubt, that the power to read minds was the type of power that would turn the tides of a war, especially if Ena was right and another was to follow this one.
Even if I was unsure what it was they were even fighting for anymore.
Climbing up off the floor, I checked my appearance in the looking glass before walking to find Friar.
It’d become such a habit to visit Friar’s room that I wasn’t paying attention during the walk, my mind instead choosing to theorize how else I could tame the mind-reading magic, and it wasn’t until my hand was resting on the door that I heard voices coming from within. Multiple.
Friar wasn’t alone.
I pressed myself against the wall. The other voice was feminine, deeper, familiar.
“I’m here as a courtesy, Friar. There is nothing that can be done. My end is coming.”
I couldn’t place the voice at first, but then I was jolted back to another time—a small cottage with a large garden I’d craved to work in.
Signa.
The Westwoods Coven’s Matron.
“The future isn’t set in stone,” Friar tried to argue, and I could picture how she would frown. “You can change—”
“Come on in, Runa.”
It took me a moment to hear the command directed at me, and when I did, my face heated as I pushed open the door and entered Friar’s room.
“Sorry,” I apologized sheepishly, not sure what else to say when caught eavesdropping.
“It’s no problem. After all, this concerns you too,” Signa replied with a frown.
It’d been a while since I’d seen the Matron, and in the season that passed, the coven matriarch appeared to have aged decades.
Given she was old in the first place, I now worried that she wouldn’t be able to walk when she finally stood, especially with the way she leaned her weight on the walking stick clasped in her bony hands as she sat on Friar’s cot.
It was Friar who explained with a sigh. “Signa has seen her end coming. The Westwoods Coven will need a new matriarch.”
My gaze bounced between the two women, and the way Friar swallowed heavily after she finished speaking. There were other feelings filtering through, ones I couldn’t quite place. Feelings that didn’t have anything to do with the matriarch’s future. “What aren’t you telling me?”
Friar’s shoulders slumped and her fingers fidgeted with the end of her black braid. “She wants you to be the matriarch.”
The air was sucked from the room, and I struggled to breathe. “Me? But I’m stuck here with—”
“Not for long,” Signa snapped, her cloudy gaze still fixed on the wall. “Change is finally coming to Heimland, and when it does, I want you to take my place, Runa.”
It was my turn to frown. Signa said similar words when we’d visited her during the dead season. When both Adis and Hansen fell a few days later, I assumed that was the change she’d been speaking of. But after my conversation with Ena, now I wondered if I’d had it wrong all along.
Still, I shook my head. “I’m not prepared for the responsibility of that size,” I said, even though my mind was already imagining how I would care for her garden and the new herbs I would plant—the potions I would concoct and sell to the citizens of Ralheim. The magic I would learn.
What my mind couldn’t grasp was becoming a leader others could look up to. At least, not how she wanted.
“You will be. War is coming, Runa, and you will be at the center of it. All I ask, is when you find out what’s coming, come to me.” Her voice was low enough that I wondered how I’d even heard it through the thick wooden door in the first place.
I shook my head, still confused by her words. “The war has been raging for several seasons now, Signa. It’s already here.”
Signa rolled her eyes. “Not that war, the other one. The one we spoke of in my home not long ago.”
My shoulders tensed, Signa was either referencing the war between the Seid and the non-Seid or the one between the covens, but I didn’t want to embarrass myself by asking.
Instead, I tossed my shoulders back and replied, “I can’t make any promises.
” I had no idea when I would be able to escape Leif, though I knew I’d made progress mere hours before.
“I will promise on her behalf,” Friar pipped up, raising her hand.
I narrowed my gaze at her, angry that she was speaking for me, and I told her as much. “You can’t make promises for me, Friar.”
“I just did,” she snapped. The emotions coming from her were amplified, stress pouring out. “You’ve already agreed to help with my plan, and my plan involves you being free, so you can head to Signa’s when it’s over.”
My insides rolled at her words. She was sounding less like the Friar I knew and more like another woman who had previously attempted to control my life.
Collum.
I shook my head a second time. “I’m sorry, Signa, but I will make no promises, as I do not know the full depth of Friar’s plans, and cannot guarantee I will be able to go to you after.
” I was no longer a weapon to be wielded by anyone other than myself, and it was time Friar realized that. I could feel my heart hardening.