Chapter 20

DAELLA

Rivelin fired up his forge and flames engulfed the brick oven. Sparks danced in the air like fireflies, and wisps of smoke curled up the chimney. I watched, transfixed, as the orange heat poured through the shop. I’d never seen anything more beautiful in my life. And the scent of it all, the smoke and steel, it grounded me.

It took all day for Rivelin to teach me how to make a bracelet. Blacksmithing was a lot more complicated than I’d ever appreciated, but it was good, hard work. As minutes turned to hours, sweat drenched my shirt and hair, and every muscle in my body ached.

But at the end of it all, I earned a simple bracelet and a nod of approval from Rivelin.

“Here you go.” I held out the bracelet. Crafted from iron, it formed the shape of a C with both ends tapered to a flat point. In the center, I’d twisted it four times so it had a decorative touch to the otherwise plain jewellery. Truthfully, it still didn’t look like much, but I had to admit I was damned proud of my effort.

“No.” Rivelin gently pushed my hand back, and an avalanche of steam gushed between us. “You worked hard for that. Keep it. Wear it, if you’d like.”

I smiled and fitted the bracelet over my wrist. It was heavy and warm. I liked how it felt. When I looked up again, I caught the way he watched me with an intensity that made my soul match the warmth from the forge. A charming smile brightened his handsome face.

“Ah, I see what you do now,” I said. “It’s a good tactic, really. I bet it works more times than not.”

He cocked his head. “I have no idea what you’re trying to say.”

“When I was dancing the other night, I overheard someone calling you a charmer, and I thought they were making a joke. But now I understand. You bring potential lovers into your forge and teach them how to make a bracelet. It’s a simple task so they feel good about their efforts, and then they have a piece of pretty jewellery to remind them of you. Very clever.”

“I’ve never taught another woman to make a bracelet, Daella. I don’t like other people poking around my forge.”

My breathing went shallow. “What?”

“I’m not a charmer,” he said, lowering the tongs to the anvil, all the while keeping his eyes locked on my face. “Who did you hear that from?”

“The pixie with the pretty wings I met the other day?”

“Odel. She only said that because she thinks I’m handsome.”

I unintentionally snorted, then instantly coughed, hoping I could cover it up.

“Well, that’s not the reaction I wanted to get from that statement,” he said, though he sounded amused and his eyes were doing a twinkling thing that made my stomach feel funny.

“You’re not not handsome,” I admitted.

“High praise.”

“You’re an elf, and you’re a blacksmith. It’s a given that you’d have some…appealing attributes.”

“Is that so?” He inched closer, and I stumbled a step away but my backside pressed into the edge of the anvil, halting my retreat. “And these appealing attributes would be…?”

I smiled. “You misheard me. I said appalling, not appealing.”

He leaned in close and braced his hands on the anvil, one on either side of my hips. “You can try and backtrack all you like, but I heard you. What was it you said the first night? I should keep my hands to myself?”

I swallowed. “Yes, that’s what I said.”

“Hmm.” His eyes swept across my face and lingered just a moment too long on my mouth. Suddenly, my lips felt impossibly dry, and it took all my self-control not to sweep my tongue across them. The moment stretched into another, the room silent but for the crackling flames from the forge. Was he going to kiss me? What a wild, ridiculous idea. Still, the tension between us felt palpable, so tangible it rose between us in a haze of steam.

And then suddenly, he shoved away from the anvil and stepped back. I nearly sagged forward—from relief or disappointment, I wasn’t certain. Perhaps neither. Perhaps both. Fates be damned, I didn’t want him to kiss me. I just…I shook my head to free myself from those kinds of thoughts.

“Something wrong?” he asked in a voice just a little lower than usual.

“No.” I moved away from him and looked for something to busy myself with. A pair of metal tongs sat on the lip of the forge. We needed to clean things up before we went inside the house. As I reached for them, Rivelin let out a strangled yell.

Frowning, I lifted the tongs and glanced back at him. “What?”

He stared at me, his eyes wide. “That’s been sitting by the fire. It’s too hot to handle without gloves. Put it down, Daella.”

“Oh.” I set down the tongs and looked at my hand. The skin on my palm was perfectly fine. “Look, no burn. The tongs are hot, but they must have cooled off enough to touch.”

Rivelin shook his head and moved to my side before poking at the tongs. “No, they’re still burning.” Gently, he lifted my fingers before his eyes and examined the skin, but I didn’t know how well he could see with all the steam billowing everywhere. The air seemed to crackle, or maybe that was just my stomach. After a long moment of inspection, he let go of me. My hand tumbled heavily to my side.

“You’re fine,” he murmured. “Are orcs immune to fire?”

“No,” I said quietly, my heart twanging. The moment suddenly dissipated like the steam. “My mother died in a fire, remember? From the Draugr.”

“That’s right.” His face softened. “Perhaps just immune to heat, then.”

“Perhaps.”

Where a moment ago, an intoxicating tension had hung between us, now I just felt awkward. I shouldn’t have touched anything. It only reminded us both of where I came from and what I’d come here to do. And the future that awaited me.

