“No,” I shake my head. “You’re here for a soul. Aren’t you? Any soul will do. So is this your plan, you get Nik to love you, kiss you, and then you steal his soul? Is thisall some kind of dark, sick game?” My heart is beating so loudly I can barely hear myself speak.
Her eyes go soft. “No, Evie. You’ve got it all wrong. I love Nik. And yes, if he loves me and kisses me, I get a part of his soul. I get to live on as human, and then when I die, more. But Nik’s generosity is no different from you giving a piece of yourself to him and to all the people you meet and treat with kindness, making them better. I don’t have that to give, but I don’t think wanting it is a crime, either.”
My heart rate slows, but I’m breathing like I’ve completed the rock carry. How could I have said what I just said? It was horrible. Annemette grabs my hands and pulls me into an embrace, the smell of the sea on her hair, calming me down. I look up when I hear boots clicking on the cobblestones. Iker and Nik are walking down the path. I pull away from Annemette, and I’m sure my face looks like hers, cheeks flushed and eyes red.
“Smile,” I say, wiping my eyes. “Our princes await.”
Annemette clasps my shoulder, a smile already blooming on her lips. “Thank you, Evie.”
With that she turns and runs past me and into Nik’s arms, squeezing him close and taking a pink tulip from his hand when it’s presented. He’s changed too, his mud-splattered boots and sweat-worn clothes switched out for a nearly identical, crisp, clean edition.
“When you weren’t where we’d left you, we’d thought you’d run off with some other sailors.”
Iker winks. “Well,hethought that. I knew you’d find none better.”
He hands me a red tulip, and I immediately sink into him. Impossibly, this new shirt smells of salt and limes and the sea despite being freshly clean and scratchy with starch.
Nik glances up the path to the court homes, Anna’s house prominently standing at the end. His eyes settle on the sharp red brick, and then move to me.
“That was our friend’s house, once,” Nik says, his chin nodding in its direction. “Has Evie told you about Anna?”
Annemette nods. “We met her lovely grandmother just now. Poor thing thought I was her.”
His thumb grazes her cheek in a delicate arc. “I must admit that you do resemble our old friend, but considering Fru Liesel has accused everyone—including me—of being Anna in the years since, I’d tell you not to worry about what she thinks.”
Nik and I allow ourselves a small laugh with the others despite how hard it is still to speak of Anna. And while my body is drained from arguing with Annemette, I can’t let go of the hope that somewhere inside of her is that old friend. I can feel it in my bones. In my heart. I’m right about this.
I’m right about her.
Tomorrow cannot be her last day, and if Nik can’t or won’t help me achieve what she needs, I will find a way do it myself.
FOUR YEARS BEFORE
The hero was too big for the room.That had been happeningoften of late, his new height making trouble with any doorframe or ceiling outside of the castle. Belowdecks on his father’s ships was definitely the worst, ironic considering the Viking blood thick in his veins.
It had been a week, and he had to see her again. She’d missed the entire Lithasblot festival that year, swallowed in blankets and despair. He’d visited her every night before his duties, entering a room cluttered with bottles and incense, Tante Hansa’s famous healing skills at work. He’d never been to this room before—she’d always come to him. Her house felt like another world—and it was.
It was weeks later now, August bearing down. And still she kept to her house, heartache confining her to her room.
That afternoon she’d improved a bit, sitting up with her back to the wall, reading some dirty old book in the low light. She glanced up as he ducked under the threshold, sitting at the end of her bed—his proper mother and her opinions about boys and girls far from here.
“How’s the world outside?”
“Still moving?”
She flinched. He didn’t blame her, he’d nearly flinched too.
Whenever anyone called him a hero for saving the life in front of him, his stomach curdled with the knowledge that he wasn’t quite heroic enough. Everyone had seen Iker pull him from the water. He’d been stopped, but everyone assumed he’d failed. Everyone, including Evie. He saw it in her eyes, wells underneath them as dark as this room.
Guilt was there too. It filled the space where Anna had been, just as large and unwieldy as an eleven-year-old girl. His guilt lay in his failure to save her, her guilt in the fact that she’d put Anna in danger in the first place. In some other part of Havnestad’s world, there was disappointment there too—that he’d saved the fisherman’s spawn instead of a friherrinde.He was a hero, but in dark rooms and hushed conversation, he was a traitor to his class as well.
“As are you, Evie. You’re here. There is so much outside these walls.”
To put a point on it, he took a tentative step forward into the tiny room. She watched him as if he might bust through the roof. But he made it carefully to the window, pulling back the curtain she had draped there, letting a sliver of sunlight stream in, blinding and white. The girl blinked so hard, her eyes stayed shut. He waited to speak again until she had the will to open them.
“The world is out there. It misses you.”
“That’s a lie.” And it might have been. But he didn’t care about the world.Hemissed her.
