SWNOVELS Court of Ice and Ash: Chapter 30
iridescent headdress over my hair. She smiled at my reflection in the mirror. I remained stone faced and unmoved. After a moment she turned away and pointed her attention at the hem of the blue gown. Fine beading glimmered on the bodice. The satin like cream.
It sickened me.
As my mother stood from the floor, she grabbed my hand and placed something cold in it. “For your marriage night.”
I dropped my gaze to a small knife. One slight enough to hide on my thigh without being noticeable. I pointed my confusion at her.
She pressed a kiss to my forehead, the gentlest she’d ever been. “Use it well.”
Bleeding hells was she telling me to kill Jarl? I hardly knew what to think.
Runa chirped a shrill laugh across the room as she returned her rings to her fingers. “Ah, mother, I doubt Elise needs advice on bedding anyone. Tell me sister, what is it like being the whore of such a violent man?”
My mother closed her eyes and paled.
“I wouldn’t know,” I said. Even if Runa taunted me, talk of Valen helped calm my racing heart. “I have only known him to be loyal. Gentle. The most attentive man I’ve met. You wish to shame me for being his lover, but I could never bear shame for such a thing. Anything I ask, he would give it unconditionally.”
I chose my words carefully. True as they were, I enjoyed how Runa’s smile faded. “In fact, he is only brutal when those he loves are threatened. I do hope you realize that, sister.”
Runa frowned and turned away, adding a silver tiara to her head.
“Have I upset you?” I asked with a bite. “Is Calder not satisfying? Or has he not yet come to his queen, and instead spends his nights elsewhere.”
“Shut up, Elise!” Runa burst to her feet. “You think you’re so clever, so strong. Well, let me tell you something little sister, by morning your precious Blood Wraith will belong to Castle Ravenspire. Either he serves us, or you will watch him carved to pieces on the rack. I do hope you realize that.”
She insisted we leave, then stormed away. My mother scurried around the room, gathering blossoms to place in my hair, or on the hem of my gown during vows. It only irritated me.
“Stop Maj,” I said. “You do not walk me to a blessed vow ceremony. You walk me toward death.”
My mother stopped. A look I’d never seen in her eyes flashed like a spark of embers. “Do I? I must’ve been mistaken, then. If I had a love as you described, I imagine I would find the strength to keep living until I took it back. Forgive me if I misjudged your conviction.”
She left me with nothing but the sting of her last words. All my life my mother, though she outranked my father, was a silent partner. A prize won by a wealthy man’s son. But for a moment, just now, she bore the fire of a warrior. A fighter.
I gathered my gown, a new burn in my heart. Today, even if vows were forced, it changed nothing. There would be one man who held my heart, and I would fight until the day I could tell him the depths of mine.
Even if it killed me. Even if those were my final words. Valen Ferus would know I was his. I always had been.
The celebration was rife with colors and music and tart sweetness. Minstrels hummed to lutes, lyres, and a cheery panpipe beneath a black canopy. Linens woven in sun red, sea blue, and honeysuckle orange draped the tall posts around the guest seating. Lanterns with pale flames brightened the fading sunlight in an Otherwordly glow. As if sunlight had been trapped and bottled for our use.
As guests waited, bards danced between rows singing tales of wonderment of our land and people. They spun on toes, clambered atop chairs, and entertained. At the end of songs, the bards tipped hats for shim or glittering things, and the entertained obliged.
Across the sides of the courtyard were tables toppled in too much food. Candied pears smothered in sugar sauce. Rolls and cakes drizzled in icings of all kinds: berry, sweet butter, bitter chocolate, tart jellies. Roasted hens with herb sauce lined silver platters. And endless fountains of sour wines and honey ales would keep guests drenched through the night.
I stood behind the bladed staffs of two ravens. My ankles were fettered beneath my gown, my wrists bound under the flowing sleeves. At my side my mother waited, unmoved. She made no sound as we watched Runa and Calder stand beneath an archway of moonvane.
