Night of Masks and Knives (The Broken Kingdoms Book 4)

The Strom estate was made of a wood and wattle longhouse and a few cottages speckled amongst the surrounding trees. There were gardens made of sweet blooms and thistles with midnight purple blossoms. A fountain in the front was made of tarnished iron and shaped like the raven Huginn. In the back was a stone fountain in the form of Munnin.

It was a grand estate; one the Strom household took a great deal of pride managing.

The perfect place for an invisible stepdaughter to hide and escape to different lands where a boy had not disappeared, and the only brother who cared for her was not locked in a sea prison.

I climbed the ladder in the hayloft, exhausted, a little perplexed on how to take Hob’s memory and make use of it.

My stepfather was not the sort of man to give up anything, especially not to me. If I pressed him about the penge, I’d be forced to admit I used my mesmer—a thing he strictly forbade me to do. What was his hand in the Masque av Aska this turn? Would he know what happened to the boy who once lived here?

Ten bleeding turns I’d taken misstep after misstep, never growing closer to learning Kase’s fate.

Heaviness lined my gut. A thought came to mind, one I refused to allow except in moments as this when I was alone and weary in the hayloft. What if Kase was dead?

I closed my eyes against the instant sting. Bleeding hells. I scrubbed my face until the ache pulled back. In Klockglas, there was no room for whimpering weaklings who fell into despair.

I turned toward the open hatch in the loft, gazing at the soft glow of the main house. There was a row of narrow cabriolets and single-rider horses near the front entrance. My stepbrother, Bard, must’ve been hosting one of his fetes. All a ruse for Bard to feel more important than he was, and for his friends to descend into debauchery until dawn.

I was surprised he’d not pounded his drunken feet to the stables, demanding I serve his schoolmates he dragged here from the higher academy across the Howl.

Those mates tried relentlessly to snag a peek under my tunic. At the last attempt, I’d split the lip of one merchant’s son and was banned from the house for two weeks. If their hands were not wandering, they were pestering me with questions to try to determine if I were an Alver or not. I had yet to discover what would happen if they found out everyone in House Strom was an Alver.

Even their boon companion.

I slammed the hatch closed and locked it. The sight of Bard made me miss my other brother, Hagen, more. Truth be told, I was a little angry Hagen had gone and gotten himself locked up. I didn’t know what caused the arrest, but grew more resentful the longer he was away.

With a heavy sigh, I flopped onto my back, staring at the eaves. The damn sting would not leave my eyes.

Boots scraped over the straw in the stalls below. With slow movements, I crept to the edge of the loft and peeked over.

A smile tugged at my lips. “Elof. Favoring the night again?”

The mysterious stable hand lifted his bright blue eyes. Blue was not accurate. These eyes were a sunburst of all colors of the sea. Rich green. Sun gold. The bluest blue. Then, beneath them all was a shadow of dark. Like a deep sea cave.

Elof almost smiled. The smallest twitch in the corner of his mouth hinted he wanted to but thought better of it. “Always, dännisk.”

He faced the stall, stroking one of the mares before he lifted a few handfuls of hay into the trough. Perhaps I ought to be ashamed the way my chest heated watching the lean, smooth divots of his muscles work. But I had so few pleasures, I could not find it in me to be ashamed over this.

He was an odd laborer, working sporadically, and often arrived after the sun set. I did not know how he leveraged such a schedule with my stepfather.

One thing that could be said for Jens Strom, he did not use serfs. Many noble folk did, but Jens used paid servants. They were free here.

When Elof first came, at the first sight I’d lost my ability to speak.

Not because he was strikingly handsome, more because his face was one plucked straight from my imagination.

A face of one of the many exotic princes I’d created in tales I’d shared with Kase when we were small. Prince Fell. A prince with bright eyes and lean body so enemies underestimated him.

Ah, but our Prince Fell was clever. He outwitted his enemies until, at the end of our tale, Fell claimed the kingdom and rescued the fair maiden locked away in a dark world.

Elof had the bright eyes, but was more haggard than Prince Fell. His dark hair was tied with twine in a warrior’s knot, and on his chin was a patchy scruff of beard that seemed to change every time I saw him. Still, beneath the rugged appearance was Fell.

I’d know my fantasy prince anywhere. As a girl, I’d shaped his face after the boy who slept near me in the hayloft. Different eyes, but if I’d given Prince Fell gold eyes like the sunrise, Kase would’ve known who’d inspired the tale.

When I saw Elof, sometimes I liked to imagine a grown Kase would look a bit like him.

″Do you know my name, Elof?” I whispered as he blew out one of the lanterns.

My pulse stalled when he cut those sharp eyes in my direction. For the first time, looking at me like he saw me. “I know it. Dännisk.”

