Now Manfred would have to do the same. Saeran was a clever, eager boy, a king already before the crown was even his, but each time he made a decision on Manfred’s behalf, he looked to his father for confirmation and support. He had all the makings of a great leader, but he also had love and respect for his father. Manfred worried that as long as he was by Saeran’s side, his son would spend his days looking over his shoulder for approval.
Manfred had been hasty in his decision to retire. Thinking only of being the father to Saeran he’d wanted to be these last ten years, he hadn’t realized he might have to give him up a second time because of it. It pained him to admit Saeran was no longer a child. They could never reclaim the time they lost, and now with his own words he’d deprived himself of even more. A bird couldn’t fly with his father’s wing still shielding him. He had to trust Saeran to be the king Wilderheim needed and give him the opportunity to do so, else risk Saeran growing resentful of his father. If he wanted Saeran to thrive, and Wilderheim to accept him, Manfred could not remain a shadow over his son’s reign.
It was time for him to pay a visit to his brother, one long overdue. Ten years, in fact. Ten years in which Halden had weathered a war, fathered three children and good as raised Manfred’s own. Now that Saeran was here to sit the throne, Manfred was free to see for himself how Halden was faring. They had much to talk about.
After the coronation, he would make the arrangements. He might not disappear as completely as Nico had, but he would give his son the chance to show what he is capable of.
CHAPTER 5
Nia watched with apprehension as three servants scaled up a tall ladder to hang a banner above the archway. They were arguing and gesturing wildly, the one on the bottom jumping up and down, throwing the ladder off balance. Not one of them seemed to notice what they were doing. It would only be a matter of time before the ladder tipped away from the wall.
She moved closer, preparing to stop them from falling such a distance, should it be needed. Opening and closing her hands, she waited, watching the top of the ladder as it shuddered and shifted ominously.
“Good morning.”
Nia jumped and turned, almost butting her head against Saeran’s. The prince smiled, his gray eyes twinkling in his handsome face, a lock of dark blond hair falling over his forehead. “Good morning, Highness,” she replied. “I thought you were meeting with the masters.”
He flashed a quick grin. “Come with me.” Without waiting for an answer, he turned and walked away.
“I…” she started, glancing at the ladder. The prince took precedence. Sighing, she turned to follow him and winced as she heard the servants give a shout and crash to the ground behind her. Nia shook her head and hurried to catch up with him. “Where are we going?”
Saeran stopped inside the stables, looking around in indecision. “You there,” he pointed to one of the hostlers, “saddle two horses. I and the royal wizard are going for a ride.”
Nia glared at him. “His name is Micah,” she scolded as the man scrambled to obey.
Color stained the prince’s cheeks. “Forgive me,” he said. “I have not yet learned everyone’s names. Many of them are new to me.”
When the hostler led two readied horses to them, Saeran nodded and gave him a coin. “Thank you, Micah. You do fast work. That is always appreciated.”
Micah’s eyes grew wide at the praise, and he bowed away at once.
“Now then,” Saeran said, swinging up into the saddle with ease. “Shall we?”
Nia swallowed hard and cautiously approached the huge gray stallion. “Hello,” she said with a tentative smile. “I am Nia. Please don’t throw me off.”
The animal snorted a laugh. Nico has neglected his duties to you, child.
Nia’s smile turned sad. “He did the best he could.”
“What was that?”
“Nothing, Highness.”
“Mount up, then,” he urged. “I intend for this to be a long ride.”
The stallion snickered. You will come to despise chairs. Hop up then. No good to keep the princeling waiting.
Nia did as she was told, following the horse’s directions to mount. She’d seen others do it many a time, but it was a different matter to have to do it herself. It only took her three tries to find her seat. Nia was proud of herself.
Hold on now, he said at the same time as Saeran shouted, “Let’s go!”
