All of that completely went out the window, though, as Loki had known it would. Jen was only out for himself, which was how he’d made it that far in the Vittra army. The King seemed to respect backstabbing.
“He did nothing,” Jen insisted. “That’s the problem.”
The King had his back to them, his long, red velvet jacket flowing down to the floor. His dark hair went down almost to his waist, and while he was a rather slight man, his presence was so imposing, even Loki found it hard not to cower around him at times.
Kyra had curtseyed when they came in, and she hadn’t bothered to fully straighten up. Jen had his arms folded behind his back and stood rigid, like a soldier, while Loki had his arms folded over his chest.
Other than the three of them and the King, the only other person in the room was Sara, the Queen. She sat in one of the chairs, her small Pomeranian, Froud, on her lap, but neither of them had made a sound. They all waited with bated breath for the King’s response.
His chambers had high ceilings, but the dark mahogany walls made it feel smaller. There were no windows, so every time Loki went in to see the King, he always felt vaguely claustrophobic. The room was sparsely furnished, too, with only a large desk and a few red high-back chairs.
One wall was covered with floor-to-ceiling bookcases, and most of them were on Vittra and troll history, but he had a few other choice titles. Once, when Loki had been left alone in the chambers, he’d gone over to inspect them. He’d found a copy of Mein Kampf, as well as a book that had graphic pictures of precisely how to inflict the worst torture and how to fillet living people.
“Is that true, Loki?” the King asked, his voice booming like gravel and thunder through the room.
“That I did nothing?” Loki shook his head. “No, Sire, of course not. I led the team, but I delegated—”
“He waited in the car while we went after her,” Jen interrupted with an unpleasant whine in his voice. “He did nothing while the Trylle took her away.”
Loki looked over at Jen, his caramel eyes hard. “Yes, I waited in the car, but I told you to call for me if you needed me.” He was nearly spitting out the words as he spoke. “And you never called, not even when you let a lone tracker run off with her.”
“We didn’t let him do anything!” Jen shouted. “And if you were there, you could’ve helped fight him off!”
“But you said you didn’t need me,” Loki countered. “You didn’t even want the King to let me go along with you. You insisted you could handle this without me, so I gave you the benefit of the doubt.”
“Did I send you along to give them the benefit of the doubt?” the King asked, finally turning around to face them for the first time.
“No.” Loki lowered his eyes. “But I was right there in the car. I thought they could handle a simple stakeout.”
“But I told you they couldn’t.” The King stepped closer to Loki, his dark eyes locked on him. “I told you they were incompetent and incapable of handling this, and while you aren’t much better than either of them, you are stronger. Not to mention that mind trick of yours.”
“I know, but I didn’t think they would let her get away.” Loki dared to look up at the King and gestured to Jen and Kyra standing beside him. “I mean, there’s two of them, and one stupid girl! I didn’t think they could screw things up that badly.”
“But I did.” The King stood right in front of Loki, his eyes burning into him. “And I told you to fix it. Did you fix it?”
Loki swallowed hard. “No, Sire, I did not.”
The King nodded once. He turned, as if he meant to start walking away, but instead he flew back at Loki, smacking him so hard across the face that Loki saw white for a minute and fell to the ground.
Sara gasped but said nothing. After years of this, she’d learned there was nothing she could do to prevent the King from taking out his anger on Loki.
Loki lay on the floor, rubbing his jaw. For a moment, he’d been certain the King had shattered his jaw, not that that would be the first time the King had shattered one of his bones. But even though he hadn’t, that didn’t mean it felt good.
Jen started chuckling, laughing at Loki’s pain, but the King stopped him.
“Get out!” the King roared, turning to Jen and Kyra. “Get out before I do the same to you!”
They hurried out, muttering their apologies as they did, and slammed the heavy oak door behind them.
He was still in pain, but Loki could get up, though he chose not to. Staying on the floor was safer. Getting to his feet would just give the King an excuse to knock him back down again.
“This will be the last time you fail me,” the King growled. “I’ve given you everything, and you’ve let me down far too many times. You’re just a lazy, brat Prince.”
“I’m not the Prince,” Loki corrected him quietly.
“And you never will be!” the King shouted, like it was some kind of threat.
Loki rolled onto his back and sighed. “I don’t want to be.”
“Good! Because you’re never going to be anything!” The King swore under his breath, then walked over and kicked Loki in the side.
Loki balled himself up, wrapping his arms around his stomach. For a moment he couldn’t breathe or move or do anything other than feel the searing pain running through him.
“Oren!” Sara gasped. Her hand clutched the arm of her chair, but she didn’t get to her feet.
The King shook his hands at her in exasperation, as if he didn’t know what to do anymore.
“I’m using restraint, my love,” the King said, and Sara could hear it in his voice. He repressed his urge to yell, and he kept his words even. “I want his head on a platter.” He gestured to where Loki lay writhing in pain. “But it’s not. He’s alive. Out of respect for you and for his title. But he won’t be for much longer if he keeps failing me.”
“I know.” Sara stood up and set the dog on the chair behind her. “And I thank you for that, my King.” She walked toward her husband, keeping her tone soothing. “I understand how frustrated you are and how badly you want the Princess. You know how much I want her, too.”
