“Notsoten,” Fell said again.
“That is not important now,” I said, quite harshly.
“It is,” Fell said softly.
I turned to Rowan.“I order you.Calm yourself as best you can.Do no harm.Eat.Sit by a fire.You look terrible.And I will come and find you and sort all of this.”
I took off, hurrying toward the palace.I made it off the thin docks onto the wider, sturdier wood that ran alongside the shore before Rowan’s words echoed in my thoughts.
They are coming.
I stumbled, steadying myself on a bone-white birch tree that grew alone in a pot.
Theydidn’t simply mean Dayne.It meant the order.
I heaved and moaned a little, collapsing onto my knees.Terror so stark it blinded me for a moment pulsed through my entire body, my limbs shaking.
They are coming.
I vomited.
Thirty-One
“Fetch Ivar!”King Arik bellowed, the entire room filling with the robust depth of his voice.
I’d run to him, breathless and dizzy—interrupting whatever meeting he’d been in the midst of.My father.The order.Poor Rowan—his face so swollen it made my stomach turn.None of these things could wait.
“My friend has been taken assoter… I… the kepen was attacked.By Norsern.My father…” I was crouched in one of the king’s smaller halls, struggling to catch my breath in front of his visitors, struggling to make sense of the onrush of so much, only slightly distracted by Fell’s concerned face, reddened because he’d run with me to the palace.He was reaching out for me… his eyes endless, his fingers weaving into my own.
“Who must I fight?”he said, a half-smile on his face.He’d been excluded from so much of my previous conversation since it was in Islish.
“Gentlewoman, I cannot help you if I cannot understand, and I cannot understand until you’ve calmed enough to speak complete thoughts.Think of the child.Here, on your knees.Yes.Like that.Think of a sleeping baby, let the steadiness of the earth beneath the sea rise in through your limbs, hold the idea?—”
“My father is dead,” I said.“A man from my country told me.”
“Oh,” King Arik knelt before me.“Your brother will be Grainkeeper now.”
“Yes.”
The king frowned.“I have many questions.But first, I would like your heart to slow.Can you do that?Think of it beating gently, think of the baby’s heart beating gently.Ivar!Took you long enough!”Ivar had burst through the door.“Here, come.She has been disturbed.”
“What has happened?”Ivar knelt as well and rested a hand on my neck, feeling my pulse.
“My father is dead,” I said again, pulling away from Ivar’s hands.The words didn’t feel real.
“Was he a good father?”Fell said.He was crouched beside me, shuffling closer.A beautiful, perfect question.
I nodded, my delayed tears finally coating my eyes in a blurry sheen.
“Then I am sad with you.”And he was.I could see it in his face, feel it in his body, in the wind between us.He opened his arms, and I wanted nothing more than to crawl into his grip, but I had to contend with everything else first.
“It was the Norsern,” I said.“They attacked?—”
“Does grief change things?”Arik asked this question to Ivar as if he hadn’t heard me at all.“You said all seemed robust and well.No reason to suspect ill health?—”
Ivar shrugged.“Grief changes all things… it will help form the child… but—” he turned to me.“It is part of living, so there is no need to feel guilt over it.The only thing… we will be forceful about eating, yes?Even if we do not feel the need for it?This is most important.We can have people remind you?—”
“You’re not listening!”I drew Arik’s eyes.“It was Norsern raiders who did it.Theyattackedmy home.They?—”
