Marieke took my hand, and we left. She put me onto the back of the horse, ignoring my complaints—I was used to my life of privilege, and I had exclaimed that the men could attempt to hurt us, but they wouldn’t get away with it, we could simply write to my cousin and he would right any wrongs—and she got onto the horse behind me. She raced through the groves, no matter that we were both hungry and tired. She didn’t stop until she found a cave, not unlike the one she’d found me in years before. It was wet and cold, but she wouldn’t let us light a fire that night. I found out why as I lay awake. There was rustling, footsteps and voices. One man asked another if he was sure he’d seen us come this way, and a third said that yes, he was sure. Marieke held me close, and neither of us moved or breathed until the footsteps became fainter, the crunching of boots ending, the torchlight they held fading.
We got back onto our horse in the morning and didn’t stop riding until we reached one of the free nations.
I speak until my voice is hoarse, and the sun begins to fall, the trade-winds breeze blowing off the sea and prickling my skin. I speak more openly to Alida than I have to any of the kongelig before, almost as openly as I would when telling Marieke all of my worries and fears. I begin to wonder if Alida has somehow concealed her true kraft: the ability to make me feel comfortable with her, to tell her all of my secrets. It’s a relief, I realize, though not one I would willingly admit—a relief to feel like, for one moment, I might have an ally on this island.
“Did you mean to take the title of regent for the Rose name?” Alida asks, her curiosity genuine, and I tell her that I did mean to, even though this admits that I’d also planned to kill Aksel, because it makes no difference whether Alida knows or not: I won’t be able to receive the title now anyway. She has a spark of judgment at this. In her mind, no matter who the person is or what they have done, taking a Fjern’s life will always be a sin before the gods. Alida, though she practices her sciences and studies her kraft, believes in the gods as much as any of the Fjern of Hans Lollik. There can be no other explanation for the start of life, for the power that runs through the veins of the blessed.
“Who do you think will receive the regent’s title?” Alida asks me.
I don’t know why she asks; it’s clear to everyone that Lothar Niklasson will be chosen. I say this, and she nods, but I can feel hesitation bubbling within her. The king, she thinks, has been strange. She means no disrespect to me, of course she doesn’t, but for the man to invite me onto the island was startling. And when she was young, Lothar Niklasson had always been the king’s most trusted adviser; the two would be seen taking their strolls around the island together, and the king always did as Lothar suggested, without hesitation; but now, this storm season, he openly questions Lothar and shows his frustration with the man.
Alida has wondered if the king is ill, or, perhaps in his old age, has gone a little mad. She thinks he might be more unpredictable than anyone would expect. We sit in silence for some time. Alida buries the mango seed and its skin beneath the sand. There aren’t many whom I trust with the truth about the king. Only Marieke and Løren know that I can’t sense a soul within the man, that Herregård Constantjin itself is a lie. Maybe it’s the feeling of desperation that makes me want to tell Alida Nørup now.
I ask her what she knows of Konge Valdemar’s kraft, and because Alida has made it her life’s mission to know all that she can about the kraft of those who surround her, she tells me without hesitation: Konge Valdemar’s kraft is over the dead. Since he was a boy of ten years, it became clear that the king could speak with the deceased. Their spirits would come to him, and they would tell him how they had died. They would ask him to send a message to a loved one, or to curse someone they had hated. The Fjern do not believe in the spirits as we islanders do, and many, including Valdemar himself, felt the voices of the dead were inspired by madness. But the spirits wouldn’t leave the king alone, and so he sought help from the divine gods, though Alida can’t say if the gods really did give him peace.
Konge Valdemar has a power to communicate with the dead, and whenever I look at him, I see nothing more than a corpse dangling by an invisible thread. I’d thought on the possibility that the king himself was dead, but decided that Konge Valdemar had to be ruled by a kongelig—but perhaps I was wrong. This could well be the king himself, already dead for a storm season. A ghost haunting his own royal island.
