But Grimarr’s slow, heavy sigh was like a blow, struck straight against Ella’s heart. “I swore to make Nattfarr Speaker of the Grisk,” Grimarr said, “once he proved to me that he had done this.”
Oh.Oh. And in a breath everything crumpled all at once, Ella’s heart Ella’s hopes, even the world behind her eyes, under her feet —
But before her staggering body could sink to the floor, there was warmth, strength, familiar hands spreading wide.Natt. He washere. And for a jolting, hurtling instant Ella let herself sink into him, he was here, she was safe —
But no, no, he’dbetrayedher, and Ella’s flailing arms suddenly thrust at him, clawed at him, away, away — and somehow she’d been set down onto the couch, her entire body wildly trembling, her eyes blinking again and again up at Natt’s pale, staring face. Wrong.Guilty.
“You came back to me,” a voice gasped, someone else’s voice, choking from Ella’s mouth. “You made love to me, made me believe you cared about me — so you could get apromotion?!”
Something flared across Natt’s eyes, and there was a hoarse noise in his throat, rattling, wrong. “It is not apromotion,” his voice said, so distant, so strange. “It is my rightful place among my kin. It is what I have been owed, since my father’s death.”
The world was stuttering again, so badly Ella couldn’t speak, couldn’t keep her eyes on his face, and beyond them there was another noise, this one more like a snarl. “You were not owed this, Nattfarr,” came a deep voice, Grimarr’s voice. “You are not just granted this, because of your father. We are not like the men, with power and titles thrown at foolish weak sons. You needed toearnthis.”
Ella could hear Natt snarling back, but Grimarr’s growl was louder, and he stalked across the room, his body huge and coiled and deadly. “Leading our brothers in a time such as this means we must make hard choices, Nattfarr,” his deep voice hissed. “We must choose our brothers over our own wishes again and again. You had not yet shown me that you could do this, so I set you a hard choice.”
A hard choice. Doing this had been ahard choice, for Natt. And Natt hadn’t spoken, wasn’t denying or affirming that, and somehow Ella raised her wet face toward Grimarr, and desperately sought for truth.
“So this was about more than just the war?!” she heard her voice say, incredulous, miserable. “This was some kind of fucked-uptestfor him? Your own brother, who you already allowed to be hunted, foryears?!”
There was another harsh growl from Grimarr, a furious shake of his black head. “You have not dealt with mybrotherall these years,” he snapped at her. “Nattfarr has shown himself oft petty, selfish, ungrateful, and short-sighted. He scorns those above him, wields his magic as a weapon, and assumes power he has not been granted. And most foolish of all, he drives deep wedges between his own brothers. He smears the Skai and Bautul, and holds up Grisk above all else.”
But Ella’s head was shaking, the unfairness of that still curdling deep, even now. “If you had had the bravery to come to his Revel tonight, you would have heard that he does not,” she shot back. “And even if he did, could he truly be blamed for feeling that way? Or have you forgotten how the Bautul abused him, afteryousent him there?! And the Skai seem to be fine with that sort of thing, too!”
She was thinking of Timo, of his pale quivering face in the corridor, but Grimarr only growled again, deep and angry. “They are not,” he snapped back. “And Nattfarr knows this, which is why he spoke as he did in the Skai common-room, this day past. And” — he turned sharply toward Natt — “I shall always regret what befell you in the south. But I had to make this hard choice, to keep you alive. And not once have you thanked me, or come alongside me as a brother. You have only fought me at every turn!”
And Ella was not looking at Natt, she wasnot— but suddenly his form seemed small, cowed, alone. And he still wasn’t speaking, wasn’t defending himself against any of thisbullshit, so Ella again shook her head, hugged herself close. “Of course he’s fought you,” she countered. “Because you let him be hunted all these years, and apparently even forbade him to lift a weapon to defend himself!”
“Ach, I did,” Grimarr hissed back, “because this was what had to be done, to keep our brothers safe, and keep away more war and death. I should be a weak, shameful Captain to allow the Grisk to be led by an angry, untested, unthinking fool. I needed to know that he would not lead them to ruin, to gain his own ends. I needed to know that he would put the wishes and needs of his brothers over his own!”
