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Chapter 22
Trees, trees, oh endless trees. The days were monotone. Ride, rest, ride, rest, sleep beside a small fire on the cold ground, then ride and rest. Our food had lasted longer than we thought, but we had run out two days ago. We had been riding in hunger again—and mostly in silence. We were too tired to speak, but also, there had been a lingering tension in the air ever since Alrick had threatened to leave Henrike behind. The two siblings kept the few words they exchanged to the absolutely necessary: “This way,” “That way,” “Let’s rest,” “Let’s water the horses,” or “I’ll make a fire.”
Alrick and I, on the other hand, spoke off and on about other things. He had even made me laugh a few times. When Henrike called me the Night Queen, he’d taken to calling her the Ice Queen behind her back.
He had been kind to me ever since the river. But then again, he had been kind to me all along. It was I who had ridiculed him at the ball and treated him like a servant when the journey had first begun.
“Do you miss it much?” he asked me one day. Alrick and I were riding next to one another, Henrike in the front.
I turned to look at him, something I seemed to be doing much more recently. And the way I did it had changed. Ever since the event in the hut, I had these fantasies about him. I would look at his lips and picture them on mine. Then I would follow the scar on his cheek down to his muscular, lean chest, wishing to kiss it. I would replay the feeling of his touch between my legs, driving me slowly insane.
“What?” I asked, trying not to look at his forearm and the hand that had touched me. By now, my cheeks were already bright red.
“Your life at the castle.”
I frowned. “Strange...but now that I think about it. No. Not actually.” It was the strangest thing, but at that moment, I didn’t miss it.
Alrick laughed. “I don’t know a lot of women who would prefer being hunted to starvation over life in one of the most significant castles on the face of this earth.”
“I miss the kitchen,” I said. “And my bathtub and clean dresses. But now that I have been free to think and live on my own, my old life seems like a lonely, golden dungeon.”
“Did you sincerely have nobody?” He sounded sad.
“I had Frida, my lady’s maid. She raised me for the most part. But besides her, there truly was nobody else, no.”
Alrick lifted a hand as if to put it on mine. But then he pulled it back. “How terrible.”
“To be fair,” I said with a smile, “I am not very lovable. I’ve earned my title as the Night Queen.”
I thought Alrick would make a joke in response, but he remained serious. “They don’t know you.”
“I’m afraid they do. I had a squire thrown into prison once. He rotted in darkness and was bitten by my rats for a full week before my father found out and freed him.”
Alrick didn’t look shocked at all. “What did he do?” he asked.
“What?” My brows shot up. Other than Frida, nobody had ever asked me why I did it, not even back then. They all thought it was over something trivial such as running into me in the hallway.
“Well,” I said, “he drowned kittens by the river for his enjoyment, then pierced their lifeless bodies with branches. He said listening to their desperate cries was amusing. Three were already dead when I discovered what he was doing. One I was able to save. Kittens and puppies had been disappearing for weeks. I screamed for the guards and demanded he be thrown into the dungeon. Thinking about it now, I’m sure the servants thought I was the one who killed them.”
“I would have done the same and worse to such a monster.”
“Maybe so, but that still doesn’t make me very lovable.” Alrick brought his horse to a halt. I did as well, confused. “What’s the matter?”
“You shouldn’t keep saying that.”
“But—” I was bewildered. The whole world knew me as the Night Queen. I had become so used to it, I believed it.
“I have seen your kindness. More than once,” Alrick said, his face still tense.
“If you are referring to the hair—”
“I’m not,” he cut me off. “Not only, that is. I’m referring to what happened all those years back then. When we were children. There was a beggar girl in the stables. Do you remember?”
I pinched my lips together. The part about the tiara was foggy, always overshadowed by the tragic death of my mother that followed shortly after.
“I remember my birthday all too well,” I said in a thin voice. “You told me that the gods showed kindness to those who showed kindness first. See how that worked out?”
Alrick studied me. “Is that what you believe deep down? That good people get punished by the gods?”
