Inside, I’m not surprised to find Finn sitting in a dark corner, leaned back in a chair with his feet propped on a worktable, sipping from a steaming mug of mead. This used to be Finn’s father’s shop, and it shows. Tiressia’s green and indigo flag hangs from the rafters while Neri’s pennon covers the wall above Finn’s head. The image of a creature more wolf than man stares at me, embroidered in silver thread on blue and white silk.
The sight disgusts me.
As the door creaks closed, Finn glances up. His short black hair is wild as usual, mussed and hanging over his forehead, and his eyelids are heavy, like he’d rather still be in bed. In better light, his brown skin—more like Hel’s and his father’s than Betha’s—appears marked with silver, save for the outline of dim amber.
“From that look you’re wearing, I take it you saw my family.” He downs a long drink of mead and lets out an irritated sigh. “Father is fine. They’ll make it back in time for supper. They’re hunters—the best. I’m not worried.”
That’s Finn’s way of stopping a conversation he doesn’t want to have before it even begins.
I don’t mind this time. I agree with him. The feast hunters know our lands better than anyone. Besides, what could’ve gone wrong that all seven would not return?
“Yes. No need to worry,”I sign. Crossing the space between us, I set the wrapped knife next to Finn’s feet and flip the skin back.“Could you sharpen this for me?”
Finn looks at the God Knife, then back at me, and furrows his brow. “What for? That’s the knife my father found, right? A bit large for peeling harvest apples.” He takes another sip of mead, watching me with a curious eye.
“It is not for apples. I need it to help clean the great horns for the feast. It must be sharp enough to cut through flesh and sinew alike.”
Gods, what a terrible excuse. There won’t even be any great horns for the harvest supper if the hunters don’t return in time.
Finn drags a hand through his thick hair and tilts his mouth into asmirk. “You are Tiressia’s worst liar, Raina Bloodgood. You’re up to something.”
I move to stand with my back to the heat of the forge, trailing a hand along a row of finely crafted dagger and knife belts that Finn sells to his customers. Last night, I considered what it might be like to tell him every detail of my plan to set Nephele and the Northland peoples free of the Frost King’s rule. To plead with him to be brave and help me.
But now that the moment is here, I can’t bring myself to be honest. He may know how to forge and wield every weapon created, but Finn is a lover, not a fighter. He’s content where I’m restless. Sated where I starve. He will call me ten kinds of foolish and try to stop me.
He could very well succeed.
“I am not lying.”I form the words, my hands steady and sure, hoping that I’m convincing.“Mother sent me. We are using the knife to clean the wild deer for tonight’s supper. The hunters will return.”
Better to cling to a terrible lie than invent another.
He narrows his brown eyes, and the need to cower behind something sweeps through me. Deceiving my mother was bad enough, but deceiving Finn might be even more challenging.
Finn has been my first everything. My first friend. My first fight. My first kiss. My first lover. My first heartbreak. He’s the only person with whom I ever shared the God Knife’s story. He’s also the man I decided not to build a family with because he refused to leave the vale, and I didn’t want to stay. My life’s moments are filled with him. He reads me as plainly as any book.
After a groan and pointed glare, he rests his chair on all four legs and reaches for the God Knife. He’s still half asleep, and he’s either grown disinterested or annoyed.
Or both.
“Wild deer, huh?” He twists the pommel in his hand, and the amber stone reflects the forge’s firelight. He looks up at me, narrowing his eyes again like he’s sorting me out. “You wouldn’t happen to mean aWitch Collectorinstead, would you, Raina? Perhaps aFrost King?”
Annoyed it is.
I take a seat in the chair across from him.“Finn, stop. Please do not make this difficult. I need your help.”
He returns the knife to the table and speaks to me with his hands.“Help with what? Killing the Witch Collector? Bringing the Frost King’s rage down upon all our heads? I remember your father’s tale. Surely you do not believe this knife will change everything. Or anything, for that matter. If it could, do you really think Rowan and Ophelia Bloodgood, of all people, wouldn’t have tried?”
My chest tightens at the mention of my parents’ names. When they met in the Northland’s southernmost city of Malgros, my father was head sentry for the Northland Watch, a guard witch assigned to protect the port. My mother was also a guard, often stationed near my father’s territory. A short time after Mother became pregnant with Nephele, tensions between the southern queen, Fia Drumera, better known as the Fire Queen, and the East’s King Regner, created unrest. As the southern and eastern breaks prepared for war, the Northland people along the coast feared the conflict might finally spill across the sea to our shores. Then Fia Drumera killed Regner, and soon, in the east, a mystical prince with no name rose to power.
My parents were granted leave to raise their family, but were required to head north and help protect the vale. They were never loyal to the king. But theywereloyal to their land and its people.
“I cannot say why they never tried,”I tell Finn.“Only that I am not them.”I grab the knife and animal skin and set them in my lap.“Will you help me or not? I need the blade sharpened. That is all I ask.”
“You want me to hone a killing blade?” He folds his muscled arms across his chest. “That is, at its essence, what you said when you walked in here. Something to cut through flesh and sinew alike. And I know you don’t mean wild deer.”
I tighten my fingers into fists of silence. Every blade he forges is used to kill, and that’s saying a lot. People come from all around the Northlands to purchase the beautiful and deadly work of Finn Owyn. To seek his expertise. He’s only conflicted now because it’smewho’s asking for his help.
“I want you to sharpen a God Knife,”I reply.“And believe in me.”
