"You're welcome," I said, instead of explaining that I hadn't meant to kill Kennet. I'd been hoping to get him to tell me who he was working for, but since Konstantin had filled me in later, it didn't seem to matter now.
And then I realized something. "What are you doing here? I heard Doldastam was on lockdown."
"It is." Tilda grimaced. "Everything has completely gone to hell since you left, and I couldn't stay any longer. There was no way I could have a baby there, so I had to get out when I could." She'd absently rubbed her stomach as she spoke.
"How far along are you now?" I asked.
"Almost five months." She smiled. "It's so weird because I'm already starting to feel more like a mom."
Hearing her say the word made me think of my own parents and how I hadn't heard anything from them since I'd been gone.
"Do you know how my parents are doing?" I asked.
Her smile fell away. "I've seen them around. I won't lie to you--things are hard for them right now. They've both lost their jobs, and people don't trust them. But they're safe, and they're still together. They're as free as anyone else in Doldastam."
I let that sink in for a moment. My parents were safe, and they were together.
"How did you get out of Doldastam?" I asked.
"Pretty much the same way you did," Tilda said. "I snuck out with Ridley."
My heart skipped a beat at the mention of his name. "What do you mean, Ridley?"
"He can explain it to you better. He convinced Mina to send him out on an errand."
"He can explain it?" I asked, and my mouth suddenly felt dry. "What do you mean? Where is he?"
"He's here." Tilda motioned toward the door. "I think he's outside talking with Finn. But you can go see him." She slowly got to her feet. "Mia offered me tea when we got here, and I think I'm going to take her up on the offer."
I stood up, feeling dazed. "Tilda. I am glad you got out, and I'm really glad that you're safe."
She smiled. "Me too. And you have no idea how happy it makes me, knowing that you're safe."
We hugged again, this time quicker than before, and then she left me so I could find Ridley.
THIRTY-SIX
reserve
The clouds that had moved in earlier, darkening the lunch with Queen Wendy and King Loki, had brought rain along with them. It was a heavy garden shower, with thunder rumbling in the distance.
I stepped out into it, not minding the cold drops that fell on my bare shoulders, and looked around for Finn and Ridley. They weren't far from the house, standing underneath the awning that stretched past a barn that had once housed goats.
Ridley had his back to me as I approached, but the lines of his body were unmistakable to me. His strong shoulders, the narrowing of his waist beneath his loose olive jacket, the dark curls of his hair that could never be completely tamed.
When I reached them, Finn excused himself, and nodded at me as he walked toward the house. It seemed to take ages for Ridley to turn around to face me, but in reality, it was probably only a few seconds.
And then he was looking at me--the strong line of his jaw darkened by a few days' stubble, the richness of his olive skin, his lips barely parted as he breathed, and the dark mahogany of his eyes burning with an intensity that made everything inside me melt.
Ridley was really here. My Ridley.
It wasn't until then that I realized I'd been holding my breath, and I breathed in deeply. He lowered his eyes, hiding his gaze behind his heavy lashes.
"What are you doing here?" I asked finally.
"I came to find you," he said, his voice low and thick, and it sounded strangely far away. Like he was holding something back.
Calvin, Hanna's small pony, was out in the yard, running around and splashing in the puddles. Ridley turned, preferring to look out at the pony than at me.
The thatched roof of the awning had seen better days, and rain dripped in around us. It soaked the bales of straw stacked up beside us, and beneath my bare feet the ground was cold and muddy. Other than Calvin, we were alone. And Ridley wouldn't look at me.
A shiver ran through me, but it wasn't because I was cold.
"You're soaking wet," he commented, glancing at me out of the corner of his eye. "You want my jacket?"
I shook my head, but he'd already started slipping it off. He walked over to me and draped his jacket over my shoulders. His hand brushed against my bare skin, and he smelled cold and crisp, the way he always did. As he adjusted the jacket, he looked down at me. For a moment we were looking into each other's eyes, and all I could think about was the night we'd spent together.
