Land of Fury, page 5
My chest heaves, my eyes filling with tears. “Don’t hurt them,” I plead, searching his gaze. “Promise me.”
He looks back toward the woman and her boy, finally answering with a brusque nod.
“Promise me, Zander,” I demand, clutching his arm. I have never demanded a thing from anyone in my life, but I must hear the words.
“I promise, princess. Now tell me—”
I continue walking because we’re drawing unwanted attention, and I wait for him to fall back into step beside me. He walks so close, I can smell the polish on his leather armor, and his head tilts toward me a little, waiting.
“She said it’s not safe for me inside the church.”
His head snaps to the end of the road, where the stone church stands tall, adorned with flowers and offerings for my mother’s arrival. “Reider!” Zander shouts.
His horseman stops twenty paces away, already nearing the entrance at my sister’s side. The look in Zander’s eyes is all the command Reider needs because he hurries toward us without hesitation.
“Take Thora back to the castle. She is feeling unwell,” he instructs, motioning for Karra to go with us.
Reider’s brow furrows with obvious confusion, but he and Zander have a silent exchange before Reider offers me his arm. “Come, princess. I will escort you back to the keep.”
I pin Zander with a pleading stare, reminding him of his promise, though he doesn’t look at me as he hurries for the church.
“Come now,” Reider urges. “We need to get you to safety.”
Looping my arm through Karra’s, and with Reider at my side, we ignore the confused looks on everyone’s faces as I am led against the last of the parade with only slightly hurried footsteps.
I risk a final glance at the fletcher’s booth to find it’s empty. She is not there, nor is her son. I don’t know where they are, but tears prick my eyes again as I pray I did not just seal their fates.
6
THORA
I watch the smoke billowing from beyond the walls of Winterwood Keep long after night sets in. I don’t know what happened in the village after Reider brought me back to the castle, because no one will tell me. I have not seen Zander or any of his horsemen since. Whatever siege or nefarious plans were set in motion against my family never happened.
For hours, my mother’s shouting has rung through the halls from her war room. Predictably at her side, my sister reads off list upon list of rebellions and their locations, squashed in the last year alone, as if that might soothe my mother’s fragile ego.
But if my mother is alive—if Siggy and I are both alive, too—then why is Winterwood burning? All I know for certain is that a mangled ball of dread and guilt has been growing in my stomach since leaving the village, and it will not be sated until I see Zander.
“I want more guards—more patrols!” The queen’s commands echo down the corridor. “Start taking them from their cribs, if you must. Have their first steps be in the queen’s army, holding a sword in my name!”
I roll my eyes, wiping the tears from my cheek.
“I want the rebels’ heads!” she continues.
I stare at the animal skulls mounted on the walls in her trophy room—the result of years of hunting wild game for sport. I can’t help but wonder if my mother would have a human skull accompanying them—one of her rebels, perhaps—if she thought Abbess Blanca would not condemn her soul to hell for it.
“Your Highness,” Karra says as she rushes into the room. Her eyes shift over the stuffed muzzles and racked horns, and the dead, beady eyes glinting in the firelight. “What on earth are you doing in here?” She cringes as she makes her way over to me.
“It has the best view of the village,” I whisper, leaning against the windowsill. I pick at the fur hem of my sleeve. All I can picture is the fletcher and her son—the fear I saw in their eyes and the hunger that hollowed their cheeks. Covering my face with my hands, I shake my head. “What have I—”
“—want loyalty? Rid us of all the rebels,” my mother continues as she marches down the hall with guards in tow.
Dropping my hands, I glance at the doorway to find her and Siggy standing there, Abbess Blanca staring accusingly over their shoulders at me.
“Thora.” My mother barks my name like a command. I straighten in the queen’s presence and turn to fully face her.
Though my mother is slender, she is every ounce a brutal queen, honed to fight. Even her words are sharp like the tip of a blade; there isn’t a single soft edge about her. “Get away from that window,” she commands, stalking over to me. Her dress swishes around her as she comes to a stop and peers out at the firelit sky. The draft that whips through the room carries a tinge of smoke.
My mother’s eyes narrow as she turns her glare on me. “This is what you spend your time doing? Pining for the very people who would have your head?” she seethes.
I wipe the tears from my cheeks again.
“It is as I said, Your Majesty,” Abbess Blanca starts, far too pleased with the sound of her own voice to keep quiet. “Her place is in the nunnery, where she will have no other choice but to obey—”
My mother’s glare silences the old woman’s haughty tone. Then she refocuses on me. “Is that what I should do, daughter? Send you to a nunnery? So that you will know what obedience is—what devotion looks like—until I have need of you?”
Her threats are meant to frighten me, but I am already a bundle of nerves and guilt and regret. There is little she can do that will change that. Only Zander can ease this sickness festering inside me by reassuring me he kept his word, and the fletcher and her son are safe. Until then, I care about nothing else.
“Those people do not deserve a second thought, and they definitely do not deserve any of your tears,” my mother clips. She spins and marches toward the door.
“Those are your people,” I shriek, incredulous and utterly despondent. “You will kill them all, and then who will you rule?”
