Chapter 37

DAELLA

Rivelin and I broke apart and took off down the winding road. The screams were coming from the festival on the outskirts of the village, and it would take us at least a few minutes to get there. I didn’t want to think about what those screams might mean.

Had something gone wrong with my wish? Had I asked the wrong thing of the island? Or worse, had it rejected me because I was only Rivelin’s assistant and not Rivelin himself?

We finally reached the edge of the meadow and started down the hill when a line of ice giant warriors shifted into view. They were all armed with deadly spears and protected by thick leathers, the shoulders engraved with the wolf sigil of the Grundstoff Empire.

Isveig’ssigil.

I choked out a cry and stumbled to a stop, taking in the sheer number of them. There were at least a hundred warriors…though I would have expected more from all those ships. Still, a hundred was more than enough to conquer this island. My plan had failed. Instead of protecting Wyndale, I had doomed them.

“Daella!” a voice called out from somewhere near the merchant stalls. A familiar voice. A friendly voice.

With my heart in my throat, I turned toward the sound. Thuri was bounding toward me, her pale blue braid thumping against her back. She wore a smile and carried a tankard of Lilia’s famous ale. In her hands, it looked quite small.

For a moment, all I could do was stare at her, as if she were an apparition come to haunt me. How was she here? And where was Isveig?

“Daella,” she said again when she reached me. “What’s wrong? I thought you’d be happy to see me.”

The world seemed to shudder back to life around me, sights and smells and sounds all at once. It was then I noticed the screaming had stopped and the babble of conversation trickled through the festival like a pleasant stream. The merchants were cooking up some food for the evening, and the crowd was milling about as if nothing unusual was happening at all, let alone the arrival of a hostile empire. Even the ice giants looked relaxed, standing around and watching the festival with blatant curiosity.

I blinked. “I am, Thuri. Thank fate you’re alive, but…what’s happening? Aren’t those Isveig’s warriors?”

“Ah. No.” She grinned. “They’re mine!”

I clutched her arm. “Do you mean to tell me you took them from him?”

“I took everything from him,” she said with a conspiratorial wink. “After I got your letter, I decided it was time to do something about my brother’s monstrous rule, and there was far more support for me than I’d ever dreamed. It did not take much convincing for me to gather enough fighters to stage a revolt. They thought the Old Gods were making a statement by saving me. And so, here I am. Meet the new Empress of the Grundstoff Empire.”

I laughed, delight chasing away the tension in my body. “I knew you could do it, Thuri. The empire will be far better off with you in charge.”

“Apparently so. Even the elements are in agreement. Do you know that endless cloud finally dispersed? It drifted off as soon as I locked Isveig in the dungeons.”

“In the dungeons? It’s boiling hot down there.” I shook my head, still laughing. “Isveig will hate that.”

“Yes.” She looked me up and down, then glanced at Rivelin, who stood within an arm’s reach. “Which brings me to you. I thought you might need rescuing, now that it’s safe for you to return home. In my empire, orcs and half-orcs have as much freedom as the rest of us. But it looks like you don’t need saving after all.”

I motioned Rivelin closer and wound my arm around his back. The scent of leather, smoke, and steel flooded my senses. “I think I’m fairly happy with the idea of visiting Fafnir now and again, but I have a new home here. I’d like to stay, as long as they’ll have me.”

Rivelin smiled and tugged me into his arms.

* * *

As Thuri and I caught each other up on everything we’d been through since that life-altering storm, Rivelin made the rounds to explain the situation to the villagers. Everyone seemed to accept the presence of the warriors, but he wanted to let Odel and Haldor in on the details.

Thuri told me most had survived our shipwreck. They’d still been close enough to shore for rescue boats to reach them quickly and return everyone to Fafnir. Isveig had been beside himself when he’d heard I’d vanished, ordering his people to search the waves day after day until he’d finally decided I must be dead.

At a lull in the conversation, Thuri motioned for one of her guards to come closer. He carried a weathered, leather-bound book in his hands. He passed it to me. It was buttery soft under my fingers, smoothed by the passing of time. The words Ris upp ur oskunni were embossed on the cover.

“Rise from the ashes,” I whispered.

“I found that in Isveig’s quarters when I took over. Recognized those words as the same ones from your dagger and realized it was an orc book. I thought you might want it.”

My heart swelled and I hugged it to my chest. Even though I no longer needed the book to learn how to bond with a dragon, just having this piece of my history meant the world to me. There was so much I didn’t know about who the orcs used to be, and I could not wait to spend an evening on Rivelin’s roof flipping through these pages.

“Thuri, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this.”

A hush suddenly went through the crowd, and a string of colorful curses soon followed. Thuri and I turned in unison toward a pack of dwarves leading two chained prisoners across the meadow. Viggo was in the front, jerking and growling at his bonds, but the dwarves held him strong. Gregor stumbled just behind him, his head hung low. Still, he wore no shoes.

“What’s happening?” I asked as Haldor and Odel approached, along with Rivelin.

Haldor scratched the base of his horns. “It’s the strangest thing. There was a dwarf ship in the nearest harbor, over from the Glass Peaks. They were meant to leave an hour ago, but the captain ended up coming into Wyndale asking about two prisoners he was told to put to work in their mines. I asked him who told him such a thing, and he said it was a voice on the wind.”

“And we just so happened to have two prisoners and nowhere to truly hold them.” Odel cut her bright eyes my way, her delicate wings flared wide. “Something tells me this is your doing, Daella.”

“Not me,” I said, understanding at once. “It was the island.”

And perhaps the Old Gods.

