Page 68

I chuckled, a bit of the tension leaving my chest. “We survived then, Ashwood. We will survive again.”

And we did survive, for a time.

Dravens feasted with more vigor than even Jorvans in Skalfirth. In Jarl Jakobson’s longhouse, I’d been knocked and shoved from the debauchery. Here, in the royal hall, Skalds sang tales to spritely lyres and drums.

Folk laughed and clapped the tables, stomping their feet to the tunes. More than one drunken fool shouted and tried to throw hands with another for some offense no one else knew until in the end both laughed, pouring more ale.

Gunter had a lovely woman with a heavy chest feeding him on his lap. Auki stood near the table with Emi, speaking and laughing with a few Dravens I guessed were members of the Dark Watch after I noted their blades and cowls.

Brynn had her chin propped on her knuckles, tipping back her horn with the other hand, watching a young couple kiss at the table across from her.

Folk would come to the dais. Mothers, fathers, children. They greeted their queen and their prince, offering gladness for his return and praising the gods he survived so many seasons behind Jorvan borders.

Roark returned stern nods, watching with a dark suspicion when his people engaged with me. More apprehension lived in their words when they offered a few “My lady”s or even “Lady Melder.”

One tiny girl with fiery red braids stood on her toes, her chin barely reaching over the table. After her mother and father had moved back into the crowds, the child slyly slid a broken blade across the table.

The knife was dull, not sharp enough to break skin, but the hilt was lovely. Rune etched, with painted vines around the end, and horridly cracked.

“Mam says…she says you stick the bones,” she said through a gap in her teeth. The girl kept glancing over her shoulder, like she did not want her parents to return. “Can you stick ’em back together, sùlka?”

Roark sat straighter, intrigued.

I leaned forward. “You want me to fix your blade?”

The girl flashed a wide smile. “Will you? My grandpap made it for me.”

She wanted me to meld. Here. In front of everyone. Roark’s mouth tightened, but he did not signal me to stop.

I pressed my fingertips to the crack across the bone hilt. The roar of craft thudded between my ears, pulsed in my blood. Each use summoned the magic more swiftly and firmly, like another instinct I could reach in and access as simply as I could smell a bloom.

Along the shards of the crack, glimmers of threads emerged from the bone. Filaments that waved as though underwater. It would not take much time, but the girl ogled my fingers with such awe, I wanted it to last.

The child couldn’t see the gilded strings of craft, but she watched the movement of my fingers stitching along her blade. Little by little, the crack sealed until only a faint scar remained where the fissure had split.

She squealed with glee when she inspected the blade.

Dozens of heads turned our way.

“Oh, many thanks, sùlka.” The child waved her dull blade and hopped off the dais. “Mam! You was right! She stuck it back together!”

I sent a prayer to the gods to swallow me into the molten hell when a few murmurs followed the girl and looks of stun found me again.

Beneath the table Roark squeezed my thigh, but his expression was shadowed, pinned on the great hall, as though daring anyone to confront me for using my horrid craft.

Elisabet sat back in her chair, sipping her dark wine, a gleam in her eye. One I hoped was more from amusement that my vicious craft had done the unthinkable—fixed a child’s toy.

“Well.” Emi approached once attention was pulled away from us again, one hand on the high table. “I suppose that was one way to reveal your craft.”

“I couldn’t say no. She has been the only one unafraid of me.”

Emi lowered her voice. “Perhaps our clan can take a lesson from a babe and grow some damn balls around you.”

I choked on a gulp of my drink and had to shield the dribble and laughter behind my hand.

When Elisabet stood and pounded the end of her horn on the table, I was glad for it. The attention of the hall shifted to the queen.

“It is no secret why we are here.” The queen hesitated. “The Norns often twist paths of fate in unseen ways. We are here to acknowledge and accept that our prince has sealed his soul bond with Lyra of House Bien. The melder.”