Please log in to recommend or discuss...
My mind is thick with fever as my mother forces me to rest. “I am eleven,” I tell her. “I’m already a man—I do not need rest.” I’m certain it’s true, and yet, I slip into a restless slumber.
I dream of our meager farmhouse filled with the scent of cornmeal and venison stew.
I dream of my family and hear the sound of my father’s trowel, creaking as he fits a new handle for repairs. I hear my sisters’ peals of laughter, drifting in from outside as they feed the animals.
When I wake again, it’s to bloodcurdling screams, men with swords outside the window, and flaming arrows arching through the sky. I wake to fire and pain and the horrific sounds of death as I frantically try to escape the farmhouse.
I’m shouting for my family. Crying out for anyone who will hear me as the flames lick up the walls and the smoke burns my eyes and throat. But the door to safety won’t open, and as breaking boards crack, the roof falls around me, and everything goes black.
The darkness is fleeting, and searing pain lances through me, stirring every inch of my body awake again. The scent of woodsmoke and burning flesh fills my nose, and when I open my eyes again, I see her peering down at me from atop her horse—a vision of red against the snow so white, she looks like a goddess of fire. Her armor glints against muted daylight. A Valkyrie?
“You are safe with me, child,” she says.
A cart creaks as the world passes slowly by. I’m moving, I realize, and my savior’s big, brown steed keeps pace beside me, cloaked in armor of his own. There is a look in the woman’s eyes—a torment I don’t understand. Her deep red hair falls from its plaited crown into her face, and blood speckles her cheeks.
“What—”
“Be still, child. You must rest,” she commands.
“Who—” I lick my lips, burned to the touch, and my throat is so raw, it hurts to breathe. “Who are you?” I rasp.
“Quiet now.”
The longer I look at her pensive stare, the more I understand. Even if I’ve never seen the queen, I know her sigil—the elk antlers set upon the cross. She is the leader of armies, feared throughout the land, yet she looks down on me with tenderness.
“I have saved you, child,” she says tersely. “You are mine now, and under my care. You will return with me to Winterwood Keep, to heal. Now, I command that you rest.”
My aching, thrumming heartbeat nearly beats from my chest. Hers? I don’t know what it means. And I don’t know why I am with her, only that I hear my family’s screams in distorted memories and the putrid scent of death is singed in my senses.
Tears blur my eyes as reality ekes its way in, nudging at the numbness and confusion until all I hear are my earsplitting sobs. Once again, as the pain and confusion become all too much, the world fades away.
Days go by before I wake. I can still smell the smoke every time I close my eyes, and I can still feel the bludgeoning hit that sent me to my knees before my world spiraled to black.
At first, I cry because of the pain in the right side of my body—in my arm, my side, and my leg. Then I cry with longing and sorrow as my pleas to the gods go unanswered. My family is dead. My home is no more. The queen has taken me, and the life I had will never be again.
“I have saved you . . . You are mine now.” Queen Sigrid’s words continue to loop through my mind, and still, I cannot decipher them. I am hers? Her slave? A pet for her to play with? It’s hard to think as physicians prod my tender flesh.
Servants tend to me night and day, changing my bandages and cleaning my wounds. And the queen silently watches from the doorway. There’s a sadness in her eyes I don’t understand. She doesn’t address me, only speaking when she commands something from her servants.
More days pass before I am allowed to leave my bed and hobble around the room, thick with the sharp aroma of herbs. Though it’s a large room, it has no embellishments, and still, it’s more lavish than any room I’ve ever been in. Its view of the snowy gardens brings me what little peace I have in this strange place, and the fire in the stone hearth fills it with warmth.
Mary, a middle-aged servant who often tends to me, comes in with a fresh wash basin and sets it on the bedside table. She eyes my untouched plate of food.
“Will you not eat, young sir?” she says, lifting the fork of cold meat to my mouth.
I turn away from her. I don’t know if my stomach hurts from hunger or sadness, but I have no appetite. I cannot settle or relax like the queen commands, because even with so many people bustling in and out of my room, I have never felt more alone.
