She nodded, daring a relieved smile.
‘Although, I will say, of all the creatures in this palace, I think you might be the wildest,’ he went on, his brow furrowing. ‘The question is, who do I find to wrangleyou?’
Greta blinked, seized by a sudden rush of heat.
‘Oh, my giddy stars, are thosenewborn cubs?’ cried a new voice, jolting them from their conversation. Greta turned to find two figures coming towards them. Alarik stepped away from her, his hands clasping behind his back.
‘Indeed they are,’ he called out. ‘Less than a day old.’
Greta recognized one of the figures as Captain Vine. The other was a tall, beautiful woman Greta had never seen before. She wore a delicate tiara on a crown of her own golden braids and a dress so fine, Greta curled her arms around herself on instinct, afraid the blood on her own clothes might somehow rub off on it. But the woman seemed not to care at all. She pressed herself against the gate to get a closer look at the leopards. ‘It was a mama, all along!’ She glanced over her shoulder, teeth gleaming. ‘Thank goodness you didn’t behead that poor beast, Alarik. The guilt would have eaten you alive.’
‘I’m sure,’ he muttered.
‘You can sleep soundly tonight, thanks to your wrangler,’ she said, smiling at Greta.
Greta was compelled to smile back, so effortlessly charming was the woman before her. Though she could tell by the lilt of her accent that she was not from here.
‘I’ve read all about your kind, you know. Your innate skill with beasts. How you can read them. Bond with them. It sounds like a kind of magic.’
‘I’ve always thought of it that way,’ said Greta, a little sheepishly. She didn’t usually waste much thought on her own appearance, but it was hard in that moment not to feel like a mussed-up swamp rat next to such a towering beauty. ‘My name is Greta.’
‘Hello, Greta.’ The woman reached for her bloodstained hand, seeming not to mind at all, and shaking it. ‘I’m Princess Elva of Halgard. King Alarik’s betrothed.’
Greta stiffened without meaning to. ‘Oh.’ Her stomach twisted and, for a fleeting moment, she felt a little sick. Before she could help it, she glanced at the king. Perhaps it was her imagination, but she thought he looked a little sick, too.
‘Let’s not bore Iversen with such tedium,’ he said, dismissively. ‘You should return to the palace before your tea gets cold, Elva.’ He nodded to Greta as he stepped away, gesturing at the others to follow. ‘Tend to your beasts, wrangler. Captain Vine and I will see to the soldiers.’
With that, he turned and stalked back to the palace. Greta loosed a breath as she watched him go, a smile flickering on her lips. It was not his parting words that pleased her, rather the startling realization that perhaps she had found an ally in Grinstad after all.
II
Waltz
CHAPTER 13
Alarik
Alarik was sitting alone in the furthest corner of the palace library, pouring over a stack of papers, when the soft patter of slippers announced the arrival of his mother. He slumped down in his wing-backed armchair, sliding so close to the roaring fireplace that the heat licked his boots.
‘I can see you,’ came the dowager queen’s voice. She moved through the passage of towering bookshelves and came to perch on the arm of his chair. ‘What on earth are you doing back here?’
She cast a wary glance over the papers as he shuffled them into a pile. He had been scowling at them for almost an hour, slipping away after breakfast to privately digest the information he had garnered from one of the Vaskan spies Elias had carted back to the palace. The rest of Regna’s illtrained scouts were still shivering in the dungeons, awaiting their own interrogations, which Alarik intended to personally oversee once his breakfast had settled. The stack of papers carried reports of the gathering Vaskan army, as well as rudimentary sketches of the gliders Regna had commissioned for her experimental aerial legion.
Alarik looked up at his mother. ‘If you must know, I’m hiding. Every time I enter my war room, your creeping little toad finds me there and saddles me with another inane decision.’ He surrendered a long-suffering sigh. ‘Yesterday, he had me choose betweensevenidentical types of parchment for wedding invitations.’
‘I hope you went with the birch,’ said Valeska.
‘I let Nova chew through them at his leisure, while Luna chased your meddlesome sidekick all the way down the front lawn.’
Now, it was her turn to sigh. ‘Alarik. Do not set your beasts on my steward.’
‘Do not set your steward on me.’ He rubbed the spot between his brows, and she clucked her tongue at the bruising along his knuckles.
‘Where did those come from?’
‘You know I like to be hands-on with my interrogations,’ he said, waving off her concern. In fact, the interrogations had been good for him these past few days. Alarik had been quite enjoying working off his frustration on the spitting, cursing faces of his enemies.
‘At least use your sword, Alarik. You’re not a barbarian.’
