Iker laughs and gently fingers the curls that have blown forward over my shoulder. “So many people that not a one of them is watching . . .”
No, they’re watching. I can feel it. He’s just used to it.
I pull away, shifting the arm he’s snagged so I’m grabbing his wrist as he clutches mine. I tug him toward Lille Bjerg Pass. “There are many side trails along the pass, thick with brush.”
He raises a brow and finally takes a step forward. “It would be a shame if we were to get lost.”
“Such a shame. Nik would be so disappointed.”
“Only if he’s lost in the same brush we are.”
It’s true. Nik returned a different person after our early morning conversation, focusing on Annemette with a renewed intensity.
With tangled hands, we march up Market Street. We are several lengths behind Annemette and Nik, though they are moving at a snail’s pace—Annemette has yet to see much of the town outside of the festival, and she’s poking in every doorway and picture window to see the wares. The sweetshop man already handed her a lollipop, which proceeded to turn her tongue a grisly shade of red. She dared to show us a block back, sticking out her tongue nearly down to her chin. It was quite the picture, a bloody maw beneath the face of an angel. Of course, she thought it was the funniest thing. I thanked Urda that Malvina wasn’t around to see it.
Nik laughed too, endearment written all over his face. He has no idea how far she’s traveled to see these things we walk past every day, to stroll down the street with him.
“I have been to Odense,” Iker starts, sun lines crinkling around his eyes, “and it isn’t Copenhagen, but it isn’t a one-horse village either. By the way she responded to the sucker, you’d suppose she’d never had a candy in all her life.”
“Showing delight isn’t a crime, Iker.” And it isn’t, though I know that answer won’t atone for Annemette’s fierce sense of wonder. Thus, I turn it back on him. “Not everyone is as difficult to amuse as the salt-worn prince of Rigeby Bay.”
His lips turn up and his eyes flash my way. “I laugh deeper than anyone and you know it—whether I’ve lived on only salt herring for three weeks or not.” His fingers squeeze mine and I kiss his shoulder. “What I mean is, there’s just something unnatural about her level of delight.”
My heart starts to pound and my temples grow hot. This line of thought is no good. No good at all. I change tactics.
“Imagine it her way.” I sweep my free hand out in front of him. “She arrived at Havnestad with a chaperone green with illness, knowing not a single other soul. And despite it all, she’s been taken in, given a bed in a beautiful palace, and the dashing prince she’s come to meet clearly believes her to be something special.” I swing up our tangled hands so they’re within view. “That is a whirlwind of delight, is it not? The curl was nearly blown out of my hair just by being a bystander.”
He gives me a courtesy laugh and snags a wayward lock of hair with his free hand, tugging it completely smooth. He lets it go and watches as it bounces back into a spiral. “That would’ve been disastrous. Even the salons of Paris would not have been able to reproduce these.”
My cheeks run scarlet as we reach the end of the cobblestones and the trailhead of Lille Bjerg Pass. Annemette and Nik have already disappeared around a bend. I step in front of Iker onto the single track, and our hands drop.
“I’m just saying,” he says, “what do we know about Annemette? How do we know she is who she says she is?”
I laugh, trying to make it seem as if he’s being ridiculous, and not appropriately concerned. “What, do you think she’s some con artist on the run, stealing crown jewels one Lithasblot at a time?” It’s the most absurd thing I can offer, except for the truth.
“No. No. She’s a sweet girl . . . there’s just something about her I can’t put my finger on. And I don’t like that feeling—especially when it involves family.”
“I know what it is,” I say, hoping to finally put this to rest—for Annemette as much as for myself. “She looks like Anna.”
His step hesitates behind me. “Your friend who drowned?”
“The very one.”
“Sure. She had blond hair.”
“Yes. And blue eyes. And creamy skin. A heart-shaped face—all of it. The resemblance about bowled me over.” And I can’t help it: tears well in my eyes. “I’d thought I’d seen a ghost.”
He stops moving forward. I turn around and he’s watching me, brows pulled together and serious. It’s just as he was on the balcony, suspicion slinking across his skin as fierce as the sunlight.
