Then finally, after some deliberation, she took a pen off my dad’s desk and circled a blank spot on the map in Ontario.
“There. That’s Lake Isolera,” she proclaimed rather proudly.
I leaned forward, squinting at the map. There were plenty of blue splotches covering the area, indicating all of the lakes. But the spot Mom had circled was completely devoid of water, an odd dry patch in an otherwise watery land.
“Are you sure that’s the right place?” I asked. “There’s nothing there, but there are tons of lakes around it.”
“Well, either it isn’t real or it’s hidden under a magic spell, so of course there wouldn’t be anything on the map.” She straightened up and folded her arms over her chest. “But if it does exist, that’s where it is.”
“If Linnea ran away, you think that’s where she would be?” I looked up at her.
“Either at the lake, or trying to find it.” Mom nodded, her lips pressed into a grim line. “Assuming she isn’t dead, of course.”
SEVEN
abscond
“You have to talk to Ridley,” Tilda told me firmly, and I groaned and slumped back against the wall.
After talking with my mom, I’d snuck into the school, barely managing not to be seen, and then lay in wait in the locker room that doubled as a women’s restroom. Thanks to her pregnancy, Tilda had to use the bathroom rather frequently—as she had lamented several times—so I knew it wouldn’t be too long before she came in.
In fact, I’d only hidden in a stall for fifteen minutes before she entered. I waited until she’d finished, and when she came out of the stall she nearly screamed at the sight of me. Once she calmed herself, she gave me a hard look—one that could cut twice as deep as any lecture.
I hurriedly explained my absence from training today, and my plan to find Linnea and why I thought it was so important. As she listened, the steel in her gray eyes began to soften, but she didn’t exactly look at me with approval either.
“But you’re my commanding officer,” I insisted. “You should be able to give me the go-ahead.”
Tilda shook her head. “You know I have no authority to release you from your duties. Even if I did, it would mean nothing. Unless you get Ridley’s approval, you’ll be considered AWOL.”
I leaned my head back against the wall and stared up at the ceiling, weighing my options. On one hand, if I left without permission, not only would I lose any hope of being on the Högdragen, but I’d most likely be fired as a tracker. I’d still have to stay in the army until after this “war” was over, but as soon as it was, I’d be out of work.
And on the other hand, getting permission meant I’d have to talk to Ridley.
“If you think this is the right thing to do, and it seems that you really do, then you need to talk to him,” Tilda said, her voice low and comforting. “Whatever is going on between the two of you, he’ll still be fair and hear you out.”
I looked up at her hopefully. “Will you get him for me?” She started to scoff, so I quickly explained. “If I go out there now, it’ll be a big spectacle because I’ve already skipped half a day. I just wanna get this over with and get out of here.”
Tilda sighed but smiled crookedly at me. “Fine. Wait here.”
While she went to retrieve Ridley, I sat down on one of the benches by the lockers. It may have seemed strange talking to the Överste in the girls’ locker room, but with so few female trackers, odds were that no one would use it. In fact, it was probably the least used area in the whole school.
Ridley pushed open the door hard enough to make it bang against the wall, and I hopped to my feet. He didn’t look at me when he came in, instead preferring to stare off at some point directly to the right of me, but finally, he forced his dark eyes to rest coldly on me.
His uniform looked good on him; like always, he’d left the top button undone, revealing just a hint of his chest. If the King or members of the Högdragen came around, he could get in trouble for that, but by the hard look on his face, I didn’t think he gave a damn.
“What the hell is so damn important that you think you can just blow off your job?” Ridley demanded.
“Queen Linnea.”
“We already went over that—”
“I think I know where she is,” I cut him off, and that got his attention.
For a brief second, he looked at me the way he always had—his mask of anger momentarily displaced. A wave of heat flushed over me, reminding me of the way I felt about him, but I pushed it away. I didn’t have time for that, even if he didn’t hate me right now.
“What are you talking about?” Ridley asked.
“She came to me in a lysa,” I said, and skepticism flashed in his eyes. “I know how rare they are, especially coming from a Skojare. But I also know that it was real. Linnea is alive, and she told me to come find her.”
He arched his eyebrow and folded his arms across his chest. “Did she happen to tell you where she was?”
“No, not exactly,” I admitted.
“If this was a true lysa, and Linnea really wanted you to come find her, why wouldn’t she tell you exactly where she was?”
“I don’t know.” I shook my head “The Skojare don’t have a ton of psychic powers, so it most likely took all she had to get out that one quick message, like an SOS.”
Ridley narrowed his eyes slightly. “That leads to another question—why you?”
I let out a frustrated sigh. “I don’t know. When I find her, I’ll ask.”
“How do you plan to find her if you don’t know where she is?” Ridley asked, and I hurried to explain my conversation with my mom about Lake Isolera.
When I finished telling him my plan to find Linnea, reiterating why it was so important, Ridley didn’t say anything. He stared down at the floor, breathing in deeply through his nose, and then he closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead.
“How far away is it?” he asked finally.
“Based on the point on the map, I’d guess around a hundred to a hundred and fifty miles from Storvatten. So that puts us at about a day’s journey from here.”