I grinned at the blossoms. Even on this day of pain, Valen would be here.
The clergy of the All Father stood before them, draped in red robes, repeating the vows to my sister and the king. Another holy man placed gold crowns of raven wings atop their heads when they kneeled.
“Stig upp vӓr herre och dam,” the holy man said. Calder and Runa stood, hand in hand, king and queen.
Applause and praises to the king rose over the peaceful music. After a turn around the courtyard, Calder and Runa were directed to the black oak thrones seated at the top of a royal dais. At their feet were stacks of gifts. From gold, silver, purses of shim, to glittering exotic fabric and shoes.
My sister grinned at her newly acquired power, then turned her wretchedness to me. A single nod and my fate was sealed.
The ravens moved their staffs and took me under each arm. My mother insisted she be at my side but was refused. I shared a look with her. We had never been close, never been affectionate, but in that single glance I saw her fear, her heartbreak for me. Not as a second, insignificant princess, but as her daughter.
Jarl waited in front of the king and queen and the same clergyman. He forced me to take his hand. I was sure those observing the vows could see how my wrists were bound, and it was disgusting how no one even made the slightest gasp. Doubtless everyone here believed me to be undeserving to vow with such a man as Jarl Magnus. I would be better suited with my head on a pike, traitor as I was.
“Wait, holy man,” Calder said when the clergyman opened his mouth. “I want to be sure my dear sister does not have any doubt.”
With a signal to the left wing of the dais, a raven dragged out a skinny girl dressed in a white robe, her face veiled. My heart dropped.
“Now, my little witch, make sure this goes forward.”
Calista smoothed her robe and cleared her throat, her voice rife with irony. “Oh, gods who listen, gods who command the fates. Make sure these stupid folk get exactly what they deserve.”
She squeaked when the nearest guard punched his fist into the back of her head.
“Stop!” I shouted. “Leave her alone.”
Runa chuckled. “One might think you had sympathy for strange Night Folk, sister.”
Calista rubbed the back of her head and straightened her shoulders again. I’m sure she cursed Runa for calling her Night Folk but kept quiet to avoid being hit again.
“She’s a child,” I said. “Leave her be.”
Calder grinned. He’d won. “As you say, Kvinna Elise. Behave yourself, do as your king demands, and the little witch will not be forced to cast her spells of fate. She’ll be untouched.”
“Don’t listen to them, kind heart. I can take it.”
“It would seem, husband, my pathetic sister has been making friends during her time in the dungeons.”
Calder laughed and the crowd followed his lead. Runa wished to humiliate me. These people meant nothing to me, not anymore. Let them laugh. They did not know what that child could do, nor whose rage awaited them outside these walls.
“Continue,” Calder demanded.
The red robed holy man turned to Jarl and me and began his old language ritual. Jarl’s eyes devoured me; he did not even hide it.
“I’ve wanted this for a long time. To know what it felt like to have Kvinna Elise. You should’ve chosen me long ago and we might’ve avoided all this unpleasantness.”
“I never would’ve chosen you,” I said.
“Because you believed you could love your vow negotiator.”
“Because your soul is black, and I would have seen you for what you are eventually.”
Jarl grinned. “I look forward to meeting the Blood Wraith again. The king has given me the first blow. We have ways of twisting him, you know. Ways of making him compliant.”
“Your fury poisons? He is stronger than whatever you have.”
Jarl leaned forward, perhaps a romantic gesture from the outside, but his words were nothing but ice. “You have no idea what fury lives in this castle.”
“And you have no idea what fury lives beyond it.”
A sneer tightened Jarl’s face. He lowered his voice. “I will break you, Elise. I will make you forget how to use your voice until you live to obey my word. It begins tonight, wife.”