I let out a long sigh. Even to one of the servants I was nothing but a leech to the name Strom. He would not address me. Doubtless, Elof would prefer it if I kept quiet and let him be.

″As long as you know,” I said, turning away.

″You should not stay out in the towns so late.”

By the gods. This might be the first time the bleeding man had carried on a conversation. I looked over my shoulder. Elof had both hands perched on the end of the fork handle, his eyes narrowed, his jaw pulsed.

Was he . . . reprimanding me?

I snorted. “Concern noted.”

″I didn’t say concern.”

The man had a voice like a bear. Interesting. “My mistake.”

″It’s foolish, and I thought you had more brains in your head.”

Now my eyes narrowed. He had no idea the lengths I could go, how dangerous I could be.

Because I was a woman did it instantly make me a thing not to be feared? Did he instantly think I had nothing but starry eyes and romantic notions in my head? Did he truly think I didn’t know the bleeding dangers of this gods-forsaken region?

I sprawled out on my belly and perched my chin atop my fist. “Dear Elof. You might want to consider it a foolish thing for those in town to meet me after dark. They are the ones at risk, not me.”

He scoffed. No, the bastard bleeding laughed at me. A throaty sound, one rife in derision.

″What?” I propped onto my elbows. “Don’t believe me?”

What did I have to prove? Nothing to him, yet here I was determined to prove my value and wickedness when I knew it was more dangerous to reveal my mesmer to someone like him, someone I didn’t truly know, than it was to steal memories from a thief like Hob.

″I believe you think you understand how the world works, dännisk. But you don’t.”

″You don’t know me, Elof.”

He stabbed a thick pile of hay, shaking his head. “Perhaps not, but I know when someone is being brainless.”

My teeth ground together. He sounded like bleeding Kase. My old friend always told me how stupidly empty my skull was with the risks I took. Then again, he was right there taking risks with me.

″You know, Elof, I think it was better when we did not speak.”

″Agreed, dännisk. Go to sleep in your warm little bed.”

Oh. I did not care much for oddly handsome Elof anymore. My mistake breaking the façade of his princely face by causing him to speak. Dozens of sharp remarks danced on my tongue, but none suited. No doubt, each would find a way to somehow make me look a fool rather than clever.

I kept my glare on him as I backed away from the ledge. The man had the audacity to smirk—bleeding smirk—until I could no longer see his awful face anymore.

That was what I got for trying to find a new connection with another person.

Best to keep to the ghosts of the past and a brother I did not know when I’d meet again. There was Ansel, Hagen’s friend and master of the grounds for the estate, but he had his own family.

The Norns had arranged a lonely path for me. Fine. I would walk alone until I found a way to save the ones who mattered. The only ones who mattered.

I scurried to the back of the loft where I’d shaped a small nest to use as that warm, little bed. On instinct, my fingers dug through the dry hay until the tips curled around a scratch of burlap. I pulled the stuffed horse from beneath the hay and fiddled with the mane made of yarn, twisted the lone button eye. The other had been lost six turns ago. A single, unbidden tear splashed onto the chipped black button.

I sniffed and hugged the horse against my chest. “We’ll find him, Asger,” I whispered. “Want to know something? I think even as a man, he’ll keep you beside him.”

I snickered at the thought. Would grown Kase be broad and strong? Or would he favor a lean height by now?

As a boy he’d worked fields, scrubbed the stables, saddled mares. Hagen always teased him, saying Kase would outgrow him if he kept at it.

Hagen was no small man.

I hugged Asger, recalling the day I gave the horse to Kase. If I’d known it would be the last gift I’d ever give him for a birth fete, would I have done more, said more?

Or would we still have bickered because there were few days that passed without us bickering?

I’m not a bleeding little, Mallie.

You’re not a man either, you sod.

I’m older than you, and I don’t need this kind of stuff no more.

My smile mingled with tears in the mane.

Kase had whined and complained over getting a stuffed toy—one I’d spent the better half of a month scrimping and saving for the stuffing to make it—but there wasn’t a night he didn’t sleep with Asger beside him.

When my eyes grew heavy, I clung to Asger against the chill of the night and against the shadows that always thickened in the stables when the stars brightened.

Strange and heavy, as if the shadows were more than night. Sounds of Elof working below tangled in the dark. Did he not notice the mists in the stables? The way he kept working, sometimes I thought the darkness belonged to me alone.

Perhaps I was slipping into a bit of madness.

Turns of desperation and now I was imagining a presence unseen to everyone else. In truth, I’d grown more accustomed to the darkness, even found some comfort when it came. Shadows were only bothersome when the eeriness of eyes watching in the dark prickled up my neck.

I winced and drew my knees up to my chest, refusing to look over my shoulder, and fought the urge to ask Elof to light a few lanterns.

Perhaps there was a ghost in the loft.

I simply hadn’t puzzled if the ghost was friend or foe.