‘No,’ he murmured. ‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘The snow leopards on Carrig mate for life. I’ve always loved that about them. When they fight, they fight together and when they hunt, they hunt in pairs … Papa was so addled by hunger that he didn’t think to look for the leopard’s mate that day. By the time we spotted her, she was already leaping at him. It ripped his leg apart. Tore out half his stomach.’
Greta said the words quickly,hoping the panic would pass, too, but she began to tremble. Wordlessly, he inched closer, until his leg brushed against her skirts. She closed her eyes, letting the pine and smoke on his skin settle the desperate rattle of her heart.
‘It all happened in a flash. I didn’t know what to do. Papa was going to die, right there in the clearing. So, I leaped between them and covered his body with my own.’
Alarik tensed against her, but held his silence, willing her to go on.
‘The leopard took a swipe at me, and I knew she was going to kill me, too. Kill us both.’
He turned ever so slightly, his breath feathering the scars on her cheek. ‘What did you do?’
‘I sang.’ She closed her eyes. ‘I closed my eyes and sang, just like my father taught me. And it worked. The leopard drew back. After a while, I felt her leave. I’d willed her to, with every desperate note. And when I couldn’t see her any more, I hauled my father up from the forest floor, slung his arm around my shoulder and dragged him home. The trek back was just as vicious as the leopard. It nearly killed us both.’
But it hadn’t killed them. It had bonded them forever, the memory of that day so harrowing, they couldn’t speak of it for months. For weeks, Greta didn’t speak at all.
‘You saved your father’s life. Without even thinking about it.’
‘He would have done it for me.’
Alarik pulled back to look at her, his gaze lingering on her scars. Pride simmered there, and another softer emotion she could not seem to place.For the first time in her life, she didn’t feel ashamed of the marks on her cheek. She was glad of them, of what they told of her story and the depth of her loyalty. ‘Brave to the core, Iversen. I should have hired you at seven years old.’
That drew a laugh from her, the heaviness of her tale dissipating as easily as smoke. Another kindness from her king.
‘I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised by your courage,’ he went on. ‘You have never once baulked from me.’
She cocked her head. ‘Do you want me to?’
‘Just once, for show. I have a reputation to uphold, you know.’ He was teasing her, and it made her feel giddy. ‘You must know that everyone baulks at me. Even when I’m not here.’
‘That’s because they’re afraid of the beast that lives inside you,’ she said, before she could stop herself. ‘I’ve known beasts all my life. I feel at home around them.’
‘So, you think I’m a beast,’ he said, wryly.
‘No!’ She stiffened in horror. ‘I only meant that …’ She frowned, trying to dig herself out of the hole she’d just flung herself into. ‘Well, I think there’s a beast inside all of us. But we spend so much of our lives shoving our beast down, hiding it away, ignoring it. We so often pretend that we’re not scared or sad orhungryfor something vital beyond what we already have … and your beast, well … your beast is wide awake.’
‘That explains my feral charm,’ he remarked.
‘Perhaps,’ she allowed. ‘I think it commands and scares people in equal measure. They don’t know how to feel about a king who acts exactly how he feels and takes what he wants.You are a man who listens to his beast.’
He was silent for a while, chewing on her words, and then, picking at a thread on his trousers that was very close to where her leg brushed against his, he asked, ‘What is my beast hungry for?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said, watching his fingers with rapt attention. ‘Only you can answer that.’
He nodded slowly, and she wondered if deep down, he already knew the answer. His fingers moved to the edge of her gown. He worried a thread there, pulling it loose, just to toy with it. ‘What does your beast hunger for, Iversen?’
Her blood heated at his question, at the nearness of his touch, hovering above all those silk tiers. She imagined a hundred different things she would have said if she was bolder, how she would have threaded her fingers through his if he was not the king and she was not a wrangler from Carrig.
She swallowed down all that reckless need and offered the plainest truth. ‘Food,’ she said, simply. ‘For as long as I can remember, my beast has hungered for food.’
The king stilled, his hand on her skirts.
‘When you wake up hungry every morning and go to bed clutching your empty belly at night, every single desire beyond food is a luxury you can’t afford,’ she went on. ‘Now that I’m here in your palace, and I’m fed and warm each night, I hunger to feed my family. To see them through this winter, and all the ones that will come after.’
When she glanced at him again, all traces of humour were gone from his face. ‘Carrig is starving?’
‘Not just Carrig,’ said Greta, knowing the blizzards that ravaged her little island had swept in from the east, and had been just as harsh on other villages.The fisherfolk had said as much. There were thousands of other families across the frosted plains of this kingdom, straining to survive. ‘Gevra has always been a warring nation, ruled by fearless kings and queens who go to battle without hesitation, again and again, for the good of their people.’ She hesitated, wondering if she should go on, but he was watching her intently, and it was too late to go back now. ‘But there is more than one way for a country to suffer, Your Majesty. Starvation is a war of its own. It’s not quick and bloody. It’s slow and aching, corrosive in a way that eats you from the inside out.’