“Are you sure there’s no way this girl could have known that? Picked the name Annemette on purpose? She could be preying on the both of you—using your memories against you.”
The slope of the trail puts us face-to-face, and he presses his thumbs to the corners of my eyes, wiping away the tears that have welled. I place my hand on his chest. “Who are these scoundrels you meet on the high seas? Does anyone in the world really do such awful things? Do you not have any faith in your fellow man?”
“Evelyn, I am aware that you are not naïve, but I feel as if I should remind both you and my cousin that people aren’t always who they say they are.”
“You’re not wrong.” I take a step toward him and touch my forehead to his, our lips a breath away, our eyes locked. “And while I find your concern incredibly endearing, I’m through talking about this. Annemette may not be Anna, but she is my friend. I have not been duped.”
I close the distance between us, our lips meeting. He sinks deeply into me, hands wrapping around my back, fingers in my hair. We stand like that for several moments, but it isn’t until he’s so taken he closes his eyes that I know I’ve finally won this round.
“Taking the long way up the mountain?”
I push away from Iker and see Annemette standing a few feet from us, Nik surely around the bend. Her brow is raised, but there’s a smirk on her black cherry–stained mouth.
“Haven’t you heard? I’m never on time.” He grins a bit at his own self-effacing jab, but I swear I still see a skeptical look in his eyes as he stalks past her.
Annemette grabs my hands, and we both burst out laughing. It really does feel like Anna is here.
We make our way up to the games, but by the time we reach them, Nik and Iker have already been plied into competing in the mountain run portion of the games. Royal duty and gamesmanship mean Annemette and I have been left behind to hold court on a fallen log. Normally, I’d run too—I’m swifter than I look—but Annemette’s feet are already bothering her, the burning she felt yesterday more painful than before. Instead, we’ll watch the rock climbers from afar while waiting for the boys to rumble back down the mountain, sweaty, dusty, and full of new tales.
“How do you do it?” she asks quietly.
“What do you mean?” I reply.
“Get Iker to kiss you like that?” she says with more than a hint of exasperation lining her voice. “It’s silly, but I was watching you—”
“For tips?” I want to laugh—the idea of someone watching me for my alluring abilities is ridiculous, and I still have my doubts about whether there’s actually any love behind Iker’s kisses, but Annemette seems so desperate. She is desperate.
Annemette’s cheeks flush, though the pink is tempered by the mountain light. “I’ve done everything I can to show him how I feel, and still no kiss! But I do think he likes me.”
“He does. I know he does!” I push this morning out of my mind entirely. Nik has heeded my words. I know it. It’s going to be all right.
She is quiet for a second, her features mellowing with thought. “My father, the sea king, says that when everything is as you hoped, you are blind to the imperfections.”
Somehow, I’m stunned silent that the sea king in our childhood tales is as real as the mermaid before me. Finally, I nod. “Your father is wise.”
“But I’m not blind. His wise words ring in my ears when I
should be enjoying every moment. Instead, I look past the perfect couple we are on the outside and see all the reasons why Nik isn’t in love with me.”
“I know what you mean,” I say.
“No, Iker loves you.”
I shake my head. “I would like Iker to love me. But Iker has a reputation for kissing any girl whose knees go weak at the sight of him—and I’m not the only one in the Øresund Kingdoms with trouble standing. Iker and I are not forever, and I’m trying to be all right with that.”
She looks at her feet. “So, he has other girls he treats like you?”
“Yes. Or he did. I don’t know.” I can feel my face flushing. “The point is, Nik does not! There is only one fish in his sea and it is you . . .”
“That is a ridiculous analogy, Evie.”
“And here I thought it was clever, given your situation.”
Annemette squeezes her eyes shut, and I regret making a stupid joke at a time like this. “My situation. Yes.” She huffs out a sad little laugh. “Such a situation—love at first sight with a boy who won’t even kiss me. I was so sure he was going to lead to a lifetime of happiness, not . . .”
