“Lena?” Freya calls out.
I heave a sigh, preparing myself. “Yep! Where are you?”
There’s a brief pause and I make my way to the end of the stack.
“Right here.”
I look left and then right before spying them by the fireplace seated on the velvet chairs. Freya’s long white hair is unbound, resting in gentle waves over her leather clad chest. A few braids are meticulously plaited throughout.
Odr’s near-black hair is brushed back off of his weary face, a permanent line etched between his brows. Whatever they were just discussing has been wearing on him. They’re nestled into the chairs, outwardly looking relaxed, but it’s vastly misleading. For at any moment, they could spring into battle and walk away as the victors.
I trail my hand along the back of the couch, a smile brightening my face as I look between her and Odr.
“The books are amazing. Thank you,” I breathe, turning to look back at the full stacks.
“It was the least we could do.” Freya chuckles. “But Harald really outdid himself.”
She gestures to the low-lying table full of ancient-looking leather tomes. “We pulled a few we thought you should look at first.”
Odr stretches forward, his training leathers flex with the movement and the weapons strapped to his side shimmer in the light as he plucks a black leather book up and offers it to me.
“This has the most thorough knowledge of the Fomorians and their royal line. So you can get a feel for what we’re up against.”
“Their royal line?” I ask, flipping it open and glancing at the scrawling script on the ancient pages.
“Yes, most of the realms have a royal line. Except in Sutr they have clans, I believe.” She waves off that train of thought and continues. “But the Fomorian and the Tuadanaan royal line both stretch back to a single family that connects them.”
I plop down on the couch, snapping the book shut. “I’ve been told the story before.”
Setting the book flat on my lap, I graze the engraved words with my fingertips. Such craftsmanship has been applied to these books. It breaks my heart to think of the ones that were destroyed here.
Freya smirks, closing the book in her lap and resting her arms on the armrests of her chair. “It is well known. One side of the family wanted to expand—to conquer—while the other side was content with their land and way of life.”
I nod, remembering some of what Mathilda had told me long ago about how the Fomorians wanted to conquer the human lands, and more recently, Dragut’s stories.
“Their realm is about the size of this one,”—she gestures around her—“but they wanted the vastness of the human lands. That and the humans.” She grimaces.
“Mathilda had mentioned that before. But she had very limited knowledge.”
“It’s worse than that,”—Odr flashes Freya a look—“they eat the children,especially babies.”
My stomach roils and I flinch, not having heard that before. “What?”
“There’s all manner of beasts from those lands that the Fae rule over, and babies are a delicacy that are difficult to acquire.”
My throat burns and I force a swallow.
“Difficult? But not impossible?”
Freya shifts. Her knuckles turn white from her grip on the armrests.
“It’s not uncommon for human women to find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
My brain is having a hard time processing this information, and my face scrunches up in confusion—in disgust.
“They use them for breeding stock,” Odr says gently.
I lean back, attempting to escape the words. Bile rises in the back of my throat as my heart plummets into my stomach.