Quietly, we tidied away his things. I left him to handle the hot tongs with his gloves. We didn’t have much to say for the rest of the night, even when we sat down for dinner in the kitchen, hand feeding Skoll our scraps. In the morning, we’d start working on the item we’d enter for the competition. Not a sword, he said, but something just as magnificent. I went to bed with images of fire and sun-kissed eyes in my mind, and I was so exhausted from blacksmithing I slept like the dead.

* * *

At the crack of dawn, I found Rivelin in the middle of the road staring at the shattered hinges of his shop’s doors. They hung half-open, revealing carnage within. Splintered remains of wooden crates and barrels littered every inch of the once-polished floor. The racks that had held his hammers and tongs were now empty. Even the decorative horseshoes were missing. His metal sign rattled in the wind, creaking ominously.

Someone had completely ransacked the place.

Rivelin jammed his fingers into his silver locks and sank to his knees. The anguish on his face cracked some of the defenses that guarded my heart, especially the new ones I’d erected last night after our…moment in the forge. Slowly, I approached and knelt beside him on the dirt street.

“What happened?” I asked quietly.

A muscle in his jaw worked as his hard gaze never left the forge. “What does it look like?”

I ignored the snap in his tone. I would have snapped, too.

I stood and held out a hand. “Come on. Let’s go inside and see what can be salvaged.”

He looked up at me, his eyes dark and hollow. After a moment, he accepted my hand and let me tug him toward the broken doors. The interior was just as damaged as it had looked from outside. Most of his tools were missing, and it would take hours, if not days, to clean the place up. I kept those thoughts to myself, though. No need to make him feel any worse than he already did.

Rivelin picked his way through the debris to the closet door in the back. I noticed a heavy-duty lock now hung from the latch, and whoever had ransacked the shop hadn’t managed to break it. There were a few dents in the wood surrounding it, though.

“If it wasn’t for the lock, he would have taken the swords, too,” he said wearily. “Just don’t say ‘I told you so.’”

I ran my hand along the top of the anvil. It was coated in a thick layer of sawdust, but it only needed a good clean to be as good as new. Same for the forge itself. The thief had only taken small things they could haul out of here easily, like the horseshoes. Anything else, they’d smashed to bits or left alone.

“I’m surprised you didn’t hear anything,” I said after a moment. “The sofa where you sleep is just on the other side of that door.”

“I wasn’t on the fucking sofa.”

I glanced at him, surprised. “Where were you, then?”

I suddenly got the unwanted image of Rivelin sneaking into Odel’s house and spending the night in her bed. He’d mentioned she found him handsome. What if they’d been an item all this time? What if they’d chosen to hide it so that I would accept Rivelin’s offer to stay in his house, so he could keep an eye on the ‘murk’? And now that he knew more about me, they’d gotten a little more relaxed about seeing each other.

He said he never brought women over to his forge. Was it because he was already taken?

And why was I even thinking about this right now?

“Patrolling the beach,” he said.

“Patrolling? What for?”

“For any unwanted visitors.”

“Ah.” Relieved, I leaned against the anvil. “Is that how you found me when I washed up on the beach? You patrol there all the time?”

“The Elding rages just offshore all through Midsummer. Ships get caught up in it. Sometimes, folk manage to survive and end up on our beach. I like to be there when it happens.”

“Most ships know better than to sail through the Elding. I doubt anyone will want to risk it for a while, especially after what happened to the craft I was on.”

He gave me a long, hard stare. “You’re valuable to the emperor, and you’ve been missing for a good while.”

“Surely you don’t think he would send a ship after me.”

“You don’t?”

“He sent me to the Isles of Fable knowing there was a good chance I’d die at sea. By now, he’ll have heard the Elding smashed the ship to pieces. There’s no reason for him to think I’ve survived. Why risk another ship?”

“What about the shard, then?” he asked.

The shard angrily throbbed in answer, and my hip ached.

“Oh, he’ll use it if I don’t show up in time, just in case I’m still alive somewhere. He’s not the type to renege on his threats.”

“Hmm.” He glanced around the shop. “Well, you can be relieved about one thing. I’m not winning the Games, not now. The tools I need are gone.”

“I’m not relieved about that. I want you to protect Wyndale,” I found myself saying. The moment the words left my mouth, I frowned, and then realized I’d meant it. Somewhere between one week and the next, I’d come to understand these people weren’t harboring the deep, dark secret I’d first believed. Yes, there were dragons around, but right now, they were harmless. And if Isveig invaded this place, he would destroy the peaceful tranquility everyone had worked so hard to create.

If Rivelin won, I did not know what that would mean for me, but I knew what it would mean for them. I would just have to find some other way to survive.

“Do you truly mean that?” he asked quietly.

“I do.” I gazed around the destroyed shop. “And we can fix this. You can still win.”

He held his hands out to his sides. “I’m all ears.”

“The saboteur, Gregor. It’s obvious he did this.”

“Of course it was him. This is payback for saving Kari’s life and turning the entire village against him. He likely thinks the only way he’ll win now is by taking us out of the competition.”

“Exactly. And what do you think he did with all your tools? He’s not smart enough to get rid of them. I bet he even thinks he might use them to craft his own item from fire.” I gestured at the missing rack of tools. “He’ll be hiding them. In his house, I bet. I say we take them back.”

Rivelin shook his head. “We can’t just storm into his house in the middle of the day. He’ll expect it.”

“Exactly. That’s why we go tonight.”