Chapter Fifteen

Buttercup was, indeed, a bitch.

She liked to wander, didn’t want to listen, would stop and chew mouthfuls of knapweed and carrot blooms, and ignore me when I tried to pull her away.

Some of the men—the thirty or so Erik had brought—joked that they should tether me to their saddles or have me ride double, and once, as Buttercup lipped a cluster of lady’s bedstraw, I caught Erik watching me from the corner of his eye.

My hands balled and he smirked.

The gall.

Still, it was easier to be angry, easier to find and fan that spark because if I looked at the Volds for too long, I wanted to wrap my arms around myself and cry.

After all, no one— no one —would care if they killed me. Not my lying, cheating father, not my shell of a mother, not Katrina, who hadn’t talked to me since Hans’s funeral.

And Hans.

People say grief is numbness, but it isn’t. It feels like your skin is being opened up and you’re being flayed alive. People also say grief is cold, but then why was I burning? Why was every single cell of my body on fire?

If I was going to woo information out of Erik, I couldn’t be sad or scared—no one falls for the sad, scared girl. I needed to be like one of the maids, confident and charming, a bright smile with spirit and verve.

I could do this.

I. Could. Do. This.

I turned to him. My heart pounded. “So,” I said, infusing my voice with a false sense of cheery, “tell me about Volgaard.”

Erik squinted at the ridge line. The corners of his eyes crinkled. “It’s cold.” His horse, the dappled gray, continued trotting. Its tail flicked behind him, swishing flies and long grasses.

Buttercup veered left to chew on a cluster of common bent, and Signey passed, her shoulders straight as a hunter’s, fur vest blowing around her shoulders, pale eyes fixed forward.

A shiver crept down my spine.

I looped my hands around Buttercup’s reins and yanked.

Buttercup nickered and moved to a clump of dandelions.

I yanked again.

Another knicker. She tossed her head and went straight back to the dandelions, finishing the yellow buds with two smacks of her lips.

I pressed a palm to my head. I needed to catch up to Erik so I could flirt. Apparently, the reins were for decoration because Buttercup ignored them. But she did like food.

I dug in the bag for a chunk of cheese, shucked off the wax cloth wrapping, and leaned close to her hairy ear. “Buttercup. Psst. Hey. I have a treat for you.”

Her ears pricked.

Careful not to lose my balance, I stretched forward and offered the round of cheese…

“Don’t feed her that.”

I jumped.

Erik and his horse stood a few feet away. He clicked his tongue, a hollow sound out of the side of his cheek and—

Oop. Okay. We were moving. I grabbed the reins. “So. Continuing where we left off, was your father always the general?” That sounded weirdly interrogation-esque.

“Always.”

Buttercup veered off course. Erik clicked his tongue again, calling her back.

Flirt. I needed to flirt. Not interrogate him. But the last time I’d flirted with someone, it ended with my hands on his abs and that comment about cheese. No hands on abs. Hands to myself. Better yet, hand on the reins. I looped them tighter and batted my lashes. “You must have grown up with a weapon in your hand.”

He shot me a suspicious glance. “I actually didn’t.”

“So your father taught you hand-to-hand combat?”

“Not that, either.”

But could I touch him if he was on a horse? I’d probably fall off my horse. Still, a little pat on the arm might go a long way. Did people pat each other on the arm when they were flirting? Was that a thing? Or was that something grandmas did?

The image of Queen Margarethe flashed in my mind—stern faced, pink nightgown buttoned all the way to her chin.

Nope. Do something else. I flashed Gretchen’s man-melting smile. “So, children in Volgaard don’t learn to fight until they’re older?”

“Plenty learn.”

“But you…didn’t?” Don’t interrogate him. Smile. Okay. And then what? Hair flip?

I hair flipped. “You’re the general’s son. His second.”

The suspicion deepened. “I didn’t learn, okay?”

I batted my lashes again. My heart pounded. “Why not?”

“Because.”

“Because you didn’t want to learn or…?”

With one quick motion, Erik spurred the horse, racing down the hillside, sending a colony of graylag geese scattering.

Signey cracked her reins and followed, her white-blonde braid streaming like a whip, and maybe I should have been disappointed that my initial attempts at flirting had failed. Instead, I felt…

Like a blade had just been lifted from my throat.

I placed my palms against Buttercup’s hairy neck. Stiff ocean winds flattened fields and blew sharp over the ridgeline, too gusty, too cold for spring. Sweeping planes unraveled like yarn on a sweater, sheer and ancient.

Behind me there was a cough. “Are you okay?”

I turned and found Bo, dark-haired and delicate. Wind ruffled his hair away from his forehead, gusted against his coat. His eyes had reddened, giving his face a watery look. He brought his horse in line with mine.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“That was just an odd exchange. With Erik. Did you get pollen in your eye?”

“In my…eye?”

“The rapid blinking. The hair flipping?”

“Oh. Um. Yes. I did. But now it’s gone.”

The men continued to ride through the meadow. The grasses continued to sway. Bo’s horse walked alongside mine. Maybe I didn’t need to get the information from Erik. Maybe I could get it from someone else.

I turned to Bo. “Can you tell me about Volgaard?”

