She’d pieced that much together over the years, thanks to the stories the others told, to their matching marks. “He explained nothing to me. Didn’t even—didn’t even let me tell my family goodbye. I didn’t understand the fire that swept through me, the mark emerging on my palm. Before I could do more than scream, he got out a needle and put me to sleep. When I woke up, I didn’t know where I was. I was cold, so cold and alone and frightened and…empty.”
No explanations. No family huddled by her bedside, love in their eyes. No hands warm around hers, like Dae’s was now. No hope for the future.
Just pain and emptiness.
Dae’s larynx bobbed. “Reykstoll?”
She nodded. “I don’t know how long I was held in that cold room. Weeks, I think. They kept me sedated so long the whole world blurred into nothing. And then one day, I woke up and the king was there. At my side.”
Somehow, without moving a muscle, Dae’s whole being went taut.
When he didn’t interrupt, she pushed herself on. “He said I had a new kind of Blessing. One he’d been waiting for, though he didn’t explain how or why. He said I had to go somewhere to learn how to use it. To train. That it would take me many years, but that was good, because it would be many years before the world was ready for me. He said that someday I would be beside him as queen, but not while Andresa still lived.”
Dae’s jaw clenched.
Elianne averted her face. “It made no sense. I thought I was delirious still, that the whole exchange was nothing but a bizarre nightmare. I’d never even glimpsed the king from a distance, certainly had no aspirations for a crown or throne. I thought I’d wake up, home in my own bed. Instead…”
“He finished Awakening the curse with his blood and tossed you down the throat of Mt. Helviti. To us. To train you for him, so that when the time was right, he could use you for his purposes.”
His tone didn’t sound as judgmental as she expected—not of her, anyway. She settled her gaze on his face again, though she couldn’t make herself lift it above his mouth. “Until that first time you sent me to fetch our rations from him, I honestly thought I’d imagined the entire thing. It couldn’t be real, it made no sense. But there he was, just as he’d been. Saying the same impossible things. Only now, he added something new. That somehow, though we clearly partake of the same power, the rest of you were daemons, but I was not. I was something else, something holy instead of something evil. Because, he said, my magic was Awakened through noble means instead of as part of a criminal trial.”
Dae snorted. “That’s the requirement now, is it? What sets good apart from evil?”
He’d told her—told them all—plenty about his early days in the lava tubes. But never about the trial that landed him here. Never about his own Awakening.
How had the old king known to slice him with flint instead of metal? Whose blood had mixed with his after the Blade had primed the magic? The king himself, as his son had done with her in that room? Another Blessed, like the others? “Were you—”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m not the one the king apparently means to marry.”
The utter ridiculousness of the suggestion brought an unexpected smile to her face. “I don’t know why—you’re quite the catch. Think of the dowry you’d bring, master of the daemons.” She waved a hand toward the mountain and fully expected the joke to fall flat.
But his mouth quirked up. Not evenly, but somehow the lopsided version of his smile was even more inviting than the full one. “I assume he’s after heirs with dual magic, like the Daryatleans can boast.”
A reminder of the demands that had never made any sense. And which she’d just as soon ignore for a few minutes more. “You were still Above when the Daryatleans’ children were Awakened, then?”
“Just. The news sent a shockwave through all of Fjordlandi—likely through all the world, I’d think. From what I recall, Daryatla’s alliance with the mer was solid enough at that time that Queen Electra wouldn’t have deemed it a threat, but Ellas and Soltierra?” He shook his head. “I always thought that was probably why Isidor’s father, Axel, reacted as he did to me—because I was clearly not his ally, and therefore I was a threat. The worst possible kind.”
She waited, hoping he’d say more.
His eyes refocused, though, losing that fog of memory. “Are you in love with him?”
“Isidor?” She jerked her hand free of his. “How could you even suggest such a thing? I owe him my loyalty because he is my Giver-given king, but my heart? You think I haven’t seen what he is? What he does? How he controls our entire land, not to mention us?”
“But you’re not like us.” He drew a knee up, propped his arm on it. “He means to take you away from here as soon as his consort dies.”
“She just did.” The words emerged as a whisper, frail and fearful. “The quake—it was terror-made. An attack on the royal residence. It killed Andresa, Einar, and Krystiana. Only Valkyrja is left.”
The youngest princess had been but a child when Elianne had last walked the surface. Krystiana had been a bad-tempered adolescent, already bullying the country with blizzards that went well beyond the cloud-cover and snow needed to hold in what warmth the sun gave. Einar had been the perfect Heir, staid and steady and a hope to them all for a future that might not be quite so strict. Or unequal.
Then they heard what he’d done in the Ice Prison, and hope had done what it always did in Fjordlandi—died of frostbite.
“Convenient for him. The consort standing between the two of you, as well as his two strongest heirs, gone in a single stroke. Leaving only a weakling in the way of the progeny he means for you to give him.”
“I won’t.” She pushed to her feet, not even touching his not-so-veiled suggestion that it was the king who had planted that explosive, not the leader of the Red Hands. An accusation she almost wanted to believe, if it meant it wasn’t one of their own, a thane, who had done something so heartless. Though she doubted it. Isidor had been angry—too angry to have been the one responsible.
That didn’t make him any less a monster. “I won’t be some broodmare for a tyrant. I thought I had more time to plan, but I don’t, so I’m going to do what I swore I never would. I’m asking you for help, Dae. I didn’t want to involve you, didn’t want you to be responsible in any way, but I can’t do it alone. Not unless I…”
He stared at her for a moment, there where he sat. Then he too launched to his feet, fury blazing once more in his eyes. This time two hands landed on her shoulders, one on each, and hegave her a little shake, more emphasis than force. “You will not. You will not throw yourself into the flow.”
