She sucked in a breath,feeling like she had been punched in the gut. She clutched Boo tighter, her words coming in a squeak. ‘All of them?’
The king nodded, his gaze locked on the distant moon. ‘Regna’s gliders found their mark.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, placing a hand on her chest to soothe the ache there. ‘Those poor creatures.’
He kept his gaze on the sky. ‘If it’s any consolation, they didn’t suffer.’
She could tell it was a lie. He was trying to shield her from the gruesome reality of it, and perhaps, by looking at the moon, he was shielding himself from the horror on her face. She sat up straighter, trying to get a hold of herself.
This is war, Greta. And war is ugly.
It will only get worse.
‘My beasts would have met the same gruesome fate if it hadn’t been for you,’ he went on. ‘Thank you.’
‘Of course,’ she said, quietly.
‘You’re brave, Iversen.’
‘It’s what anyone would have done.’
‘No, it’s not,’ he said, at last turning to face her. His eyes glittered, the blue inside threaded with silver. ‘It’s whatyoudid. You alone.’
Her cheeks warmed at the hardness of his praise, as though he was daring her to refute it.
‘Have you always been like this?’ he pressed.
‘What, easily embarrassed?’
‘Fearless,’ he said. And then once more. ‘Utterly fearless.’
She almost laughed, but it was an honest question, and how was he to know the quivering little girl she had once been? The one she still sometimes felt like when she was alone at night in the cold,cloying dark?
‘No,’ she said, truthfully. Her mind flitted back to that day in the low forest with her father, when his blood had painted the snow crimson and she thought she was going to lose him forever. For years afterwards, she had endured the most awful nightmares and debilitating panic attacks. Even now, whenever she felt overwhelmed, she had to catch her breath and centre her mind before it ran away from her. ‘I was very scared, for a very long time.’
‘Why?’ he said, quietly.
‘My father was attacked when I was seven. It was the most terrified I’ve ever been. I don’t think that terror ever fully wore off.’ Her hand went instinctively to the scars on her cheek. She tugged her hair free to cover it.
He leaned over and brushed it back, his fingers leaving a trail of heat along her skin. ‘What happened?’ he said, as though he hadn’t just lit every one of her nerve endings on fire, as though he wasn’t gazing at those three silver scars like they were a mark of honour.
Greta swallowed twice to steady her voice. ‘Papa and I were out hunting for deer. It was late winter, and the snowfall on the island had been so heavy for so long, we were half starved. Hela and Tor were older, so they went out together. Kindra hated to hunt, preferring to stay home and tend to the animals with Mama. Papa usually went out alone, but I was so eager to go that day. So eager to help him. I loved the wildness of Carrig even then, the howl of its blizzards and its tall, creaking mountains, the cold snaps in the morning that cloud your breath and snatch the feeling from your nose.’
She smiled,picturing the pale pink sky above their little cabin, the sun fighting its way over the mountains with what little heat it had. When she glanced at the king, he was smiling too, as though the memory was theirs to share.
‘We were in the cedar wood, stalking a doe,’ she went on. ‘Papa had been singing for hours, casting lullabies deep into the forest. When we spotted the creature, it felt like we had struck gold. I was shaking with so much excitement I almost gave us away. But we weren’t the only ones tracking the deer. As we closed in, a snow leopard leaped from the trees. It was half starved, like we were.’ When she closed her eyes, she could still see its emaciated body, the ridges of its ribcage and the sunken hollows of its eyes. She could still hear the desperate sawing of its breath.
‘Papa shot the leopard. Then he shot the doe.’
She pressed her lips together to keep them from wobbling. She hated how the guilt still prickled at her.
‘He had to kill the leopard,’ said Alarik, with such devastating simplicity, she almost wept. ‘You were starving.’
She dropped her head and looked at Boo. ‘That’s what Papa said. I know he was right. But I cried anyway.’
‘That’s your wrangler’s heart,’ he said, softly.
She smiled, ruefully. ‘Troublesome little thing.’
