Chapter 10 #2
I was pretty sure I didn’t want to know what he meant, so I only shrugged. “What’s your name?”
“Fedic,” he responded, offering me a shallow bow. “Selected for my strength and my skill with my axe. And I’m not too bad at negotiations.”
I believed him when he licked his full lips.
“Climber,” someone mock-coughed.
Ottoh strolled up to us again, his eyes on the karl before me.
Fedic and his men stiffened, and even Ivren’s smile wavered for a beat as more karls followed Ottoh, surrounding us in all directions—crowding us against the railing.
The air that had been tense but with a flicker of warmth shifted into a choked heaviness that threatened the breaths I tried to pull into my lungs.
“She already has a second,” Ottoh continued as he gestured toward Viljan, who rested against a mast, pretending he wasn’t tracking every word and movement.
“See that burly guard over there with the long braids? He looks about ready to wring your neck, so stop wagging your tail like a bushy wolf. It’s embarrassing. ”
“Oh, shut up, Ottoh,” Ivren said. “Nobody asked for your opinion.”
Fedic didn’t miss a beat as he clinked his cup against mine as if we were at a solstice feast instead of whatever the dangerous gathering here could be called. “I only wanted to introduce myself. Out of the heirs, you’re the only one we don’t know.”
He swept his arm across the karls. It wasn’t just the three hovering behind Fedic who stared at me—every pair of eyes belonging to the men before us followed as I lifted my cup to my lips.
The bloodlust from the tent was a thousandfold stronger here, a thick metallic heat that seemed to pulse directly from the earth.
More shouts came from the warriors on land, but the karls only moved in closer, not a single head turning. I flexed my hands. If we said one wrong word, I was quite certain the whole night would shatter like thin ice over a black sea.
“We all met Lika, so we knew you must be something extraordinary for your father to send you.” Fedic’s eyes went over me, and there was a strange appreciation in his gaze, one that made Ottoh roll his eyes. “Seems we were right.”
“Please,” Ottoh exclaimed. “Could you be any more pathetic?”
Ivren’s laugh was strained as he shifted closer to me, heat rolling off his body as he sneaked an arm behind my back and ran his fingers along my spine. “Be ready,” he whispered. “He’s trying to rile them up.”
I was very aware of what Ottoh was doing.
He was trying to win the karls’ favor by making me look even worse.
“If she’s not going to fight you, she’s not going to fuck you,” Ottoh said. “She’s too good for that.”
An angry murmur went through the crowd. From where he’d been standing, Viljan inched closer, and even the king’s warriors went still. It was as if the ship held its breath—even the music faded into a lower melody, building anticipation for a fight I had no interest in being part of.
“You don’t need to be here, Ottoh,” Ivren said quietly. “Nobody wants you here.”
There was a chill in my brother’s best friend’s eyes, one I had known lived within him—because it was in all of us; it was the Viking way, after all—but it still jarred me to hear Ivren so cold.
Ottoh’s smile was slow. “She’s not going to go for you either.”
Ivren took a step toward him, leaving a confusing chill where his arm had been.
“Watch it, Briggen.” His voice was impossibly low, and my stomach surged at the power in it. “You won’t have any allies left soon. Your parents already got themselves in enough trouble.”
“As if I want you as an ally,” Ottoh replied, a vicious curl to his lips. “As if I want either of you.” The heir looked me up and down. “Lika is an asshole, and you might be worse.”
“Watch. Your. Mouth.” Ivren stepped into Ottoh’s space.
“Or what?” Ottoh laughed. “You’re going to take me down? You couldn’t even take her down.”
Heat burned across my face.
“Or did you let her win because you want to fuck her?” Ottoh tilted his head when my face grew hotter. “Wouldn’t be the first time a Sweengard and a Solsken lied and cheated to get a girl into bed, would it?”
I couldn’t stand the sharpness in the air—the static charge that made the hair on my arms stand up and my skin itch. The karls drew closer, excitedly hovering around us until there was no air left.
