‘Right behind you,’ said Elva, scurrying after him, and batting his hand away firmly when he tried to stop her. ‘I’m not missing this.’
Vine raised her brows, looking impressed. Another desperate cry echoed through the palace. There was no time to argue. Alarik turned to his war captain. ‘Stick with the princess. Don’t let her out of your sight.’
Alarik bolted through the palace and tore out into the courtyard. Chaos had descended there, soldiers screaming as they scattered, most too frightened to even notice the king standing in their midst.
Alarik tracked the terror all the way around the back of the arena, where the stone courtyard bled into a grassy field, and beyond it, the forest where the beasts were kept. Up ahead, two soldiers were tending to another who had passed out in the dirt. Not far from them, another soldier wailed as she clutched her bloodied leg, the man beside her whimpering as he cradled his dislocated shoulder.
Alarik did not have to search long for the source of their distress.Right on the treeline, a large snow leopard was stalking back and forth, attacking anyone who came near it. There was blood around its maw, on its underbelly and dripping from its fangs.
Alarik crept towards the beast, craning his neck for a glimpse of his wayward wrangler.Where in freezing hell was she?Panic stirred, tightening like a vice around his chest. His eyes darted, his blood chilling. There was no sign of the Iversen girl anywhere. Just this rabid creature, who was making mincemeat of his soldiers.
He pushed on, desperately scanning the trees.
The leopard stilled as he approached, its hackles rising.
He pointed his sword at the beast and roared, ‘HEEL!’
The leopard released a rasping cry. A warning. Alarik drew a steadying breath, his father’s words ringing in his head.A king who bows to his beasts is no king at all.
He walked on, hissing through his teeth, ‘Heel.’
The leopard began to circle him as he approached. It was then that he saw the blood trailing from its holding pen. No.No.He tried not to picture his wrangler’s body inside it, but he couldn’t unsee her glazed blue-grey eyes, that slight frame curled in on itself, pale hands turned stiff and blue.
It was his own terrible mistake. Reckless, desperate fool that he was. To throw her to his beasts without proper assessment, without training. It was her blood on his hands. Her loss gutting his chest. Tor would never forgive him. He would storm the palace and tear Alarik limb from limb, kill the thoughtless king who had carelessly thrown his sister to his beasts without bothering to check in on her for days.
Shame flooded Alarik, a tidal wave of self-hatred coming on the heels of his fear.
‘HEEL!’ he roared again.
The beast roared back.
The leopard was beyond training. Beyond repair. Alarik raised his sword as it sprung towards him. He struck, bringing his sword down just as another cry rang out.
‘DON’T HURT HER!’
Alarik didn’t see his wrangler until she was leaping in front of him. She crashed right into the leopard, throwing her arms around its neck and knocking it to the ground, just as his sword came down and skewered the dirt.
Alarik froze, his blade embedded less than a foot from his wrangler’s neck. His hands trembled as he unstuck it from the earth, staring down at her like she was some kind of an apparition. Not his wrangler but a ghost who, for some incomprehensible reason, had just thrown her body between a rabid beast and the point of his sword.
He blinked, but the spectre remained. She was scrabbling now, not to get away from the beast but to cling tighter to it, crawling over its torso, through blood and fur and dirt, until she was covering it with her own body. She turned then, blinking up at Alarik through blood-streaked strands of copper hair.
At the sight of her rasping for breath below him, relief swept through Alarik like a cold breeze. A fleeting breath of calm before his anger exploded from him. ‘WHAT IN FREEZING HELL ARE YOU DOING?’
She swiped her hair from her face so he could see the same rage reflected in her eyes. ‘Saving this poor animal from your temper tantrum!’
Alarik’s eyes widened, his blood pounding so hard, he almost raised his sword again. He leashed his temper, all too aware of his soldiers gathering at his back,feasting their eyes on the spectacle. ‘Get up, Iversen,’ he growled. ‘Let me put this beast down.’
‘No.’ She cut her eyes at him. ‘If you wish to kill Saga, you’ll have to kill me first.’
Alarik jerked, like he had been struck. He stared hard at her and knew by the crack of lightning in her eyes that she was deadly serious. Not only would she die for this feral leopard, but she would also likely fight him for her. And something about that made his blood roar even louder, until the rest of the world fell away entirely – the soldiers and the blood and the trees and the wind – until it was just the king and his wrangler, locked in a seething glare that suddenly felt far more dangerous than the beast trapped between them.
CHAPTER 12
Greta
Greta did not dare take her eyes off the king. He did not take his eyes off her. They were brighter than she had ever seen them, as cold and hard as chips of ice. His fingers twitched around the hilt of his sword, like he was thinking about killing her. Killing them both.
Brutal wretch.
