Chapter 9 | Arne

Chapter 9

Arne

I LEFT KELVAR THE WHISPERER'S office and wiped sweat from my brow before leaving the building. Lifting my shoulders, I stepped outside into the dark, cloudy morning, trying to act normal, like nothing was amiss.

Visiting the Whisperer's office every other day for three weeks was taking its toll on me. I felt antsy, jittery, and doomed. The gray-haired master interrogator had a way of making his whispers stay in your mind long after they'd been spoken, whether it was a threat or honeyed words.

Kelvar told me everything would be all right as long as I kept providing him information. I had a tendency to believe him, which I knew was damned stupid.

It wasn't my own mind making that decision.

This time around, he'd asked about the elves who had attacked me, Ravinica, and the Huscarls. I told him the truth: They had struck like steel lightning, brilliantly dispatching the six Huscarls with aplomb. Without breaking a sweat.

Earlier this week, Kelvar had asked about their weapons, their armor, their weaknesses. I'd told him about their curved blades and radiant-gold breastplates. I hadn't had a chance to notice any weaknesses, because it all happened so fast. Plus, one of them had punched me in the face, addling my mind. Then there was the knife Ravinica rightly held to my throat.

That horrible time had been increasingly fueling my nightmares in my little fox's absence.

My little fox? I thought with a scoff, walking with my head bowed through campus. She is as much mine as she is the wind's.

I would never tame Ravinica, and I had no intention of trying. I deserved her ire whenever I saw her again, if that time ever came. I regretted what I'd done, yet the past couldn't change. It had been a hard decision to choose my sister Frida over the woman I'd fallen for.

I was the first person Ravinica had met en route to Vikingrune Academy, unless you counted the bully Ulf Torfen. To then betray her like that . . . it hurt my heart to even think about.

Through it all, I had to now carry on like nothing was wrong. My meetings with Hersir Kelvar were typically early in the morning or late at night—times when other students wouldn't notice. I managed to attend my second-year classes, and even met with a Lepers Who Leapt emissary on one dark night near campus.

The other men who typically stayed close to Ravinica—Grim and Magnus—had acted distant to me since that day. I was offered no words of commiseration or condolences for surviving the ordeal outside Vikingrune.

I supposed I deserved their ire, too. In their minds, I had let Ravinica get captured. If they only knew the truth was even worse than what they think transpired . . .

The entire debacle was gnawing at me. It was a death by a thousand paper cuts, and I wasn't sure how much longer I could stand it until I lost my damned mind.

I had no closure. No idea where Ravinica was. The most galling thing was it didn't seem anyone at the academy cared. There'd been no troops sent out, to my knowledge, to go and look for her—or to even bring back the dead bodies of the Huscarls from the river.

Things were too dangerous.

Three weeks past that day, the academy faculty was trying desperately to keep a lid on everything that had happened outside those walls. But the truth was slowly slipping out.

It was what happened inside these walls that had everyone on a razor's edge. Astrid Dahlmyrr's death, her friend Corta. I had no idea who could have done that. Ravinica had been with me during their murders, well on our way to the swamp-seer in Niflbog, so she couldn't have been responsible.

Who else had a motive to murder two female students?

All the levity was gone from my body, puffed out like a stomped balloon. It was Ravinica and her mischievous nature that had caused me to act with a glint of mirth always dancing in my eyes. Now, I was dour, surly, and wanted to speak to no one.

Something was dreadfully wrong when a loudmouth like me didn't want to talk to people. My currency was gossip and information. I couldn't get rich off silence.

With a sigh, I looked up to see where my feet had dragged me. Muscle memory had brought me toward the longhouse where I stayed, on the northeast side of campus, surrounded by other houses for vagabond second-years.

I was near Mimir Tomes. It was eerily quiet, early in the morning before the sun had risen. As I bounded up a hill and down the other side of it, walking down a small grassy path that led to the longhouse village, I glanced over at the pillars of the academy's epic library.

Something flashed out the corner of my right eye, near my longhouse, and my head whipped straight ahead.

Nothing was there. My brow furrowed. Ice curled around my fingertips at my sides as I summoned my inherent magic.

A growl sounded behind me.