Neither of us wants to say what her life will be otherwise.
18
WHEN NIK AND IKER RETURN, THEY ARE EAGER TO prove who is the strongest, the fastest, the most agile, their egos sorely bruised after both losing the mountain run. It seems the tailor’s son, little Johan Olsen, is not so little anymore.
“I’ve never seen someone run like him,” Nik admits as we make our way over to the Havnestad River, which slices through the mountains before emptying to the sea. “It was a sight to see.”
“You want to see a sight?” says Iker. “Challenge me to a log run, Cousin. I could beat ten of that Olsen boy, and you, too.”
I look over at Annemette, who has plastered a smile on her face and is laughing along with the boys. And, because I’d love to see Iker dunked in the Havnestad River, I am totally encouraging it too.
Nik chuckles—a royal chuckle, but an actual chuckle nonetheless. As we reach the riverbank, he’s still contemplating. He props one foot up on the tail end of the right log. There’s an open one to his left, ready for Iker.
“If I’m not mistaken,” Nik says, “I heard you came to this Lithasblot extravaganza with the promise of a certain raven-haired girl scampering across a log, and it wasn’t me, Cousin.”
Nik! How could he? But I laugh an Iker laugh, head thrown toward the sky. Nik is losing it too—chortling so hard that his foot has slipped off the end of the log and he’s nearly squatted to a sit on the thing.
Annemette, though, has her wits about her. I right myself just as she glances my way with a wicked little grin and a gleam in her eyes. “How about this compromise? Nik and Evie race. The winner faces Iker.”
Iker’s brows climb his forehead and his eyes sparkle, clear and thrilled. He claps his big, strong hands together. “Yes. That’s it. The lady has the perfect idea!”
I shake my head. “Yes, the perfect idea to keep herself dry.”
Annemette shrugs and backs into the small crowd that has gathered, lined along the rocks and logs. “I’m just a spectator.”
Nik laughs and manages a long lunge to nudge her sweetly with his elbow. “That’s what I thought, too, my dear, and now look where it’s got me.”
I cock a brow at him. “Yes, as my first victim.”
“Hey, now, what makes you so sure you’ll win?” Nik says to me, a smile playing at his lips, though his tone is attempting to sound indignant.
“Sometimes you just have a feeling, my prince. You’re sure to be a loser, Asger Niklas Bryniulf Øldenburg III.”
As the spectators and competitors chant Nik’s name, he plants a foot on the log across from me. Both logs are suspended just above the current, tied by ship ropes on either side to keep them straight and somewhat steady—to keep the competition fair, not to create ease.
It is twenty-five feet from one end to the other. We must race to the other side, touch the bank, and then make a return trip. The first one back or the one to stay out of the water wins. If we both wind up in the river, then it’s a draw, no matter who fell first.
Our classmate, Ruyven Van Horn, squashed ginger hair, elephant ears and all, is there between us, the official start on his lips. “On your marks . . . get set . . . go!”
We lunge onto the logs. Nik’s legs are much longer, and he’s ahead after a step, but his center of gravity is much higher, and he immediately wobbles.
“Unsteady so soon, Cousin?” Iker laughs in the background.
I can’t see him, but I’m sure Nik is smiling right back. “Jeer me, and you only serve to anger me.”
In the time it’s taken him to steady himself and answer Iker’s ribbing, I’ve already made it five steps. The logs are slicked over, but mine is the perfect size for my feet. Planting each foot in a turnout à la the French ballet, I can move quickly to the center point with shallow steps. Beside me, Nik hasn’t altered his stride, daring gravity to take him with every long step, but using his strength and coordination to stay steady.
I make it to the end of my log and tag the ground on the other side, earning me a flag raise from Ruyven’s counterpart.
“Excellent, Evie!” Annemette cheers.
I get both feet back onto my log just as Nik lunges off the end of his and safely into the dirt.
“Mette, you traitor,” Nik yells, mounting his log a bit too quickly. His arms windmill through my periphery in a grand arc—the crowd gasps.