There’re shouts. Alida frowns, looking up the path. We both stand, dusting the sand from our legs and clothes, and walk up the dirt path and into the groves. The groves are empty. They’re usually filled with slaves, overseen by a Fjern on his horse, but now there’s no one. As we walk, the smell of smoke becomes stronger, and my eyes and nose begin to sting. Slaves begin to run past us when we reach the clearing. We hurry with them, quickening our steps until we’ve reached one of the manors. The house is on fire. Flames burn and blacken the walls, ash and smoke flying into the sky. The fire has already spread to the nearest trees. The fire is like a breathing thing, growing when the wind blows, heightening to the tops of the groves. Sparks spit onto the grass near our feet. Slaves run around us, carrying pails of ocean water, but the water turns to steam the moment it hits the flame. They shout to one another, and their tactics change: Some begin to dig around the manor, while others start a fire of their own, killing the brush before the fire has a chance to spread farther.
Alida and I stand and watch in shock. Alida has spent more storm seasons on this island than I, but she’s never seen a fire erupt like this, engulfing an entire manor. This is the Årud manor, she knows. She’d once been forced to come here with her brother when they were children, to politely stand and smile in their uncomfortable clothes while the adults socialized around them. She wonders about the Herre and Elskerinde Årud. The roof collapses with a crash and explosion of fire and smoke. Even the slaves who’d been desperately working to prevent the fire’s spread stop now, all of us standing and staring at the fallen manor. Anyone who might’ve been trapped inside the manor is surely dead now.
“There’s nothing we can do,” Alida tells me, shouting over roar of the flame. “Best to go to the safety of our homes.”
We part ways as more slaves and guards arrive. Alida hurries down the path, and I run in the opposite direction, unable to stop looking over my shoulder at the crumbling mansion and the smoke darkening the sky.
Marieke is already waiting for me on the porch when I arrive at the Jannik house. She’d been worried for me, she couldn’t help it, even with the anger she holds for me now. We sit on the balcony outside of my chambers and watch the fire in the far distance. The fire’s spread is stopped, thankfully, but the house burns until it’s nothing but blackened embers, the smoke filling the sky into the night and even as dawn breaks. Marieke’s thoughts are empty as she sits beside me, unblinking as she stares at the fire in the distance. She doesn’t feel surprise, or even fear, but I do. Even knowing the kongelig—knowing that they’re willing to kill for the chance at winning the regent’s title—I’d always thought their murder would at least be quiet, poison or a knife in the dark.
“These are the people whose respect you so desperately craved,” Marieke tells me.
“Only to heighten my chance of inheriting the throne.” I pause. “I may have an ally. Alida Nørup. She can’t be trusted fully, none of them can—but if I pull her over to my side, to my way of thinking, maybe there’s a chance…”
“A chance of what?” Marieke asks.
“Using her to help me attack the kongelig.”
As we sit and watch, the sun lightening the sky, a slave comes to us with news, sent by Malthe to deliver the message. At least nine were killed in the fire, the bodies charred, but it’s impossible to know who the victims are. Marieke has gotten no sleep for the night, but she doesn’t complain. She gets to her feet to ready for the day. There was a fire, yes, and lives were lost, but there’s still a meal to prepare for both me and my husband, halls to sweep, weeds to pull.
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I try to sleep, though I only lie in my bed, tossing and turning in the heat. I finally close my eyes, the darkness of a shadowed hall calling me—there’s a figure at the end of the hall, but I can’t see their shape, can’t make out their face. Heat sears my skin, and when my eyes open, my bed is on fire, sheets eaten by flame. The fire burns through me, but when I wake up again, sitting up with a gasp, the fire is gone. I hide my face in my hands and try to breathe. The nightmares have been getting worse. It’s difficult to breathe on this island—difficult not to feel that I’m falling into madness.
