Dozens of people reported asSent to Helviti. Sent like Isidor had tried to send Nik, primed but not Awakened. Condemned to death for their blood. Innocent people, most of whom looked as though they’d been discovered in the Test.
What made the six—or the five anyway, discounting his mother—different?
“Wait.” Raf gripped his shoulder, pushing so that Nik turned to look at him again. His eyes were wide as the moon. “You found her? Your mother. And this didn’t even rate as something to tell me?”
Nik winced. “Of course. I would have—was going to. I figured I’d bring you completely up to date when we had time to talk without a whole village for an audience. She was in the volcano. Knew me right away.”
“Of course she did. You’re the image of Tristan.” Raf shook his head. “You must have been…”
“Confused?” Nik breathed a laugh. “Still am, to be honest. I don’t even remember her, Raf. But there she is, wanting to pick up and…I don’t even know. Be my mother? My friend? I don’t know how to be the grown son of a woman I don’t remember when she clearly remembers me and feels things for me I don’t know how to return.”
“Frost. Your pab was right. He really did steal her from you.” Raf shook his head, looking dazed yet again. “And all those others? Were they all down there? Inside the volcano?”
“No.” He turned to the papers again, but he didn’t even know the names the other Aflame had been born with. He flipped anyway, until a series of words jumped out at him the right number of times.
Rebel.Condemned to Helviti for eternity.
He huffed out a breath. “Stupid.”
“What?”
“The only ones he let live down there were the rebels. The rest, the innocents, he shoved into the volcano with their Awakenings half-finished, so that they’d burn. Which was stupid. Why keep alive and give power to the people who already wanted to threaten you?” Yet even as he said it, he knew. “Isidor honestly believed he was sentencing them to eternal torment. He thought he, and Einar after him, could keep them confined to Helviti forever, until they eventually died. That they could make a race of slaves of us, punish us for centuries instead of with a quick death.”
Raf grunted. “Why wouldn’t they think it? They’ve already made a race of slaves of the thanes, haven’t they?” He sounded more bitter than Nik had ever heard him. At the look he sent him, his friend shrugged. “I’ve had weeks to go through those documents, Nik. Your father was right. This is something different. Something more. The Giver sent us a gift—us, the thanes, not the Fjorders—and they’ve done their best to killeveryone they find with it. Kill them or enslave them. It’s a wonder they haven’t started Testing us all, to see who among us has this blood so they can completely wipe it out.”
It was, at that. And had Isidor or Axel before him understood this new magic, Nik had no doubt they would have. The only thing that had saved them was the kings’ hubris. Their belief that their Blessing was so superior to what they called the Curse.
As for why his mother had been the first of the Tested women Isidor had decided to save, to train, rather than to sacrifice to the lava?
Maybe it had only been recently that Isidor decided it was worth seeing if their magics could be combined. Maybe he’d run her blood against his in the Test and its results had been promising. Or maybe she’d caught his eye in a way the other women in these files hadn’t—she was beautiful, Nik had to grant that. Even Stefanos had been instantly intrigued.
Weird. Too weird to dwell on. He had to shake that from his mind—because even if she had been a stranger, she was his mother.
He put the papers back in the box and fit the lid onto it. “He couldn’t have known how it would play out. But Pab did exactly what he meant to. Took Isidor’s family. Reunited me with my mother.” He looked down at his palm, where the mark would tell the tale for the rest of his life. “He struck the flint.”
Raf chuckled and leaned back against his pillow. “Bet he never imagined it would be Princess Valkyrja to fan the flames of freedom though, hey?”
“That’sQueenValkyrja now. And no.” He shoved to his feet, moved to the other pallet, and brought the fire back to glowing coals. “No, there’s a lot Pab didn’t imagine.”
He’d been right that Nik disapproved of his methods—disapprovewas far too mild a word. He would never condoneviolence, never seek it, would certainly never advocate for it himself.
And yet, even this, the Giver had used. Would use. Until Fjordlandi was forged into something new.
Something worth bleeding for.
26
Had Fodur grown stronger, somehow, in the Ice Prison? It shouldn’t have been possible, but for the tenth time in as many hours, Kyrja felt him break through her control of the tides, sending the other threads of Blessed magic scattering, and she had to scurry to reestablish her hold on them, let the others weave in again.
Maybe it was that he was focusing his already-considerable might only there. Maybe it was that the rest inside the prison had given him a burst of strength. Maybe, like her, he’d found that sudden necessity gave him new power. Maybe allowing the other threads of magic into hers had made a hole he could exploit.
“You all right?”
She glanced over and found Nik’s eyes level with hers—she was walking atop the compact snow, he on the bare ground he’d exposed in their path. It hadn’t taken long to discover that he was constantly melting through the snowpack, which meant trudging and cost far too much energy. She could have worked to keep the snow frozen under him, like she’d done to the arena floor, but why? It had been more expedient for him to melt a path for him and Raf to walk on. Though the ground lookedmuddy ahead of them, by the time Nik’s boots touched down, it had baked hard.
Handy for those coming behind them to use, too. Kyrja glanced over her shoulder, where two dozen members of the outcast village brought up the rear of their little caravan, laughter on their lips.
Their elder blazed the path ahead of them, leading the way to the next village of outcasts. Who knew that they had their own network of relationships and alliances? This elder had promised he would give them safe passage to the next village, and that their elder would provide introductions to the next, and so on.