“Please,” Mary says again, and this time it sounds like a plea. “You must eat. The queen demands it.” There is fear in the woman’s brown eyes, and though I fear living this unrecognizable life more than I fear the queen, I do not wish for Mary to feel her wrath either.
I take a bite of ham, chewing slowly as I lay my head back down. The skin and tendons of my body ache and pull with the slightest movement. What good is being alive if my body is broken? If I cannot hunt or fish, and can barely walk? Squeezing my eyes shut, I wish death would reunite me with the rest of my family.
As Mary lifts another piece of ham to my lips, I want to shout with anger and curse the gods. I move my mouth away from the meat, cringing at the cutting pain. Tears burn the backs of my eyes as my throat swells shut, despite my urge to scream.
Instead, I exhale and swallow it all away, refusing to let the tears come. They will not save my family, because my family is already dead.
Because I could not save them.
Because I was sick and weak.
“Will he be all right?” A curious little voice squeaks from across the room, one I have not heard before. Lifting my head, I find an impish girl with huge green eyes and unruly red curls hugging the doorway.
“Ah, princess,” Mary hisses, spinning around to the little girl. “You should not be here. Your mother has forbidden it.”
Princess?
The little girl frowns, sticking out her bottom lip with an angry pout. “But I just wanted to see if he is all right.”
“He will be fine,” Mary chides, wiping her hands on her apron as she hurries to the little girl.
“Will I?” I ask Mary, skeptical.
Mary glares back at me. “You know you will, young master. You are clearly too stubborn to die. Just as you are too stubborn to eat, when I know you are hungry.”
“You shouldn’t call me that,” I tell her. Sighing, I rest my head again, staring at the rafters in the ceiling.
I feel Mary’s impatient gaze on me. “Call you what? Young m
aster?”
“I am not your master. I am no one.”
“The queen says differently,” Mary counters. “You are her pet now. She will see that you heal.”
I lift onto my good elbow, wincing as my body is riddled with pain. “I am no one’s pet,” I seethe.
Mary stops manhandling the princess back toward the door and looks at me. But it is the princess who speaks. “You are her pet,” she rebukes, tearing her arm from the servant’s hold. “If my mother says so, you have no choice.” Though I hate to admit it, I like the fire in the princess’s eyes. She reminds me of my little sister, and my heart aches as reality sets in again.
“Leave me alone,” I tell them both, lying down again.
“You should not be alone,” the princess says with indignation, and her dress rustles as she runs over.
“The young master is not alone,” Mary grumbles. “Now come—”
The princess climbs onto my bed, jostling my body before Mary can get to her.
I growl in pain.
“Princess,” Mary hisses again.
My flesh seems to move two ways at once, and I grimace.
“Apologies,” the princess whispers meekly. “I just wanted to give you this.”
Exhaling the lingering pain, I open my eyes to find a misshapen piece of obsidian in her palm. It’s the size of my little finger. “Mountain glass,” she explains. “Gorm told me that mountain stones help you feel at peace.” She shrugs, handing it to me. “I found it when I was playing in the graveyard.”
I look at her from the corner of my eye. “You were playing in the graveyard?”
She nods.
“Is that not . . . peculiar for a princess?”
Her big green eyes dim. “There is nothing else to do,” she says, taking o
ffense. “You do not have to keep it.” The princess grabs for the stone in my hand.
“Do not be hasty,” I tell her, closing my fist around it. “I am still looking at it.” Holding the black mirror glass up to the light, I watch it shimmer. “I rarely see onyx glass,” I admit. “There is little of it where I am from.” My heart aches as I glare at it.
“Do you like horses?” the princess chirps, her dejection forgotten. She folds her legs in front of her as if she plans to stay a while. “I always miss riding when I am sick. And when you are better, you can come ride Lightning. Gorm brought him for me after his last battle. He said every princess needs a pretty horse.” When I say nothing, too busy staring at the stone, the princess twitters on. “So, you want to keep it, then?” she asks. She looks hopeful, and I’m not sure why, but my eyes instantly cloud with tears.