“About home?” His brow furrowed. “Sure. It’s less green than this, but there are trees. Entire forests, even. It rains, but not nearly as often. Kaspar could show you. He uses reykr.”

“Reykr?”

“The illusions. He could show you what Volgaard looks like with his illusions.”

Oh. That’s what they called them. But I didn’t care what Volgaard looked like; I cared about the weapon. I needed to take the conversation in that direction. “Did you grow up in the general’s house, too?”

Bo blinked. “Too? As in—”

“Like Signey. Erik.”

“Oh. Um, Erik didn’t grow up in Lothgar’s house.”

I squinted down the ravine where he’d trotted, a gray blot against the sweeping hills. Interesting. I’d heard of high-ranking children being placed with other families as tributaries, a way to forge friendships with foreign countries. Gormark was fond of the concept, sending us two flighty princesses each summer. Still, the children chosen for such a task were never the important ones, never the heirs, which didn’t make sense because—

“Erik is the second-in-command,” I said.

Bo pulled his scarf tighter around his neck and swiped the corners of his eyes. “He’s better at reykr than Signey. Better at reykr than everyone. Amazing, considering he’s only twenty.”

Twenty.

Two years older than me.

A few sheep grazed, their hair so long and curly their bells disappeared into their rust-tipped coats. A wagtail fluttered over a stone wall.

“Right. So he’s better than you.”

“Well, no. I don’t use reykr. I’m from House Kaldr-Flodi. We use skygge.”

“Skygge?”

“Like reykr, it’s a form of projection. Only instead of projecting your mind, you’re projecting yourself.”

He must have read my confused expression because he held up his gloved hand, the supple leather tailored to the fit of his fingers. “Think of it like this. My hand is my soul. The glove is my body. The glove fits my hand, my hand fits the glove. Most people can’t take off their gloves. But when I use skygge, I can slip out of it like—” He pinched the tip of his finger and tugged his hand free. “Make sense?”

Is this how they’d found out about the letters from Larland? Why they’d killed Hans? Did that mean Stefan and the minister could have someone watching them? Did I need to warn them?

“You can just leave your body?” I asked. “Any time you want?”

“Sort of. Bodies don’t like to be left empty. They die pretty quickly. It takes someone who can send your body some of their spirit, just enough to keep it alive while you’re gone. Someone who can also use skygge. An anchor.”

“And when you’re a ghost, you walk around like normal?”

Bo shifted in his saddle. His eyes cut to Erik. “I could show you, but I’d need Erik’s help. He’s my anchor.”

Great. Of course, the second-in-command, the best person at illusion magic, could also leave his body and spy. I glanced at the line of men—strong hands, thick shoulders, scars. “Can the others use skygge?”

“It’s a common gift in Volgaard. But here? Just Erik and me.” He rubbed his nose, then added, “Being able to use more than one type of magic is rare. It’s passed through bloodlines, usually from the father, though sometimes the mother. The others only use reykr. So,” he gestured at the men, “they’re all from House Rythja. They use reykr. I’m from House Kaldr-Flodi. I use skygge. Erik can use both.”

“Are there other types of magic? Besides reykr and skygge?”

“A few.”

Buttercup stopped to lip a cluster of white-headed yarrow.

“What about…” I yanked on her reins. Once. Twice. “Seeing the future?”

Bo glanced over his shoulder. “Oh? You met a sooth?”

I thought back to the woman, the blackish leaf on the tip of her tongue, the way she’d said, I don’t think you’re meant to become the royal physician.

One goal, but not the other.

I slid off Buttercup’s saddle and grabbed the reins. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

We reached the bottom of the valley, where the hay-like grass had flattened. A stream cut through the middle like a knife. Water burbled, clear and cold, and a few bugs scudded the surface, leaving a trail of ripples.

Erik settled himself on top of a rock and divided the food from the packs, buckwheat cakes and thick sheep’s cheese that smelled like butter and burnt nuts. “We’ll water the horses and eat,” he said. “Then continue moving.”

The men let their horses go to stream, then settled themselves on rocks, arms thrown over legs, stretched toward the sun.

I sat next to Kaspar, who tore straight into his cheese hunk with the ferocity of a fox. He snapped it between his teeth, the grayish crumbs falling into the folds of his shirt. He finished the hunk and reached for another, peeling at the wax cloth, and—

Hans.

The thought snuck up, two hands and a ghost, and I shouldn’t think about him now, but there he was—brown hair, smile—and something in the way Kaspar peeled at the wax cloth reminded me of him, and it was stupid, stupid, stupid , but that’s how Hans peeled the wax cloth, and now all the things I’d been holding threatened to spill.

I bit my lip and glanced at the sky. Pale blue. Watercolor blue. The thinnest threading of clouds. I couldn’t cry in front of them. I needed to focus on the task at hand.

My vision wavered. I gritted my teeth. Balled my hands so hard nails pricked my palm and shoved down everything else, the pain, the hurt, the ugly things that wanted to claw their way out of my chest.

Focus. On. The. Task. At hand.

No one likes a sad, scared girl.

I swiped my eyes and turned to Kaspar. “Bo said you could show me Volgaard.” Then I plastered a smile on my face. Plastered it so wide and tight, it hurt. “Want to try?”