He considered it, then nodded once. “Okay.” For a second I was so relieved that I almost hugged him, and then he added, “But I’m going with you.”
“What?” I asked, and I’m sure I sounded as shocked as I felt. “You—you … you’re running the army.”
I’d stumbled because I wanted to say, you hate me. But I couldn’t say that, so I pointed out the next logical reason why he wouldn’t be able to go.
“Tomorrow is Sunday, and that’s a light day. If we head out now, taking shifts driving, we should find the place and be back by Tuesday,” Ridley reasoned. “The scouts left this morning to search for Viktor Dålig and Konstantin Black. We’ll just be doing basic drills back here. Tilda can handle it until we get back.”
I opened my mouth, trying to think of protests, but I merely ended up gaping at him.
“You don’t need to come with,” I finally said.
“If Linnea knows anything about Viktor, I want to be there when you find her,” he said, and by the resolve in his eyes I knew he wouldn’t back down. Not that I blamed him.
I swallowed hard, as if my guilt had taken physical form as a painful lump in my throat. “Understood.”
“Go pack and get the things you need,” Ridley instructed me. “I’ll talk to Tilda and the King and get everything arranged. When I’m finished, I’ll meet you at your place, and we’ll head out.”
EIGHT
skirmish
What had started as light snow an hour ago had switched to an icy sleet that sounded like pebbles hitting the windshield. To Ridley’s credit, he slept through it—his head lolled to one side, bouncing along with the Land Rover as it navigated the worsening terrain of the back roads.
It was over twenty hours into our journey to the mythical and possibly nonexistent Lake Isolera, which had begun with an awkward train ride during which we both struggled to fill the sil
ence by inspecting maps of Ontario.
Before we left, I’d borrowed a Skojare book from my mom. She kept a few artifacts from her past life in Storvatten, and this was a book of fairy tales that her beloved grandmother had read to her. It had a few poems and stories that mentioned Lake Isolera, and since that was the only thing we had to go on, I took it.
On the train, Ridley had read the stories about the lake aloud. They had a tendency to switch between English and Swedish mid-sentence, and his pronunciation was much better than mine. Out of the five tribes, the Skojare were the most isolated, and therefore, most attached to the ways of the old world—including the original language of all the troll tribes.
“Through the trees and past the slinggrande flod, in the depths of snow that no human would trod,” Ridley read aloud. “There is a land of trolleri and beauty, the most wonderful place that ever you’ll see.”
I closed my eyes, listening to the comforting baritone of Ridley’s voice. When he was reading from the book, he spoke like he normally did—no hint of anger or unease. My chest ached with regret and longing. He was so close to me. Our arms brushed up against each other on the armrest. But he was still so far away.
If I looked up at him, I would see an icy wall in his mahogany eyes where once there had only been warmth.
All I wanted was to take back everything that had happened—not telling him about Viktor right away and even kissing him. I just wanted things to go back to the way they used to be between us, but I didn’t have the words to erase what had happened. So I just closed my eyes and listened to him read.
Once we’d picked up a rental car at the train station, things had actually gotten easier. We needed to take turns driving, and Ridley had offered to take the first shift. I hadn’t slept well, but at least it wasn’t tense or weird that we weren’t speaking.
I’d taken my shift a few hours back, and Ridley had been sleeping soundly the whole time. Most of the drive had been easy and relatively uneventful, but gradually the clouds had moved in, growing darker and blotting out the sun. Then the snow had begun, which wasn’t bad when compared to its icy counterpart that pounded down now.
The windshield wipers could barely keep up at this point. The SUV slid on a slick patch. I managed to catch it before we went off the road, but it jerked hard when it hit a dip on the pavement.
“What’s going on?” Ridley asked, waking up with a start.
“Everything’s okay.”
He sat up straighter, blinking back sleep, and looking out the window at the mess the sky was pouring down on us.
“Do you want me to take over?” he asked, eyeing my hands gripped tightly on the wheel.
I shook my head. “No, I’ve got it. You just woke up.”
And at that moment, the Land Rover decided to skid again. It wasn’t bad, and I recovered easily, but it hadn’t eased Ridley’s concerns.
“Are you sure?” he asked. “Because I got plenty of sleep, and I’m feeling alert now.”
“Yeah, I’m sure,” I insisted. “Besides, I think we’re getting close.”
He waited a beat before adding, “Because sometimes you say you’re sure, and you’re not.”
“What are you talking about?” I gave him a sidelong glance, since I didn’t want to take my eyes completely off the road. “I never say I’m sure unless I am.”
He laughed dryly. “Whatever you say.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.
“It means…” He ran a hand through his wavy, sleep-tousled hair. “Nothing. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“But you did.”
Ridley let out a long breath. “It’s just … you sure kissed me like you meant it, and then you told me that you didn’t.”
At first I was too stunned to say anything. I couldn’t believe he was even bringing it up. Finally, I managed a plaintive “That’s not fair.”
“Life isn’t fair, Bryn,” he muttered dryly, and for some reason that set me off.
“You kissed me like you meant it too,” I shot back. “And you have a girlfriend!”