“Less jawing, more movement, Cousin. Evie’s smoking you!”
“You only root for me because you’re stupid enough to think you can beat me in the next round. Against her you won’t have a chance, and you know it.”
I’m still in the lead but just barely, my steps slower and more careful now. Over the years, I’ve seen many a competitor fall in the river a yard from the finish because his mind was already on land. I could easily whisper one of Tante Hansa’s spells and dry the log without any notice, but I won’t do that. I’m not a cheat. So my heart stills as I concentrate on the log before me, the sound of rushing water the only thing in my ears.
Nik is beside me, but my tunnel vision has drowned him out—if his arms are flailing or if he is steady and slowing too, I don’t know. All I know is that when I touch dirt, Ruyven raises my arm, and when I look over, Nik is there too, hands on his hips, breathing at a good clip.
“The lady, by an inch!” Ruyven says. Annemette is clapping and Iker, too, though his game face is already sliding into place. The rest of the crowd is mostly silent until Nik raises his hands above his head in thanks—then they go wild.
“Well done, Evie.” Nik squeezes my shoulder. Then he leans in, for my ears only. “Ignore them. They only cheer because they have to.” Then, to the crowd, he says, “Let’s hear it for Evie!”
Slightly heartier applause chases his exclamation, but—not shockingly—also some boos. And then all eyes swing to Iker. His gaze is locked on my face, the glee in the blue of his eyes already hardening to concentration. If Iker competes in the grand way that he does everything else, I’m going to need much more than an inch.
I turn and place my foot on the log.
“Are you sure you’re ready to exert yourself again so quickly, Evelyn?”
“Quit stalling, Romeo. Let’s go.”
I glance over to Ruyven, who is having a fine time laughing at our expense. Ruyven meets my eyes, his normally dough-pale face now plum red, and raises his flag for a start. Iker is still a step or two away from his log, turned around, playing to the crowd. I settle my footing, calf muscles tense beneath my dress.
“On your marks . . .” It takes Iker almost a second too long to register the words. Ruyven is onto the next part before the crown prince of Rigeby Bay has time to turn. “Get set . . .” Iker is a yard from his log. “Go!”
I dash onto my log, keeping my chest low, hips square and knees bent. I’m five feet in
front when Iker finally mounts his log, but in true Iker form, he takes the lead with just two grand steps.
The surrounding wood is alive with voices, so strong that they rise above my concentration and the babbling of the stream—Iker is always one to bring out the rowdiness in any situation.
“Go get him!” Annemette yells.
“You’ve got this, Evie!” Nik cheers.
But I don’t have it. Iker is already a yard from touching down on the other side of the log, his bold steps risky but not without reward. I am still at least ten careful steps from the bank and the chance to turn around. When Iker’s feet hit the dirt, he immediately spins and points to the flagman on the other side and then raises his arms, grand and proud as he addresses the crowd.
“Will no one cheer for the first-place horse? Am I so hideous?”
At this, every girl in the crowd, save Annemette, screams his name. It’s the same chorus that I picture when he lands aground anywhere in the Øresund Kingdoms.
Iker’s grandstanding costs him, though, and I touch down on the dirt just after he’s mounted his log. He calculates that he’s made an error in timing and immediately sprints for the other side, half leaping to stay in front of me.
I’m tempted to speed up and take longer steps, but I hold back, the log even slicker than before.
So I take my time. Quick steps, eyes only for the log, breath steady and calm.
I’m in the lead at the midpoint, a second victory in my sights. And that’s exactly when someone in the crowd decides a prince can’t lose yet again, and a branch whizzes through the air, catching me across the neck.
The pain is sharp, and I lose my balance. I’m falling toward the water and Iker’s log before I can do anything physically or magically to stop it. As I’m falling, I think for a split second of Annemette’s floating spell, and I almost say the command, but I can’t do that here. Still, I hang in the air for the slightest of seconds before I catch Annemette’s eyes. I see them shift to the look of concentration I saw in Greta’s Lagoon. Don’t do it, I glare. Not here.
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