Chapter One
The hall cat has five inches of my yarn in his mouth and is working on a sixth.
“Sir.” I brace one hand under his chin and tug the blue strand with the other. “We’ve discussed this. Wool isn’t food.”
He closes his eyes.
That’s his entire response.
The courtyard wind pushes another curl across my mouth. I spit it out, lose my grip on the yarn, and watch the cat drag another half inch between his teeth before Asta catches him around the middle.
“Traitor.” I point my hook at him.
Asta settles the cat against her ribs. He goes boneless in her arms, because apparently he can behave when the person holding him has dignity.
“You put the basket beside him.” She pulls the damp strand from his mouth. “Then you looked away.”
“I trusted him.”
“You met him yesterday.”
“It was a powerful day.”
The cat starts purring.
Asta gives me the yarn. “Your judgment remains excellent.”
“Thank you.”
“That wasn’t praise.”
“Then your delivery needs work.”
I wipe the wool on my skirt and study the last row of stitches.
The scarf was supposed to be a deep blue rectangle.
At present it has one straight edge, one adventurous edge, and a narrow section in the middle where I forgot how counting works.
Asta will wear it anyway. She’s worn every terrible thing I’ve made since we were children, including the yellow hat that kept sliding over her eyes through an entire winter procession.
She claimed it was warm.
It was also an attack.
Behind us, wood cracks against wood in the training yard. Boots scrape over packed earth. Men grunt, curse, and occasionally hit the ground hard enough to make the low stone wall tremble beneath my bottom.
I’ve lived in Sólvik long enough that the noise barely catches my attention now.
The sea does. It always does. Even here, tucked behind the hall with three walls between us and the cliffs, I can hear it driving into the rock below.
Gullither has wind through grain, soft and endless.
Sólvik has waves trying to break the land apart.
I love both sounds.
The cat reaches one black paw toward my basket.
“No.” I pull it farther away.
His paw follows.
“You’re very bold for a man being held by his armpits.”
“He’s worked out that you’re weak.” Asta turns one page of the household list balanced on her knee.
“I’m not weak.”
The cat gets his claws into the blue wool.
I lunge for it, catch my boot on the basket handle, and pitch sideways. My shoulder hits Asta’s. The household list flies out of her hand. The hook escapes mine. The basket flips over, releasing two balls of yarn, three loose buttons, and the heel of bread I forgot I had.
The cat takes the bread.
Of course he does.
Asta watches him trot toward the training-yard gate with his prize. “A decisive victory.”
I’m half across her lap and still holding the ruined scarf. “I had him cornered.”
“Clearly.”
“There were complications.”
“There generally are when you sit down.”
I push myself upright. “That was hurtful.”
“Do you need a moment?”
“No. I need my hook.”
It’s rolled beneath the boots of a Skorvaer courtier standing a few paces away.
Wonderful.
I know his face. I know most faces here, though names take longer. He eats at the lower end of Baldr’s hall and spends court gatherings close to whoever’s speaking loudest. Both eyes carry the gold of the strength kin, fixed on the tangle of wool around my ankles.
He nudges my hook with the toe of his boot.
It rolls farther away.
Asta sets the list beside her. Her shoulders go straight.
I touch her wrist before she can stand. “It’s all right.”
The courtier looks from my hand to my face. “Is it?”
“I think so. Unless the hook has offended you.” I bend to gather the nearest ball of wool. “It does have a difficult personality.”
His gaze moves over my skirt, my basket, the scarf dragging on the ground. “This is what human princesses do with their days?”
“Mostly. In the mornings we arrange flowers. After midday we ruin wool.”
Asta lowers her head. Her braid slides over one shoulder and hides most of her mouth.
The courtier misses that. “I’d wondered why Gullither sent you.”
There it is.
I wind the loose yarn around my palm. “For the flowers?”
“To occupy a chair in the hall.”
“Oh.” I glance toward the longhouse. “Which chair?”
His mouth flattens. “The treaty chair.”
“I don’t think we have one of those. Mine has a green cushion.”
Asta’s fingers close around my abandoned hook. She doesn’t hand it back. Sensible. I might point with it, and nobody needs that.
The courtier steps closer. “You make a game of this because you don’t understand where you are.”
“Sólvik.”
“Nástrond.”
“Sólvik is in Nástrond.” I look at Asta. “It was this morning, wasn’t it?”