“Mind your tongue, child!” the abbess hisses, and her black cloak swishes out around her as she turns and follows my mother’s angry footsteps, disappearing with the guards down the hall.
“Your soft heart will get you killed, Thora!” my mother calls, her voice ricocheting down the corridor.
Still standing in the doorway, Siggy wrings her hands, her gray-blue gaze filled with worry as I hurry toward her. “They were going to kill us, Thora,” Siggy says. I stop next to her. The candlelight casts shadows in her tired eyes. “They would have locked us in the church and burned us alive if they could. You must not mourn them.” There’s a practiced detachment in her voice I know is not hers. It’s our mother’s.
“Don’t be so heartless, Siggy,” I chide. “It doesn’t suit you, like it does Mother. They do not all plot and plan.” I don’t care if she is the future queen. She is still my sister. “Some of those people saved us today. They should be revered, not persecuted.”
I shake my head, the vehemence draining from me as I take my sister’s hands in mine. They are clammy and trembling, though her schooled expression is very good, giving little away. “You know that, right? You know that Mother’s wrath will not fix this. It will only make them hate us more. You see that, Siggy, don’t you?”
But my sister won’t acknowledge it. Instead, as my mother’s beckoning rings down the corridor, Siggy pulls her hands from mine, averting her gaze. With her perfect daughter facade hinged in place, she strides away.
My sister and I have never been close—we’ve never spent much time together at all—but Siggy is not callous, nor is she cruel. But my mother adheres to tradition as if the devil himself would smite her if she didn’t. And so, since tradition deems Siggy, the first born Storrada daughter, the heir to the throne, I know she must be what my mother wishes. Even if she doesn’t want to.
“Zander is a warrior, not a monster,” I tell myself aloud. My voice echoes in the empty hallway.
“No, Your Highness. He is not a monster,” Karra agrees, stepping out to me. “He will see that things are made right.”
A rush of guards march down the hallway, their boots loud against the wooden floors. I spin around, expecting to find an approaching Zander, but find Reider and two other horsemen instead.
“Wait!” I command, rushing up to him. “What burns in the village?” I ask. “The church? Was it set on fire?”
Reider shakes his head, his jaw set and his mouth pinched in an angry line. “The church still stands. But the rebel scum who planned to kill you today, Your Highness, have been punished. All of them have.”
My stomach drops. “All of them? What—what does that mean?”
“The streets of Winterwood are safe again. Zander has seen to it.”
Reider bows his head gracefully and excuses himself as he and the horsemen—Elof and a woman rider named Gunhild—continue down the corridor. Neither of them looks at me as they disappear around the corner.
I stare blankly at the torchlit shadows flickering along the stone wall. Reider’s words gut me because I know in my heart that I sent that poor boy and his mother to an early, brutal grave, and I am torn between tears of sadness, hatred, and fear.
“He promised me,” I whisper, staring at nothing but feeling far too much.
“Come, princess,” Karra says carefully, approaching me like I’m a wild deer about to flee. “We should get you to bed. It has been a very long day. Perhaps I can draw you a bath?” I allow her to lead me down the hallway toward the other wing of the castle, though I see nothing but that boy’s face as he peeked around his mother with awe and intrigue.
And fear, I remind myself, because everyone fears my family. And now I know why all too keenly.
“Zander promised me he would not hurt them,” I repeat.
“And he may have kept his word. You have not asked him yet.”
I shake my head, feeling wobbly on my feet.
“I know it is a heavy burden, my lady,” Karra says, looping her arm with mine as we make our way through the hall of portraits. “But even if that woman was trying to help, she put you in a very precarious position. What else were you supposed to do but tell Zander? Did they expect you to keep quiet and disappear, as if your absence would go unnoticed?”
I scoff because on any other day it would have.
“Or,” Karra continues, “for you to stand by while your family is attacked, when you could have prevented it?”
“Do you not see?” I say, my gaze snapping to hers. “They didn’t think of themselves at all, Karra. They were doing a kindness for me.” I shake my head. “If I had not stopped—”
Karra clutches my trembling hands in hers. Older than me by a couple of years, she seems like more of a sister than Siggy ever has. “Shh, princess,” she whispers. “Whatever has happened down there, you cannot blame yourself.”
I know I should be angry that people would try to kill me, someone whom they have never met, who has never done them any harm . . . but I can’t be angry that they hate my mother. The older I get and the more I understand the world, the more I hate my mother.
We make our way toward the grand staircase leading to the east wing, when I hear Zander’s voice in the corridor.
Instantly, my blood runs cold and dread grips hold of me.
Pulling my hand from Karra’s, I veer to the right and stop in front of Zander as he steps into a foyer. His scythes are crusted red and strapped to his back, his clothes splattered with blood.
“What of the boy and his mother?” I rasp.
He sidesteps me and continues walking.
“Zander!”
He stops and looks at me, his eyes shadowed with truth. “They are no longer a concern, princess.” His voice isn’t cruel so much as it is warning me to leave the matter alone.
