They would tell us if they executed him ... wouldn't they? Another tracker was talking about how they used to have public executions of traitors in the town square. I think that's what they'd do, if they decided to hang Ridley. So he must still be alive.
Osten Sundt has been promoted to working as the "acting" Overste, but they haven't given him the official title yet, so I'm hoping that's a good sign and it means that Ridley still has a chance to return to his position. To be truthful, though, I don't think anything is a good sign anymore.
I'm just keeping my head down, training and doing what they tell me. I visit Tilda most nights, because I'm afraid to leave her sitting alone in her apartment. I've tried to sneak around to see Delilah. We only just officially became an item, and both of us are getting nervous about what would happen if we got caught. At least I still get to see her training.
The King and Queen have such a stranglehold on Doldastam now. It's like they want to crush us before Viktor gets a chance to. I guess the King thinks that if he couldn't trust you, he can't trust anybody, and there is some truth to that. Except I know that he could trust you.
I know you didn't do the things they said you did, but I wish I knew what happened. What did you do? And why did you do it?
Will I ever see you again?
I know you can't answer these questions, at least not like this. But I do feel better talking to you, even if you can't hear me. And hopefully someday, you'll be able to read this.
Your friend (no matter what),
Ember
FOUR
impetus
It wasn't the worst place I'd ever stayed, but that was by a very, very, very small margin. The room smelled like dirty gym clothes and cigarettes, but the motel had met the requirements of small and secluded.
Konstantin had driven about an hour before finally spotting this sketchy-looking little motel off the edge of the highway. Based on the lack of cars in the lot, it appeared that we were the only ones here.
I tossed my duffel bag onto one of the two small beds in the room, and a plume of dust came out from the worn comforter. Konstantin had gone to the window and pulled the heavy drapes shut, casting the room in darkness.
"Sorry about that," he said and turned on a bedside lamp.
"The room sucks, but I don't care, because we're here." I had my arms crossed over my chest, and then I held out my hand to him, presenting him with the lock of hair. "Now you can tell me about this."
"That was the deal, wasn't it?" Konstantin grimaced before sitting back on the bed. "The long and short of it is that the Queen gave it to me."
My heart skipped a beat. "You mean Linnea?"
"No." He shook his head. "Mina. The Kanin Queen."
The room suddenly felt as if it had pitched to the right. The whole world seemed to go out of focus for a moment as I tried to comprehend the full of implications of what Konstantin had just told me.
"Why?" I asked breathlessly. "Why would the woman I was sworn to serve and protect want to cause me harm?"
"She didn't want to cause you harm ... at first," he corrected me. "After the whole incident where you made off with Linus Berling before I could stop you, Mina just wanted to keep tabs on you and keep you out of the way."
"But why?" I pressed on. "Why was she involved with any of this?"
"The same reason as anyone else--she wants power." He shrugged helplessly.
"Power?" I scoffed. "She already has the fucking crown in the most powerful kingdom in the troll world. What more does she want?"
"Mina's power is contingent on Evert. He has the final say on everything, and if something happens to him, she's shit out of luck. She's under his thumb just as much as anyone else, and she hates it. She wanted to rule in her own right."
I'd taken to pacing the room, processing everything Konstantin was telling me. "And how does she plan to do that? If Evert's out of the way, they'll just find a replacement..." As soon as I said that, it dawned on me. "That's why you went after Linus Berling."
"Our plan was to remove as many of the next-in-line royals as we could until it would just make the most sense for the Chancellor to leave Mina in charge," Konstantin explained. "It wasn't a guarantee, but the idea was also that if the community was in turmoil, they might be reluctant to change horses midstream. And in the meantime, Mina is doing her best to make herself seem beloved by all."
"And she thought the best way to do that was to get hooked up with Viktor Dalig?" I asked.
Konstantin lowered his eyes. "It's not that simple. Viktor promised men to help the kingdom feel threatened. Mina wanted there to be the threat of war so she could step up and show everyone how well she could rule, and she would get Evert out of the way so she could 'crush' the enemy herself and no one would depose her."