The King let out a deep breath and seemed to soften a bit, or as much as the King could soften.
“I know.” He nodded. “I do sometimes forget how much the Princess would mean to you, too.”
“Perhaps your anger at Loki is a tad misplaced,” Sara said. When the King opened his mouth to argue, she held up her hand. “Not at him. He has let you down. But perhaps it could be better directed at the Trylle, and not at your own people.”
“What are you proposing?” The King narrowed his eyes at her.
“Nothing that you haven’t proposed already, my love.” She put her hands on his chest and smiled up at him. “You said you would stop at nothing to get her, and all is not lost yet. She’s with the Trylle, but you’ve waged wars on them before. This will be no different.”
The King nodded, considering what his wife said.
“Loki,” the King barked without looking back at him. “Gather all the best trackers we have, all of our powerful Vittra. We’ll launch an attack on the Trylle.”
Loki got to his feet, still holding his side. He stretched his jaw, which throbbed dully, and cracked his neck.
“Even the hob goblins, Sire?” Loki asked.
“No, not yet.” The King shook his head. “We’ll hold them back until we absolutely have to use them.”
THREE
Loki stood in the back of the room while the King went over his plan for the attack on the Trylle palace in Förening with the army he’d assembled. The King had launched attacks on the Trylle before, some of them quite successful, and there was no reason for him to think this one wouldn’t go the same way.
This wasn’t his last measure, though. Sara had convinced him to hold a few things back, namely, himself and Loki. The Queen thought sending them into that kind of danger was unnecessary. Oren and Loki were the two most powerful Vittra they had, but t
he army that the King had mounted should be sufficient to take down the Trylle.
The Trylle had grown weak and complacent in recent years, which was part of the reason the King felt such contempt for them. So the King wouldn’t give the attack all he had. He didn’t think he would need to.
He knew enough of Trylle society to know that the girl’s coming-out ball would be soon, and he had spies in neighbor camps that could tell him exactly when it would be. The King could go after her before that, when security was more lax at the Trylle palace, but he wanted to make a big show of it. He wanted all the trolls from every tribe to know exactly how powerful he was, so he planned the attack for that night, even though there would be far more Trylle guards on duty.
After the meeting ended, the King went out with his Vittra army to work them on a few training exercises. Since Loki wouldn’t be going on the mission, he stayed behind, leaning against a bookcase in the back of the King’s chambers.
“How are you holding up?” Sara asked when it was only the two of them in the room.
“Oh, you know, as well as I always do after a good beating.” Loki smirked at her, and she pursed her lips.
She walked over to him and put her hand on his side, meaning to heal him from where the King had kicked him, but Loki squirmed away from her touch.
“Loki, I know how strong the King is. Better than anyone,” Sara said.
Over the years, he’d seen her with her fair share of bruises, probably even more than Loki himself had earned from the hands of the King. He glanced over at her but quickly looked away.
“I’m fine,” he insisted, even though he wasn’t.
“You should let me heal you.” She stepped closer to him, but he just moved away. “You might have a ruptured organ or a broken rib. Why won’t you let me help you?”
“Because.” He sighed and ran a hand through his sandy hair. “I deserve it.”
“Loki, you can’t mean that. You know you don’t deserve it. Oren lashes out over everything, and you can’t take it to heart.”
“But I should’ve helped them,” he said quietly. “Jen and Kyra. Oren told me to. He said they couldn’t handle it. And I knew it. But I didn’t help them enough. I knew that she would get away.”
“You couldn’t have known that,” Sara said, trying to reassure him.
“No, I did.” He paused. “I even hoped for it.”
Sara’s jaw dropped and her eyes widened. “Loki!”
“Oh, come on, Sara!” Loki looked at her, exasperated. “I know how much you want that girl, but what good will it do bringing her here? Do you really think it will make your life better? Or the King’s?”
“We’ll both be happier,” Sara said, but she lowered her eyes. “Everything’s better when the King is happy.”
Loki laughed darkly. “You really think she’ll make him happy? I’ve lived under the service of the King my entire life, and in twenty-three years, I’ve never seen him happy. Nothing makes him happy.”
“You don’t understand.” Sara shook her head and stepped away from him. “And I can’t believe you’d purposely let her get away.”
“Why is that so hard to believe?” Loki asked. “The King will treat her the same way he does you or me, and you know it. For once I wanted to see somebody get away. I wanted somebody to escape from the trap you and I are stuck in.”
Sara kept walking away from Loki, the train of her long red gown dragging on the floor behind her. Her black hair had been pulled back in a severe ponytail, the way she usually wore it. She did everything she could to seem as strong and imposing as her husband, but there was something soft and frail about her.
Sometimes Loki was surprised that the King had not broken her, but when she looked back at him, her brown eyes swimming with tears, Loki realized that he had. Physically, she may have looked the same, but inside, Sara wasn’t the same woman he’d met fourteen years ago.
“You don’t understand,” she said emphatically. “The Princess will change things, and not just for me. For all of us. She has that power.”