Then he looked away and stepped back from me. I slipped my arms into the sleeves, which were still warm from his body heat. I wondered dourly if this was as close as he would get to touching me.
The distance between us felt immeasurable. The last time I'd seen him, he'd held me in his arms and kissed me deeply. He'd wanted to run away with me, but it had been dangerous, and I needed him to stay behind and make sure my parents and Tilda and Ember were okay.
Every night since, I'd had nightmares about him being ripped away from me. And as we stood here, with so much tension filling the gulf between us, I feared that all my nightmares had come true.
"Why did you come find me?" I asked. "You knew where I was. You sent me here."
"I had to get out of Doldastam," he said simply. "Queen Mina wants you captured and convicted, and I managed to convince her that I wanted that too. That you'd betrayed me so badly that I would go out and bring you back for her."
I swallowed hard. "Do you think I betrayed you?"
"No, of course not." He dismissed the idea immediately. "I just had to tell Mina that so I could get out of there."
"What's your plan now that you're here?" I asked.
He let his eyes rest on me. "Honestly, I don't have one."
"It's hard to know what to do when everything is falling apart."
Ridley rubbed the back of his neck, then turned away, again watching Calvin prance through puddles. Without looking at me, he asked, "You're working with Konstantin Black now? When did that start?"
"After I left," I said, realizing how much I had to explain to Ridley. How much had happened while we'd been apart. "He found me. He defected from Viktor, and he thought we might help each other."
"Have you been?"
"I think so," I said.
"He hasn't ... hurt you or anything?" Ridley looked at me, and there was no jealousy in his eyes--only genuine concern.
I shook my head quickly. "No. No, nothing like that."
"Good. It's just..." He sighed. "For weeks, I didn't know what was happening with you. I was worrying about all the terrible things that might be going on."
"I had a run-in with a bear, but otherwise, I'm okay." I tried to force a smile, to ease some of the tension, but it didn't work.
"Finn told me about that," was all Ridley said.
"I worried about you too," I said, deciding that speaking from the heart might work better. "I thought of you every day, and I was so afraid of what might be happening to you." His jaw clenched, and he stared down at a small stone that he kicked at absently. "What happened after I left?"
"It's over now," he said, almost growling. "That's what matters."
"What does that mean?"
"It's getting cold out here. I think I'm gonna head back inside." Rather abruptly, he started to walk past me.
"Ridley," I said, but he just kept going.
I pulled his jacket more tightly around me and tried to make sense of what had just happened. This was not at all how I'd pictured my reunion with Ridley. There had been much more kissing.
I was so relieved to see him, to know that he was okay, but after that exchange, I had no idea how to feel.
From the corner of my eye, I saw movement. I quickly turned my head, but I couldn't see anything. Then it moved again, and in the shadows between the doorway to the barn and stacks of straw, I realized that I coul
d see a black shirt, floating disembodied thanks to the chameleonlike skin of the Kanin.
Someone was there, spying on me.
THIRTY-SEVEN
derailed
I rushed over, preparing to get the jump on whoever it was, as my mind raced with thoughts of a Kanin spy stowing away with Ridley. Someone working for Mina coming to gather information and trap us.
But just before I punched at the black shirt, I heard Konstantin's voice. "Easy, white rabbit! It's just me!"
He appeared to materialize out of thin air--the brown brick of the wall and the dirty yellow of the straw quickly shifting to his normal skin tone. Konstantin had his hands up defensively, but since he had been eavesdropping on me, I punched him in the arm anyway. Not very hard, but enough to let him know that I was annoyed.
He scowled at me as he rubbed his shoulder. "That was uncalled-for."
"Why were you stalking me like that?" I demanded.
"I wasn't. I just came out to talk to you, and then you were in the middle of something, and I didn't want to interrupt the moment, so I just thought I'd hide out and wait for it to be over," Konstantin said. "And it's over now."
