Crystal Kingdom

by Amanda Hocking

  “What do you see?” Finn asked. He stood back behind us, with Ludlow and Konstantin.

  Baltsar, Ridley, and I lay at the top of the hill, scoping out Doldastam. Baltsar had a pair of binoculars, while Ridley and I were left gauging it with our eyes.

  “It’s definitely not good.” Baltsar lowered his binoculars, so I held out my hand for them, and he passed them to me.

  “What do you mean?” Finn asked. “Is it worse than we thought?”

  I adjusted the binoculars, fixing them on the campsite outside the walls, and I immediately saw what the problem was. Not only were there a great deal of Omte soldiers, but members of the Högdragen and Kanin soldiers were mixed among them. It appeared that Viktor’s army had fully acclimated with the Kanin and the Omte, and they were all blended together.

  Konstantin had said that Viktor’s army had been camping outside of Doldastam, and we were hoping that we could take care of them before moving on to deal with the Omte. Doldastam was too big to house the entire Omte army, so we’d assumed they’d also be camping outside the city walls.

  Our plan had been to take out Viktor’s men and the Omte without ever having to touch a Kanin. If we eliminated the first two threats, there was a good chance that Mina and her army would surrender, because at that point they would be outnumbered. Assuming we could take out Viktor and the Omte first.

  But I wanted to avoid Kanin bloodshed as much as possible. These were people I had grown up with and trained with. They were good people, and they were going to end up dead.

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  fortified

  “Shit,” I swore as I lowered the binoculars.

  Baltsar stood up, wiping the mud from his clothes, and turned back toward Finn and Konstantin. “We’re going to have to take on everyone all at once.”

  “We can’t do that,” I protested. As I got up, Ridley reached out and took the binoculars from me. “Innocent people will get hurt.”

  “You act like all the Kanin are saints and everybody else is a sinner,” Konstantin said harshly. “Those Omte soldiers down there are just following orders, the same as the Kanin. And you don’t have any qualms about killing them.”

  I shook my head. “It’s different.”

  “It’s different how? Because they’re not like you? Because you didn’t grow up with them?” Konstantin shot back. “Proximity doesn’t make some people more worthwhile than others, Bryn.”

  “That’s not what I’m saying. I don’t want to kill anyone, but the Omte volunteered for this fight,” I argued. “The Kanin were manipulated into it.”

  “You don’t think the Omte were manipulated at all?” Konstantin arched an eyebrow. “You said yourself that weird things were going down in Fulaträsk.”

  And I had. I remembered how the Omte Queen Bodil had seemed eager to help Konstantin and me stop those who had gotten her nephew Bent Stum tangled up in the mess. She’d agreed to aid us in our quest to stop Viktor Dålig.

  But later that night, her right-hand man Helge had done a total about-face. Not only had he refused to help us, he’d banished us from Fulaträsk in the middle of the night.

  It all seemed very odd, and now it seemed even more suspicious that the Omte had aligned themselves with Viktor and the Kanin. Bodil had wanted revenge on Viktor one moment, and then she was apparently helping him the next.

  The Omte were known for being finicky thanks to their short tempers, but this was ridiculous even by their standards.

  “Fulaträsk?” Baltsar asked, looking from Konstantin to me with a quizzical expression. “When were you in Fulaträsk?”

  Both Konstantin and I had failed to mention our excursion to the Omte capital city, since it hadn’t been relevant before. But now, with the Omte so involved, it definitely wouldn’t hurt for everyone to know.

  “Finn.” Ridley stood up, extending the binoculars toward Finn. “You should come see this.”

  “What?” Finn rushed up the hill, nearly knocking me over, and he snatched the binoculars from Ridley. “Oh, hell.”

  “What?” I demanded.

  “My sister is with them.” His shoulders slumped. “I just saw her go into a tent with Viktor Dålig.”

  “But she’s not with with him,” I said, almost insisting it when I looked at Baltsar and Ludlow, so they wouldn’t think less of her. “Ember would only work with him to bide time. And this is what I’m talking about. We can’t just storm Doldastam and hurt innocent people like her. We need to get them out.”