I narrowed my eyes. "Get Evert out of the way how?"
"I don't know exactly. I wasn't privy to all the details of the operation."
"If Mina's got this great plan for war on her kingdom, why'd you end up sidetracked with the Skojare?" I asked.
"To get enough men for a war, we needed money, and Mina couldn't very well take money from the Kanin. I don't know exactly how it all started, but she was at some event or another hobnobbing with other royals, and she got to talking to Kennet Biaelse, and together they cooked up this great scheme where he would get her all the sapphires she needed in exchange for getting his brother dethroned."
I sighed and sat down on the bed across from Konstantin. "So that's how Kennet got involved. How did you?"
"I was the Queen's guard. I spent night and day by her side for a year." He stared down at a stain on the carpet, then swallowed hard. "She asked me to help her, and I couldn't say no. I went after your father for Viktor. It was his revenge for your father choosing Evert for the crown, and Mina said I needed to do it to strengthen our alliance with Viktor."
He sat at the side of the bed, with his hands holding the edge, and he gripped it more tightly every time he mentioned Mina. His brows bunched up, and his jaw tensed under his dark stubble.
"That's not good enough," I said at length, and he looked up sharply at me, his eyes flashing like freshly forged steel.
"What?"
"You took an oath," I reminded him, and then began reciting the key component to him: "In times of war, I swear to defend the kingdom and fight our enemies. In times of peace, I vow to protect the King at all costs. It is my duty to kill if necessary, but never murder. A life must only be taken in preservation of the kingdom."
As I was speaking, Konstantin looked away and groaned loudly. "Come on, Bryn. You've seen enough to know that life is never that black-and-white."
"My father was an innocent man," I growled at him. "You tried to kill him because the Queen didn't like being married but still wanted to be rich and powerful. Tell me what shades of gray I'm missing."
"I'm sorry about your father! I made a mistake!" Konstantin shouted and stood up. "But I was trying to protect Mina." He let out a rough breath. "I was in love with her."
I waited a beat before deciding to ignore his confession about his feelings for Mina--at least for the moment. "Protect her from what?"
"Evert." It was Konstantin's turn to begin pacing the small motel room. "He was cold and cruel to her. When we were alone together, Mina would cry to me and tell me how awful the King was to her. That's how the affair started between us. I only wanted to comfort her and make her happy ... and it turned into something more."
"Evert can be cold." I agreed with his summation. "But I've never known him to be cruel to Mina. In fact, I've never seen him treat her with anything but respect."
It hadn't even been a week ago when I'd been in the King's parlor with Evert and Mina, both of them drunk on wine. He'd been so tender and loving with her, asking her what he'd done to deserve her, and she smiled at him.
Not to mention that Mina was constantly professing her love for Evert. I knew that abuse wasn't always obvious--people tended to do everything they could to h
ide it. But just the same, Evert didn't seem to fit the description Konstantin had laid out.
"I'm not saying I believe her now," Konstantin corrected me. "I'm saying I believed her then. I'll be the first to admit that I was far too blinded by love."
"Why didn't you just run away with her, then? Why did you resort to murder and treason?" I asked.
"I suggested it, but where would we run to? She grew up in Iskyla--a frozen, isolated wasteland that doesn't even have proper electricity. She wasn't going back to that, and she wasn't about to give up the life she'd created for herself.
"And killing Evert was out of the question, because he was the King. Somehow she convinced me that the only way for us to live happily ever after was for me to get rid of the Chancellor and start working for Viktor."
He shook his head at his own ignorance. "I don't even know how she did it. All I can say is that there is something very powerful about the conversations you have in bed with your forbidden lover."
I scowled, trying not to let myself think too much about Konstantin in bed with Mina, his arms entwined with hers as they lay in the satin sheets of her bed.