Marieke’s too busy to comfort me from my nightmare, to reassure me that our house on the hill won’t be set on fire, and besides that, I’m too old now for her to wrap me in her arms and kiss my cheek as she did when I was a child. There were days when Marieke, I knew, pretended I was her daughter. She tried not to; she knew this was offensive to the memory of her little girl, but there were some nights when I woke crying that she couldn’t help but see her own child crying from a nightmare, afraid that the Fjern had come onto Rose Helle to take her away from her mother. The little girl had heard stories of other children being stolen away from their homes, and this was the nightmare that had plagued her. Marieke believes in the spirits that fill these islands. She believes in the ancestors who watch and protect us. But she wonders why, then, the spirit of her child hasn’t come to her. She wonders if she will ever be able to see her daughter again.
Marieke wouldn’t want to comfort me now, and I shouldn’t want her comfort, either. I’m a grown woman. The days of Marieke’s reassuring whispers have passed. I go to the sitting room, staring from the window, curtains parted and allowing in the breeze that smells of ash. I think on Alida Nørup—the plans that begin to build in my mind.
“Elskerinde Jannik,” a slave girl says, standing by the glass doors. “I have a message for you.”
She passes me the note, sealed with the sunburst insignia of Hans Lollik Helle. Patrika Årud survived the fire—she’d been on a boat, watching the passing of the whales—but Olsen Årud and eight slaves are dead. There will be a funeral ceremony for Herre Årud in the coming day.
I mutter an automatic prayer, as is customary at receiving such news. I don’t feel sorry for the man. He was wicked, heartless, and didn’t treat me with the respect I deserve. But I don’t feel gladness at his death, either. I can’t summon happiness at knowing the man is dead, when I can only think about the fire and who might’ve had a hand in setting it. The person who killed Ane Solberg, Jens Nørup, Olsen Årud, who killed Beata Larsen, and who attempted to kill me is to blame. I don’t believe they’ll stop in their plans until every kongelig on Hans Lollik Helle is dead.
I look up from the message, and I’m surprised to see the slave girl Agatha still there, standing and watching me. “Is there anything else?” I ask her.
She seems shy, but I can tell there’s a question on the edge of her tongue. I could enter her mind, force the question from her lips, but I hesitate. Hatred for me lives and breathes in the minds of the other islanders, and I don’t want to feel her hatred now.
“Is it true that you have kraft?” she asks me. Her question seems innocent enough, but I don’t know why she asks it. Everyone knows I have kraft.
“Yes,” I tell her.
“I didn’t think any islander could have kraft and be allowed to live,” she says. “You must truly be blessed by the spirits.”
I frown. The girl must know the risk, to openly praise the spirits. I could order her hung by her neck. But I have no reason to, and we’re alone in this room. “I don’t think that I am.”
“No?” She gives me a hesitant smile. “I think that all of the spirits watch us and care for us. They love their people.” Her smile almost seems mocking, but this could be my own fear of how the spirits see me. “You can know another’s thoughts and feelings,” she says. “This is what I heard. Won’t you use your kraft on me, Elskerinde Rose?”
I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to know what she thinks of me, what she and the other slaves whisper about me once I’ve turned my back to them. I already know how they hate me. I already know how I’ll never be accepted by my own people. There’s no greater loneliness in the world than this. My enemies, yes—I understand that the Fjern and the kongelig will never accept me. But it’s natural for me to want to be accepted and loved by my people, who understand the pain of having lost our history and our land. It’s understandable not to want to see the disappointment and betrayal in the minds of those who expect me to be like my mother—to fight not only for myself but for their freedom as well.
“Please,” she tells me. “I want to know what it’s like to feel someone as blessed as you use their ability on me.”
“It doesn’t feel any different from how you are now,” I tell her, but she insists, in the same way that a child might insist that one play a game. She doesn’t seem afraid that I’m one of the kongelig and that I might be annoyed. She watches me as she waits, so I take a breath and close my eyes, sinking into her mind.
