16. Maddy

Chapter 16

Maddy

" E rm, Maddy, there's someone to see you," Sarra says, waking me with a start the next morning. I'm groggy, and she sounds nervous.

I roll up into a sitting position and blink at her. "Here? Who?"

"Harald the Strong."

"Shit." I scramble out of the furs and pull my clothes on. "What the fates is he doing here? How does he even know I'm sleeping here?"

His big voice booms through the door, which is ajar. "I'll see you in the throne room in five minutes, rook!"

I pull a face. I wanted coffee and bread, not a conversation with Harald five minutes after waking up.

"This is good," Sarra says, though she's wringing her hands anxiously. "He can help you."

"I hope so." I strap on my belt with its pouches, and then pull my larger book bag over my shoulder. Who knows what the big Valkyrie has in store for me? "I'll see you later."

"Good luck!" she calls after me.

"Come," says Harald as soon as he sees me.

I hurry after him as he makes his way up the steps on the left side of the hall, toward the dormitories. Is he going to reprimand me for not sleeping in my room?

"Three rooks told us what happened at the spring yesterday," he says.

"I told you I wasn't lying about her," I say, then realize how impudent I sound. " Hersir ," I add lamely.

He snorts. " All the rooks here are talking about the bear. I meant three rooks specifically told us what Orgid tried to do to you." He slows and turns to me. "That he tried to drown you."

I swallow. "He and Inga don't like me. I'm not sure why."

"There are many fae I don't like. Much as I would like to, I do not try to drown them." He wraps his fingers around his massive, braided beard and looks at me thoughtfully. "You really do not know what they could be so upset about that they would try to end your life?"

I can always hear doubt in Harald's voice, I realize. I heard it in the Ice Court Palace when they came to get Freydis, I heard it when I told him about the bear, and now, when somebody else told him what the two arseholes did at the spring.

Kain didn't doubt me. He said they are trying to kill me because they fear what I'm capable of.

My desire to confide in Harald drops.

"I have no idea," I say. "They just keep saying I'm a weak link and will get them killed."

Harald tilts his head in a half shrug. "I suppose they have a point."I scowl at him before I can stop myself. He laughs. "That's what it may look like to them," he clarifies, then turns and carries on along the corridor.

I follow after him. "Will they be punished?"

"Do you want them to be?"

"I want them to leave me alone. I'm getting stronger, and I'm learning. I'd be able to do more if I wasn't worried about them all the time."

"Do you think they'll leave you alone if we punish them?"

"No."

He chuckles. "Then you haven't seen all of our punishments."Wild thoughts of chains and torture devices flash through my mind. I'm not about to admit that I've seen the cells, but they looked reasonably comfortable to me. Before I can ask anything, though, he speaks again. "Brynhild will decide what to do with them."

"Oh."

We walk on in silence, out of the higher exit and along past the temple and its pretty garden. A small set of steps is carved from the organic wood of the path, seeming to lead straight into a dense bush covered in purple berries. Harald stops in front of the steps and looks at me expectantly.

"You want me to go into the bush?" I ask him.

His face droops a little. "Bush," he says with a sigh. "You see a bush with red berries?"

"Purple berries."

He brightens a little. "Purple? Huh. I wonder what that means."

I'm wondering what everything means. "What do you see?" I ask eventually when he says nothing else and keeps gazing at the bush.

"Oh, the Bear Wing."

My heart skips a beat, and I look back at the bush. "Really?"

"Yes. I hoped if your val-tivar presented itself, you'd be able to see it now."

Disappointment whirls through me.

"Are you sure?—"

I turn to him sharply."Do not ask me if I'm sure she was my val-tivar ," I snap, then wince. I'm shouting at a Valkyrie.

He grins at me."Okay. You're sure. Maybe you just need more control before Featherblade shows you the Bear Wing."

I relax a tiny bit. "What's in it?"

"Ah, that's for you to find out. They said she was a real beauty," he says, giving me a sideways look.

"My bear?"

He nods. "You weren't exaggerating when you told me how big she was. Or that she didn't possess you. "

I look from the berry bush to him. His large eyes are trained on me. He may not have as much faith in me as I'd like, but he knows what it's like to have a bear val-tivar.

Making up my mind, I turn squarely to face him."Can you call yours at will?"

"Yes. But he's always here. I can always feel him."

"So, you call him, he appears beside you, and then when you fight… does he… take over your body? Or is he beside you and he just lends you his strength?"

Harald considers me a long moment. "You are supposed to learn this yourself, but given that you are experiencing something different, I suppose it can't hurt to tell you. When I perform magic, I can just sense him, as part of me, a whisper in my mind. When I want him before me, to converse, to threaten, to increase my aura, I can call him, and he will stand beside me. When I need his power to use as my own, yes, I absorb him. I can't see him when I fight, but I hear him in my mind, no longer a whisper, but a commanding presence. He moves my limbs, uses my voice, swells my muscles."

I stare at Harald. "And you let him have that much control? You never worry that he will do something you wouldn't?"

"He is born of me. A part of me. If I can control my own bloodlust, he will feel that boundary."

I think of Branka, and the insatiable hunger of the wolf, and then Kain. The image of the flaming, snarling wolf causes a frisson of fear to ripple through my veins. He allows that beast to control him when he fights ?

"When your bear is beside you, is he solid?"

Harald's brows draw together. "No," he says slowly. "A solid being could not be absorbed. He is more like a spirit. A collection of magical energy, in the form of a great brown bear."

"My bear is solid," I say. "Not shimmery and translucent. She physically lifted me from the water, on her back. And she knocked the Frost Giant off Kain. But she can vanish into thin air, so she's not a real bear."

"I wish I had seen her," says Harald.

I take a deep breath. "Can… can I see yours?"He cocks his head and looks at me like I'm an idiot. I start speaking again, before he can and before I can change my mind. "I saw Erik's snake. And Kain's wolf."

Harald's mouth falls open. "How?"

"I don't know, but ever since I first saw her, it seems I can see other val-tivar too."

Without him moving, or changing his incredulous expression, Harald's val-tivar flickers to life beside him.

"Odin's arse," I curse, and stumble back.

He's huge. Fucking massive. Larger than my bear. And where she has big black eyes filled with something deep and maybe wise, the look in Harald's bear's eyes is terrifyingly mean.

Huge fangs drip with glistening saliva as he stares at me, his dark brown fur coarse and jagged and his claws flexed and sharp.

I drag my eyes from him to look at Harald. "He's amazing," I whisper. "More vicious looking than mine."

Harald slowly shakes his head from side to side. "I wasn't sure about you," he says quietly. "But the gods rarely make mistakes."

"You don't know why this is happening to me, do you?" I say, staring again at his bear. I don't really expect him to, but at least I have more information than I did before. And I've seen this incredible beast.

The bear cocks his massive head at me, baring his fangs again.

"No," Harald replies. "And I don't think the others will, either. I must tell them, though."

I sigh. I knew that was coming. "Please, if they know anything that could help me get her to stay, or work out how to summon her, tell me."

"Of course."His bear flickers, then fades from view. "You must get breakfast before the day starts," he says.

I start to respond, but my stomach swoops. I drop to the ground just a second before I lose consciousness.

"Your reflexes are improving," Harald says as I come around. "You managed to avoid any risk to your head that time."

"Six hundred and seventy-one," I mutter through the nausea. He's right, though. I pretty much got my head onto the warm wood before I blacked out.

I clamber to my feet, and my stomach grumbles loudly. "Breakfast," Harald says, and points toward the High Hall. "Keep coming back here. When the bush becomes a door, come find me."