"If you loved her so much that you were willing to give up everything you worked for, everything you believed in, how can you go against her now?" I asked. "How can I trust you?"
He thought for a minute before finally saying, "I am still in love with the idea of her, the mirage that Mina showed me that was beautiful and warm and loving. But now I've come to know her well enough to see that that was nothing but a lie. The idea I had of her never existed."
"What made you realize that?" I asked.
"I'd started to realize that she was far more cold and calculating than I'd first suspected, but it was when she asked me to kill the changelings," he replied. "Initially we were only supposed to scare them off so they'd never go back with their tracker. But after Linus Berling, she told me to start murdering these innocent children ... and that's when I knew her lust for power was the only thing that mattered to her.
"Well, that and her damn rabbit," he corrected himself.
Like many other Kanin royals, Mina had a pet Gotland rabbit. They were a symbol of hope and prestige for our people, and Mina used to carry hers around everywhere she went, until Evert made fun of her for it at a party once. Then she started leaving the white rabbit in her room, but she still brought it with her anytime she went on a trip out of Doldastam.
"If she's as awful as you say she is--and I do believe you that she is--then how did it take you so long to figure it out?" I asked.
"For starters, I couldn't see her that often, because I was a wanted traitor," Konstantin expounded. "It was very tricky for her to sneak out to nearby villages to see me, usually under the guise of visiting royalty or family members. Once I think she said she'd gone for a spa weekend in a human town, but she really spent it with me.
"So I only saw her for small glimpses, and she was always putting on a good show of being this helpless victim." He sighed. "And I--being the lovesick idiot I was--ate it up."
"Why has it been so long?" I asked, realizing that he'd been lying in wait for years. "Between your initial attack on my dad until Linus Berling, there was a four-year silence. Why didn't Mina command you to make a move sooner?"
"Viktor had been trying to gather more men, and Mina had been trying to gather more money," Konstantin explained. "But time was running out. Evert was getting more impatient about having children, and Mina refused to have kids."
I shook my head. "Why?"
"Because if something happens to Evert, then her kids will inherit all his power--not her."
"Holy crap. She really is power-hungry." Then something else occurred to me. "She's been plotting her attack for four years?"
Konstantin lifted his eyes to meet mine. "Honestly? I think she's been plotting her attack since the day she met Evert, and she is one determined bitch."
FIVE
exile
Lying on top of the covers, I was still fully clothed in my jeans and tank top. Konstantin promised me that he wouldn't murder me in my sleep, and even though we had struck an uneasy alliance, I still wasn't sure how much I could trust him.
In the darkness of the motel room, I lay awake for a long time, trying to process everything that Konstantin had told me. I reanalyzed every interaction I'd had with the Queen, and the more I thought about it, the more I saw that everything Konstantin had said added up.
It explained all kinds of little things about her--her insistence on wearing her crown so often, even when Evert didn't, her constant mood shifts from warm to icy, her unreasonable hatred of me.
And then everything that had happened with Kennet. She must have instructed Kennet to flirt with me in Storvatten in an attempt to keep me too distracted to figure things out. When Kasper and I had put the pieces together, we'd told her, and she'd had us arrested before we could find out her involvement.
For the first time, some of my guilt about Kasper's death had eased. There was no way that either of us could've known that Mina was involved, and she would've had us executed. Escape had been the smartest move we could have made.
I lay awake, letting my thoughts go over the scenarios again and again, because it was so much better than sleeping. When I closed my eyes, I knew that only nightmares awaited me. Horrific images of Kasper's death haunted me every night, replaying in nauseating clarity.
Other times, my dreams would start out nicer, with Ridley. We would be in the middle of nowhere, with the aurora borealis dancing above us, and he'd look down at me with that heat in his eyes that made my heart flutter.
He'd pull me close to him, and his lips would meet mine. Somehow, in the dream, I knew this would be the last time I'd ever be with him, and I kissed him desperately.
