Chapter Thirteen

My braid swung behind me. My heels clicked on the tile floor.

Stefan jogged to catch up. “Why’d you say no?”

“Because I like living.”

Ancient suits of polished armor stood solemn beside faded maritime maps framed in driftwood. Our smudgy shapes glinted through the glass, Stefan’s green and cherry-red and mine, blue and brown.

“If you wooed him, he’d protect you. Don’t you want his strong hands all over your—”

“His hands are not going anywhere on me.”

“You say that now, but I bet they’d feel really nice.”

For some reason, I had the feeling he was right about that. It was an odd thought, especially considering Erik had just tried to scare me with those angry, angry eyes. Gray, the color of smoke or stone or wild storms.

The thought of them wavered, shifted. Expressive. Brown. I turned, half expecting to find Hans.

Instead, I found Stefan.

Something pricked at the back of my throat. I bit my lip and glanced at the ceiling. Stupid, stupid. Hans wouldn’t be in this part of the castle, anyway. He would have been outside in the dovecote, and I couldn’t do this. Not here. I couldn’t cry in front of Stefan.

I pushed those brown eyes aside and dredged up images of scary Erik.

It worked.

More than likely, he would use those hands to kill me the same way they killed Hans. I needed to get back to the apothecary and hunker down until this blew over. I’d heard of people dying their hair with beetroot juice. I was stuck with the bangs until they grew out, but if I chopped the rest of it above my shoulders, I think I could pass for someone else.

We reached a set of reception rooms that branched off the main hall. Their doors were thrown open, showing slivers of golden sunlight and massive hearths, cold, save for the fjord lilies and mountain saxifrage bundled into vases. One pair of doors, then another, then a sofa set in the hall and—

Katrina. She stood beside a carved oak chest, pulling slipcovers off cushions and throwing them into a wicker hamper.

Her eyes flicked up. Strands fell loose from her bun, unwashed, and her knuckles blistered red. Lye soap. It happened if she spent too many days in the washroom. She usually came to see me before it got bad. I’d smother her hands in beeswax salve, wrap them in gauze, and she’d spend the rest of the afternoon pretending to be helpless.

She always came to see me.

Always .

Her reddened hands twitched.

That thing pricked my throat. I shoved it down.

“I’ll be leaving,” Stefan said. He tweaked my nose. “Just…think about it.”

And he was gone.

I grabbed one of the sofa cushions and shimmied the pillow out. “Want to come see me for those? I’ll make the salve. Chamomile or lavender?”

“Go away.”

“About the funeral…”

She rolled her eyes and moved the basket to the next sofa. “Don’t give me that.”

“Give you what?”

“Some bullshit excuse.”

“I know you’re still angry, but—”

“I’m not angry.”

“Yes, you are. It’s fine, it’s—”

She yanked the cushion from the settee and unfastened the buttons with deft fingers. “I’m not the one who ignored him. For years. He was ready to give you everything —”

My chest tightened. “Stop.”

“And all you had to do— literally, all you had to do —was accept it.”

“I don’t want to fight.”

“Then what do you want?” She shoved me.

My body tensed. I stumbled back.

“You ignored him. You broke him. You. Pushed. Him. Away.” She shoved me again and again and again.

I fell onto the naked settee. Goose down prickled through the linen, stung my palms, and I should be surprised that Katrina shoved me, I should, but her anger could be a blizzard, and she was wrong—I couldn’t accept Hans’s love because it was a mistake. I was a mistake. But everywhere I looked, I saw him—the kitchens, the hallways—and Katrina’s hands, her red, red hands. Why didn’t she come to me, why didn’t—

It occurred to me.

She was jealous.

My heart raced. I wanted to laugh. “You liked him. You liked Hans, and that’s why you’re doing this. That’s why you’re taking it out on me. Well, you know what? I don’t care. Go ahead. Hit me.” I tipped my chin toward her and barred my teeth. “Hit. Me.”

Katrina stepped back, shaking her head. She was only eighteen, but in that moment, she could have been eighty. Her mouth was drawn, shadows rimmed her eyes, and they were dark. Not the dark of anger, but the hollow dark of resignation.

“No, Isy. It just makes me sad. He deserved more than that.” Her shoulders slumped. “He deserved more than you.”

That night, girls flickered in and out of the dorm room, going dancing or drinking, their skirts whirls of cream and fleecy blues.

I pulled the blanket around my shoulders and waited for someone to come, to laugh and talk to me, to make everything okay, but the girls were chatting and singing, and I was a bird weathering the waves.

The shock of the letters had worn off. So had the shock of Katrina shoving me, the bright and bitter rage replaced with… something else.

He deserved more than that.

More than you.

You could have been there.

Been more.

Been better.

If you’d listened, maybe he wouldn’t have died.

You pushed him away.

You shut him out.

You’re a disaster.

Who would ever want you?

Not your father.

Not your mother.

Hans would have left you, too.

You failed him.

You fail everyone.

You—

“What if you made him matter?”

The words shook me from my thoughts, a tumble of silk and satin, and it was Sofie from laundry and her words weren’t directed at me. They were for Elin, who sat on the edge of another bed, dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief.

I pushed myself a little higher.

“I mean,” Sofie continued, “obviously, it would make Pehr jealous but, yeah. What if you made him matter?”

“I don’t know…” Elin sniffled. “Seems petty.”

But—

Make him matter.

A strike of light. A flare in the dark.

I couldn’t give Hans my heart, but maybe I could give his death meaning. And someday, when this story was told, the chroniclers would tell of him—how his death was the seed, the spark, the kindling that lit the fire and saved the Sanokes. Hans would be the hero who fought against the Volds, who sacrificed his life to send those messages, the reason for our victory. Ballads would be sung, poems written, monuments erected in his name. Above the ocean, cannons would crack, and swans would fly, and he would go down in history.

I glanced up, caught my reflection in the window. My hair hung limp around my face, and circles rimmed my eyes. The thing that whispered you could have been better clenched tight.

Make his death matter.

Maybe that would be enough.

Rain pounded heavy against the roof as I pushed the door to the minister’s sitting room open.

A fire roared in the hearth, flames licking up the walls. It stretched the shadows of the minister and a dark-haired girl, delicate hands and eyes the warming blue of lilacs after rain.

“… give him what he wants,” the minister said. “Come on strong, but not too strong. Men like—”

They glanced up.

“Ingrid,” the minister said. “What are you doing?”

I held up Larland’s letter. “The Volds. Send me.”

Thunder boomed and firelight caught the metallic threads, making them burn.