She hides something from me. This I feel immediately, but I can see at its roots her hatred for me, which isn’t surprising. Even as she smiles at me, she hates me, this woman who has betrayed her people and wears the white of the kongelig. But though she hates me, Agatha so badly wants my attention. She wants me to believe that she’s worthy. She’s seen what happens to unworthy slaves—to those the masters have found no use for, the ones who become broken and discarded, not even worth enough to be sold on the docks of Niklasson Helle. Agatha came not from one of the kongelig families but from a Fjern plantation owner on Årud Helle. Agatha has seen cruelty. She’s witnessed cruelty like no one else I’ve known.
As a little girl, she huddled with the other children in a room, afraid that the master would come for them—and come he did, every night, choosing a new girl so that Agatha and the others would have to hear her screams from the main house. Agatha was sometimes the girl he chose, and she prayed to the spirits for forgiveness whenever she wasn’t chosen and felt relief. Sometimes the children didn’t come back at all. When Agatha became too old for the master to bring her to his bed, she began to work the fields from dawn until well into the night. She begged the spirits to not let her faint. The last girl who had fainted was whipped until she was dead, right where she’d fallen. Agatha prayed she wouldn’t accidentally cut herself; the last girl who had cut herself got an infection that wouldn’t heal. She lost her hand, and the master didn’t find her life worthy anymore, and so had her drowned, rocks tied to her feet as she was thrown from a ship. Agatha knows what happens when a slave is no longer considered worthy. She wants me to see that she can be useful to me, more useful than any of the other slaves of this house.
I leave her mind. It’s always exhausting, this ability of mine—tiring to become another person, to feel their emotions more than I feel my own, and it’s always painful to see the hatred of my people directed toward me. But there’s something about Agatha’s mind that’s more exhausting than all the rest. I don’t want to know these burdens, these horrors. I don’t want to know them.
“You’re dismissed,” I tell the slave girl. She nods her understanding, curtsies, and leaves.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Olsen Årud’s funeral ceremony has a boat empty of any body. I can see in the minds of the kongelig what they’d witnessed: the bodies charred beyond recognition, blackened bones and mouths twisted open, eye sockets empty. Olsen Årud had been found in the ruins near a window. He’d tried to escape, but the window must have been barred. His golden rings and glittering jewels, some partly melted and fused to his bone, were the only pieces that could identify his body. The slaves had seen the house crumbling to embers as the fire raged. The heat was too intense, the fire spreading purposefully and quickly. This fire wasn’t an accident. Everyone on the island knows.
We kongelig stand on the sand, as we had for Beata Larsen, but the wind is stronger today. It’s difficult to hear
the words of prayer. I can feel the stares of distrust, hear the thoughts of those around me: They think I’m to blame. They said as much, before the funeral even began. As I walked down the sand, approaching the kongelig who stood in respect of Herre Årud, Jytte Solberg immediately asked me where I’d been and what I’d been doing when the fire had been set. Luckily for me, Alida answered that we’d been sitting on the bay together. Even so, most of the kongelig aren’t convinced. They remember my guilt in using my kraft on Elskerinde Jannik. They believe I could’ve just as easily used my kraft on Alida. And Jytte Solberg won’t look away from me. She thinks to herself that it’s possible I could’ve sent a slave to do my work and waited with Alida on the bay, using the girl for an alibi—for all her intelligence, Jytte believes that Alida Nørup is far too naive.
Patrika is distraught. She stands closest to the water, her shoulders shaking with emotion she tries to hide. This isn’t a lie. She truly is devastated by the death of her husband. The emotion that scours through her surprises me. I thought she’d hated him; she’d laughed at him, thought him a fool. But I can see now that though she didn’t love Olsen Årud, he was her partner. They’d plotted and planned together many a night, strategizing how they would help the Årud name claim the title of regent. The two had helped one another achieve their goals. Patrika knows that she’s supposed to be dead as well. She’d left to go whale watching unexpectedly, out of boredom; if she’d stayed, she’d have been a charred corpse on the ground beside her husband. She feels guilty she survived, while Olsen is now dead. She should’ve invited him to come watch the passing of the whales with her, but she’d fought with him just the night before, argued over the value of this island and whether the title of regent would be worth their lives.
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