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“Yes. He seemed afraid for them—afraid for me too. He couldn’t put his finger on why, but the feelings were there all the same. He said he needed to council with the other gods. He too noticed the change in the weather.”
So, the Forest Gods are gone?
I nod. “They left, and just now, I was woken up by a scream. My father’s scream. I’d never heard that sound come from him before. It was shrill, immature, sounding more like a child who didn’t get his way. Reminded me of…”
Reminded you of what?
“Before I tell you, perhaps I should tell you why my father screamed. I looked out my door and saw him leaving the guest chambers where Tapio and his family would have stayed overnight. He thought they were leaving in the morning. Hecame to pay them a visit just now, in the middle of the night, and was upset that they were gone.”
Feeling insulted, perhaps…
“He was carrying a knife.”
Sarvi stills.A knife. Are you sure?
I remember the way the torches on the walls reflected off the blade. “I’m sure. The way he carried the knife wasn’t like him either. The way he walked, frustration rolling off him. I think he meant to kill Tapio.”
Why in hell would he do that?
“Because of the way he sounded. Because right before he appeared in the dungeons of Inmost, I had run into my mother.”
What?Sarvi’s eye goes wide.She was there, at the match?
I nod. “She said she wanted to see Hanna’s first public appearance, but she disappeared before my father came up from the dungeons.”
Silence fills the room. Sarvi turns and slowly walks over to the glass doors that look out onto the landing on the castle wall where they often take flight. Outside, the faintest hint of dawn lightens the horizon over the Mountains of Vipunen.
Louhi has taken over Tuoni’s Shadow Self, Sarvi says after a moment.But where is Tuoni? And how does Hanna not know?
I get out of my chair and join Sarvi at the window. “I believe my father is still in Inmost with Hanna. I don’t think that’s Hanna at all. Perhaps it’s another Shadow Self Louhi conjured from her own magic.”
Or perhaps…something—or someone—worse.
A chill runs through me. “We have to go back to Inmost.”
Sarvi eyes me sharply.No. I will go back to Inmost. I am quick. Both of us going would rouse suspicion. If your mother truly is impersonating the king, she’ll be paying far more attention to you than to me.
“If something has happened to him, do you think you’d be able to help?” I ask gently.
Sarvi thinks about that for a moment. I’ll pay Tapio a visit since he’s already suspicious, see if he’s learned anything from the other gods. Something like this, perhaps it’s better not to do anything alone.
They’re right about that.
We have no idea what we’re up against.
Chapter 12
Death
The Secretive Man
“I’ve missed a year,” Hanna says breathlessly, staring down at her phone. I have a hard time understanding what she means; the sight of the phone in her hands is so foreign to me that it feels like I’m walking inside a film, that I’m still back at Shadow’s End watching something, and I’m not really here.
“You missed a year?” I repeat, shifting in my seat beside her on the bench at the train station. I’m constantly aware of how much space I’m taking up in this world. So is everyone else, it seems. People stare at me in barely disguised awe, a mixture of wonder and fear. I don’t know if the fear is because I look strange to them, darker skinned with silver lines, long hair, furs draped around my shoulders, which don’t seem to be the fashion here, plus my height and stature. Or is it because they instinctively know that I am Death? Perhaps not the one that comes for them, but the one that welcomes them. Do they know, deep down, that I am their king when they go to the afterlife?
If only I had access to the Library of the Veils right now. I could look inside the books of their lives and learn something about each and every one of them.
“Yeah,” Hanna says, her voice dull now, tapping at the screen on her phone. “My father’s funeral was in February, and now, it’s the first week of January.”
