I pierce one mind, and I can feel the man fighting me as if he’d been warned about my kraft—but then he turns and stabs his machete into the stomach of one of his comrades, then another, before he cuts his own neck—
One man aims his bow at me, and an arrow whisks by, nearly piercing my cheek. I haven’t recovered before the man races toward me, knife drawn—I try to sink into him next, but my kraft ricochets. I barely manage to jump back, to escape the knife aimed for my neck, my feet tangling in my dress as I fall to the dirt. The assassin moves to follow, to stab my chest—I grab his hand, pushing back as he grips the handle, the tip piercing my skin above my heart. I kick out with a scream, push him off with all my force, and he rolls from me and jumps to his feet. My soldiers have gained control of the battle, three of the assassins falling, red gushing from their throats, their chests, their stomachs; it’s now four of my guards against the one remaining assassin. He sees the situation, his dead friends, and begins to run.
Malthe follows—grabs the man’s arm and yanks him to the ground, twisting the knife from him. My guards are on the assassin, pulling him to his feet as he struggles against them. The dead surround us. Friedrich is one of them. Blood on his lips, his neck mangled, eyes empty. Pain wells and burns my throat, but I swallow my tears. I learned early that it doesn’t help to let anyone see me cry.
Malthe knocks a fist into the assassin’s mouth, and he stops fighting against the hands that hold him. He spits blood into the dirt. The man has a young face, even if his expression is grim, mouth set in a firm line. Now that he’s lost, he stands calm under the force of my guards, eyes on me, waiting for me to give the order that would take his life, but he doesn’t seem afraid. There’s even a shadow of a smile on his lips. As though he thinks this is funny, that he’s killed Friedrich and my men and attempted to kill me.
I move toward him, bending over to pick up a fallen machete as I walk, leather handle rough in my palm, blade gleaming with sunlight and blood. I press the edge of the machete to the man’s neck.
“Who are you? What’s your name?”
He doesn’t answer me. I try to force myself into him again, but it’s as if I’m walking into a glass wall, bouncing back with surprise—agitation, as I press a hand against the glass wall and try to push. The man winces, but only for a second. His face returns to the same expressionless mask.
“Who sent you?” I ask. “The Ludjivik?”
I’m so used to asking a question and finding my answer, but this time there’s only silence. People have tried to hide their thoughts from me, and many have succeeded—a jungle of confused thought to hide the secret they don’t want me to know, or a quiet and meditative mind—but to be blocked out completely… This is different. This is new.
The assassin only stands, chin raised, peering at me as the corners of his lips twitch into a smile. He taunts me as though he knows of my kraft and knows, too, that I can’t see into him like I can see into anyone else of my choosing. I study him. His dark brown eyes are the same color as his hair, curling and sticking to his face in the heat. His skin is a golden brown, bright even in the shaded grove. Though his dead friends were all islanders, it’s difficult to tell if this man is a descendant of the men and women who invaded these islands, or if he has the blood of an islander as well. The longer I look at him, the more questions appear, and the more my frustration builds.
“Elskerinde Lund,” Malthe says, his face steeled though his eyes are wet. It’d been his responsibility to protect these guards, and though Friedrich had been a pain in his side, I could tell that Malthe also cared for the boy. “What should we do with this man?” he asks me.
I should kill him. Slice open his neck as he and his friends sliced open the necks of the men on the ground. An execution, for attacking and attempting to kill me, is the only action anyone would expect. I open my mouth, ready to give the order… But there are still too many unanswered questions. Not only about why he has tried to kill me but about why my kraft doesn’t work on him as well. I can’t kill him—not yet. My hand holding the machete trembles before I drop the blade to the ground.
“Take him to Herregård Dronnigen. I’ll question him there.”
The guards hesitate. Shock, anger pulse across their faces. I’m sparing the life of a man who has killed their fellow guards, their friends—who has tried to kill them. If I read their thoughts, I might feel a confirmation of what I’ve feared has been there all along: their hatred of me, their judgment. Malthe remains steady.
