Brenn didn’t answer.
“I won’t leave,” Freya repeated.
“I’ll set up rooms for you here, so you can be close,” Brenn said, gesturing to the hallway.
“That won’t be necessary,” said Freya. “I’ll need to be closer.”
Freya nodded to Brenn as she left her, but she felt the weight of Brenn’s judgment against her back like a warning.
Chapter Fourteen
Astrid was ordered to rest, even though she was not the one who’d been hurt. Emotional duress, Brenn had called it—and that much was true. The shock of seeing Freya’s blood had worn off, and suspicion settled in, rendering Astrid unable to do more than cower under her bed covers.
An assassin roamed the castle somewhere. Astrid had been left out of the investigation entirely, locked away in her new rooms. To make matters worse, Fenrir prowled around with his sulky feline saunter, less like he was guarding Astrid and more like he was looking for a way to escape the small space.
Astrid couldn’t help but feel panicked at the idea of being trapped. There was only one, heavily guarded exit. She gathered she would not be able to so much as piss alone for a while.
She did not bother speculating aboutwhowould assassinate her. Freya would have balked, but Astrid hardly cared. There were plenty of people—people Astrid had not even met—who would undoubtedly seek the notoriety that came with killing her, even if they didn’t want to usurp her entirely.
But she worried Freya could be hurt, caught in the middle. She worried Ruga would be targeted over the channel, that Ruga’s wife could be in danger, that Astrid would lose members of her beloved félag to the killer.
No, she amended. Not a killer yet. She had her loyal bodyguard to thank for that.
But how had someone ascertained the location of Astrid’s rooms from outside? They’d picked out her balcony; they’d been good with their bow, or good enough to nearly hit Freya.
They knew Astrid had kissed Freya like she was the one thing Astrid truly wanted in the world.
Astrid was not worried about Freya physically—the cut had been superficial, and Brenn would heal it. But Freya would be distraught. Thinking of herself as a failure for not apprehending an attack she couldn’t have possibly predicted.
As if summoned by Astrid’s thoughts, Freya entered the room quietly, holding a small stool, and locked the door behind her. Astrid watched in silence as Freya set the stool next to the bed. The room was empty of most furniture. Once upon a time, long before Astrid’s reign, it had been used as a holding space for political prisoners.
And now it was a prison for her, she thought wryly.
Freya sat atop the stool and extracted a book from inside her shirt. Fenrir stopped his prowling and pawed at Freya’s leg, and Freya shifted to let the cat jump into her lap. Astrid’s heart warmed as Freya removed one of her gloves to run her hands through Fenrir’s fur. Freya was soft on animals. She was soft on anything she felt needed protection. Astrid had always admired that about her.
Was Freya going to sit there all night? Astrid held in her questions due to Freya’s serious expression. Freya did not look nearly as distraught as Astrid thought she would be. Her ear was healed, albeit missing a chunk of skin, and her hair had beengently mussed—the way Freya styled it before dinner when she wanted to look good. To Astrid’s dismay, Freya looked so good, it was hard to stop looking.
Astrid forced herself to avert her eyes before she got caught, down to the cover of Freya’s book. The binding was leather, and the cover illustration displayed a rosy-cheeked orc woman held by another helmeted orc woman in chainmail. A memory surfaced: little Astrid, hardly more than a hundred and twenty years old, searching through her parents’ cart of goods for reading material to pass the time while they traveled from one city to the other. She had wanted to be a soldier even then, and had picked it up because of the chainmail, thinking it to be an adventure story.
There had been adventure in the book, to be fair, but the things that kept Astrid awake into the night were not about battling evildoers and putting the kingdom to rights. Even now, Astrid could recall in explicit detail some of the phrasings about the creative positions the author had given the soldier and her sweetheart.
Her cheeks warmed. Why would Freya be readingthat? Astrid had not known Freya to read fiction at all; Freya’s time was always pared down, utilized in the most practical way possible, and when she picked up books they were about war, weaponry, politics, finance—things that would assist in her spymaster work.
Was it possible the book was meant to send a message to Astrid? That Freya was in an amorous mood? Or maybe they could experience this kind of relationship in erotic literature, but not in reality? Whatever the answer, Astrid fully planned on pretending the balcony had never happened, to push it as far from her mind as she could, and now she saw Freya as the soldier in the story, and somehowAstridwas the lover who needed rescuing, and the memory of their kiss merged with hermemory of the story, and then she had to turn in bed to face the wall because the sight of Freya overwhelmed her.
There were so many reasons not to pursue Freya, and the only reason Astrid could think of to initiate anything now wasbecause I want to, which was hardly good enough. The most pressing reason, which weighed on Astrid constantly, jumping ahead: the inevitable heartbreak of losing Freya when her short human lifespan ended. If Astrid wanted to be more pragmatic, she could admit it was messy for a queen to be involved with her attendant, spymaster or not, and it could jeopardize the whole country if something unpleasant happened between them, or if Astrid prioritized Freya over Torden’s people.
If Astrid was being completely honest with herself, Freya’s impending mortality and Astrid’s queenly duties weren’t the only things holding her back.
Astrid had no time or energy for romance since becoming queen—before then, even, when training to be a good soldier had required every ounce of her attention. Even if somehow she were to overcome every last one of her reservations, it had been so, so long since she’d been intimate with anyone. Quite literally longer than Freya had been alive. Astrid was not confident she knew what to do anymore.
At least like this—rationalizing, counting, compartmentalizing her reasons for not pursuing Freya—Astrid could make them real and remind herself why she could not act on her emotions. How any love for Freya could only end in heartbreak, one way or another. On the balcony, Astrid might have been able to pretend they were just two people. She had pretended there would be no consequences beyond, and now she was going to pay the price.
Fenrir leapt from Freya’s lap, and Freya sighed, closing her book and standing. She lifted Fenrir gently and nudged open thedoor to the antechamber to let him out, to the dismay of the guards standing there.
“Was he putting you on edge too?” Astrid asked, and flinched. She had not meant to break the silence or open any doors that should remain closed.
“Yes,” said Freya.