“Sara.” Loki sighed and stepped over to her. He put his hands on her bare arms, and she stared up at him, her lips quivering. “You’ve been trying to change things since you married Oren, and I’ve been trying to for as long as I can remember. But nothing we do makes anything better. He’s never going to relinquish his power. And one girl isn’t going to change anything for us.”
“Maybe you’ve given up, but I haven’t.” She wiped at her eyes and pulled away from him. “I will never stop believing that we can be better.”
“I’m not . . .” He trailed off. “Never mind.”
“But I don’t understand. If you think you did the right thing letting her get away, then why did you say you deserved what Oren did to you?”
“Because of all that mess out there.” Loki motioned vaguely to the door, through which they could hear the grunts and groans from the soldiers. “They’re going to war over her. People will get hurt, some even killed, and I could’ve just brought her back and avoided this whole thing.”
“Yes, you could’ve,” Sara snapped. “You don’t ever think anything through.”
He groaned and flopped into one of the King’s chairs. “I don’t need a lecture, Sara. You’re not my mother.”
“Your mother was a good woman, and she’d give you a lecture much worse than this one,” Sara shot back. “You have to stop being so rash. The things you do have consequences.”
“I was trying to do the right thing!”
“You thought letting her getting away would be the right thing?” Sara asked dubiously.
“Kind of, yeah,” he admitted.
Sara rubbed her forehead, as if talking to him gave her a headache. “You’re so foolish sometimes.”
“I screwed—”
“I don’t want to hear it!” Sara shouted suddenly and held her hand up to him. “You let her get away! And that’s unforgivable.”
Loki didn’t say anything. Her voice trembled with hurt, and he couldn’t take that away. Swallowing hard, he stared down at his lap and let her finish.
“This attack on the Trylle should work,” Sara said. “But if it doesn’t, you will do whatever the King asks of you to bring her back. No, that’s not enough. You will do anything and everything you need to do, even if that means going above and beyond the King’s orders.
“Because so help me, Loki, if you let her get away again, I will not stand in the way of his wrath upon you.” She took a deep breath. “Do you understand me?”
“Yes,” he said quietly, still looking down.
“Loki?” Sara snapped. “Do you understand me?”
“Yes!” He lifted his head, and he could see the conviction her eyes. She would let the King kill him if he didn’t bring back the Princess.
“Good.” She smoothed back her hair and looked away from him. “Now get yourself together. They could use you for their training exercises.”
Loki did as he was told, too afraid to argue with her. The bizarre part was that he’d told her the truth because he thought she’d understand. He thought she’d agree with him that he’d done the right thing by letting the Princess escape from all this, but Sara was too blinded by her own needs.
With no allies, Loki had no choice. If the King didn’t get the girl with this attack, then Loki would have to get her later.
FOUR
We should’ve heard from them by now,” Sara said, pacing the King’s chambers with Froud at her heels.
“It’s a long drive to Förening,” the King told her, his gritty voice doing its best to come across as soothing. “Give them time to attack. The coming-out ball only started a few hours ago.”
Loki sat behind the King’s desk, flipping through a book of Vittra lullabies. All of them were surprisingly disturbing, usually involving a disobedient infant being dragged off by hob goblins or rival tribes to be eaten or turned into a slave.
He found the one his mother used to sing to him, and it
was the least horrific of them all. It still involved a human turning into a bird to try to steal a Vittra baby, but at least the baby lived in the end.
In reality, he’d rather be anywhere but in these chambers, waiting to see how the battle turned out, if they got the Princess. But both the King and Queen had commanded him to wait with them, and the whole time the King sat stoically in his chair while Sara paced.
The tension in the room was exhausting, and the book of lullabies wasn’t distracting enough. He thought about getting the book on torture, because that would definitely take his mind off things, but he didn’t want to see all the horrible acts the King would eventually do to him someday.
“What if they don’t get her?” Sara asked, turning to her husband. She wrung her hands, and her smooth skin was uncharacteristically ashen.
“They’ll get her,” Oren replied, staring past her at the doors to his chambers.
“But if they don’t?” Sara sounded as if she might cry, and Loki looked up from his book. “Oren, this might be our last chance to ever get her.”
“It’s not like they’re going to kill her,” Loki tried to reassure her. “Even if we don’t get her today, the Trylle won’t hurt her. They’ll just hold her for safekeeping. So you’ve got nothing to worry about.”
The King motioned to him. “Loki’s right, for once.”
Sara nodded, but she didn’t look convinced. She returned to her pacing, with Froud practically tripping over the train of her gown.
Loki went back to reading the lullabies, but he didn’t get much farther in the book when they heard a commotion in the hall. Footsteps running, and then the door to the chambers was thrown open.
When Kyra burst into the room, Loki stood up. She looked positively horrid. Her short hair had been singed. Dirt and blood stained her skin and clothing, except for two streaks down her cheeks that were clean from her tears.
“We couldn’t get her.” Kyra’s voice trembled, and she shook her head. “They overpowered us. They killed Jen.”
“They killed Jen?” Loki asked, surprised. He’d never cared for the guy, but Loki’d always thought he was a fairly good tracker.
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