“Elskerinde Lund,” he begins, his tone grave—but he doesn’t push when I hold up my hand to silence him. There’s even, for a moment, the barest flicker of relief across his face, and he lowers his head, perhaps glad that he won’t have to argue for another islander’s death.
One of my guardsmen gets onto his horse to race ahead to the manor, to be sure it’s safe for my arrival. Two of my other guards bind the assassin, throw him over the back of a horse, and start their journey to the manor as well. Malthe tells me that we must leave immediately. The groves might still be unsafe. Other assailants could be hiding in wait. I know that he’s right, but still I have a hard time leaving. I force myself to keep my gaze on Friedrich. His body is empty. I can still feel the remnants of his being inside of him, dust settling, but this is no longer Friedrich. There’s no energy that vibrates through him, no humor, no gladness that he’s alive even if he doesn’t own his life.
I ask Malthe to give Friedrich a proper burial at sea, and he promises that he will.
Herregård Dronnigen appears on its hill, faded white as though a ghost of itself. The guard who had raced ahead has already arrived, waiting on the path to acknowledge that the manor holds no threat. Marieke and other slaves await my return on the front steps. Malthe helps me from my horse, my hands and knees weak. Marieke is by my side immediately, taking my gloves as I yank them from my trembling fingers.
“Is it true?” she says beneath her breath. “Is Friedrich dead?”
I nod, sweeping past her.
“Spirits remain,” Marieke murmurs, following closely behind. Marieke often murmurs her prayers to the ancestors, even knowing that if the wrong ears hear her, she could be hung. It doesn’t normally annoy me, her prayers to the spirits, but it annoys me now—the idea, that spirits remain and protect us. Friedrich has been killed. He isn’t here. He doesn’t remain.
I throw open the doors to my chambers and turn to the stand beside my bed, but the letter is gone. “Where is it?”
Marieke squints at me in confusion as though I’ve lost my mind. Maybe I have. “Where is what?”
“The letter from Hans Lollik Helle. The invitation.”
Marieke hesitates, closing the doors behind her. “You’ve just had an attempt on your life,” she says, “and though you won’t likely admit it, you’re grieving the loss of your guard. It’s all right for you to take a breath.”
I shake my head, and as I look to the ground, I see the splotches of brown—Friedrich’s dried blood along the collar, the front of my dress. My stomach churns. I try to yank it off, struggling with the collar and the sleeves, until Marieke moves to help me and I’m able to step out of the dress, leaving it a crumpled mess on the ground. Even if the stains are removed, I won’t be able to wear the dress again.
“I nearly died today,” I tell Marieke.
She nods, but she doesn’t understand, and it’s difficult for me to form the words, to describe what happened—Friedrich’s death, and the man who tried to kill me. Two guards are riding back with the assassin now, expected to arrive by evening.
I stand naked and catch a glimpse of myself in a mirror. The cut on my chest, right above my heart, has already started to scab. The dirt and grease smeared across my face, my tangled hair, the panic in the shine of my eyes, the pain knitted in my brow. I look close to tears. I harden my expression.
I watch myself as I speak. “Give me the invitation.”
There’s no doubt in my mind now: I’d grown too comfo
rtable with myself, my position, my plans—I was too confident, and now reality has come to confront me. A group of islanders, so well trained, couldn’t simply have found their way to Lund Helle and attempted to kill me. These were guardsmen. Someone sent assassins for me, and the only people in these islands able to afford such a group of assassins are the kongelig.
Marieke folds her arms for a moment before walking to my bookshelf and pulling the invitation from a stack of papers. I snatch it from her fingers, palms sweating as I tear the seal and unfold the paper to read the script with shaking hands. As the betrothed of Herre Aksel Jannik, the honor of my presence is requested on the royal island for the coming storm season. Should I accept, I must arrive within one week’s time. The paper is signed by the regent, Konge Valdemar, himself.
