The silence stretched, the heat between them palpable. Alarik’s thoughts were rioting, his heart slamming against his ribcage. What if he stayed here with her? What if he gave his crown to Anika, along with the heaving weight of his ailing kingdom, and shirked off his father’s legacy for good? What if he got on his knees and asked the fates for the bride he truly wanted? What if—
‘Don’t lose yourself towhat ifs.’ Greta was suddenly before him, blinking up at him with those knowing blue eyes. There was such sadness in them, he wondered if he had been speaking his thoughts aloud, or if perhaps she had already spiralled through the same questions. ‘You’ll only torture us both.’
He dipped his chin, their noses almost brushing. She was close enough to kiss. But if he dared, this time he might never stop.
She stepped backwards and held out her hand. ‘Friends, then.’
‘Friends.’ He hated the word, instantly rebelling against the pathetic consolation of it. But he took her hand anyway, her callouses sliding against his own. ‘Goodnight, Greta.’
‘Goodnight, Alarik.’
He left then, the imprint of her hand still warming his palm, and yet as he replayed her final melancholicgoodnightin his mind, he couldn’t help but think it sounded like goodbye.
IV
Wings
CHAPTER 38
Greta
It was after midnight in the silent underbelly of Grinstad Palace, and Greta Iversen was tossing and turning in her bed. Beyond the stone walls of her chamber, the north wind howled, demanding that she listen. She frowned in her sleep, her mind splintering from her body before she could stop it.
Cold air curled around her. She could feel herself moving through it, but without awareness of her own body. She was a breeze in the starless night, drifting towards a distant, keening cry.
The sound was rough and desperate, reverberating through her like the pounding of a drum. She followed it through a crack in the rock and felt, rather than saw, the mountain enveloping her, the narrowing walls inching closer, closer …
The air here was damp and sad and ancient.
The beast cried again. It was like a noose, tugging her down, down, down, invisible feet flying over loose rock, her eyes straining in the dark. Back at the palace, panic laced her trembling bones. It didn’t belong to her – this fear – but it settled like a rock in her chest.
Her wrangler’s spirit could ignore it no longer.
The mountains groaned as they cleaved open,rock falling like snow, until it was not a tunnel that Greta found herself in but a tomb. She pushed on, flinging an invisible hand towards the beast, pulling herself by the string that bound them, moving deeper and faster and—
Time stopped, the world freezing around her.
The beast was right there in the darkness. Ancient and unknowable. Impatient.
Its breath cast silver smoke between them.
Greta floated through it.
Two pooling blue eyes peered back at her, so pale and glittering they lit up the cavern. They were a pair of diamonds, each as big as her fist.
That cry came again.
Help me, wrangler, she imagined it saying.Free me.
Those wide eyes blinked, and the darkness returned.
Greta fell away from the beast, retreating from the cold, cloying mountain on a ribbon of wind. She floated back to the palace and the bedchamber where her body slumbered, but as her mind and body knitted back together and the dream broke apart, the beast’s parting plea echoed deep within her spirit. How much longer could she go on ignoring it?
How much longer would she listen to the rule of her king, when she knew, in her wrangler’s heart, that he was wrong?
CHAPTER 39
Alarik