  “Most of the ‘innocent’ people down there would kill us on sight.” Konstantin motioned toward the town. “They think we’re the villains. So how do we decide who is safe and who dies?”

  “Let’s stop this before it gets too heated.” Baltsar stepped in between us, raising his hands palms-out toward us. “It has been very a long day, and pressure is high. It’s getting dark, so we should camp out tonight, and we’ll come up with a plan of attack in the morning.”

  Below us, most of the troops were already setting up camp. We’d driven most of the day, and then spent the last four hours making the arduous walk toward Doldastam, through crowded forests and rough terrain. Everyone was exhausted, myself included, but that didn’t stop the adrenaline from surging through me.

  Baltsar managed to calm us down, and Finn agreed to a meeting at dawn with Mikko and all the captains. While everyone made their way back down the hill, I lingered behind to walk with Konstantin, who still moved more slowly because of his leg.

  Ridley paused, looking back up at me with concern in his eyes. I nodded my head, motioning for him to go on ahead without me. He let out a heavy sigh, but he left me to argue with Konstantin on the side of the hill

  “Why are you fighting with me so hard?” I asked him in a hushed voice.

  “Because you’ve got to get the fantasy out of your head that you can ride in on a horse like some white knight and vanquish the dragon and save the kingdom,” he replied wearily.

  I stopped. “I don’t have that fantasy.”

  “You do,” he insisted, and he stopped so he could look at me.

  It had started to rain, and it was just above freezing, so the rain felt like ice. We stood on the side of the hill, among the trees that smelled of damp pine. The light was fading, thanks to the expanding cloud cover blotting out the setting sun, but I could still see the steel in his eyes.

  “There is no such thing as a good war, Bryn,” Konstantin said. “Good people will die. Innocent lives will be destroyed. And in the end, one unfit person will still hold the crown.”

  “But Mina is evil, and she needs to be stopped,” I argued. “How do you propose we do that without war?”

  “She does need to be stopped, and you’re correct that this is probably the only way to do it,” he agreed. “But that still doesn’t make it good or easy or bloodless.”

  FIFTY-NINE

  kingdom of ice

  The flaps to the tent were frozen shut when we awoke, and when I kicked them open with my foot, ice shattered to the ground like broken glass.

  My tentmate had found herself another place to sleep, and Ridley had taken residence in my tent. Despite our exhaustion, we had stayed up for a while, trying to concoct a plan to save our families from the worst of this war, but eventually we succumbed to sleep, our bodies pressed together for warmth, as the rain beat down on the canvas.

  While we were sleeping the temperature had finally dropped enough to freeze, but the rain must’ve kept on for some time. When we emerged from the tent, the sky was beginning to lighten, casting us in an ethereal blue glow, and everything around was covered in a thick layer of ice.

  Overnight, the world had turned into a frozen wonderland. Branches were encased in ice, their early buds trapped in crystal tombs. As difficult as it was getting around on the ice, there was something oddly magical about it. The way it changed the landscape completely.

  Mikko held court in a large round tent, the sides of which now looked like panes of glass. He stood ins
ide, hunched over a table with a map of Doldastam spread out on it, wearing a dark gray fur coat. Someone had made a pot of tea over a fire, and he sipped from a chalice as he studied the map.

  The large hill kept our armies and the fires mostly hidden from Doldastam, but the Skojare tower guard cloaked any smoke or light that might be visible. Still, the guards’ powers weren’t very strong, so we kept the fires to a minimum.

  Ludlow, Finn, and Baltsar were already in with him when Ridley and I arrived. None of them were speaking, so it didn’t seem like we’d missed much.

  “It’s damn early for all this,” Ludlow muttered, pouring himself a cup of tea.

  Darkness only lasted for roughly six hours this time of year, and the plan before we’d gone to bed was that we wanted to hit Doldastam as close to daybreak as possible. Well, that was the old plan, at least. I was hoping to change it.

  “If we go around—” Finn began to say, but I cut him off and stepped closer to the table.

