Land of Fury, page 19
I glance at Zander again, who stares at his untouched drinking horn in his hand.
“Something you will learn when you go off to battle.”
“Elof!” Liv shouts from the back. “If you dare fill my boy’s head with nonsense, it will be the last thing you do!”
The table chuckles again as Kaldr rolls his eyes.
“He is not going off to battle. Ever!” Liv adds.
Zander is the only one who doesn’t laugh, and as the chorus of merriment fades away, a grave silence befalls the room. In one fell swoop, it’s as if the horsemen are reminiscing about fallen friends, or perhaps the horrible things they’ve seen and done over the years. There is so much they all share. Meanwhile, I can’t tell which parts of what I know are truths and lies anymore.
“What else do the queen’s horsemen do, besides build secret settlements and save people she thinks are dead?” I ask brusquely, stirring the silence. I’m too irritated to curb my tone.
Some men look at me from the corners of their eyes, as if they aren’t sure how to answer, and others don’t meet my gaze at all. It only infuriates me more.
“Are there more villages like this? Or am I not allowed to know the answer to that?” I look at Zander, but even he says nothing. The longer he stares at me with an air of indifference, the angrier I become. Scanning the group, I eye each of the horsemen at the table again. They are clearly waiting for Zander to say something.
Kaldr glances worriedly between me and the rest of them, and even Karra averts her gaze and takes a long drink of her ale.
“Fine.” I stand and head toward the doors—past Odin, who lifts his head from slumber beside the fire. I grab my cloak from a hook where many of the others hang, draping it around my shoulders, and step out into the blistering cold. I’m inclined to turn immediately around and go back into the warmth, but I’m too coiled with anger to be sensible.
Latching the doors behind me, I leave them all to their silence. The wind lashes around me, tugging at my hair and cloak, ushering me toward the covering next to the longhouse. I lift my hood over my head and let it guide me. The snow whistles in and around the support posts as I step under it, my breaths hard and fast as I brace against the wind. It’s a storehouse, I realize, and when I’m under its scant protection, I lean against the building between two stacks of wood. Gripping my furs tighter, I nestle deeper inside them and let the world whirl around me.
There’s nothing to do but stare into the darkness. To let the cold rake over me and chase away the thoughts that plague me. The feelings I’m tired of wading through.
Of all the secrets and surprises unveiled to me, this one—this place with Kaldr and Liv—is more than I can bear. To have thought them dead all this time, and that Zander and his horsemen were off ravaging villages on my mother’s behalf, only to find they weren’t, is too much. Or maybe they were burning villages. Maybe they have been squashing rebellions. Maybe they pick who they save. A hundred questions spin through my head, but I fear I’ll never know the truth to any of them, because Zander isn’t only the huntsman, he’s the keeper of secrets. Does he know what such guilt has done to me? How much I have hated myself—the nightmares I’ve had?
My hands fist, my heart aching for reasons I don’t quite understand.
Eventually, the doors to the longhouse open. Reider steps out, quickly latching the doors behind him. He glances around, and he must spot me in the darkness because he trudges over, wrapping his own cloak frantically around him as the wind tries to tug it away.
“Good gods,” he hisses against the storm as he crunches closer. He resituates his cloak and nestles between the wood stacks with me. Reider stares into the howling night as I do. Only the outline of the barn across the road is visible.
“I know there is a lot you do not understand, princess,” Reider says against the wind. “It is a lot to take in. But I hope—” He pulls his furs tighter.
“Hope what?”
I feel Reider’s gaze on me, his face consumed in shadows. “I hope you will not be too hard on him, Your Highness. It has not been a peaceful journey for any of us, most of all for Zander.”
I turn to face Reider.
“He has spent his life looking into the eyes of the person who ordered his parents and sisters dead, forcing himself to go on, when I think most days he wished he could join them. Zander has had to make one decision after another, knowing it affects everyone, and that all he has been working for could come crumbling down around him—around all of us—at any moment. It is far easier to follow than it is to lead, and I would not want his burden.”
“All he has been working for?” I repeat. “What does that mean, Reider? What is the big picture? What is it you all want out of this?”
The snowy wind thrashes around us in his silence, and I shudder.
“What we do—why we do it—is different for all of us,” he finally says. “But in the end, we all want the same thing.”
“Which is what?” I demand, and I hold my breath, desperate to hear his answer.
“The right queen, Your Highness.”
His words score a part of me I hadn’t expected. He can’t possibly mean that they are doing all of this because of what Zander said before—that I should take my sister’s place. I was never meant to be queen.
“I thought I had killed them, Reider. They had only been helping me, and I thought . . . I thought I had been the cause of their deaths—of many deaths. But Liv and Kaldr were different. They had faces—she saved me.” I shake my head. “I know my burden is nothing compared to those you have borne over the years,” I force out. “And perhaps it is selfish to be angry that I have had to carry my false guilt when you all bear far more on your shoulders than I ever will. But I am not built for this. I think that much is clear. The right queen you all wish would take the throne—whoever she is to you all, she is not me. She does not exist.” My eyes burn from the cold, and my heart thumps erratically with panic as I nestle deeper into my furs, seeking comfort in them. “This world you have created—whatever it is you all hope for—is fostered by expectations I cannot possibly meet, Reider.”