I spun around, Shaping a quick rune and tossing an icicle back toward the hill in one fluid motion—

Directly at a snarling black wolf that lunged at me out of nowhere. My first thought: There was literally nowhere the wolf could have been hiding on this treeless hillock. It baffled me.

My icicle pierced through the wolf's face, yet it kept charging and I ducked and instinctively put my hands over my face to prepare for impact.

Vaguely, I recalled wolves weren't black. They were gray.

I moved my arms, opening my eyes, and the shadow-beast was gone, dissipating through me like mist.

More sounds behind me, from the direction of the village—

And another wolf charged at me from the base of the hill. This one looked all too gray, real, and big.

With a gasp, I swirled more Shapes in the air, casting a shield of ice around myself. Something cracked overhead, and I glanced up to see a giant paw shatter the ice and shower me with flakes—

Just in time for the charging wolf to tackle me to the ground, snarling directly in my face with its dripping teeth.

I writhed and fought under its weight, but the wolf had me pinned. Over its shoulder, a polar bear settled onto its haunches after appearing from the side of the hill and shattering my ice shield.

"Fuck," I breathed, as the wolf's predatory jaws inched back a step, knowing they had me dead to rights.

"Fuck is right," came a human voice.

I sat up once the wolf receded and shifted into Sven Torfen. I was surprised it wasn't his pack with him; it was Grim Kollbjorn, of all people, changing from his bear into a human as well.

But the voice had come from the third participant, unseen until now. Magnus Feldraug staggered over from behind one of the longhouses. He nursed a bleeding thumb, which he sucked on.

Shadowshaping, I thought, recognizing the man's mark from the first black wolf that had attacked me and distracted me from the real threats of Sven and Grim.

Magnus did not look well. He was paler and gaunter than usual, slightly limping. I wondered if casting that imaginary wolf had taken that much out of him. Purple bags were under his eyes. He looked . . . bloodless.

"You know the drill, Arne," Magnus said, his voice raspy. His trench coat billowed in the early morning breeze. "Two ways to do this. One easy, one hard."

"What the hell is going on?" I growled at him, moving my eyes from Magnus to the two naked shifters who stood in front of him like bodyguards.

"We're going to have a little chat, iceshaper," Sven said, punching a fist into his open palm. He cracked his knuckles and shot me a rictus grin.

My stomach soured. Fuck. This is why they've been avoidant and distant since Ravinica's abduction. They've been scheming.

I couldn't fault them for it. I was impressed they'd managed to keep their ambush quiet until now. If I was in their shoes, and cared about Ravinica as much as they acted like they did, I would have done the same thing.

I twisted my neck to work out kinks as I began to stand, then brushed myself off.

"Don't try anything, Arne," Grim said, towering over me.

By gods, the man's cock was nearly level to my chest from his fucking height and the slight slope he stood on.

It was an envious position to be in, admittedly, and I had to force my eyes to his face. "Or what? You'll kill me? Add a third body to the growing list, Koll?"

"I don't need to kill you," Grim said easily. "These other two want your blood just as badly."

My heart sank. I was in deep shit.

I'd already told Kelvar most of what I knew. I wanted Ravinica back more than anything, which meant I managed to hide a few things from the Whisperer to try and keep her safe.

Part of me was begging to release this burden weighing me down. "Then let's go," I said with a sigh. "Where are you taking me for this chat?"

Sven glanced over at Grim. "Eirik's longhouse?"

Grim frowned and shook his head. "It's across campus. Someone might see us. Also, I don't trust Eirik to invite us in. He's too rules-oriented."

"True. The man is spineless." Sven scoffed. "Interesting, that quality, considering Ravinica's bullheadedness."

Grim flashed a smile at Sven—a man I'd always thought was his mortal nemesis. I guess even enemies can become friends when they're facing a mutual foe. Me.

"No," Magnus said, his raspy, deadened voice nearly drowned out by the wind. It was going to be a gray day—even grayer for me, it appeared.

The coat-wearing dead man nudged his sharp chin over his shoulder, twisting the tattoos creeping up his neck. "We'll do it in the iceshaper's abode."

"You think that's safe with other people sleeping in the nearby longhouses?" Grim asked.

Flatly, without emotion, Magnus stared at me with his gray eyes. "We'll just have to make sure he doesn't scream."