“Who ordered you to kill me?”
He doesn’t respond.
“You can’t have any true loyalty to them,” I say. “You would’ve tried to kill me again by now if you did.”
“I still might,” he says, smile beginning to fade.
“I think you have no loyalty to whoever sent you to kill me. I also think you’ve given a false impression of your identity.”
He raises a brow at this.
“You have the blood of an islander,” I tell him, “but you also have the blood of the Fjern. I can see it in the color of your skin, your hair. You’re a slave of whichever kongelig sent you to kill me. Kongelig that you’re also related to, perhaps?”
He watches me, waiting as though bored, but I can see the twitch of uncertainty in the corners of his mouth.
“Which family do you belong to? Which of your cousins want me dead? Nørup, Solberg, Niklasson? Your family has sent you on a mission to sacrifice yourself, and I, by default, want to destroy anyone who wants me dead. I would say that we’re allies.”
“We’re not allies.”
I step closer to him, lowering my voice. “Which family?” He doesn’t move, only watches me. “Tell me,” I say. “Was it Jannik?”
He clenches his jaw and glances at the shelves of books.
I let out a laugh of surprise. “Elskerinde Jannik?”
“That woman doesn’t even know where she is,” he says.
“Then it was Aksel.”
There’s a flash of pity in his eyes, which I turn away from. Emotions come to me, slowly. Embarrassment first. The slave might have a point. Everyone really might be laughing at me. While I’d considered myself a master in this game of the kongelig, I’ve been nothing but a piece on a board game myself. Anger comes next. Rage, twisting through me, growing into a fury that makes my fingers tremble and makes my stomach lurch. Aksel Jannik has become much better at hiding his thoughts from me.
I’m quiet for too long, and the slave is watching me carefully now. I ask him, “Why would Aksel Jannik want me dead?”
“That’s something you should ask Aksel Jannik.”
I can barely look at him now. A thought strikes through me: how much better I might feel, if I’m able to see this killer hanging from his neck. It’s because of him that Friedrich is dead, and it would feel nice, I think, to kill him and have his head delivered to Aksel.
“You have your answers,” he says. Hesitation in his eyes—maybe a glint of fear, fear that I’ll have him executed now that I know who tried to have me killed. Maybe he can sense the rage in me, see the way I look at him.
But curiosity still burns inside of me. I don’t yet know why I can’t work my kraft on him. “Not all of them.”
I may not be able to feel his emotions for myself, but the more I watch him, the clearer they become, in the flicker of his gaze, the shifting of muscles beneath his skin. He tries to hide his relief. He pretends to be brave, pretends to be a willing martyr, but he doesn’t want to die. I wonder if I’d be able to do the same. If I hadn’t been born to the Rose name, and had been taken from my mother’s hands; if I’d been forced into the fields because of the dark of my skin; if a pale-skinned master had ripped at my clothes and forced his way into me, between my legs, and then tore out a child from me, taking the screaming baby away—would I tie rocks around my ankles and walk into the sea, like so many of our people have done before?
He doesn’t say anything else when I leave him in the library, locking the door behind me.
CHAPTER EIGHT
In the days that pass, golden mornings followed by sunsets that light the sky afire, I hope that I’ll begin to feel settled, but I do not. The habits are familiar: waking in a bed with sheets that are sticky with sweat; allowing Marieke to scrub my shoulders and back in my warm bath and stepping into the white dress she has laid out for me; wandering the gardens of the Jannik house where slaves work, replanting mango and guava and sugar-apple trees and yanking out the dried weeds; sitting on the porch with lemongrass tea, closing my eyes in the trade-winds breeze. The days begin to mirror my life on Lund Helle—but here, every shadow that passes in the corner of my eye makes my pulse race beneath my skin. Every creaking floorboard has me whirling around to see a startled slave carrying a handful of sheets or a basket of fruits. Closing my eyes, I feel the loose skin of Freja Jannik’s neck beneath my fingertips, the tip of the blade piercing the skin above my heart. I can never feel settled or at ease on this royal island of Hans Lollik. Especially not when I should be preparing myself to meet Konge Valdemar—to convince him that I am worthy of the title of regent.