I narrowed my eyes at him. "That's creepy. Don't be creepy."
"What was going on with that guy anyway?" he asked. "Is he your boyfriend?"
I ran my hand through my wet hair and turned away from Konstantin. "Never mind."
"That's just as well. I didn't come out here to talk about him anyway."
"What did you come out for?"
"Mia got a call from the palace." He motioned vaguely behind me, in the direction of where the palace sat hidden among the trees a mile down the road. "Those friends of yours came in through the gate, so the Queen got word of it. She wants to meet with you and Ridley in the morning to discuss what's happening."
"Discuss what?" I asked.
"Probably why there's like half a dozen people hiding out in Finn's house, and how long everyone plans on staying here," he said.
I nodded. "That makes sense."
"I overheard Mia say that Ridley is the Overste now?" Konstantin asked.
"He was before I left. I'm not sure if he still is. I'm not sure about anything anymore..." I trailed off.
"Ridley's younger than me, and he wasn't on the Hogdragen, so I didn't really know him," Konstantin explained. "But you know how small the tracker school was, so I knew of him. He always seemed like a punk kid with a chip on his shoulder. I didn't know he had it in him to be the Overste."
"That was a long time ago," I reminded Konstantin. "He's grown up since then. We all have."
"Time does have a way of doing that to you."
He was right, and I realized how much the last few months had changed us--me, Ridley, Tilda, and even Konstantin. It was strange to look back and realize how much simpler things had been before I caught sight of Konstantin following Linus Berling.
"That one moment changed everything and put it all in motion," I said, thinking aloud.
Konstantin's thick brows rose in surprise, and then, as if reading my mind, he said, "When you got into my car in Chicago. It changed the course of my life entirely."
"Good. Your life needed a change of course."
He smirked. "That it did."
I turned away, staring out at the pouring rain around us. "Now where do we go from here?"
"I don't know. But I can't see anything good for you in Doldastam." He shook his head. "Only death and destruction."
THIRTY-EIGHT
gathering
An awkward night spent in Finn and Mia's increasingly cramped house did nothing to ease the tension between Ridley and me. I wanted to talk to him, to find out what was going on, but it was impossible to get a moment alone. There was always someone--usually Liam--in the way.
I'd taken the floor in Hanna's room, so Tilda could have the bed, and Ulla had gone back to Liam's room again. Ridley slept on the couch, while Konstantin strangely took the stables, insisting he'd gotten used to sleeping anywhere.
In the morning, I awoke with an awful crick in my neck. The bandages on my side were a bit bloodier than normal, probably from pressing too hard on the floor, but it was nothing that I couldn't survive.
First thing after breakfast, Ridley and I walked down to the palace for the meeting with Queen Wendy. We spoke very little on the way there, mostly commenting on the weather or the way the gravel stung my feet. Even though we were together for the first time in ages, the distance between us stretched further than ever before.
We'd been shown into the palace and left to wait outside the Queen's office. Presumably, she had some business to attend to before she'd let us in. There was no waiting area, so we stood in the hall just outside the office.
Ridley leaned back against the wall, staring down the corridor with a look of boredom and annoyance. The top few buttons of his shirt had been left undone, the way they usually were, but I noticed that his rabbit amulet was absent. It had been his gift from the kingdom upon becoming Rektor three years ago, and I'd never seen him without it before.
I wanted to ask him where it was or why he wasn't wearing it, but I doubted I'd get any kind of answer from him. Everything he'd said to me since he'd been here had been little more than a word or a grunt. It was like he couldn't even bring himself to speak to me.
I did my best to keep my head up and my expression neutral, like this wasn't breaking my heart all over again.
"One thing's for sure," Ridley said at length. "We can't all keep staying at Finn's house."
"I plan on leaving soon anyway," I told him honestly.
He jerked his head to look at me. "Why? Where are you going?"
"Doldastam."
His eyes darkened. "You can't go back there. Mina will have you killed."
"I didn't realize you even cared," I replied wearily.
