The king’s eyes went wide. By such a reaction, I suspected he really had thought of me as a bastard-born Falk, which I’d recently learned was common enough. Prince Calder Falk and my own father had sired many bastards in their youth, before my father met and wed my mother. Though, of course, those same bastards might not know the truth of their fathers. And if they did, they wouldbe smart not to flaunt that name while King Magnus sat the throne.
“Isolde Falk, daughter to King Harald and Queen Revna?” the queen whispered.
“The same.”
“A daughter of Harald and Revna was a slave?” She set her cup of tea down with trembling hands. Considering Dergia was hidden, I doubted she’d known my parents. Likely, she was considering her own children living as I had done.
“My parents sought to send me to safety, but the Fates intervened. As they did again, two moons back when I escaped the Blood Court.”
A pregnant pause followed in which the royals studied me with such intensity that my skin crawled. Finally, the king shook his head.
“I should have you killed. A trueborn Falk, in my kingdom, the very line we swore to protect and hide from. The same line that tried to make my ancestors bend the knee.”
“Try and you’ll meet your own death,” Vale growled.
“The operative word isshould,” King Tholin retorted as forcefully, “I have no desire to harm you, Princess Neve. You have shown character, bringing humans here at great personal risk. You have given me the truth, a secret, if I’m not mistaken. And you have arrived when the Kingdom of Winter as a whole needs you most. I can read the signs, and bad blood between our families be damned. I am a dwarf of honor. Of ingenuity too.”
I exhaled, and a knot in my chest released. Nothing in his holding said the king had been about to be violent, butwatching him speak, seeing the sincerity in his eyes told me a lot. I felt, for the first time since being found by the dwarves, that we were really, truly safe.
The king held out his arm. “Might you stay for a day or two as guests to the Crown so that we may discuss matters?”
Could this turn into an alliance?
I stared at his arm. I wasn’t willing to commit to a full-on alliance yet. How could I when I had not yet committed to my own name? All that aside, I wished to have a relationship. To become friends with fae who thought like me. Those who valued humans as much as the varied races of our kind.
So I grasped his arm tightly with my own hand. “Thank you for your hospitality, King Tholin. We would be delighted to stay.”
Chapter 8
VALE
Ipaused before the desk in the room Neve and I had been given, and glanced down at a book, its pages open. I read a bit and chuckled. In the ten minutes I’d taken to clean the dwarven blood and grime from our travels off me, Neve had requested multiple histories of Dergia delivered. My wife never rested, just as she never ceased to amaze me.
An illustration featured on the opposite page, one that showed dwarves bearing the historical garb and colors of other mining kingdoms arriving in Dergia, pleading for a home. The king, likely one of the current king’s ancestors, welcomed them with open arms. My finger ran along the old, dry page. There was so much I did not know.
I looked away from the image, into the fire that burned in the stone hearth dominating one wall of our quarters. Set into the dark stone, fiery gems gleamed, a dwarven touch if there ever was one.
There had been, for many turns, a hidden kingdom within my own. One that treated humans as equals.
The dwarves of Dergia had been here for centuries, hiding so that fae of their race might be as free as they wished. But did they love living beneath the Great Rock all the time?
I suspected no. Or at least, not always. If I had to guess, I’d say that King Tholin was hoping to use Neve’s legitimate claim to Winter’s Realm to bring his people out of the shadow of his mountain. To emerge into the wider Winter’s Realm but continue ruling as a separate entity.
But first they’re giving us a bleeding tour.I shook my head at all that had happened in the last hours.
“Ready?” My wife emerged from the bathing chamber adjoining our quarters looking fresh as newly fallen snow and smelling of her usual smokey vanilla. She wore borrowed black pants and a crisp white tunic while her other clothes were being washed.
I suspected the new clothing had to be from a human, for Neve was curvy and also not a short female. I wished I’d gotten a change of attire but had settled for handing off my dirtiest clothing to the servants and wearing the most presentable of my traveling clothes. Never had I met a human as large as I, and as for dwarves—well, just the idea of me attempting to shove myself into their clothing was laughable.
“We don’t want to keep Prince Thordur waiting.” She pulled on her sword belt. Not that we thought we’d need weapons, not as guests of the Crown, but like me, my wife believed it was better to be prepared.
“I’m ready.” I slung on my belt bearingSkeldaand went to her, circling my arms around her waist and pulling her close. “Thank the dead gods that you smell like yourself again.”
Neve scoffed, but her eyes twinkled, telling me that she was not upset. “That’s what happens when you travel for weeks!”
“Some of us bathed.” I buried my face into her hair and inhaled, a smirk overtaking my lips at her gasp.
She whacked my shoulder. “I couldn’t bring myself to bathe in the rivers. Not as often as you did, anyway.”
