Her brows lifted. ‘Then you are already aware of the dark circles under your eyes.’
‘Take care not to miss the warning flashing inside them,’ he said, pointedly. ‘I have not slept well.’
She pressed her curving lips together, drawing her arms behind her back as they walked along the upper glass corridor, which provided ample views of the courtyard below. Ordinarily, Alarik looked down on the stone arena within with simmering fondness – the place where he had spent countless hours sparring with soldiers and beasts alike, first as a young boy eager to please his father, the late King Soren, and then as a young king, eager to prove himself to his soldiers. To his beasts.
This morning, the arena was a far cry from the bravery and skill that often graced it. A group of quivering soldiers were attempting to corral a snow tiger and two leopards – a mere fraction of the regiment Alarik had been replenishing all year – and yet the twelve soldiers chosen to train them were all cowering against the walls.
Not a damned wrangler among them.
‘Give them time, Majesty,’ said Captain Vine, as though reading his thoughts.
He curled his lip. ‘The one on the end is openly weeping.’
‘No, he’s— Oh,Garvin.’ She muttered a curse. ‘He promised me he was ready.’
‘Let’s see how ready he is when that tiger makes a toothpick of him.’
‘That’s not funny.’
‘No,’ muttered Alarik,folding his arms as he looked down at his trembling soldiers, at the beasts snapping and growling like they owned the arena. Owned the palace. ‘This is far from funny.’
Vine chewed on her lip, her silence a reluctant agreement.
‘I watched a Vaskan eagle hunt in my mountains last night,’ said Alarik, after a moment.
Vine stiffened. ‘If Regna’s birds are here, her falconers cannot be far behind.’
Alarik frowned. His thoughts exactly. Word had clearly spread of the war in Eana, and the losses the king’s army had sustained. ‘She thinks I’m weak.’
Outside, a soldier screamed as the tiger began to circle him. He turned and scrabbled up the arena wall, losing his left boot and longsword in the process. Alarik swallowed a growl of annoyance.
‘We are weak,’ said Vine.
He glared sidelong at her. ‘That is not what I want to hear from my war captain.’
‘Our soldiers are well-trained,’ Vine went on, tempering her criticism. ‘But they are still fewer than they were last year. And as for the beasts … without regular training, the older ones have gone half wild. And the new ones are not trained at all. If we took them to war, they would likely devour as many of our own soldiers as our opposition.’
‘Contain your optimism, Vine.’
The kingdom of Gevra was long known for the might of its war beasts,just as it was for the strength and skill of its soldiers. The combination of both was why the northern kingdom hadn’t lost a war in over eight hundred years. Alarik did not intend to start losing now, but he could not deny the sorry state of his army as another soldier’s scream rang out. A young leopard had pounced, pinning him with a large, snowy paw. It took five flailing soldiers to beat the beast back, and not one of them seemed to realize the creature was simply playing.
Alarik pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘We have to do better than this.’
Vine gripped her sword, a frown tugging at her jaw. ‘I’m no wrangler, Majesty. I have tried with the beasts these past months, but it takes a certain skill. A certain type of soldier …’ She trailed off, the rest of her sentence hanging unsaid between them.
A type of soldier they no longer had. Not since the departure of Captain Tor Iversen. Yes, what Alarik needed now – and sorely – was a true wrangler. Someone who possessed that crucial inborn connection that allowed them to read the shift in a beast’s mood, to cajole and coax them, to train them. Wrangling was the closest thing to magic that existed in Gevra, but Captain Iversen’s talent, while exceedingly rare, was not entirely unheard of. At least not on the small rock of an island, Carrig, where he hailed from. A blot of grey in the middle of the Sunless Sea, as cold and unforgiving as the scythe of mountains that surrounded Grinstad Palace. Perhaps even more so. And yet the king hoped that Carrig might offer them a solution to their worsening problem. ‘It’s time to find a wrangler, Vine.’
She stepped back from the window. ‘As far as I’m aware, Tor Iversen is the only soldier capable of wrangling your beasts.’
‘I don’t want a soldier.’ He had plenty of those. ‘And anyway, Tor is long gone.’ The words were crisp, final. Alarik would not drag his former captain – and more importantly his oldest friend – away from the woman he loved, and the peace he had found in her kingdom, only to return to the blood-soaked battles of his past. No, Captain Vine had missed his meaning entirely. ‘Send word to Carrig,’ he clarified. ‘Get me one of Tor’s sisters.’
Vine blinked away her surprise. ‘Which one?’
A pertinent question. Alarik was aware that Tor had three sisters, he’d even met one of them – the eldest – briefly, many years ago at Grinstad, but he did not know the name of the other two. He did not especially care about their names, only that he knew they shared their brother’s gift for wrangling. Outside, a mewling rasp echoed through the courtyard. Alarik turned from the sound of a soldier’s answering shriek. Those infernal cowards would sooner hand his country to Regna on a silver platter than face down a bear cub.
‘I don’t care which sister,’ he said, storming off.
CHAPTER 2