I said nothing but held his contempt with my own. Fight. I would fight. There was more to say, more I needed to do before this man wiped me from the earth. I grew lost in my own thoughts I hardly noticed when the clergyman finished speaking. He named us vowed. My pulse quickened and Jarl narrowed his eyes into something ferocious and cruel. He gripped the back of my head and forced my mouth to his. I bit his lip until I tasted the tang of his blood.
He pulled back in a hiss, dabbed his lip, and raised his fist. Before he landed the strike a shudder caused the posts around the guests to groan.
Jarl stared at the ground, confused, but the moment passed. He took me by the hair, grinning, blood on his teeth. “My King. I ask permission to leave with my wife. To show her how a true woman of Timoran is to behave.”
Calder chuckled darkly. “Take your leave. And may the gods grant you luck.”
I tried to keep quiet, but Jarl tugged on my hair with such force, I let out a cry of pain as he dragged me off the vow podium.
The knife my mother had given me was hot against my skin. Jarl would have it in his back soon enough. I’d murder, I’d run, I’d do it all to be free of this place and back with Valen Ferus.
A collective gasp ran up through the crowd when the ground seized once again. Sharper this time, enough to topple the fattest hen from its platter.
Jarl kept his hand in my hair but drew us to a pause. I smiled, unguarded. Tears of relief gathered in the corners of my eyes when I titled my face at Jarl and laughed. “You did not find him, Jarl Magnus. He found you.”
It was then the ravens at the front portcullis shouted alarms. Calder rose from his seat and commanded the nearby ravens to surround the courtyard. I laughed harder when a violent tremble drew the guests to their feet, screaming.
Jarl glared at me. He adjusted, so his arm was tight around my neck, his blade pointed at my ribs.
From the low place in the courtyard, it was difficult to make out the front gates. Screams vibrated down the slope. Shouts came. Smoke rose. Steel crashed. I didn’t know how much time passed, a few breaths, a full clock turn, but when a figure broke through the rising smoke, my knees gave under my weight. I let a tear fall.
Valen, dressed in black, one axe on his waist, the other notched under Ulf’s chin, dragged the whimpering traitor through the clouds. The guards around the courtyard raised their swords in a warning.
Our distance made it difficult to see his face, but his voice carried. Deep, harsh, demanding. “Were you expecting us to come from the back, false king? We found your spy and decided to bring him through the front door.”
Jarl turned back to the royal dais, forcing me to go with him. Runa was stiff, her grip white on the arms of her throne. Calder’s face tightened. He glowered at me, then back at Valen. “Legion Grey, you are outnumbered. Stop whatever foolish attack you think you have started. Come, let us talk as dignified men.”
“I am neither dignified nor here to talk to you, false king.”
“If you’ve come for Kvinna Elise,” Calder shouted, “I’m afraid she has taken vows with another. You are too late.”
I could not see it, but a grin coated Valen’s voice. “A few forced words change nothing for me. I wish to return your spy.” The crowd gasped and screamed when Valen ripped his axe across Ulf’s throat. For a moment the bulky man choked on his own blood until Valen shoved his lifeless body down the hillside. “Next, I will tell you Elise will be coming with me.”
Calder muttered to his guards to make the capture or kill if necessary. “Anything else, Blood Wraith? Any other demands you have when you have no leg to stand on in my court?”
“Yes,” he said. The ground shuddered, and even Calder staggered back when a crack drove down the center of the courtyard. “I would have you cease calling me Blood Wraith and Legion Grey. Those names grow old and irritating.”
Calder scoffed, but there was a twinge of nervousness in it. “Oh, please, then. Tell us what we should know you by, so we might mark your grave correctly.”
The crack widened. Jarl was forced to dodge. We landed in a heap beside one of the wooden posts. I elbowed him, but he held my head in the dirt. It didn’t matter, I stopped struggling, desperate to hear every coming word.
“My name is Valen Ferus, the Night Prince of Etta! And you, false king, you are in my seat.”