“For a little while,” I say, finally meeting her gaze. The princess can’t be more than six or seven—just five years younger than me—and she brought me a gift. “Thank you,” I whisper.
“Do you want to be friends?” she replies gleefully. “You are alone, and I am alone. But we don’t have to be.”
I frown and look at Mary. “Are there not two Storrada princesses?”
The servant nods, her fists on her hips, peering down at my visitor with waning patience.
“Siggy does not count,” the princess grumbles, and she leans back against the wall. “She is always with Mother. I never see her. Everything is so boring.”
Through her grumbles, though, I see true loneliness in the little girl’s eyes, and hear it in her reedy voice. I can imagine it is difficult for a child in a place like this, and yet, she is the princess, living in a castle with all she could possibly desire, save for a companion. I cannot empathize with her. I refuse to.
“So,” she says timidly, “perhaps we can be friends.”
I find that her presence is strangely comforting despite myself, and when I look at the princess from the corner of my eye, her expression earnest and beseeching, it makes me frown. “How is it I am the one lying here, burned to a crisp, and it is you—the princess who has everything in the world—I feel sorry for?”
She shrugs, picking at her fingers. “But . . . does that mean you will be my friend?”
“Perhaps,” I tell her, because she’s amusing if nothing else.
Her entire face lights with glee. “Really? I have never had a friend before. Lightning doesn’t count.”
“Your horse? No, I suppose he does not.”
The princess scans my body closely, her excitement contorting to sympathy and confusion. For some reason, her inspecting my wrapped body doesn’t bother me the way it does when everyone else is scrutinizing me.
“Did my mother do that to you?” she whispers, and her cheeks pinken as she meets my gaze.
“No, your mother—” The words die on my lips as I recall the blood on the queen’s armor and the inferno her men pulled me from. No one has been allowed to talk to me about what happened, and only now do I realize why. “Yes,” I grit out. “Your mother did this to me.” My body protests, but the tension lacing through every part of me is outside of my control. Fury and confusion wage a war in my head that leaves my temples pounding. Silently, I curse the queen. I don’t want to be here, alive and in pain. And I wish the fire had taken me—that blackness would swallow me whole once and for all.
The princess looks sad, and even if it is irrational to blame her for any of it, I don’t want to look at her.
I can’t bear it, so I shut my eyes. I don’t want to see those shimmering, sympathetic green eyes intent on me. “Go away, princess. Leave me be.” I swallow thickly. I have hardly moved in days, yet exhaustion makes it all feel unbearable. “Go,” I repeat. “I want to be alone.”
“But—” Her voice cracks a little. “I thought we were friends?”
I would turn on my side if I could. I would hide myself away from the world, but I am forced to lie as I am, and it only enrages me more. “I said go—”
“Thora!” the queen barks from the doorway, making us both jump. In two strides, she walks in, takes her daughter’s arm, and yanks
her off the bed.
The princess shrieks, and I wince as my body jostles again.
Queen Sigrid glares at Mary, and I note the eldest daughter standing in the doorway, closer to my age. All she does is watch the commotion in a meek sort of silence.
“I told you she was to leave the boy alone,” the queen growls at Mary, and if I didn’t know better, I would think the queen had fangs.
Mary apologizes profusely, offering one excuse after the other, but the queen ignores her as she wrenches Thora from the room.
The princess whimpers but doesn’t fight against her mother as she is pulled out the door.
“Must I always do everything myself?” the queen growls. “As if I do not have a kingdom to fortify and people to protect.” Her voice booms from the hallway. Then I hear Thora whimper again and what sounds like a smack.
My jaw aches as I grit my teeth, and I hate myself for not showing the princess a little more kindness.
But this is not my home, and she is not my friend, I remind myself. None of this is right. I should not even be here.
And staring at the onyx stone in my hand, I think of tossing it to the floor or out the window, wanting nothing from these people. Only ...my fist clenches tightly around it instead.