“It hasn’t moved.”
“Good. I hate packing.”
He stares at me.
I wait.
I’m usually terrible at silence. This one’s useful, though. He came over to tell me what he thinks, and men who do that rarely stop after one sentence.
“Your family sent a daughter here to guarantee its obedience.” He folds his arms. “You sit beside our Dróttin, eat from his stores, and play with string while your people congratulate themselves for keeping the treaty.”
Asta turns the hook between her fingers. “There it is.”
The courtier rounds on her. “You have a place because she requires an attendant. Don’t confuse that with belonging.”
Asta’s face doesn’t change. He’s reading her quiet as soft. It isn’t. I’m tempted to let her have him.
But he still has room to dig.
“I’m sorry.” I gather the second ball of yarn. “I thought you said I occupy a chair. Now I eat the food too. This position has grown terribly demanding.”
His gold eyes narrow. “You’re a hostage.”
The training yard goes quiet behind him.
Not fully. A pair of men keep moving at the far end, boots grinding into dirt, but the nearest drills have stopped.
The courtier notices too late.
Baldr walks through the gate with a practice sword in one hand and no shirt anywhere on the rest of him.
Oh.
Well.
That seems unnecessary.
I’ve seen him without a coat. I’ve seen him in thin summer linen. Once, when I was fourteen, I saw him soaked through after he pulled a fisherman from the bay, and that memory has stayed very well maintained. None of it prepared me for this.
He’s broad everywhere. Shoulders, chest, arms. Sweat darkens the light-brown hair at his temples and runs down skin marked with old pale lines. His right eye is amber. The left, pale green, finds me first.
It moves over the overturned basket, the yarn around my boots, Asta holding my hook, and the courtier standing too close.
His attention settles there.
The courtier lowers his arms. “Dróttin.”
Baldr plants the wooden sword against the ground. “Apologize.”
No one moves.
The cat crunches his stolen bread beneath the wall.
The courtier dips his head. “I spoke carelessly, Dróttin.”
“You didn’t speak to me.”
The man’s gaze drops. He turns to me. It takes him a second. “Lady Solveih. Forgive me.”
I smile. “For which part?”
Asta finally gives me the hook. The blunt end presses into my palm.
The courtier looks toward Baldr.
Baldr doesn’t help him.
The words come out flat. “All of it.”
“Thank you.” I crouch and set the hook in my basket. “I do appreciate a complete apology.”
He leaves through the opposite arch without looking at either of us.
Baldr watches until he’s gone. The men nearest the gate remember their drills. Wood cracks again, louder than before, everybody very interested in hitting things properly.
He turns to me. “You let him keep going.”
I untangle the yarn from my boots. “I wanted to see how far he’d go.”
“You found out.”
“I’d have found out more if you’d waited.”
His mouth pulls into a grin. It reaches both eyes and makes him look younger, though he’s been fully grown since my great-grandparents were children. “Should I go fetch him?”
“No. He’ll have prepared answers now.”
“Terrible luck.” He offers me his hand. “Next time one of my court forgets his manners, you don’t need to stand there and let him practice on you.”
“I wasn’t letting him practice. I was—”
He lifts me over the loose yarn before my boot can catch it again. Both my feet leave the ground. He sets me on the clear side of the basket with the same ease he uses to move chairs.
My explanation disappears.
Baldr looks down at the wool. “Asta, was she winning?”
“Completely.” Asta begins returning buttons to the basket. “The bread was an unrelated loss.”
I point my hook toward the gate. “The cat cheated.”
“He used the opening you gave him.” Asta doesn’t look up.
“You’re both being very unkind about this.”
Baldr laughs. He bends, lifts the end of my blue scarf, and studies it. “Is this a belt?”
“It’s a scarf.”
“For whom?”
I point at Asta.
She’s still holding the other end. “A surprise, apparently.”
“I’ve only just started it.” I snatch the scarf from Baldr. “There will be more scarf.”
“That’s a comfort.”
His practice sword is still standing where he left it. The sunlight catches the damp skin over his chest when he reaches for the grip.
I look at the scarf.
Asta bumps her knee against mine.
I ignore her.
A young steward hurries from the hall before Baldr can return to the yard. He carries a narrow wooden box under one arm and a folded strip of parchment in the other. “Dróttin. The eastern allotment arrived.”
Baldr’s grin disappears. “How light?”
