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“What did you say?” Luca shoved through Halvar and Raum. His attention was locked on me. “They took Felstad. They tookmy family?”
“Luc,” Raum tried to reach for him, but Luca shoved him off.
“I promised Dagny she would never fear the palace again.” His voice cracked in a heavy darkness. “I left her there. I won’t put her through it again, Kase. I won’t let them take her again.”
I gripped the back of his neck, pulling his forehead to mine. Luca could be flippant and bold, even as a boy it was rare to get him to show anything but irony or playful whims. When it came to Dagny, he was clear glass. The fear, pain, the passion he felt for her was written in every crease on his face.
“Luca.” My tone was dark, but steady. “They won’t touch her again.”
I could not stomach the notion of anyone left in Felstad slaughtered or strung up like Sigurd.
“They will have my heir.” The sea fae cut through the crowd. His tone was steady, almost unbothered. “Take me to this place.”
“We will all takethis place,” I said. My voice was jagged, like broken glass. “There is more than your boy at risk in those walls.”
“He is the heir to the Ever.”
I broke. My hand curled around his throat. Malin reached for me, but no one truly pulled me back. I lowered my voice to something low and rough. A true threat in every word. “I do not care if he is made of gold. His life holds no greater value than my Kryv, than an innocent princess, than Von Grym.”
“You’d do well to remember the importance of some littles over others.”
“I’d do well to kill you now.”
“Enough.” Malin stepped between us. Her voice still quivered, but there was growing strength there. “We will take them all. No little will die to the Black Palace. Not one.”
The sea fae sloughed off Malin’s touch. “See that you keep that vow, or it will be your head I seek.”
“Watch how you speak to my wife.” My lip curled, but Malin yanked on my arm before more blood spilled.
She led me away from the pompous bastard of a sea fae, leaving Thorvald to endure the glares and sneers of Luca and Hagen. Two fathers whose children were degraded by the fae, and I had a glimmer of hope they’d deal with the fool and spare me the trouble.
“Kase,” Malin whispered. She slipped her fingers through mine. “We need to take Sigurd. He deserves to rest properly, and he can show us the truth.”
Malin’s thumb brushed over my little finger. A distant look lived in her eyes, but I understood. She’d take Sigurd’s final memories. Painful as it was, the steelman was a key to what truly happened here today.
* * *
We foundrefuge in a dark grove of spruce and aspens. The area was concealed and would give us time to plan. I could not rid myself of the guilt. First, for not protecting Sigurd properly. Second, for his pathetic funeral pyre. We’d needed to work swiftly, and had burned him in a pit hardly fit for a goat.
Malin finished placing the last of the wildflower blooms around a stone she’d placed near his ashes. “I hope you save me a place at the table of the gods so we may tell bawdy tales someday, my friend.”
I palmed the leather pouch filled with bone dust. Sigurd had been robbed of his life too soon. He hadn’t deserved death, but the first thing Malin had done was take his little finger, and had Niklas help her crush it to dust.
“It is my way of keeping him alive, at least a little,” she’d told me.
Straightaway Malin had used the bone dust to confirm Hodag’s tale. The Black Palace had control of the ruins. Sigurd had been snatched off the streets after he’d been caught talking about the memory thief near the docks. An Elixist had taken the truth of his connection to us through serums that loosened the tongue, and they’d tortured him, but it wasn’t enough to break the steelman.
“He never gave us up entirely,” Malin said proudly. “He fought against the serums and never told them where we’d been headed. He was killed because of his loyalty.”
I swallowed thickly. In truth, I’d underestimated the steelman. I knew he was a bit of a rebel at heart. He valued Malin, but I did not think he would be a man made of stone and iron when blades tore into his skin.
We could avenge him. Even though he deserved much more.
Malin backed away and I knelt beside the stone. I said nothing. The words wouldn’t come. But I pressed a hand against the cold rock. A silent promise he wouldn’t die in vain.
No one who was trapped or harmed within the walls of Felstad would go without getting the justice owed to them through blood and bone of our enemies soon enough.
CHAPTERTWENTY-SEVEN