The first jolt would have had her flying through the air, had her mount, Satardust was his name, not kicked out with his hind legs to set her upright once more. Before she could even draw a full breath, they were out in the open, galloping across the frozen fields.
Hold on with your legs and lean forward, Stardust advised. See how the princeling rides?
Nia took a chance and looked to her left. Saeran rode beside her, moving in rhythm with his mount’s gallop. Nia mirrored his pose, grinning as the new position gave her much more balance and control.
They rode for a long time until the wind chill made Nia’s face go numb, and her legs became so sore she didn’t know how much longer she could keep her seat. When the castle was so far in the distance they could barely see it and they approached the forest’s edge, Saeran slowed their pace and then stopped to catch his breath. His eyes were feverish, his face alight.
He dismounted at once, lifting his face to the sky. “This kingship will be the death of me,” he muttered.
Nia grinned and swung her leg over to dismount as well.
Careful, Stardust urged, but it was too late. Her knee buckled and she yelped, tumbling to the ground. With her foot still caught in the stirrup, she gazed up at Stardust with her mouth hanging open. “That hurt!”
Saeran peeked at her from behind her mount. “Nia?” He came to her and freed her foot from the stirrup, holding his hand out to help her up. When her legs still refused to support her, he laughed and slid an arm beneath her shoulders to brace her against his side. “You should have told me you do not ride.”
“Your Highness?”
“Yes?”
“I am afraid I don’t ride.”
“Thank you for telling me. Perhaps I should have a carriage prepared instead.”
She returned his easy smile with an awkward one of her own. Her rump felt numb and her legs were wobbly. As mortifying as it was to be so helpless, it was made a thousand times worse by Saeran’s helping her. But though she could have restored her sapping strength in moments, she didn’t. It didn’t occur to her while Saeran had his arm around her and was smiling the way he was. Nia forgot she was a wizard, and his vassal. For that small moment in time, she was nothing more than Nia.
Stardust suddenly tossed his head with a snort and paced sideways right into them. The other stallion backed away from the forest’s edge, both animals’ eyes wide. Saeran frowned. “What in Thor’s name…”
He ascertained her balance before he released her. Grasping onto his mount’s reins, he settled the beast with a soft touch and then drew his long dagger, returning to Nia. “Handsome does not spook easily,” he told her. “There is something there.”
Fangs, Handsome said, and claws.
“It’s an animal,” Nia translated, taking a couple of uncertain steps toward the trees. “Put that away.”
“What are you doing?” Saeran hissed. “Get back here. Get behind me.”
She looked over her shoulder at him. “Behind you?” she repeated, puzzled. “I am supposed to protect you, Highness.”
“Nia, stop,” he said.
She didn’t listen. Not even when something rustled a short distance off and the prince swore and came to her instead. Nia could feel him at her back, his blade shining next to her. She put her hand over his on the handle and made him lower it.
Neither of them wore gloves and the touch of her warm hand on his cold one jolted Saeran. He didn’t know what to do first. The horses needed calming before they panicked and trampled them to death, or ran off and left them here. It would take a day to get back to
the castle on foot. The snow came up to Saeran’s knee in the shallow parts.
But he couldn’t leave Nia unprotected. She had no armor or weapons, and when she lowered to her knees in the snow, he was certain she’d lost her mind. “What are you doing?” he demanded. Brandishing his dagger, wishing he’d taken his sword instead, he waited for the beast to appear.
“Come forward, brother,” Nia called out. “You will not be harmed.”
“Must you?” Saeran growled at her.
“I must,” she returned, her gaze never leaving the trees.
A massive gray wolf stumbled out of the shadows, easily half the size of a draft horse. No wonder the animals panicked. Handsome reared and Saeran had to duck to escape his hooves. He expected to be trampled, but then Stardust slammed into Handsome from the side, somehow subduing the mount and moving him out of the way at the same time.
Saeran didn’t know what was going on, but he turned his attention back to the bigger threat. The one with a maw large enough to crush a man’s skull in a single bite.
