“I believe I know a bit more about the working of magics beyond the waters than you, Your Majesty.” She reached out, though Nik had no idea what she intended until she took his left hand in both of hers.
Blue light danced from her fingertips, tracing his mark and sending a bolt of electricity through him. The tingle was odd, though not painful. And in its wake, the heat banked. His face cooled.
“Fire,” she said, amazement in her voice. Her gaze lifted from his palm to his eyes. “Fascinating. How old are you, my friend?”
“Twenty-eight.”
Her lips pursed. “Well, one theory dispelled then. Though no matter.” She offered him a smile that put him in mind of Raf’s closest sister’s, all mischief. “The wells of magic in this one are deep. You surely misspoke when you said you mean to execute him, Isidor. Why would you want to destroy a new magic before you’ve even fully Awakened it? If he is guilty of a crime, then rehabilitate him. Or if you are unwilling, Daryatla will be glad to do it for you.”
The king reached for Nik’s arm and pulled him away from the princess’s touch. “He is not Daryatla’s problem. He is my subject, a conspirator with the man who killed my family. You have no right to interfere with our justice.”
“Unfortunately true.” Perla moved to his side again. “But I do have the right to observe.” She held out a hand toward Kyrja and wiggled her fingers—again like Raf’s sister with her best friend.
A glance over his shoulder showed him Kyrja had risen and reached now for Perla’s hand, but with a slow deliberation that said she could make no sense of the visitor’s actions either. Though she too reacted to the touch of blue light to her palm.
Perla grinned. “Ah! I thought so.” She pulled Kyrja closer and linked their arms together. “We’re going to be the best of friends, you and I. You’ll call me Perla, or even Perl. And you’re Valkyrja? It’s a beautiful name.”
Kyrja blinked twice. Then her face relaxed. “Kyrja. You may call me Kyrja. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Perla. I’ve yet to meet any royalty beyond my own family.”
“Because your father refuses all the invitations, clearly afraid his little island will implode if any of you leave its shores.” Perla swung a reproachful gaze toward the king. “But you will remedy that, I think, Kyrja. Now. Lead on, Your Majesty. If we’re going to have an execution, we might as well get on with it.”
He’d been thinking he liked this new princess. But now? It seemed her oddities stopped short of mercy.
He shouldn’t have expected anything different.
11
Kyrja had never been down the corridor her father led them along, and the farther they walked, the more she questioned that the palace even extended so far in this direction. Windows had given way to solid obsidian walls, and the last view she’d seen from them said they were underground now. Within Mt. Helviti.
She’d known the palace was built into the base of the mountain, but…intothe mountain? How had she lived here all her life and never known this?
Because she’d never been allowed much beyond the residential wing, not unless it was for a specific purpose and with a chaperone.
Well, her father was right about one thing. There was much she didn’t know about the working of Fjordlandi. Her father’s court. The Two Councils. And every new bit she learned in the last month with and for Nik made the ice fracture in her veins and the Song from the Grand Kyrka hum through her mind.
This was not right. This was not what the Giver wanted for them. This was not justice.
A month now, she’d been trying to learn. Trying to discern what the Giver wanted from her, why he’d sent his anointingthrough those crystal channels. She hadn’t dared go back to the Grand Kyrka, not after her midnight return to the palace after visiting Raf had nearly seen her caught. But she’d found a ready teacher in Nik, and his eyes, when he looked at her, didn’t burn with that same weight of demand that the dominie’s had.
A month. A single month, but everything in her world had shifted.
She should have been preparing for her big Blessing Day celebration today, which Mamma and Freya had spent months planning. She should have been donning a gown right now and having her hair done, after a full two days of mineral baths and pampering and laughing with the other girls in her family—even Krystiana would have put aside her foul temper for the occasion. Probably.
But of course, that celebration had been canceled in light of the attack. So instead, Kyrja had spent the last twenty-four hours poring over every book and data crystal she could find on legal procedures to remind her of what she’d been learning, refreshing herself on her rights and duties as the Heir, the warden, a de facto head of the High Council. Anything she could find that would help her help Nik.
He’d looked so resigned in the High Council chamber. So horrified when Fodur had drawn that stone blade over his finger and felt the rising of his mark.
She remembered her own ceremony, when they’d Awakened her Blessing. She’d only been five, but she remembered with startling clarity. The barely-felt kiss of the blade. The surge of heat, so intense it was pain, in her palm. The sting when Einar’s blood touched her veins. The race of power through her little body, the sudden opening of a sense she’d never had before. Awareness of water surging up, like an awareness of light on her skin or thirst on her tongue or sound in her ears.
But this…Curse, as Fodur called it? She didn’t know what to make of that. Something deep inside, where the Song still hummed, said it wasn’t what her father tried to make it sound like. It wasn’t evidence of evil.
Until Perla had declared it a half-finished Awakening though, Kyrja hadn’t connected the dots. Now she did, and her mind raced.
Fire magic—that was what the woman whose arm linked with hers had called it. And she hadn’t seemed surprised, exactly. More…expectant. And eager. Eager to take this magic to her own country.
That meant it was powerful, desired—and not known there. Which meant it was something new, something given to them, to Fjordlandi, like wind magic had been given to Daryatla a hundred and fifty years ago.
Which begged the very question Perla had put to Fodur: Why would he want to destroy it rather than harness it?