“Perhaps, princess, but the queen we have now is not the answer either. Surely you have seen enough by now to accept that.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, steadying my breath. Reider is right. I may not be the right queen, but my mother and grandmother have torn this land to shreds.
“Your Highness,” Reider says again, more hesitantly this time. “You might not be able to bear the burden of loss as well as the rest of us, but allow yourself to feel relief and pride. Because of you, the mission has become much more than taking from the queen what she has taken from us.”
Taking from the queen? I’m afraid to ask him what he means. Her crown? Hurting her family? “Wait,” I rasp. “Because of me?”
Reider adjusts his hood. “I will excuse myself for the night.”
“Please—” I take his arm before he steps out into the storm. “Where are you going?”
“I would rather sleep with the horses than listen to Alik and Liv making love all night,” he grumbles. “Good night, princess.”
I stare after him until shadows swallow his outline and my mind is too tired and I can’t stand the cold anymore.
Battling the wind back to the longhouse, I pray sleep will make tomorrow more endurable. Unlatching the door, I push inside. When warmth assails me, full exhaustion hits with it.
The hall is quiet, save for the flicker of the flames in the firepit, and everyone has gone to bed, except for Zander, unpacking his saddlebag at one of the tables. He doesn’t look at me, as if he didn’t hear me enter, but I make my way over to him all the same.
Zander continues with his task as if nothing has changed in the past few days. As if he is still my mother’s huntsman and my antagonist. As if he hasn’t saved these people and kept it from me. As if he doesn’t care how angry I am at him or how maddening he is in the slightest.
Drawing closer, my frustration froths anew, and I want to scream. “Do you know how enraging you are?” I say, removing my cloak. Snowflakes drift from my furs, quickly melting as they hit the wood floor. I toss the cloak onto the bench, waiting for him to look at me, but he doesn’t. “Everything about you is a riddle, and I feel like the pretext for your games. Yet you don’t explain how or why that is. You don’t care that your words and lies have resulted in me wasting so much of my life resenting you for things you never did, while I mourned people who never died.”
“I know you are angry,” Zander says as he drops his coin purse on the table and then his waterskin. How irrelevant that seems to be to him only enrages me more.
“Will you at least look at me while you brush my feelings aside?” I nearly screech. “I know it means nothing to you, but—”
“Means nothing?” he grinds out, finally meeting my gaze, glare for glare. “You do not know what you say, princess.” His voice hardens. His eyes aren’t empty anymore but enlivened with a fire I’ve never seen in them before.
“You are the one who has been lying,” I seethe. “Yet you act as if you are angry with me?”
“Yes, I have lied about many things,” he counters. “More than I can possibly count. What do you want me to say to that?”
“I want you to tell me the truth, about everything. I want you to tell me that you did not want to lie—”
“You know I did not.”
“Do I?”
Zander is quiet as he pulls out his compass and sharpening stone. “What choice did I have, princess?” he finally says. “Any kindness toward you—any affection shown to you—and your mother would have punished you for it. Not only that,” he says, stopping to look directly into my eyes. “She would have questioned my loyalty to her, and my authority only lasts as long as I have her trust. For her to question who I am loyal to in any way would have ruined everything.”
“Yes, your big plans,” I say, spitting out the words. “To overthrow my sister with the right queen. And tell me,” I say, folding my arms over my chest. “Is that because you want to control the kingdom? So that I can be another pawn in another scheme for the crown?”
“No schemes, princess. It is simply what is right.”
“Stop calling me that,” I tell him.
“What, princess? That is what you are.”
“Am I? Because it seems all I am to any of you is a thing. A doll to be played with when the time is right. Whatever your plans are—that no one will speak plainly about, I might add, not even my own lady’s maid—that is what it comes down to, and I am tired of being everyone’s pawn.”
“You are more than you know, Thora,” Zander says. “You are hope to these people. I wish you would see that.”
“Is that why you brought me here? So I would see? So you could convince me to stay in Norseland, so you can finish what you set out to do—to uproot my mother and take everything from her for your revenge? I am sure you have longed to see the look of betrayal on her face.”
Zander thinks about it a moment, then shakes his head. “I am more selfish than that.” Raw emotion fills his eyes, making my stomach flip. “I have wanted to rid myself of your hatred for so long—for you to know the truth. That is why I brought you here. So you would see who I really am, that I have not completely abandoned you, no matter how it may have seemed.” He steps closer. “It might have been from afar, princess, but I have always protected you as best I can.”
Though his words stir something hopeful and dangerous inside me, I shake my head. “Yet you would support my marriage to a monster like Harald—”
“No.” Zander’s voice sharpens. “I made sure your mother would send me with you. That she would be so worried about his loyalty, she would have no choice but to have me accompany you south to protect her reign. To protect you.” He draws in a deep breath. “You are what matters. You always have been.” There’s a fierceness in his words that steals my breath. A look of realization that flickers in his eyes and fades just as quickly, like he has said too much.