But something was wrong. The wolf was licking his snout again and again, his legs stumbling over each other. If Saeran didn’t know better he’d say the beast was drunk. He moved forward raising his blade. “Get back, Nia.”
“Put that away,” she told him again, never taking her eyes off the wolf. “He couldn’t harm us if he wanted to.”
As if to agree with her, the beast whined, almost falling over with the next step. Nia held out her hands in a sort of welcome, and to Saeran’s utter shock the wolf came to her, ears flat. The beast sat down as soon as he was within reach, shivering and huffing as the whines continued.
Nia spoke to the great beast. “Tell me what ails you, brother,” she said, and if he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes Saeran never would have believed. The wolf was weeping.
At a loss for words, he lowered his blade and watched as woman and beast stared at each other. The wolf licked his snout and shivered, and his front legs were bowed as if he could barely support himself.
Nia sucked in a sharp breath. “Will you allow me to look into your mind?” she asked.
Another soft whine.
Nia placed her hands on either side of the wolf’s head and looked into his eyes. “He has been poisoned,” she said for Saeran’s benefit. “He ate from a carcass left in the woods. It’s…killing him. I can’t…I…” Nia released the wolf and circled her arms around him for a moment. “I am sorry, brother. Will you let me take your pain away?”
The wolf lied down with his head in Nia’s lap, one of his paws reaching for her hand. Tears in her eyes, Nia grasped his paw and placed her other hand over his eyes. “Sleep,” she whispered. “I will see to it your pack does not suffer as you have. Be at peace.”
The great beast closed his eyes with a sigh and Saeran watched his chest rise and fall while Nia stroked his fur. It didn’t take long. Within moments the wolf became still, expiring quietly beneath the wizard’s touch.
For a while, Nia sat there, cradling his head, as her tears slid down her cheeks. She mourned him as she would a true brother. Saeran was amazed at her compassion. Kneeling in the snow beside her, he touched her shoulder.
As if awakened from a dream, she looked at him with fire burning in her blue eyes and said, “Huntsmen did this.”
She brushed off his touch and moved the wolf off her lap, pushing to her feet.
All at once, the sky became dark with storm clouds. Thunder rolled in the distance as she walked into the woods, and Saeran pushed to his feet to follow.
“Nia!” he called after her. Anger trailed in her wake, so thick it choked him. A terrible wind picked up, lashing at her robes, but the branches that hindered Saeran’s progress bent out of her way to allow her passage. Within moments they reached a clearing. By then the sun was gone and the forest pitch black, yet somehow he could still see her. She almost glowed in the darkness, drawing his eye, his only guiding star in the unnatural night.
Nia reached her hands to the sky and lifted her face to it. Saeran felt magic wind around her like a cloak, twisting around her arms. She spoke a series of words, reached higher.
When the rustling started anew, Saeran raised his blade. They were surrounded by the sound of it, and there were too many to fight by himself. “Nia,” he tried again, but she didn’t answer.
To his left something exploded out of the bushes. Saeran turned, dagger at the ready, but what landed at his feet was a piece of meat. Dozens more came flying out, all of them piling together around them.
When the last of the carcasses fell, Nia lowered her arms and faced him, her eyes sparking with terrible light. “Your huntsmen did this,” she told him, furious red lights flashing around her. “They were all around, in every corner of the wood. Just tossed on the ground for any beast to feed on and die.” She gritted her teeth as tears slid down her cheeks. “The poison tore through their bodies and it took days.”
Rage simmered in his veins. He saw from Nia’s reaction that she could see it in his eyes. “Show me,” he said tightly.