As we watched the dwarves haul the prisoners down the hill, pink lines dashed across the sky to signal the setting of the sun. It almost felt like a message from the island itself, as if it were trying to tell us this was the end of any threat against this peaceful land.

“What did they want, anyway?” Rivelin asked. “Did you ever manage to get it out of either of them?”

“From the Games?” Odel asked. “Gregor truly believed Rivelin was behind everything, but he was only looking out for himself. He hoped Rivelin would take the fall, and he could swoop in as the island’s savior. Everyone would love him, then.”

I scowled. “And Viggo?”

“Funnily enough, Viggo was the one who helped Gregor cheat to get chosen for the Games again. Viggo realized he would be the perfect decoy until he could turn suspicion toward you two.”

“To what end?” Rivelin asked.

“Viggo wanted to bond with a dragon. He thought asking the island would prevent him from becoming poisoned by the magic,” Haldor said. “When I asked him why, he said he thought it was the best way to defeat Isveig. He’d take the dragon, fly to Fafnir, and burn it all down.”

My stomach churned. A part of me yearned to do something similar. After all, Isveig had destroyed so much, and the temptation to meet destruction with destruction was intoxicating in a way that only few could understand. But Rivelin could, I realized, as I met his knowing gaze.

But there was a much greater part of me that tempered that desire. In an attack like that, it would be inevitable for innocents to get caught in the crossfire. The castle would burn and so would everyone in it. Besides, his sister had taken care of him now, and he would suffer far more stuck in those humid dungeon cells.

“Here’s one thing I still don’t understand. Why in fate’s name did Viggo burn all my parchment?” asked Rivelin.

“Ah.” Haldor glanced my way. “He saw Daella send that letter to Thuri, and he thought it was meant for Isveig. He was trying to stop her from sending any more letters to the enemy.”

I shook my head. “So everything he did, he did for the good of the island.”

“He thought it was for the good of the island,” Odel countered. “But he has done too much damage. And if he’d had his way, thousands of innocents in Fafnir would have died.”

For a moment, no one spoke. We stood there in our huddle and let Odel’s words sink in, understanding how easy it could be to lose sight of things. Emperor Isveig had gone to war, believing himself to be the world’s savior. And Viggo would have done the same thing. It could have become a vicious cycle of rage and blood until it was the only thing left, until everything good was gone from this world.

“Luckily, all that’s over.” I turned to Thuri. “Now let me introduce you to Mabel. She makes a mean mushroom pie.”

* * *

The entire village was out for Midsummer. The sky was lit with a million stars, and a soft breeze rustled the grass at my feet. I popped another cube of Elma’s cheese in my mouth, leaning against the side of Lilia’s wagon, where lanterns cast their light on the dancing crowd. Haldor had taken it upon himself to loose some fireworks between each song, dazzling everyone in attendance with their oohs and ahhs that rippled across the meadow in waves.

It was a beautiful, mystical night, and for the first time in my life, I no longer feared what tomorrow might bring. I had no idea what would happen next, but I was safe here, and I was free. That was enough.

“There you are.” Rivelin stepped from the shadows to join me in the quiet calm, away from the merriment of the crowd. “Why are you hiding all the way over here? Some of this celebration is for you, you know. You won the Games.”

“I believe that was you, Rivelin.”

“I’m not the one who baked hundreds of cupcakes and rode on the back of a dragon. The win is yours, and I know you like to dance. Shall I ask the bard to play that tune about Isveig?”

“The troll one?” I grinned. “Oh yes, please. I just…first, I want to take it all in.”

“Take all what in?”

“My freedom,” I breathed. “And all that comes with it. Look at Hege twirling her wife through a meadow beneath a blanket of stars. Have you ever seen any two people more in love? And over there is Elma, cheerily serving up her cheese and her olives, and Lilia beaming every time someone asks her for an ale. Even Godfrey seems happy here. He’s been so quiet and reclusive these past few weeks, but now look at him. He’s dancing with wild abandon.”

I felt the weight of Rivelin’s stare, and I wondered if I’d gone on for too long.

He reached out and brushed a strand of hair behind my ear. “You see the beauty in things. It’s one of the first things I noticed about you.” A pause. “One of the first things I loved about you.”

I started and met his gaze, my heart pounding.

His smile matched the gold in his eyes. “Would you like to dance with me?”

“You, dance? I thought you hated parties.”

“With you, I would dance until the world ends.”

My heart rattled in my chest as a wave of emotion rushed through me. I slipped my hand into his, mesmerized by the steam that fogged between us.

Rivelin pulled me against him, and I draped my arms around his neck. As I dropped my head against his chest, we swayed in the grass beside Lilia’s wagon, the scent of summer weaving around us. I closed my eyes and memorized the feel of him and the sound of his pounding heartbeat against my ear. The rhythm of it was so familiar to me now, so right.

For so much of my life, I’d never had a home. Somehow, despite everything, I’d found one. With him.

And then, from the stage, the bard began to play my new favorite tune.

Once there was a northern troll

Whose face looked like a big blue mole!

He pranced around as if to rule

But he was nothing but an icy fool!

I grinned and unwound myself from Rivelin, then grabbed his hand and tugged him closer to the meadow where the revelling crowd went wild. “You said you wanted to dance with me. Well, come on, then. Let’s really dance.”

I thought he might bow out of this one. After all, he was the grumpy blacksmith who enjoyed his quiet solitude up on his roof, and this was quite the opposite of that. But when he saw my beaming smile, he matched it with one of his own and followed me into the meadow.

We reveled until dawn while dragons danced in the sky.