Warmth spreads through my chest, and my heart soars a little because I believe him. Does he feel drawn to me the way I’ve always been drawn to him? That those feelings might be reciprocated in the smallest way emboldens me.
“Why?” I ask, because I think I am more than the princess to him. More than a pawn. “Why am I what matters, Zander?”
His jaw clenches and, straightening ever so slightly, he takes a step back. “Because you are the hope of this kingdom.”
Disappointment wilts the erratic thrumming of my heart. “That is the only reason?”
Zander’s silence is strangely soothing when he could easily utter a dreaded yes.
Licking my lips, I nod, determined to save face and leave him to his brooding before I say something I’m likely to regret. Turning to leave, I freeze, my breath catching in my throat. I tilt my head, staring at the mountain glass I’d given him the day we met, lying on the table with his things.
My eyes snap to his. “You still have it? You keep it with you?” I pick up the worry stone, turning the crudely carved thing over in my palm.
“Always,” Zander whispers, closer than before.
My breaths quicken as the air shifts between us, and a warm thrill skidders over my skin.
Kiss me. I don’t know where the thought comes from, but I will Zander to lean in. To press his lips to mine. And the longer he stares into my eyes, the more I think he might.
But when Liv’s cries of ecstasy crescendo across the hall, the spell breaks. Zander blinks, clears his throat, and nods to the loft. “You should rest,” he says gruffly. “If the storm clears, we leave tomorrow.” He takes a step back. “You have a ship to catch, princess.”
29
ZANDER
I sit in the privacy of the loft, back against the wall and tending to my scars as the storm continues to flurry outside. It hasn’t let up since arriving last night, and despite our plans, there will be no leaving today. Even if I am eager to get to Talon Bay to check in on our men there, a part of me dreads our arrival as well.
I flatten the cooling rag against my burns, and exhale as chills rake over me, my muscles tightening beneath the skin. I count to three and busy myself with thoughts and plans.
The men could use a day or two of respite, even if idleness leaves me with too much time to think. And more than the dangerous journey ahead of us, I worry that being stuck here with the princess risks too much. Especially now that she knows Kaldr and Liv are alive; the more of my secrets Thora learns, the more she will resent me, and I fear it’s only a matter of time before they stack too high, and there will be no coming back from it.
A few days ago, I would have thought it best she was cross with me and would have been relieved that there was a divide between us so I could focus on the queen. But with so much on the brink of change, and the precarious balance of influence and deceit, I worry I’ve woven a web so taut it’s bound to snap and unravel completely. Everything we’ve worked for over the years will have been for nothing, and all that the horsemen have sacrificed and fought for will be for naught.
I lean my head back against the wall. Until now, my path and purpose have been painfully clear, and yet, a few days with the princess blurs too many lines I’ve kept inflexible, and leaves me far too unsettled to even sleep.
“Ready, my lady?” Kaldr says below. Opening my eyes, I peel the drying rag from my side and drop it into the water bowl, listening.
I hear Thora’s light, hurried footsteps. “You promise to go easy on me?” she asks, a lilt of a smile in her voice.
“Of course, my lady,” Kaldr assures her, and I rise to my feet. “I am not a great warrior like the others. At least, not yet.”
Tugging my tunic the rest of the way down with one hand, I pull the drapes aside with the other and step onto the balcony to watch them. Thora’s hair falls in loose, fire-red curls around her shoulders, only pulled back at her temples, away from her face. Though her dress is basic tan wool and fur lining, there is no hiding her royalty. She’s too perfect, too bright and unmarred by this world to ever blend in.
“You mean to be a warrior someday, then?” she asks the boy.
When he’s ready, Kaldr holds up his wooden sparring sword. The princess mimics him and widens her stance, biting her bottom lip as she awaits further instruction.
“Yes,” he admits. “When Alik will let me, I will be a warrior, like the rest of them. But he says I am not ready.” They knock swords, Kaldr moving slowly so the princess can anticipate each move. The clack of each block resounds through the hall as they make their way around the firepit.
“But many of them have been horsemen since they were your age, no?” Growing impatient, the princess moves to strike Kaldr and he blocks her, knocking the sword from her hand. Quickly, she picks it up again.
“I have said the same, but Alik says Zander would not let me.” I hold my breath when Kaldr says my name, wondering what Thora’s response will be.
“And everyone does what Zander says,” she grumbles and huffs, dropping her sword again.
“I think he worries he will have to save my life a second time,” Kaldr explains, which is true, and the princess seems accepting of that.
As Thora and Kaldr continue sparring, their breaths become heavy but their laughter more free. Their arms seem to tire, and Thora drops her weapon more times than she blocks Kaldr’s advances. Still, the determination grows fiercer in her eyes. The princess may not be well versed in swordplay, but she would best him in archery with her eyes closed. I’ve seen her skills sharpen over the years, wondering if every time she lets loose an arrow she imagines my head as the target.
“Is that a hint of a smile?” I glance at Reider coming up the steps. He follows my line of sight to Thora, and sighs.
“There is something soothing about her laugh,” he muses. “No?”
It’s not a real question, so I don’t bother answering. Thora barely laughs, and when she does, it feels like a gift.
