Chapter Twenty-Five
Something moves through the bond and stops.
A hard jolt, low under my ribs. There, then gone—pain, and then a flat nothing where the pain was.
She fell.
She’s forever going down—stairs, thresholds, flat open ground with nothing on it to trip a child—and it always reaches me the same way: a bright crack of pain, a curse I feel her swallow, and then her getting up and carrying on like the floor started it.
I wait for the rest of it. The getting-up. The swallowed curse, the flash of temper at the floor.
It doesn’t come.
I set my seal to the next page. Then the one under it. I keep half an ear on the bond for her the whole time, and she doesn’t come back onto it.
Long enough that I put the seal down and go to find her anyway—to prove the quiet’s her sulking somewhere warm, and nothing else.
The guest wing’s already awake—chests down the passage, half the household hauling the other half toward the yard. Nobody meets my eye, which is the natural order of things and a mercy this particular morning.
Her door’s open. The bed’s made. The room’s empty.
So she’s up, then, and off somewhere being cheerful at someone. I turn to go, and I don’t look too hard at why my chest hasn’t loosened.
I find Asta in the west gallery.
Not alone. Ketill has her backed into the window bay, kissing her like the household isn’t twenty feet away, her fist knotted in his collar, and for the first time in six hundred years my mine overseer isn’t watching the door.
I’ll enjoy that later.
Then Asta sees me past his shoulder.
She’s off him and across the gallery before Ketill’s finished turning around. Her braid’s half-undone, her eyes are red, and the fury coming off her has nothing to do with the man she just had by the collar.
Her hand cracks across the side of my face.
The mask takes most of it. Her hand comes away the worse for it. She doesn’t so much as shake it out.
“That’s for last night.”
So she knows.
She would. Solveih came down from my rooms with a torn dress and my blood dried under one nail, and Asta’s built a conviction on less. I could tell her the woman she’s ready to gut me over chose it—all of it, both hands—but it wouldn’t cool her a degree, and it isn’t mine to hand out.
“Ketill,” I say, without looking away from her. “Your judgment’s as sound as ever.”
“Eirik.” He’s come up behind her, unhurried, reading my face.
Asta pulls in a breath to start on me again.
She doesn’t get there.
It hits me, and it’s coming from a long way off.
Solveih.
My hand slams onto the window frame hard enough to crack the stone under it. My knee hits the floor. Everything else drops away.
Her fear comes through the bond raw enough to break every wall I have. It has teeth in it. Cold. Pain. A frantic need for help, reaching in three directions and finding me in all of them.
I have known every frightened breath she has taken since she was nine. Each one cut through the bond and passed.
This keeps building.
Somebody’s still frightening her.
The mask ignites across my face.
Purple light spills across the gallery.
Asta says my name.
I’m through the door before she finishes it.
The west passage is full of servants carrying travel chests. One looks up.
He drops the chest.
“Stable,” I tell him. “Two horses. Now.”
He runs.
Asta catches the doorframe behind me. “What happened?”
Solveih’s fear drives harder.
Farther east than she should be.
Off the road.
Moving.
“Someone has her.”
Asta’s anger vanishes.
Her fear joins every other mind in the Hall.
“How do you know?”
I take the west stairs three at a time.
“Eirik.”
“Find Baldr.”
The lower gallery opens ahead.
Ketill’s a step behind me the whole way down.
“What?”
“Seal the gates.”
“Why?”
“Solveih has been taken.”
Every conversation in the gallery stops.
Ketill reaches me. His walls fall, and concern strikes through the rest of the Hall.
“Where?”
“East.”
“By whom?”
“They haven’t introduced themselves.” The mask burns brighter.
“How many?”
“Enough to frighten her.”
The gallery goes silent.
Ketill turns toward the guardroom. “I’ll get a party.”
“You’ll lock the roads and keep every rider here until I know who else is involved.”
He looks back. “You’re not going alone.”
“I am.”
“She may need a healer.”