It’s on the third day that one of the new slaves, a young girl that I’ve heard Marieke call Agatha, comes to my chamber with news, twisting her hands with nerves: My betrothed, Aksel Jannik, has arrived. I thank Agatha and leave her in my chambers. I walk down the stairs and a hall with sunlight pouring in through windows before I pass the open glass doors. Marieke stands at attention against the nearest wall while Aksel sits on a sofa on the opposite side of the room. His boots have tracked dirt onto the rug. Aksel doesn’t stand when I walk in, but I give the customary curtsy, straining to keep my expression serene so that he won’t see the fury twisting through my veins. He’s tried to have me killed, and yet he sits here as he does, daring to look me in the eye without any shame. It’s because of him that Friedrich is dead.
“Herre Jannik,” I say when I rise. “I’m glad you’ve arrived safely.”
There’s a roiling of emotions, of thoughts, that knock into me at once—complete confusion, a jumbled mess—but Aksel’s face remains impassive. He’s trying to hide something from me. Trying to hide the fact that he sent assassins to take my life. Another layer of anger is added, and bitterness for my own ignorance: Had I not gotten my answer from the slave locked within my library, Aksel might’ve succeeded in keeping his secret from me.
I move to sit across from him. “How was your journey?” I ask.
Aksel waves his hand impatiently in response.
“Will you be staying long?”
He looks at me as though it’s a ridiculous question, and I suppose it is. “This house you’ve occupied, Elskerinde Lund, is my own, and you’re only here on Hans Lollik Helle because we’re engaged to be married.”
My rage reminds me of when I faced a laughing Andela, and the anger that would come to me at night when I couldn’t sleep, thinking about my family that had been taken from me. I could kill Aksel, I know. I could sink myself into him and force him to stop breathing, pressure building in his lungs and throat. I could have him walk to the kitchens and pick up a knife to cut open his own neck. I could have him walk off the cliffs of Hans Lollik Helle.
But I need him. I need his name if I’m to fulfill any of my plans on this island.
“I haven’t forgotten, Herre Jannik. I’m glad to be welcomed here.”
He’s silent, struggling, a swell of emotion and thoughts. Finally, he says, “My mother is dead.”
It takes me a moment to understand the words. There’s a spark of satisfaction, but darkness also churns through me. Though Elskerinde Jannik’s death had been a part of this plan of mine, I still feel a twist at the knowledge that she’s dead in part because of me.
“I’m sorry to hear that, Aksel,” I tell him, and surprise myself when I mean what I say. I know how it is to lose a mother.
“I’m not,” he says, his eyes fastened to the ground. “She was suffering. Now she’s at peace.”
I don’t speak. The silence curdles as remorse grows in me. Elskerinde Jannik would’ve died eventually, but she may have had a few more years of life if I hadn’t made her a piece in my game against the kongelig. I try to remember that she’s a part of the reason my own family is dead, try to grasp that rage and hold it close to my chest.
I don’t realize Aksel still has more to say and is struggling to speak until I look up and see him watching me, jaw clenched.
“I heard word just the other day
,” he finally says, “of an attempt on your life.”
I sit unmoving for a moment, before I ask Marieke for lemongrass tea. She nods her head and leaves the sitting room, closing the glass doors behind her.
He continues. “I had a visitor to Jannik Helle who’d come from a town your guardsmen had passed through, with news that the guard named Friedrich is dead. Is that true?”
Aksel mentions this now only because he knows hearing Friedrich’s name will hurt me—and it does, a stab to the chest. I flinch, but I don’t blink, don’t look away from Aksel.
“Poor Friedrich,” he says, though he doesn’t feel sad for the boy at all. Anger rips through me. “He had a lot of potential. I’d considered adding him to the Jannik guard, once we were married.”
I fold my hands together in my lap. “Let’s not pretend, Aksel,” I say. “You tried to have me killed.”
The churning of emotions, of thoughts, stops within him.
I watch Aksel, his surprise and confusion. “I knew you hated me, but I didn’t quite realize how much. I underestimated you.”
Silence flows for some time before he manages to speak. “So you survived, and decided to come to Hans Lollik Helle anyway?”
“I must be here if we’re to be chosen by Konge Valdemar.”
He struggles to meet my eye now as thoughts storm through his head. “How did you know?”
“A prisoner,” I tell him, but that’s all I will say.