“Tell me they are not dead,” I demand as tears fill my eyes. “Because you promised me—”
“He owes you no explanation,” my mother says coolly. She strides up beside him. “Zander has done what he must for the crown.” She peers down her nose at me. “That you have any love for the very people who would have slaughtered us all like sheep in the butcher line sickens me.”
I glare at her. “That woman—she was not a rebel. And he was only a boy—”
“One who would have grown up to do exactly what the rest of them would,” my mother seethes.
“But—” Tears stream down my cheeks and my heart fills with hate. “She was only trying to help—”
“Save your tears,” my mother growls. “They are wasted here.”
I ignore her and glare at Zander again. “People hear things. It does not mean they were complicit.”
“If they were not complicit,” he counters, “they would have told us far sooner than that.”
“Foolish child,” my mother snaps, and she stalks away, Zander falling into line behind her like the good little warrior she has molded him to be.
Whatever lingering love I have for my mother, and whatever hope I have that Zander is any different from her, withers.
I squeeze my eyes shut, a failed attempt to keep the tears from falling, and something inside me hardens. “I hate you,” I whisper. I don’t expect Zander to hear, but when I open my eyes again, his footsteps falter, just a little, but he doesn’t look back.
PART TWO
7
THORA
FIVE YEARS LATER
The frigid winter wind whips at my back as Karra and I hurry through the torchlit streets. Villagers scamper down alleyways toward the celebration, and they take no notice of me as we follow, because tonight, cloaked in servant’s garments, I am just like them.
If the Winter Solstice Festival is all the freedom I can have in this wretched life, I will grasp for it—risking my mother’s wrath and whatever punishment follows. Twenty years of living in a prison, even one adorned with every material comfort, is too much. The stone is still unyielding, life within its walls still callous and lonely, and as my impending future draws closer, I want something more, just for one night.
The air is crisp, but it does little to cover the stench of urine and decay in the most crowded parts of town, where people cluster during the coldest season to keep warm and drink ale until they can no longer stay upright. There is little else they can do to pass the darkest months of the year.
I’d thought the memories from the last celebration I was to attend five years ago were still vivid, but as I walk the streets—some of the buildings still marked by fire—the embers of resentment and regret stoke painfully anew.
Karra’s hold on my hand tightens, and she pulls me into the bowels of the city, far from the guarded gates of Winterwood Keep.
“I told you wearing your clothes would do the trick,” I boast, though my itchy scalp and mud-dyed hair might’ve been overkill.
“They moved the market over here, princess,” Karra says, nodding toward a large pavilion down the road, nearer the outskirts of town. Crowds of drunken men and women cluster around it, their laughter and cheering, shouting and jeering, filling the night sky the closer we get. They seem oblivious to the frigid night, or they simply don’t care.
We weave through villagers and the white puffs of air that disperse around us like a low-hanging cloud. A couple of them grumble as we jostle by, but Karra is far too used to life down here to take notice.
“Wait—” I collide with a body. A small one. A boy. His dark hair is braided back like a warrior’s, and his face is dirty, as if he hasn’t bathed in days. His eyes are impossibly blue in the glow of torchlight, and they widen the longer he stares at me. Noticing a strand of red hair has fallen loose despite my efforts, I tuck it back under my hood. Suddenly, I fear my skin is too pale, too unmarred, and too unweathered, setting me apart from the others. But it’s my green eyes the boy stares at the longest.
Karra hurries to me. “Your High—”
“Shh,” I chide, not wanting to give myself away to more than this child. “Are you all right?” I ask, offering the boy a smile. He is only eight or nine, but old enough to know who I am, and I pull a piece of silver from the purse tied to my belt. “For your silence,” I whisper, placing it in his hand. I wrap his fingers around the coin.
His eyes widen even more. “Yes, princess,” he whispers.
I place my finger to my lips. It would take his family a week of trade to earn a single piece of silver, and they are bound to ask questions. “Tell your mother you helped a castle servant with her linens.”
The boy nods.
And with a wink, I allow Karra to pull me away.
“I cannot believe I let you talk me into this,” she mutters to herself. “The queen will have my head.”
“She won’t. I promise you.”
Karra looks at me with disbelief, as if I have any say in what my mother does or desires, and while that is mostly true, I am not completely powerless against her.
“You must call me by my name out here, Karra.” I squeeze her hand, forcing her to look at me. “You must.”
Her hazel eyes are hardened by a cruel life no twenty-two-year-old should ever have to endure. Even if she speaks little of her life before the castle, a dozen lifetimes shine back at me in her gaze.
“This is the last chance I have to experience anything other than chains in this life. So, please,” I plead with her, “call me anything but Your Highness.” A princess begging a servant? That my momentary sliver of happiness hinges on her is both sobering and infuriating. “What is a night away from the castle if everyone finds out who I really am? There will surely be no hiding it from my mother then.”
With a sigh of resignation, Karra nods. “Right this way, Your High—” She clears her throat. “My lady.”
I smile ruefully. “That’s only a little better,” I mutter, following Karra deeper into the crowd.
“We must stay on the outskirts of the festivities,” Karra cautions, and it’s the first time I’ve heard true conviction in her voice, so I heed her warning.