His voice had risen to a roar, almost seeming to vibrate the room, and there was only a choked, deafening silence in its wake. But then, in the silence, Natt slowly seemed to draw himself tall, his head lifting, his eyes steady on Grimarr’s, unafraid.
“And I did this,” he said, his voice very quiet. “I betrayed my own soul, and I did this. I faced the scent of the man I most hate, upon the woman I most love. I kept my true aims secret from her, and earned her maidenhood for my own. And when I saw I could not yet fill her with my son, I then took her in the night, against her will, in hopes of gaining this. I wreaked all these wrongs upon her, Captain, just as you wished.”
He spoke the last words with an emptiness Ella had never before heard on his voice, and it was wrong, so wrong, so ugly Ella felt sick. But Grimarr still wasn’t satisfied, he was still looming and angry and cruel, his head still whipping back and forth.
“Ach,” he growled, “youkidnappedher. Without leave, without my blessing. You went well beyond my orders, and broke the human laws, and risked our treaty, and wished anotherwarupon our mountain! And then you strode in here as though you had won a shiny new prize, and dressed her up like a make-believe, scent-bound Grisk mother who lived only to worship you! You again sought to provoke me, and flaunt your power before your brothers, and show that you are petty and foolish and care only for your own!”
But Natt’s stiff form still hadn’t moved, his hands in tight fists at his sides. “No,” he said, chilly, brittle,wrong, his gaze unflinching on Grimarr’s face. “I show you that I know these games you play, Grimarr of Clan Ash-Kai, Captain of Five Clans. I show you that I am your match, and I shall always be a thorn to you, and you shall never find a better Speaker than I to check you. I show you” — he took a slow, steady step toward Grimarr — “that I can survive this darkness, I can make these choices, I can earn both the fear and trust of our brothers. I can earn the eager fealty of a good woman of high standing, even after I have betrayed her, and thus wreak my vengeance upon a man I hate more than any upon this earth. Just — like —you,Captain.”
And as Ella stared at Natt, her entire being caught on his body and his face and his words, there was the dull, bitter understanding that he was speaking truth. Hewasthis. Natt, her oldest and dearest friend, had somehow become this, speaking these awful truths. A stranger.
And why had Ella ever trusted him. Why had she so blindly believed what he’d shown her. Why had she given him her —eager fealty, he’d said. She was a woman ofhigh standing— good gods, in another world, she might have laughed at that awful phrase — and she was vengeance. And that was all.
She was a fool.
“That ismorethan enough, you two,” a distant voice said, Jule’s voice, almost vibrating with rage. “We are going totalk, Grimarr. And Nattfarr, you need to fuckingbegfor Ella to have mercy upon us all, and then stay the hell away from her, before you traumatize her even more than you already have. You unfeelingassholes.”
No one spoke, or moved, and Jule finally dragged both hands through her hair, and turned back toward Grimarr. “So what happens now,” she snapped. “What orc-inducedbullshitdoes Ella get to deal with next.”
There was another instant’s silence, and finally another sigh from Grimarr’s huge form. “The woman must go,” he said, his eyes fixed to the wall behind Ella’s head. “This man is yet her betrothed, for now. And as she pledged, she shall defend us to him, and deny that Nattfarr has kidnapped her.”
Ella’s body flinched all over, her eyes blinking down at her visibly trembling hands, gripping sweaty against her bare knees. “And if I don’t?” she whispered. “Go to Alfred? Or defend you to him?”
“Then you shall give him all the cause he needs to spark his war at once,” came Grimarr’s immediate reply. “You shall wear a mountain full of blood on your hands.Nattfarr’sblood.”
Ella’s gasp of misery was reflexive, desperate. “But by going away with Alfred,” she choked out, “won’t I start a war then, too?”
There was an awful, hanging silence, during which no one spoke, not even Jule — but finally Grimarr sighed. “War may yet come,” he said. “But it shall have naught to do with you. And it shall have none of your hoard behind it.”