"What are you talking about? Of course I care," Ridley said in an angry whisper.
I studied him, standing across from me. His hands were clenched on the chair rail that ran along the wall behind him, and his expression had softened. For one of the first times since he'd arrived in Forening, I could actually see the guy I'd fallen in love with.
"Do you?" I asked softly.
He stepped away from the wall and moved toward me. With only inches between us, he stopped, and looked down at me in the way that made my heart beat erratically. He had this wonderful, dizzying way of making the whole world disappear for a few moments, so it was only me and him, and all the rest of my fears and worries fell away.
Ridley opened his mouth like he meant to say something, but I'll never know exactly what it was, because the Queen's office door opened, interrupting us, and Ridley quickly stepped back from me.
Chancellor Bain leaned out into the hallway, hanging onto the door as he did, and offered us an apologetic smile. "Sorry to keep you waiting. But the Queen is ready to see you now."
"Thank you," Ridley said. He glanced at me from the corner of his eye and straightened his shirt, then followed Bain into the office.
I took a second longer to collect myself. Thanks in part to my much fairer skin flushing so noticeably, it was a bit harder for me to return to normal after moments like that with Ridley.
The Queen's office was smaller than I'd expected. The entire exterior wall consisted of floor-to-ceiling windows, which helped it feel a bit larger than it actually was. Two of the three interior walls were all shelves filled to the brim with books.
A large oak desk sat in the center of the room. Along the edges, vines had been carved into it, but that was a reoccurring theme throughout the room, with vines carved into crown molding and the frames around the window.
On the wall across from the desk were two large paintings--one of the previous Queen Elora, Wendy's mother, and the other was of Wendy, her husband, and an adorable boy of about three years old, presumably their son, Prince Oliver.
When I came into the room, Bain sat cross-legged in one of the leather chairs in front of the desk,
while Ridley preferred to stand, leaving the other chair empty. Wendy was standing with her hands on the desk, leaning forward to look down at the papers spread over it.
"Can you close the door behind you?" she asked absently, still staring down at the papers before her.
I did as I was told, and when I came back to stand beside Ridley, I got a better look at what held her attention so raptly. It was a scroll, with a quartz paperweight placed at either end to keep it from rolling up. Still, a portion had flipped just enough for me to see the wax seal at the top--a rabbit pressed in white wax. The symbol of the Kanin.
Trolls weren't completely prehistoric--they would call or send e-mail, even text. It was so much faster than airmail, even though that scroll had probably been overnighted to a local town by FedEx and retrieved by a Trylle messenger. But we used scrolls for formal business, like invitations, gratitude, proclamations, and declarations of war.
I waited, holding my breath, to find out which one of those it was, although with Mina, I feared I already knew the answer.
THIRTY-NINE
proclamation
"That Queen of yours has gone totally mad," Wendy said finally.
"She's no Queen of mine," I replied without thinking, and Bain smiled in approval, causing his blue eyes to light up.
Wendy straightened, but kept her eyes fixed on the scroll. "This just arrived, so it isn't what I'd invited you here to talk about. I only meant to ask you about your plans in Forening. But I know about your past relationship with the Skojare, so I'm sure you'd want to know."
"Know what?" I asked, instantly fearing that something had happened to Linnea Biaelse, or perhaps her husband Mikko or grandmother Lisbet.
The Queen finally looked at us, her dark tawny eyes sad. "The Kanin have declared war on the Skojare."
"What?" Ridley asked, sounding as shocked as I felt.
"Why would Mina do that?" I asked in disbelief. "She'd aligned herself with them to get their..."
And that's when it hit me. Mina had not been working with the Skojare as a whole--she'd been working with specific people, like the now-dead Kennet Biaelse and the now-exiled head guard Bayle Lundeen.
She had no one to get her the sapphires anymore, so she would have to take them by force.
"It's all here." Wendy motioned to the scroll. "Assuming you can make sense of her nonsense."