I’d envisioned reading these words for so many years now. If I accept, there’s little chance that I’ll survive the storm season. It’s become a tradition of sorts to see which member of the kongelig family will be found dead, drowned on the beach or strangled in their bed, poisoned at a dinner party, or in the middle of the woods with their neck cut. To be invited to Hans Lollik Helle is an honor that’s bestowed upon few Fjern, and for them to be gathered during the storm season is the perfect time to settle old grudges—to kill whoever stands in the way of their goals. As the only islander, I know I’ll be targeted all the more. Even when I was young, I knew there was little chance I would survive the storm season on Hans Lollik Helle, but it had become my only goal: to receive an invitation from the king himself. To convince him of my worth, and to be named the next regent of the islands of Hans Lollik, so that I would have the power to destroy the people who killed my family.
I tell Marieke to begin preparations for Hans Lollik Helle. We leave tomorrow.
CHAPTER FIVE
Herregård Dronnigen isn’t the same without Friedrich. I’ve lost guardsmen before, but with Friedrich there always seemed to be a smile upon everyone’s faces—the kitchen staff’s as he chatted with the cooks, picking at desserts; the stable boys’ as he told stories about his days in training over rum. And mine, whenever he accompanied me to the nearby villages. When he laughed against my ear under my sheets, speaking of escaping the islands of Hans Lollik. I didn’t love Friedrich, not as he believed he loved me—but he didn’t deserve to die. Not because of me.
The manor is silent. No chatter in the kitchens, no laughter in the halls. Guards are positioned at the entryway and on the porch. I can feel their anger. My guards have never held love for me, but the anger they now have boils. I’ve allowed the man who attempted to take my life—the man who killed Friedrich and most of my personal guardsmen—to live, when he should have been hung from his neck. There’s a reason I don’t read the thoughts of my people. The Fjern—yes, I know that they hate me, and always will—but the hatred from my own people is what cuts me open. It’s the hatred in their eyes that lets me know I’m truly alone.
There aren’t any dungeons in Herregård Dronnigen, so the assassin has been locked away in an abandoned wing. I haven’t wanted to face him, knowing he was responsible for Friedrich’s death. I’m not sure I can trust myself not to have him killed the moment I see his face. But now, with only hours before I must leave for Hans Lollik Helle, I have little choice. I plod through the halls barefoot. Dust has gathered and floats, shining through the yellow light that streams from the closed windows. The air of the hall is heavy, the curtains unmoving. Heat rises through my skin, and sweat pricks my brow. This had been the wing my sisters and brother and I shared with our mother when we came to visit our cousins as children.
I didn’t have my kraft yet, so there’s no way for me to be sure, but as a child I thought it was easy to see the discomfort of our cousins. The Lund knew it was our ancestor, Wilhelm Rose, they had to thank for their wealth, but even this didn’t stop them from placing us in these quarters that had once belonged to slaves. This didn’t stop Bernhand and his wife, before her death, from repeatedly failing to invite us to their sitting room for tea or to the dining room for supper. More often than not, my mother would come here with us, and we would stay only a few days as she conducted her business, observing the crop and meeting with Bernhand Lund, until finally we’d return to Rose Helle. While my mother was locked away in the office with Bernhand, Ellinor and I would run laughing through the halls, hiding from our nurse and Inga. We explored the manor, searching for hidden and unlocked rooms, rummaging through drawers for buried treasure. The wallpaper, like an old memory, has faded. Dust covers the porcelain vases, which once held bunches of flowers of every color and scent, but only sit empty now.
I walk to the main chamber, hand hesitating on the golden handles of the large mahogany doors. Ellinor and I would run to these doors, burst them open, and jump onto the bed where our mother slept. She would open her eyes, a smile already on her face, as she’d wrap her arms around us and tickle both of our bellies until we could no longer breathe.
The sound of laughter dies away. I push open the door and step into the room. The lace curtains are still the same, the canopy bed and the vanity table and the balcony that gives a glance at the blue sea. The only difference is the man standing in the center of the room, watching me, as if he’d been waiting there in exactly that same spot for the past night and day. I snap the doors shut behind me.
