Page 14 of Keldori By Daybreak

“Odharnait,” she corrected me. “It is an honor, my Lady—”

“It’s just Wren, please.” Heat rose in my cheeks, and I was acutely aware of every face in the hall trained on me. Odharnait nodded and gulped.

Maybe Odharnait was less like her Keel Watch Harbor self than I’d initially thought. Olive had always regarded me with kindness and warmth. I didn’t like that Odharnait looked more scared of me than anything.

“Excuse the Saergrim.” Ciarán pulled his aunt in for another hug. “She’s still learning how to carry her title. Let me get her settled with Sorcha, and I’ll speak with you in a moment, alright?”

He released his aunt, and Odharnait bowed at me again. I was sure my smile looked more like a grimace, but I was much more comfortable as a patron of Olive’s harbor bagel shop than I was as Odharnait’s queen. God. Sovereign. Whatever I was to these people.

I looked down at my feet rather than the staring villagers.

“You need to be more respectful,” Ciarán murmured in my ear. “My aunt lost her sister and her son to their work as Grimguards, and she herself is descended from Darragh.”

“Am I supposed to know who Darragh is?” I snapped.

“He was the first Grimguard and a friend of your grandmother’s. He was the first to pledge his life to protecting her after she went into the glacier.”

“That doesn’t mean I have to like being called ‘my Lady’.”

“No,” Ciarán stepped aside and held his arm out to let me enter the kitchen ahead of him, “but it wouldn’t hurt you to be less awkward and show more grace to the people who have given everything in service to you and your family.”

My cheeks burned with the heat of indignation, embarrassment, and the double-sided fireplace. Orla and Sabrina already waited in the kitchen tucked on the other side of the hearth, and the people of Darragh’s Watch continued to try to stare at us through the flames of the fire.

Luckily, a large iron pot suspended over the coals and the woman stirring its contents obscured most of their view. The woman passed me a wooden bowl of thick soup, and despite the soup’s sludgy appearance, the savory smell made my stomach growl.

“Thanks.” I tried to smile, Ciarán’s admonishment fresh in my head, but startled at the woman’s face.

I’d known her in Keel Watch Harbor, and luckily, Siobhan had always been kinder to me than her daughter, but her resemblance to Sabrina still caught me off guard.

That and the sutured wound that traced the edge of her face. I wondered if she’d sustained it when Ferrin had attacked the Rift a week ago.

“My Lady.” She kept her hair short, like she had in Keel Watch, and something about her coy smile dampened my embarrassment at the “Lady” title.

“Ribs first. Soup later.” Sorcha tore my soup from my hands and shoved it towards Sabrina. “You three, make yourselves useful and help feed the people out there.”

Orla and Sabrina nodded and took more bowls from Sabrina’s mother to deliver in the main hall, but Ciarán stayed fixed at my side.

“There were men in the woods. Breachriver, by the looks of their clothing. They were headed towards the Rift,” he said.

“We saw soldiers, too, on our way in,” Siobhan said from her giant pot of soup. “Looked Shogunate rather than Breachriver, so they weren’t the same men you saw.”

“Word of our Lady’s release from the glacier is spreading, and if Skalterra has one thing, it’s power hungry Magicians who all want their own piece of the prize.” Sorcha sighed, then ladled more soup into bowls for Ciarán. “Speaking of hungry Magicians…”

“We aren’t inn workers,” Sabrina said, though she was already balancing six bowls of soup between her arms.

“Feed your people, Sabrina.” Siobhan handed another bowl to Ciarán. I reached for a bowl to help, but Sorcha batted me away.

“Not you. You sit.” She pointed at a dusty wooden chair next to a potato-laden pantry shelf.

“I feel fine,” I lied. Sorcha poked at my side, and I winced.

“Liar. Sabrina, was this you, undoing all my hard work healing her this last week?”

“It’s not my fault she didn’t block.” Sabrina stalked after Ciarán and Orla into the main hall, each weighed down with soup.

“I told you to take it easy,” Sorcha sighed at me.

I winced as I lowered myself into the wooden chair. “I’ll worry about my injuries after Gams is back in the ice and things can go back to normal.”