“Enough,” I snarled.
Fedic stepped up behind me when the two men whirled, and judging by the flash of brown in the corner of my eye, Viljan was also on his way. Angry or not, he’d not risk leaving me alone in whatever this was becoming.
“It’s enough,” I repeated. “I’m bored.” I waved my hands at the karls, who were frothing at the mouth for the heirs to challenge each other. “Get out of my way or I’ll throw you off the ship.”
Disappointment cooled the air when I barged forward, but thankfully the people moved without me having to risk them learning about the emptiness in my veins.
I prayed the karls would believe my unsteady gait was because of anger and not because I was terrified of the men towering around me. My fingers cramped around the cup I held in my hands as I walked down the brow, and I didn’t dare look up until I reached the forest again.
When the shadows from the tree crowns covered me, I jammed my back against the rough bark and closed my eyes.
“You’ve really made a mess, haven’t you?”
I sighed as I opened an eye to Rakkel, who leaned against another tree, her body hidden from the glen. “Seems I’m not the only one who’s hiding, so maybe that makes two of us.”
“I’m only hiding from my guard,” she said. “He’s nice, but a little overbearing sometimes.” She looked me up and down. “I’d ask who you’re hiding from, but I’d venture the better question is, Who are you not hiding from?”
“Touché.”
I didn’t have the energy to come up with some quick retort. Instead I started walking through the woods.
“You should really not be alone,” Rakkel called after me.
“Not the first time I’ve heard that,” I said.
“I’m not surprised.” Her tongue teased her lower lip as she motioned to the ship. “I am surprised, though, you want to keep such a handsome man away. I’d be all over that if I were you.”
“Go for it,” I said.
I didn’t think she was Viljan’s type, but I also had never seen him with a woman. I was the one who sneaked away to secretly meet up with men my mother would never approve of.
Or at least I used to. Back when who I’d marry was my biggest problem.
“My my,” she mused. “Afraid of our father, are we?”
I turned the huff of pain into laughter.
If I’d ever been afraid of either parent, it had been my mother who commanded my dread.
She’d thrown a fit when my father suggested we rid ourselves of the custom that guards could not touch us nor speak to other heirs, arguing that they heard and saw everything and it would be in our best interest to ensure their discretion didn’t drown in the bottom of a cask.
I was surprised my father had even managed to bend her to his will and allow Viljan to be my guard at all. She’d fought to have one of her uncles look after me—a man older than my father, seasoned in the old village ways and loyal to a fault.
Rakkel raised an inquisitive brow.
“My father doesn’t dictate my life,” I replied, refusing to give in to the painful truth of those words. “I am capable of making choices for myself.”
“It seems that way, since you’re here and not Lika.” She tilted her head. “Does he know you took his spot?”
Heat shot up my neck. “Of course he—”
Rakkel laughed, but there was something strange behind it. “I’m only jesting. Lika would have to either support you being here or be dead.”
It was like being punched, but I forced a grin back across my face.
“Exactly.” I cleared my voice from any thickness. “Lika knows what I can do, and why it’s better for me to take on the responsibilities of the Sweengard heir.”
She blinked for a second, but her smile didn’t waver. “I hope for your sake that’s true.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Making enemies of the karls wasn’t your best move, but also, with some, it’s unavoidable.
I mean… they’re going to try to come for all of us heirs at some point.
You only made yourself a target earlier.
” Rakkel cocked her head. “But making enemies with Darcke A’lian? That was your true mistake.”
“I…” I covered my face with my hands as more tiredness swept through me. “I didn’t mean to.”
Rakkel nodded as she slipped out from the tree.
“Still, I’d find a better hiding spot than that tree tonight.
We’re not the only ones who know where you’re sleeping.
” With a wag of her fingers she disappeared into the shadows, leaving me cold and exhausted, and with a tremor in my bones that remained all night.