  “Sire, I would like to make a request,” I said, and Mikko slowly lifted his head to look at me. “I would like it if you waited to launch the assault against Doldastam and allowed myself and a few others to sneak in past the walls so we can get people out before the bloodshed starts.”

  Mikko straightened up, resting his solemn gaze on me. “I know that you’ve grown up here, so you have friends and family to consider. But you can’t evacuate half the town, at least not without everybody noticing.”

  “I’m not asking for half the town,” I persisted. “I’m asking to get my parents out, and Ridley wants to get his mother.” I motioned to Finn. “Finn’s parents and sister are there.”

  Mikko’s gaze hardened, and though I wanted to go on and on listing people I’d like to get out of there—like Tilda’s parents, her sister and brother-in-law, and her three-year-old niece, or Kasper’s family, which had already had enough loss. Even Linus Berling and his parents, who had been nothing but kind, a rarity among royals.

  I knew Mikko’s fear. I would evacuate the whole town if I could, but that wasn’t an option. But I’d be damned if I left my parents trapped behind those walls. Tilda had told me that the town was already turning against them, and I wouldn’t let them die there.

  “Do you know a way that you can get in without being seen?” Baltsar asked, his curiosity clearly piqued.

  “Yes, we think so.” Ridley moved to the map and tapped on the east side of the wall. “There’s a narrow pipe that drains out to the Hudson Bay. It wouldn’t be large enough to sneak an army in, but a few of us should be able to go in undetected.”

  “I would like to get my family out of there,” Finn said. “They have no part in this.”

  “I’d like to go too, my lord,” Konstantin said, appearing behind us in the tent, and I turned to look at him. “I’ve already had to escape Doldastam once by going out through the sewers. I can get back through them.”

  Baltsar rubbed his chin, staring down at the spot on the map. “I would like to see the interior of Doldastam so I can plan my attacks better, but I don’t think it’s worth the risk.”

  “You’ve been looking for a weak spot in the wall,” Konstantin pointed out, walking over to him. “And it’s hard to detect from this distance. If we were inside, I could show you the weakest points, and you can decide where you want to attack.”

  Baltsar arched an eyebrow. “That would be invaluable information. Our only way into Doldastam will be by taking down that wall.”

  “It will only take us an hour, maybe two,” I persisted. “Baltsar could gather information that would give us a great advantage in the war, and then we’ll return. We can go to war without anything lost.”

  “Go, then,” Mikko said, his thunderous voice rumbling with irritation. “Leave before anybody else decides to join you.”

  There wasn’t time to waste. If we wanted to rescue our families, it would be best to use what little time we had before the sun rose.

  Just before we left, Konstantin stopped me at the bottom of the hill. He held one of his prized daggers, the handle pointed toward me. “Take it, white rabbit. It’ll come in handy if we run into trouble.”

  I’d planned to grab one of the swords from the arsenal, but a dagger would be easier to carry. Not to mention that none of the weapons here would be as nice or as strong as Konstantin’s.

  “Thank you,” I started to say as I tucked it in the back of my waistband, but he’d already turned and started walking up the hill.

  Climbing back up the hill outside of Doldastam was much harder work than it had been last night, thanks to the ice. Once we reached the peak and looked down below, I had to pause to marvel at the beauty of it.

  Even in the dim light, the ice made it all sparkle. Every inch of it was frozen. It looked like a kingdom made of crystal.

  Ridley soundlessly came up beside me, and I didn’t even know he was there until he started to speak.

  “It’s so strange to see the town this way.” He exhaled deeply, his breath coming out in a plume of white fog. “I don’t just mean the way the ice makes it look like diamonds. From up here, so far away, it looks like a quiet, peaceful little village. You’d have no idea about the lives it holds, or all the dark secrets it’s hiding.”

  “I know,” I agreed. “But it really is beautiful.”

  I looked over at Ridley. A strange expression was on his face, somewhere between wistful and pained. But I understood exactly, because Doldastam made me feel the same way. Homesick and angry and scared and happy and terrified.