The steward offers the box. “More than last time.”
Baldr opens it. Dark cloth lines the inside, holding six slim bars of vein-silver. There should be more. I know that much from the size of the empty grooves.
“Was there a letter?”
The parchment changes hands. Baldr reads it once, then again.
The muscle along his jaw tightens.
The steward shifts the box higher against his ribs. “Myrkvier confirms the count. The mines released a full shipment. The seal was intact when it reached the pass.”
Myrkvier.
Screaming. A wall of it, and one spark of purple cutting through.
An eye above a silver mask. White cloth going red. That eye finding me across the room like I’m the only one in it.
And the grief—huge, and quiet, sitting under all of it where no one else thought to look. I felt it like it was mine.
The hook slips and bites my thumb.
I blink down. A bright bead gathers beside the nail.
No.
I press my thumb into the blue wool and make myself look at the courtyard. Sea wind. Wooden swords. The cat washing one paw beneath the wall. Baldr, reading the parchment a third time.
He looks up. “Sól?”
“The hook won.” I hold up my thumb.
His gaze drops to the blood. “Let me see.”
“It’s tiny.”
“You say that about every injury.”
“Because people keep reacting to them incorrectly.”
He takes my hand anyway. His fingers close around mine, warm and rough from the sword grip. He turns my thumb toward the light with great seriousness.
The cut is barely there.
I lift my thumb between us. “I may survive.”
“The day’s young.”
I smile. Keeping a straight face around him has never gone well.
Baldr lets go of my hand and folds the parchment. “Put the silver in the locked store. Tell the smiths I’ll speak with them before supper. No changes to the harbor work until I know where the rest went.”
The steward bows. “Yes, Dróttin.”
He leaves with the box tucked close.
I look toward the arch after him. “Does that happen often?”
“Not often.” Baldr slides the folded message beneath the belt at his waist. “Too often lately.”
“And Myrkvier says it sent the full amount?”
“It says many things.”
His hand tightens around the practice sword. I want to ask what Myrkvier’s been saying, but the folded message at his belt has already handed him enough questions for one afternoon.
Then he looks at me again, and the line between his brows eases.
“I meant to ask you before training.” He rubs the back of his neck. “Then a steward found me, and after that three men decided I needed to be hit with wooden swords.”
“Did you?”
“Apparently.”
“You should choose kinder friends.”
“I have. They keep hitting me.”
Asta rises and tucks the household list under her arm. The cat circles her boots with the last of the bread in his mouth.
Baldr glances at her, then returns to me. His breathing has settled. Both eyes are on me now—gold and green, familiar enough that I know the tiny crease beside the green one appears only when he’s uncertain.
Baldr is uncertain.
About me.
I stop winding the yarn.
“Have dinner with me tonight.” His thumb rubs once over the practice sword’s grip. “Please.”
“We have dinner together most nights.”
“We eat in the same hall most nights.” He shifts the sword to his other hand. “I was thinking the west room. No court. No stewards unless we need them. Just us.”
The wind catches a loose piece of parchment from Asta’s list. She traps it against her skirt without taking her eyes off Baldr.
I stare at him.
He waits.
He could’ve made this sound easy. He could’ve assumed. The treaty put me in his hall, on his ground, close enough that half the court has already decided our future for us.
“Is this a dinner where Asta has to do alarming things to my hair?”
Asta folds the escaped page back into her list. “I don’t have to do anything. I choose excellence.”
Baldr’s grin returns. “Your hair looks lovely now.”
“There’s yarn in it.”
He reaches toward my temple and pulls free a short blue strand. “There was.”
His fingers brush one curl. Barely. He lowers his hand.
The courtyard is noisy. The sea is louder. I hear all of it.
Baldr shifts the sword to his other hand. “Seven?”
“Seven.”
“Good.” He takes two backward steps, still facing me. “And Sól?”
“Yes?”
“Wear the yarn. It suits you.”
I flick the loose strand at him. It falls several feet short.
He laughs and carries his sword into the training yard.
Asta waits until he’s out of earshot. “You stopped breathing.”
“I was conserving air.”
“For what?”
“Later.”
She picks up my basket. “Do you want to go?”
Across the yard, Baldr reaches for the shirt one of his men holds out. He catches me looking before he pulls it over his head.
His smile is warm, open, and entirely for me.
I wind the blue yarn once around my fingers.
“Very much.”