It took four more days of those visits, but he drew her out.
They avoided the beach and the cove, sticking to the market streets—at first. Even though he was there to shield her as much as he could, buying honey buns and the sweet man’s freshsaltlakridswith all the joy of a summer day. It didn’t stop the stares. Judgment radiated out of every street corner and doorway.
“Acts as if she were the one who drowned.”
“The sea takes as much as it gives; it’s just the way of things, young lady.”
“Saved by a prince and still can’t put a smile on that lucky face.”
Evie’s eyes kept to the cobblestones. There was no way she could enjoy the sun with those stares—even with him by her side.
So he took her away.
He tugged her wrist toward the mountains. Up and up they hiked, the trail twisting toward Lille Bjerg Pass.
There, in a clearing, a mile from the cobblestones, he’d found a sturdy log. One with a particular view of the farmlands sprawling out in the valley below, the sea and its troubles at their backs. They’d never truly been alone like this. Not since they were children, and even then Anna had been there nearly every moment.
Paper bag rustling, he offered hersaltlakridsand a smile.
“Salty licorice for your thoughts?”
She didn’t touch the bag.
“I knew that was how they’d react.” She gestured aimlessly behind her, the entire town in a sweep of her palm.
There was no use in denying it—he’d seen and heard it too. He nodded. She went on.
“They were the same after Mother died and Father would take me to the market, unaware of how to buy for a household with Tante Hansa still away.”
She was six at the time, the hero knew. Old enough for memories to truly settle. She looked away from him then, out to the summer-burned pastures below.
“I just want to steal a ship and leave it all. I just want to be me—” She almost said more, but then he snatched her hand in his and gathered the treats in the other.
“Come, then, to the docks. Let’s go.”
She skipped along beside him, her joyful urgency closer to matching his with each step.
“Where shall we go? Copenhagen? Stockholm? Oslo? Amsterdam? Brighton? Name the place you want to be!”
“Anywhere but here.”
“Then anywhere it is.”
The hero and the girl made it across the strait and to Rigeby Bay that day. The hero’s aunt, uncle, and cousin greeted them first with surprise—both at their arrival and that they’d come alone—and then with dinner.
His mother was the angriest when he arrived back at the castle two days later, wearing his cousin’s clothes—loose at the shoulders, short in the arms.
Still, his mind wandered to the time they’d had—Evie, Iker, and himself, across the strait—even as his parents dressed him down in the royal apartments, far from where any servant could hear.
Beach walks with hvidtøl (his first taste), his cousin’s seafaring stories, and Evie’s hair blowing over her shoulders in the bay’s famous wind. It was the first time they’d all been together since the day Anna died. His cousin drank enough hvidtøl to become wobbly on his feet; the hero stopped short of a full glass.
“You are twelve and an heir, what were you thinking?”
The three of them collecting sap for syrup in the deep forests, the shadows thicker than clouds under a knot of pine.
“You have duties in Havnestad to your people and your father. You are too old to be running off. Too smart,too importantfor such whims.”
Her grin, crumbs on her lips, at the queen’s insistence on butter cookies at every meal to fatten her up.