“Juni’s not my girlfriend,” he nearly shouted, shifting in his seat. “We’ve gone on a few dates is all.”
I scoffed. “That’s bullshit, Ridley.”
“And it doesn’t matter,” he said, instead of arguing my point. “You’ve made it perfectly and repeatedly clear that you have no interest in dating anyone ever, so I don’t know why it bothers you if I’m seeing someone or not.”
“It doesn’t bother me. Do whatever you want.”
He mumbled something, but I didn’t ask what. I just let him lapse into silence and stare out the window, not that there was much to see. The sleet was coming down so heavily that visibility was completely shot.
That’s how the tree appeared out of nowhere. It had been uprooted by the excessive weight of the snow-sleet mixture, and it tipped across the road, angling upward with branches sticking out haphazardly.
I jerked the wheel, attempting to swerve around the tree, but there was nowhere to swerve to. This was a narrow road, barely wider than a lane, and the tree had it blocked entirely. The tires slipped on the icy mixture, and we careened off the road.
NINE
collision
Ridley cried out in surprise as the SUV spun ninety degrees, and bounced down the shallow embankment next to the road before slamming into a tree and coming to a hard stop.
We both sat there panting, neither of us saying anything. The dashboard console began to beep angrily, letting us know that we’d collided with something—as if we couldn’t figure that out already.
“You okay?” Ridley asked.
“Yeah. You?”
He nodded. “You should’ve let me drive.”
“There was a tree in the road!” I gestured back toward the road several yards behind us. “That wasn’t my fault.”
“Right.” Ridley rolled his eyes. “Of course. Nothing is ever your fault.”
I didn’t want to argue with him, so I got out of the SUV under the ruse of inspecting it for damage. Fortunately, the Land Rover had hit a massive pine tree, and its long branches covered with thick needles helped to keep back the sting of the sleet.
We’d been going relatively slowly when I swerved on the road, so thankfully the SUV hadn’t been going that fast when it hit the tree. Other than some minor bumper damage, it didn’t seem like the Land Rover was any worse for wear.
Ridley got out of the vehicle and walked over to where I was standing near the tree. The branches mostly sheltered us, but it was warm enough that when the sleet rested on the pine needles they eventually began to melt, dripping through the branches in a light shower that sprinkled down on me.
“I’ve never said nothing is my fault,” I said. The adrenaline from the accident left me feeling sharper, pricklier, and I know that my words came out harsher than I meant them, but I didn’t care. “I’ve never even thought that.”
“You sure as hell act like that,” Ridley snapped back, matching my intensity, and I turned to glare up at him.
“If you think I don’t constantly blame myself for letting Viktor get away—”
“I don’t blame you!” he shouted, then he stopped. As quickly as that, the fight had gone out of him, and his whole frame seemed to sag. The icy mask he’d been wearing melted away, and he just looked hurt and a little lost. “Why can’t you just tell me things?”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about him.” I was surprised that my voice quivered with my sincerity, and I hastily steadied it. “I just had to be certain about what I saw. After all you’ve been through with Viktor, I didn’t want to get you upset for nothing. But now I realize it would’ve been better if I had told you sooner, and I’m sorry. I can never tell you how sorry I am.”
“I don’t need your apologies.” He shook his head. “And I’m not even really mad at you.”
“You’re not?”
He shrugged. “I mean, you should’ve gotten me before you went
down to talk to Konstantin.”
“I thought he would be more likely to open up if it was just me.” I tried to explain my reasoning, and I couldn’t tell if he accepted it or not.
Hesitantly, Ridley said, “I know that makes sense.”
“But?” I prompted, since he’d left that statement hanging in the air.
“But Viktor almost killed you, Bryn.” He looked at me for the first time since he’d gotten out of the SUV, and the heat had returned to his eyes, burning darkly within him. “I was asleep a few floors above you, and the man who killed my father came back after being gone for years and nearly killed the person…”
Ridley trailed off, and I didn’t push him to finish. Whatever he was going to say, I didn’t think I wanted to know. The pounding of my heart would argue with that, but I knew logically it was better for us if he didn’t finish that sentence, if I don’t know what I really meant to him.
“I don’t know what’s going on between us,” he said finally. “But I do know that I don’t want to lose you.”
I swallowed hard. “I don’t want to lose you either.”
“Then you need to confide in me, okay?” Ridley asked. “You can’t go running off without letting me know. I told you before that we’re in this together, and with Viktor back, I mean that now more than ever.”
“I can do that,” I agreed. “And I promise not to keep secrets from you anymore.”
“Friends again?” he asked with a hopeful smile, holding out his hand to me.
“Friends.”
He’d had his hands shoved in his pockets, but mine were cold and damp from touching the vehicle to check for damage. When I took his hand to shake it, the warmth that enveloped me was astonishing. Instantly, I knew this was a bad idea, but I didn’t let go of him.
The air smelled of snow, water, and fresh pine needles. The dripping water had dampened our hair, making his a bit wavier than normal, and for some reason it made his mahogany eyes appear brighter. I was cold and wet, and I imagined how much warmer it would be in his arms.
Ice Kissed (The Kanin Chronicles) Page 4