Nia weaved her hand through the air between them, drawing on the red light and pulling it in. Mist following her movements until it formed a circle. She said a word of command to make it glow like a torch and in its depths images took shape. Four huntsmen argued in the woods. Saeran knew them. They’d brought in a great boar only yesterday, boasting of the hunt’s thrill. Telling him he’d have loved it. In the vision their words were drowned in silence, but their meaning was clear. They had just evaded a pack of wolves. The forest was full of them; they could not step foot past the creek without hearing their howls. But hunting them was forbidden unless they attacked livestock, and that had not happened in too many years to count. For the safety of Frastmir and its inhabitants, they proclaimed loftily, something had to be done.
If there were fewer wolves, they mused, there would be more game for them to hunt, more mouths to be fed with such bounty. In truth, they thought only of the people. But disobeying the order to spare the beasts was punishable by a lashing and imprisonment. Two of them had wives and children to feed, one was courting a shopkeeper’s daughter, and the last was quite sought after by the tavern wenches. None of them could chance being caught.
They looked from one to the other, each weighing his comrades and all alighting on the same idea at once.
All it took was a wild boar or two, a vial of poison, and a sad shake of the head when the palace guards asked after the day’s trophies. No one had to know.
With a swirl of black smoke, the vision changed and Saeran found himself in the castle, looking at the huntsmen’s drunken faces. Their beards were greasy with food and their hands filled with meat. One took a bite from a succulent pig’s leg and threw the rest to the dogs. They fought over it viciously, tearing into each other as much as the meat, and the huntsmen laughed, entertained by this. “Enough,” he ground out, unable to watch anymore. “I’ve seen enough.”
The images faded back into mist and then disappeared. As they did, the carcasses all around him burst into flames. The smoke they emitted reeked of pain and death as the poison burned off. That was Nia’s doing. She was a distance off, staring into the dark forest, her back to him. The lights were gone, her magic darkened once again.
“They will pay for this,” he said, joining her on the other side of the pyre. She wouldn’t face him.
“There are still others out there,” she said weakly. “Many more, and all suffering the same.” Her hands were clenched at her sides and somehow he knew she’d felt the wolf’s pain. Just as she felt the pain of the others now.
“Can you help them?”
Nia shook her head and he could see it break her heart to say the words. “Not from this far away. They are too weak to come to me and it would take too long to find them.” She swayed on her feet and Saeran caught her, sitting down in the snow with her. “Nico would have known what to do,” she sobbed.
Saeran pulled her closer, but though she allowed the
touch, she didn’t lean on him. “I swear to you I will see them hanged.”
When the fires died down, Nia stood, wiping her sleeve across her wet face. “We have to go back,” She said, pushing to her feet. “We’ll freeze out here.” She waited for him to stand and then turned in the direction they had to walk in.
“Wait,” Saeran said. He went to a raspberry bush and ducked under it, pulling out a large piece of wood. “I saw this earlier,” he told her, handing it to her. It was curiously even from one end to a large, twisted knot at the other. “You’ll need it. Even Nico had one.”
Nia curled her fingers around the wood and tested its balance. It fit into her hand. Saeran couldn’t see any obvious weaknesses; it would be sturdy enough to lean her weight on and with some work, a fine staff, indeed. “Thank you, Highness,” she said, managing a small smile.
They returned to the castle in silence, and said not a word to anyone about what they had seen, but Saeran knew something needed to be done. And when he met her gaze in front of the great hall, a moment before going his own way and leaving her to hers, seeing the pain still there, he knew he would be the one to do it.
CHAPTER 6
Nia would not leave her chambers again until the day of the coronation. It was not by choice. The spell she’d worked that night drained her so completely that when she returned to the castle, the staff proved to be invaluable. It would take some time for her to recover both physically and magically.
What happened outside her study doors, however, did not escape her. Nia could feel the walls shiver with whispers. Rumors of things she would not have believed—had she not expected them.
The walls gossiped to her of the prince. How he’d marched through the castle courtyard, bearing a heavy beast in his arms, a small group of guards following close behind. How he’d kicked down the door on the huntsmen’s cottage, tossed the furry heap at their feet and demanded, “Is this your work?”
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