Traitors. In the king’s own army.
Never would Roar find such traitors among his own soldiers. Never would they write to the Warrior Bear and proclaim their loyalty like these idiots. Maybe the captains thought he wasn’t watching the ravens coming and going, but since he’d been tossed into lordship as a youngling, Roar watched everything.
“You did not get far,” Roar spoke just loud enough that those closest could hear him. Loud enough for people to lean in. For everyone in the square and beyond to understand without a shadow of a doubt who was in control.
Two males and one female were tied up. Not one of them answered, although the female, the one with the most ice in her spine, spat on the ground in front of her.
“Imagine if you channeled that righteous anger correctly. Fates, you’d be unstoppable.”
“Prince Vale fights for the fae of Winter’s Realm. For what’s right,” the female growled. “He always has.”
“You think so?”
“I do.”
The high lord paced in front of the poles. “Then why is he with a Falk? Have you not heard the stories of the Cruel King?”
“Of course we have,” a male said, and recognition sparked within the Warden of the West.
“Captain Gorm, is it? Originally from the easternlands?”
“I’ve lived in Avaldenn for ten turns and reported to Prince Vale’s command for five of them.” The captain was decorated, though he’d left all those decorations behind after Vale’s letter had been found and he’d fled into the woods.
“And so you sought to abandon your fellows and fight with the prince who has joined up with the Cruel King’s daughters? Those females have as much murderous ice in their veins as their father.”
Not that he knew anything of Thyra, but he did know Isolde. That was enough to pass judgment on the twin sister.
“I’m with Vale,” Gorm replied stoutly.
“As am I.” Asmund pulled against the metal that bound him.
“As we all should be!” Helga shouted.
The crowd took a collective step back, as though the idea might spread like the blight. Roar’s jaw flexed. Though his wings had been mangled for so long, he still hated being reminded of what had been stolen from him. That he’d never fly again.
While that had been devastating in that same turn, his mother, father, and older brother had all been killed during an effort to better his house. Roar could not help but put partial blame on the power and allure of the Ice Scepter.
The same Scepter the Shadow King had gotten his hands on, though he’d been evasive when Roar asked how that occurred. Another reason Roar didn’t trust the shadow wielder.
“Your loyalty is admirable,” Roar said after a pause that was long enough for the crowd to be focused on him once again. “But ultimately misplaced. The king is who you swore to. The House of Aaberg. Vale the traitor is no longer a part of that house.”
Roar had learned of the queen’s infidelity, right before word came that deep in the south of Winter’s Realm, Vale had publicly proclaimed himself a Riis.
“The spare heir renounced his blood and stayed true to the Falk whore!”
“Say the Falk ladyisbetter though.” Asmund scanned the crowd, as if to sway them. “What do we know of her? Not much. But was she not engaged to you, Lord Roar? She couldn’t have been all that bad, right?”
Roar snarled. “Isolde Falk betrayed me, and I have entertained you for far too long.”
He called his power, the shifting magic that outshone his winter magic. The power that had saved his life. Without it, he would never have been able to fly from that deep, dark pit.
Whispers rippled through the crowd as his magic strengthened, changing his body, growing it. Fur sprouted. He fell to all fours. The pain of shifting used to be far worse, but Roar had grown used to it. And when compared to the agony he’d been in when the blight ravaged his body, this rearrangement of bones, sprouting of fur, and growing of new appendages was nothing.
The snow leopard grew so large it dwarfed Roar’s largest sleigh. A size the cats would never reach in the wild, but over his turns of practice, Roar had adapted his form to this for a specific reason. Awe. Shock. He’d always loved his shifter forms for the effect they had on others, and now he loved them even more. When he shifted he was finally whole again. His back leg returned, and in his frostfly form his wings were functional.
His claws gripped the ground, free of snow. They flexed and released, flexed and released, as a low rumble carried from his chest up his windpipe.
“Dead gods save us,” Gorm prayed.
