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CHAPTER 14
Rune
The soft warmth of my horse, Inga, calmed me as I ran my palm down her strong neck. She was a warhorse, almost twice the size of our famous Northern racehorses. Her hair was as black as my heart and soul, and she had been with me to the pits of the underworld and back. If there was something left in this world I could possibly love, it would be her.
I had waited for a stable boy to have her prepared for me to ride back home north, but after my request had been lost in the hectic celebrations twice, I decided to saddle my own damn horse.
Inga had still been eating hay and apples when I finally found her in her stall in the most enormous stable I had ever stepped foot in. Now, I was waiting patiently for her to finish.
As much as I hated it, my thoughts drifted once more to the Rhine Queen. When I had first made up my mind to come here, I didn’t know what I would find. The Night Queen, they called her. She eats children and spits fire, they said. Yet what I had found could not have been further from such nonsense. I found a woman lost and alone, one step away from falling apart, yet too strong to give up.
When I had first met her in the garden, I thought her to be one of the most interesting noblewomen I had ever met: short golden hair like that of a man, those amber eyes holding secrets I couldn’t stop wondering about. Every word that had come out of her mouth had interested me in one way or another. Which was unusual, as other people usually annoyed me to death.
Then I met her again as the queen, shaken to the core about her father’s death and all the horrors that came with it. In the darkness of the cellar, I had rushed to her aid as if my body was not my own.
My hand froze against Inga as I stared at it. Its cuts and scars reminding me of the killer I was. It felt wrong that a hand such as this could still feel the silken softness of her hair beneath my fingers. Why had I reached for her? Of course she was disgusted by my touch. She’d stepped back, knife in hand, like a wounded lioness ready to fight until the bitter end.
And yet, the way she had spoken to me...with respect and trust.
Whatever you decide to do, I’m certain you will have your reasons.
Those words of hers had haunted me ever since she’d said them. I’d decided to ride back north that same hour, but for some reason, I’d stalled. Instead, I’d watched her crowning at a safe distance. After that, I was resolved once more to ride back north, but again, I still couldn’t. Instead, I followed her back to the castle with the crowd and watched as she stepped out of her carriage and received her guests, my father and useless brother Yutrik included.
“This your first time, lad?” I heard a woman giggle from the stall next to me.
“I-I should better go,” the voice of a young boy countered in a well-spoken manner.
“Don’t be shy, let me show you how good it feels,” the woman insisted.
“Please, I-I really want to go now,” the boy whimpered.
One of my brows shot up.
“You want to be a real man or not?” the woman pushed. I sighed loudly as I knew exactly what was going on. It happened all the time. Women with men and vice versa.
“Be right back, my love,” I whispered to Inga and walked over to the stall next to me. I flung open the stable door and found a young boy and a much older woman in an empty stall on a pile of hay. The boy was wearing fine clothes. The woman, who was maybe triple his age, wore a dirty wool dress and was sitting on top of him, her unevenly shaped mouth twisting in anger the moment she saw me.
“Get out!” she barked.
Instead, I walked in and grabbed her by her arm to pull her off the boy. Once she was removed, the little lad sat up.
“If you’re not gone before I can count to three, I will find the boy’s mother and tell her what you’re up to here, wench. She’ll have you whipped or worse.”
The woman narrowed her eyes at me like an angry cat, then jerked her arm free from my grasp and ran off.
Looking down at the boy, I shook my head. He was barely in his teens, if even. It was a well-known trick in the North to have a young lordling father a child in the hopes he would provide for the child and mother.
“Has anything happened?” I asked.
The boy shook his head. “O-only a kiss.”
I nodded. “Where is your mother, boy?”
The boy looked away, more petrified of me than the old woman.
Analyzing his clothes in more detail, I growled. He was a Northern lordling.
May the gods damn me all over again!Nobody but the queen had been aware of my presence in the castle, and now this.