“Send one behind me.”
“Eirik.”
“Twenty riders. Give me ten minutes before they leave.”
“Why?”
I keep walking.
“So they don’t slow the killing.”
Fear moves through the guards nearest the door.
One steps out of my path.
The rest follow.
A crash comes from the entrance hall.
Wood splinters. A horse screams in the yard beyond the outer doors, followed by three Skorvaer shouting over one another.
Then a sound cuts through all of them.
High. Ragged. Furious.
Snowpetal tears into the Hall.
Blood has turned half her white coat red.
It covers her horns, runs down one front leg, and mats the fur along a cut in her side. The puffball is gone from her tail. Six bare spikes strike the floor when she turns toward the nearest guard.
His spear comes down.
“Drop it.”
The spear hits stone.
Snowpetal sees me.
She runs.
People press against the walls while the only living predator their kind remembers crosses the floor with her mouth red and both horns uncovered.
She reaches my boots and climbs.
Talons pierce my trousers, coat, and shirt. Her front paws strike my chest. One horn scrapes the mask.
“Where is she?”
Snowpetal screams into my face.
The sound scrapes her throat raw. She turns toward the open doors, jumps down, and runs three paces before her injured leg folds.
She hits the floor.
Then she gets up.
Blood marks each step toward the yard.
Ketill catches her before the leg gives again. Snowpetal turns on him with every tooth visible.
“Careful,” he says.
She snaps one inch from his wrist.
Ketill looks at me. “Helpful animal.”
A fine silver loop is caught near the base of Snowpetal’s right horn.
I cross back and take it between two fingers.
Vein-silver. Narrow enough to lie flat against the horn, fixed to a torn leather cord.
The metal is old. The leather isn’t.
Ketill sees it.
His hands tighten around Snowpetal, careful of the cut.
“A restraint.”
“Yes.”
“Someone brought Sanguir restraints onto your road.”
“Yes.”
His concern hardens into fury.
Snowpetal reaches for the silver loop with one paw. Her talon catches it and pulls.
I break the cord.
The loop comes free.
“Healer,” Ketill calls.
Snowpetal twists hard enough to open the cut along her side.
Fresh blood runs over his sleeve.
“She won’t stay,” he says.
“Then stop trying.”
He sets her down.
Snowpetal limps through the doors.
The stable yard has come apart.
Two saddled horses wait near the steps. A stable hand holds both reins while another tries to calm the grey mare. Snowpetal has already passed them and is moving toward the lower gate.
The mare sees the blood on her horns and pulls backward.
I take the reins.
“Stand.”
Her fear strikes the mask. I catch the bridle below her jaw and keep her head down until all four hooves settle.
She knows my hands. That’ll have to serve for trust.
I mount before she changes her mind.
The stable hand backs away and checks his fingers.
All present.
“My Dróttin, the saddle straps—”
“Will survive.”
“The mare hasn’t run since the storm.”
“She’s about to.”
Ketill comes down the steps fastening a sword belt over his coat.
“Take it off,” I tell him.
“No.”
“You have a mine, a territory, and twenty riders to manage.”
“You have a habit of making poor decisions in forests.”
“I have never made this one.”
His blue eyes hold mine.
He knows exactly what I’ll do when I find them.
That’s the problem.
“You can’t feed from Snowpetal,” he says. “You can’t tell how badly she’s hurt.”
“She can still bite. I checked.”
“And Sól?”
The bond pulls east.
Solveih’s terror flares again, thinner now. Exhaustion drags beneath it. Her need for us remains.
For me.
My hands close around the reins.
The leather creaks.
“Alive.”
Ketill gets one foot into the second stirrup.
“Get down.”
“Kill me later.”
“Gladly.”
“Then we agree.”
The lower gate opens.
Baldr rides through it.
He has put on dark mail and a heavy coat over it. A sword lies across his back. His hair is tied at his neck for the road, and his amber eye burns bright against the snow.
He’s riding my fastest horse.