Aksel sits still for some time, his darkening emotions clouding the air. There’s only a jumble of thoughts and emotions, tangled together, and it’s impossible to latch on to any single thread. The doors reopen, and Marieke steps inside, placing a silver tray of steaming porcelain cups on the center table. The tea will stay untouched—it’s just a formality, and besides, it’s too hot to drink on a day like this.
“You may leave, Marieke,” I tell her, and I feel her irritation prick me, for acting like she’s a mere slave who can be easily dismissed. Still, she bows her head before she walks out of the sitting room, shutting the doors behind her again.
“I don’t like that one’s attitude,” Aksel says, his eyes having followed her to the door, as though I hadn’t just told him that I know he tried to have me killed. “She should be replaced.”
“Marieke will stay wherever I am,” I say with enough finality that he doesn’t argue. “Why?” I ask. “That’s the one thing I can’t figure out.”
He takes an impatient breath—a sudden shift in tactic, attempting to pretend he holds the power in our dynamic. I realize with a spike to my heart that he does. He’s a pale-skinned Fjernman on the royal island of Hans Lollik. He will always have more power than me.
“Take a moment to think.” He wants to pretend he’s indifferent, but I can feel the discomfort ripple through him.
“I’ve considered one possibility: It would be easy for you to blame my death on an assassin sent from the Ludjivik,” I tell him. “Easy enough to spark a war now, and destroy the family while the Jannik guard remains in a stronger position.” When he doesn’t answer—only watches me, unblinking—I ask, “Is the Jannik name really so weak that you feel the need to eliminate the Ludjivik now, before they become a threat?”
“Perhaps the idea of being tied to you for the rest of my life is reason enough to want you dead.”
“I’m not afraid of you, Aksel,” I tell him. “You want to have me killed, but you can’t see that the Jannik family is nothing without the Lund name.”
He stills. His jaw tightens, and he watches me, eyes cold, thoughts swarming—until he clears a path through his mind, a path that leads me to what he wants me to see: a memory of the gossip, the gossip that holds its own value in these islands, whispers that had reached Aksel’s ears—the mention that there had once been a little girl named Sigourney Rose who might’ve been my age had she not been found dead in a pretty little dress beside the rest of her family.
“The Lund name,” he repeats.
Aksel doesn’t know the truth, not for sure, but he suspects. He’s suspected for some time now.
“Ask me,” I tell him.
He doesn’t ask.
“Ask me if it’s true.”
“I don’t need you to tell me if it’s true.”
“And so because I’m not Sigourney Lund,” I say, “but Sigourney Rose, you want me dead? What does my name matter, when any name is better than the Jannik?”
There’s a splinter of surprise in his chest, yes—curiosity, even, as he knows with certainty now that he looks upon someone who had been thought dead for the past twelve years. But engulfing that surprise is a fury that swells inside him. It infuriates Aksel that I’d try to sweep away this lie and pretend it isn’t worth discussion. My bloodline, and my attempt to trick him into an alliance with the Rose, is unforgivable. Bad enough that Aksel is being tied in marriage to an islander with skin as dark as mine—but to be deceived into a marriage with an enemy of the kongelig not only makes a joke of Aksel Jannik but makes him a target of the kongelig as well. They could think that he truly is an ally of the family that his father had ordered killed, and that he means to help the Rose rise to power once again.
“You believe the Rose name is stronger than the Jannik?” he says. “The Rose is dead.”
“I’m alive, and I’m stronger than you.”
“You give yourself too much credit.”
“No, your ego is too bruised to see the truth,” I say. “You need me when faced by Konge Valdemar. It’s doesn’t matter if I’m Sigourney Lund or Sigourney Rose. You’re a fool if you don’t see that.”
“You’re a fool if you think I could ever allow myself to marry you.”
“Why? Because you don’t love me? Are you really so childish, Aksel?”
“It isn’t childish to love and be loved. I doubt you’ve ever felt love. I doubt you ever will.”
I push away the wave of hurt—the memory of Friedrich telling me that I deserved his love. It’s impossible to continue the lie without Friedrich here to uphold his end. Aksel is right; I can’t be loved, not by any of my people, not when I allow them to remain slaves. A Fjern would never in their eyes lower themselves to love someone like me, and I could never hold love for a Fjern. I want to be the beloved heroine to my people, but I want the power and respect of the kongelig as well. I know that both are impossible.