I can’t read his mind. I can’t control his body. My kraft has allowed me to do both for years now, since the days I spent traveling the north with Marieke. First, the ability was an uncontrolled burst of power: The thoughts and emotions of others came to me as though they were my own, and I would crumble under the weight of other minds. Slowly, the power faded into what it is now: my conscious effort in deciding to read the thoughts and emotions of those around me. The ability to sink so deeply into those thoughts that I could become that person, even for a moment, developed over time as well. Every person, each mind, each body, has belonged to me for half of my life now. No one has ever been able to resist me and my kraft—not until the man who stands before me.
I walk across the room, eyes still on him. His ghost of a smile is gone now. It might have something to do with the bruise that blossoms across his cheek, the cut on his lip. He wears the same loose-fitting shirt and pants as when he fired the arrow that killed Friedrich, and when he tried to take my life. There are rusted bloodstains on his clothes, splattered across his shirt. His hands, his nails, are dried with red as well.
I try again—try to press into him—but the wall remains. This wall—it’s almost something I can feel, an ache growing in my own mind whenever I attempt to force my way into his thoughts.
“What’s your name?” I ask.
He blinks, but doesn’t look away.
“Did the Ludjivik family send you? Was it one of the kongelig?” Any of the kongelig could’ve learned that Konge Valdemar sent me an invitation to join him on Hans Lollik Helle for the storm season and hoped to see me killed before I could arrive. This wouldn’t surprise me. The kongelig are ruthless. Just as I plan to destroy them, they undoubtedly plan to destroy me.
The assassin speaks, his voice broken and hoarse. “If you’re going to kill me, then please—kill me. But don’t force me to listen to the same questions over and over again, spirits remain.”
I can’t help but smile. He has a bit of a bite. “You’re bold, to praise the spirits in front of a kongelig.”
He finally looks away, his face showing a twitch of annoyance—an annoyance I share, since I can’t feel the emotion for myself.
“You killed my personal guard, you know,” I tell him.
“Was he your favorite?”
“He was,” I say with enough force that he looks at me again. “He was childish, but he was passionate about life. He didn’t deserve to die, not by your hand.”
He clenches his jaw. “Then have me executed as punishment.”
“Why’re you so eager to die? Were you sent to kill me, not expecting to survive yourself?” I gesture at the balcony,
the curtains, the bedsheets. “You could’ve taken care of this yourself, if you were determined to. Maybe you’re only asking for your execution because you know it’s your duty to die, but you don’t want to—not really. You want to live. Which makes me think that you were sent on a mission to kill me, not expecting to survive, by force. Forced to kill, forced to die—who would do such a thing to you? You couldn’t have any real loyalty for such a person.”
“Not any more loyalty than I have for someone who would lock me in a room and threaten to have me killed.”
“I can see we’re going nowhere.”
There’s a flicker of fear in his eyes at the suggestion that I’ll follow through and have him executed for killing Friedrich and my other guardsmen. A part of me does want to see him swing for taking my Friedrich’s life, for acting like Friedrich had meant nothing. But I know that I need this boy alive. I need answers from him still.
The journey to Hans Lollik Helle begins within hours. I leave last-minute preparations in the charge of Marieke and take my horse for a ride with Malthe, racing over the green fields of guinea grass, the hills that allow me to see Lund Helle for what could be my last time: its white-sand shore, the cloudless sky, the yellow sun reflecting on the ocean of clear water that turns turquoise, then blue, the nearby islands resting in the distance.
I ride my horse to the top of a hill, and directly across sits Rose Helle—and down in a valley, appearing as though it is nothing more than the scattered pieces of a broken toy, rests the ruins of the manor where I’d lived my first few years. Even from here, I can see the gardens—now overgrown, filled with weeds and wild flowers. The garden where my family was killed. The balcony where I stood, listening to their screams.
I tell Malthe that I’d like to visit the fallen manor, and he doesn’t argue. We ride to the bay and take a small boat across the still sea. Malthe’s hair is gray, but his height and strong muscles are intimidating, even to me. His skin is dark, face peppered with unshaved white hair. He has a quiet mind, which can be frustrating when I search for his thoughts. I wonder how he feels about me keeping Friedrich’s murderer in my home rather than killing him and returning his body to the sea.
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