Asta follows on foot from the gatehouse.
Baldr reins in beside me.
Salt and iron reach my tongue.
“You’re staying here,” I tell him.
“Move.”
The one word is flat, warm, and very nearly polite.
Tedious man.
“She didn’t choose you.”
Pain cuts through him.
He takes it without looking away.
“She’s in danger.”
“I will bring her back.”
“I know.”
That stops me.
Baldr looks past my shoulder toward the road. “Whoever took her chose someone who couldn’t fight them. I’m coming for her.”
“She is not yours to ride for.”
Baldr doesn’t move. “She isn’t yours either, Eirik.”
Not mine.
Then she hits the bond, and everything else goes.
Sharp. A fresh cut of it—fear, and something worse riding under the fear. All of it reaching for me.
Me.
The mask goes hot across my face. My hand’s fisted in the mare’s mane.
“They have my mate.”
Baldr goes very still.
“They have my mate, Baldr.”
Salt and Iron floods my tongue—his. He knows now.
The purple light’s all over his face. He holds still under it. Then he gathers the reins.
“Then we bring her back.”
We.
Ketill removes his foot from the stirrup.
Traitor.
I turn the mare toward the gate.
“Keep up.”
Baldr rides beside me.
Snowpetal runs ahead.
The lower road is hard beneath the fresh powder. The watch cleared a narrow path between banks taller than the Sanguir, though Snowpetal ignores it and takes the tops. Blood spots the white surface behind her.
I let the mare run.
Wind strikes the mask. The runes burn brighter with every pull from the bond.
Solveih is ahead.
There.
Always there.
Baldr keeps pace.
Ketill’s riders remain behind us. Their horns haven’t sounded.
Snowpetal reaches the first marker and stumbles.
I slow long enough to lean down.
She snaps at my glove.
“Save it.”
Her second attempt catches leather.
I lift her by the loose skin behind her shoulders and bring her onto the saddle.
The mare tosses her head. I shorten the reins and keep one hand on her neck until she remembers the road.
Snowpetal claws her way up my coat and settles against my chest.
Blood warms the wool.
Her eyes stay on the road.
“Sensible creature.”
She bites the edge of the mask.
Baldr makes one sound that may be a laugh.
I look at him and the sound ends.
Better.
We pass the last ridge marker.
The road drops into denser pine. Snowpetal’s body stiffens against me.
The bond yanks left.
I pull the mare off the cleared path.
Baldr follows for four strides, then looks back toward the road.
“There’s no tracks here.”
“There will be.”
“How far?”
“Too far.”
Branches strike my shoulders. The mare breaks through the first drift and nearly loses her footing. I keep her moving until the ground falls too steeply between the trees.
I dismount.
Snowpetal hits the snow and limps downhill.
Baldr swings down beside me. “Eirik.”
I turn east.
Solveih’s fear pulses through the bond.
Closer.
The relief beneath it is small, but it reaches me.
She knows I’m coming.
Baldr watches my face.
His eyes drop to the hand I’ve pressed below my ribs.
Salt touches my tongue again.
He looks toward the unmarked slope.
“You can find her.”
I start down.
“Yes.”
The trees open onto the road again two bends below.
Blood covers the snow.
One rogue lies against a pine with his throat open. Another has left a dark trail into the forest. A broken sword rests near a length of fine silver mesh.
White wool sits beside the body.
Snowpetal reaches it.
She sniffs the ruined puffball, then turns toward the trees on the opposite side.
Baldr kneels near two deep lines cut through the snow.
“They dragged her.”
“She was walking when they left the road.”
His head lifts.
“You know that too.”
“Yes.”
He stands and draws his sword.
The hurt remains, but it’s no longer aimed at me.
For now, that’s enough.
Snowpetal enters the trees.
I follow.
Baldr takes my right side, the place he held when we were boys and our father still believed two sons might become one weapon.
The bond pulls toward the black pines.
The men who took her have mistaken distance for safety.
I am going to correct them.