Then, without warning, he'd be ripped from my arms. An unknown force would pull him away, dragging him off into the darkness, and I would scream his name. I would run after him, but no matter how fast I ran, I never caught up to him.
Over and over, I had these nightmares of Kasper dying and Ridley being taken away. So I fought sleep as much as I could, but eventually it won out, and darkness enveloped me.
It didn't last for long tonight, though, before it was interrupted by bright blue water. It shimmered like sapphires, and it seemed to fill every corner of my vision. I could almost feel it, cool and delicious running over my skin.
I heard her shouting before I saw her--"Bryn! Bryn!"
"What?" I asked, and my voice sounded like a strange echo, bouncing off of everything.
Suddenly a hand gripped my ankle, yanking me underwater. I started to fight it, but I realized with some surprise that I could breathe easily in the clear water that surrounded me. Even though it should all be terrifying, I felt oddly relaxed.
Linnea floated up in front of me, and the way her platinum-blond curls floated around her head made her look ethereal. Under the water, her eyes somehow managed to look even more blue than normal, but a worried expression aged her youthful face.
"Bryn," Linnea said again, and it sounded like she was speaking directly inside my head. "What's happened? Where are you?"
"I don't know where I am." I looked around, as if there would be some kind of sign telling me the exact location of my underwater dream.
"Not here. This is a lysa." Linnea took my hand, making me focus on her. "Everything is crazy in Storvatten. They say you killed Kennet."
"I didn't kill Kennet!" I shouted, then corrected myself. "I tried to save him, but I couldn't. But he was behind everything, Linnea. He's the reason Mikko was arrested."
Her eyes widened and she gasped. "Kennet? But he loved Mikko!"
"It's too much to explain now, but you have to believe me. Kennet was into some bad things, and you can't trust the Kanin Queen either. She was working with him."
"Who can I trust?" Linnea's lip began to quiver. "Everything is falling apart here. My grandma is trying to run things, but the board of advisers is pushing her out. They w
on't release Mikko, and they're trying to bring Bayle Lundeen back, but they can't find him anywhere."
"Don't let Bayle run anything!" I warned her. "If they find him, make them question him. He knows what Kennet was up to, so maybe he can help free Mikko."
The water seemed to grow colder. It had been the whole time, but I began to feel the chill running deeper in me. And it was getting harder to breathe. Each breath I took seemed to be equal parts air and water, and I was starting to choke.
"Don't trust the Kanin. Don't accept any aid from them," I told her as water filled my lungs. "Stray strong."
Her expression hardened with resolve. "I won't let anyone hurt me or Mikko anymore," Linnea promised me. "And I will clear your name, Bryn!"
That was the last thing I heard her say before the dream collapsed on me, and I woke up in bed, gasping for breath.
SIX
alliance
With one hand I tousled my damp hair with a towel, and with the other I pulled back the drapes, allowing the blinding sun to spill into the dark room. When my eyes adjusted, I half expected to see Hogdragen or maybe Viktor Dalig's men outside, waiting to capture me.
But it was only an empty gravel parking lot on a relatively deserted highway. Being on the run made it awfully hard to not feel paranoid, especially when it turned out there was actually a conspiracy plotting against me.
"Anything exciting out there?" Konstantin's voice rumbled from behind me, making me jump.
I let the shades close, and I turned back to see him standing in the bathroom doorway. His dark curls were wet, and he was wearing only a pair of jeans. Seeing him shirtless, I realized that he was more muscular than I'd originally imagined.
While the smooth definition of his torso was a pleasant sight, his deep olive skin was marred by scars running all over his chest and arms. Some of them were undoubtedly from the days when he partook in the brutal sport of the King's Games, but some of them had probably been from more sinister actions with Viktor Dalig and his men.
On his chest, just above his heart, he had a black tattoo of a rabbit--the same tattoo many members of the Hogdragen shared. They usually got it after they took their oath, and I was sure that Konstantin had been the same. He'd once been as young and determined as I had been, but somewhere along the line he'd taken a much darker turn.