Aksel is silent now, biting his lip. I’m exhausted from confronting Aksel and from reading his mind, but still I sink into him one last time. He has a tangle of thoughts, emotions, and memories, but one becomes clear: an image of the woman he’s loved all along, her yellow hair and pale skin and blue eyes. It’s almost enough to make me laugh. Not the politics of the Jannik and Ludjivik families, not my false identity, not even the fact that my skin is as dark as night; it’s this, something so simple and plain.
“So your desire for that woman did play a role after all,” I say. “I underestimated your love for her and overestimated your love for the Jannik name.”
He doesn’t speak. Even now he’s lost in his memories of Beata; the storm season, years ago now, when he finally found the courage to tell her that he loved her and that he wanted to marry her. They’d whispered their dreams to each other. Beata’s patrons, kongelig of the island, wouldn’t have approved of her choice in Aksel, she knew; and Aksel also knew that his mother would’ve hoped for him to choose a daughter of the kongelig who had more coin and a more powerful kraft that would impress Konge Valdemar. They’d kept their promises to one another a secret, and every storm season when they were able to fall into each other’s arms once again, they would make plans to escape the island and travel to the north, be married, and start their life anew. Aksel thinks, too, about how one year ago, after he agreed to his mother’s wishes, he had to tell Beata Larsen that he couldn’t be her husband and she couldn’t be his wife. She had cried, yes, but even then she had been so full of understanding and love. Aksel’s heart aches at the memory, salt beginning to prick the backs of his
eyes. It was only out of respect for his mother’s wishes that he told Beata he could not marry her; it’s out of respect for his mother’s wishes that he remains here on Hans Lollik Helle.
“Understand that I’m showing you a mercy,” I tell him. “I could have you killed and declare to all we’d been married in secret, taking the Jannik name. I don’t need you to impress Konge Valdemar. It’s a mercy that I’m allowing you to live.”
He blinks too quickly, too many times.
“But betray me again,” I tell him, “and I’ll cut your neck. Do you hear me, Aksel?”
He watches me, fury building in him.
“Say it. Tell me that you understand.”
I feel a wave of the depth of his hatred, splashing onto my feet, rising to my knees. “I understand, Elskerinde Lund.”
“Good.” I stand, clenching my hands so that he won’t see them tremble, and walk out of the sitting room doors.
Marieke waits for me in the hall. She follows closely behind. “I’ve heard gossip that passed from a slave of the groves,” she whispers to me, “that the prisoner you keep in your library is familiar. He’s spent many storm seasons here on Hans Lollik Helle.”
I wait for her to speak again, but when she hesitates, my respect for her privacy is overwhelmed by my impatience. In the same moment, I realize this is what she’d wanted—she’s known for some time now but has had a difficult time telling me. But she can’t keep this secret to herself any longer, not when Aksel Jannik has returned to Hans Lollik Helle, and when my prisoner, named Løren Jannik, is the half brother of the man I’m meant to marry.
Now that Freja Jannik is dead, the family needs a new Elskerinde to inherit the title, and so Aksel declares the wedding that will unite me to the Jannik name will be within three days’ time. This is an emotionless business proposal, after all; there isn’t any need to wait the weeks it would take to plan and execute a ceremony of the sort of caliber the Fjern are used to witnessing.
I’ve never been excited for my wedding. Even as a child, I only saw this ritual as something that was meant for the pale-skinned girls with their yellow hair. The ceremonies I heard of, much like the fairy tales I listened to, weren’t meant for someone like me. Ellinor wanted a grand wedding, she whispered to me at night, one where her dress was made of white rose-mallow flowers and her husband was a handsome Fjernman. She knew the wedding ceremonies weren’t meant for her, either, with her brown skin and brown eyes and brown hair, but Ellinor had a hope in her that was different from my own. She wished to be welcomed by the Fjern. Maybe because her skin and hair and eyes were lighter than mine, closer to those of the Fjern ancestor we’d had generations ago, she felt this spark of potential that allowed her to dream of the smiles of Fjern who might one day greet us in the streets of other islands, rather than the still faces and cold eyes we’d only ever known.
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