  Doldastam was the only home we’d ever really known, and it was home to everyone we’d ever really loved. And we were trying to save it, assuming that it didn’t kill us or that we didn’t destroy it in the process.

  I reached out, taking Ridley’s cold hand in mine. He squeezed it, the intensity of his grip promising me that somehow we would be strong enough to take this on.

  “Ready to go back home?” he asked with a crooked smile.

  “Are we going, or are you gonna stand up there all day having a chat?” Konstantin called up at us, and he was already a quarter of the way down the hill.

  I tried to give Ridley a reassuring smile. “Let’s go.”

  Then we were moving again, skidding down the hill, and sneaking around the camp. We stuck close to the bay, which put about four miles between us and Doldastam. There weren’t any trees along the shoreline, but the distance from where the Omte and Viktor’s men were camped made it nearly impossible for them to see us.

  Eventually we reached the frozen stream that let water waste flow out from the town. It was in a trough dug eight feet down, so we were able to walk along it without fear of being seen. Assuming, of course, that no one came over and looked in.

  Underneath the stone wall there was an iron grate to keep people or bears from getting in. Icicles hung from the bars, and Konstantin knocked them off. At the ends, where the grate met the wall, he used the handle of his dagger to hammer on the grate until it started to come free. Then, with Ridley’s help, he pulled the grate back, creating a gap large enough for someone to slide through.

  He stepped aside, looking at me, and then motioned to the gap. “Ladies first.”

  I smiled at him, then squeezed in through the gap, and entered Doldastam for the first time in almost a month.

  SIXTY

  burial

  We came up in the cemetery. There were other access points, Konstantin explained, but most of them led into highly visible areas. This would be the least conspicuous place to climb up out of a sewer grate.

  The cemetery was a narrow rectangle a few blocks from the center of town. Evergreen hedges created a living fence around the outside of it, providing us with some much-needed cover.

  Thick, dark deciduous trees surrounded us, and their branches came together overhead, creating a canopy. In the summer, they bloomed brightly with flowers, but now icicles hung down from them, like diamond ornaments.

  Almost hidden in the dim light, I saw a
bearded vulture perched on one of the branches. It cocked its head, its sharp eyes locked on me. I held my breath, waiting for it to cackle and give away our position, but it only watched us before taking flight.

  Four large mausoleums sat in the center of the cemetery, pointing to each of the four directions, and the royal family and high-ranking Markis and Marksinna were buried within them. Since plots were scarce, most people had burials at the bay. What few spaces were left were usually reserved for dödsfall—or a hero’s death, someone who died in service to the kingdom.

  We crept along, keeping our heads low in case guards were patrolling nearby, then Ridley stopped short, causing me to run into him. Konstantin was leading the way, weaving through headstones, with Baltsar and Finn following close behind.

  I was about to ask Ridley why he’d stopped, but then I looked to see what he was staring it. It was a headstone, broken in half. The bloody carcass of a fish with its guts hanging out had been left on the stone, the blood and entrails frozen to the granite.

  Even though it was broken, I could still make out most of the words, and I filled in the rest:

  REINHARD MIKAEL DRESDEN

  1963–1999

  HERO TO THE KING

  BELOVED FATHER AND HUSBAND

  Ridley’s father had been killed protecting the King during Viktor Dålig’s revolt. He’d been revered as a hero … until Ridley had defected from Doldastam, and now, based on the dead fish, they were punishing Reinhard for Ridley’s assumed loyalties to the Skojare. To me.

  I put my hand on his arm and whispered, “I’m so sorry.”

  His jaw was set, and his eyes were hard. Then he shook his head once. “We just need to get out of here.”

  He turned and walked away. I wanted to right the stone and clean off the frozen blood, but we really didn’t have time. And what would it matter if we did? The damage had already been done.

  When we reached the edge of the cemetery, Konstantin, Baltsar, and Finn were long gone. I knew that Finn would go after his family, but I had no idea what Konstantin and Baltsar might be up to. Crouching beside the hedges, Ridley whispered that we should split up—he’d go get his mom, while I got my parents.