Astrid’s eyes softened in understanding. Her fingertips brushed the back of Freya’s hand. “Would you tell me how you got the scars?”
Freya flexed her scarred hands. In the dim light of the room, she could just see the shadows of irregularly raised skin, unnaturally shiny. In daylight, her scars were paler than the rest of her, just faintly pink against her tan skin. She closed her eyes, remembering.
“Poison plants,” Freya said. “We had to pick them. When you were too little to be useful for anything else, the warlords would put you to work how they could. I collected the plants with my bare hands. I’d get sick for days afterward. The plants were poisonous even to the touch. Blisters and all that, and it had thorns. I was always scraping my skin against them, over and over.” She lifted her hand to her face, turned it. “The marks don’t go away.”
Freya looked up at Astrid. Her queen’s eyes were watery, her lips parted in surprise. But where had she thought the scars were from? There was a reason Freya hid them most of the time.
“Oh, Freya,” Astrid said.
The sympathy discomfited Freya. She cleared her throat as the room blurred in her vision. “What about you? You’ve beenso at home here. I imagine your life was pretty different before becoming queen.”
Astrid’s eyes lit up. “You have no idea,” she said. “All the traveling with our parents. Learning the merchant trade, but so many other things, too. Ruga and I were thick as thieves. I was always getting in trouble and she was always getting me out of it.”
“That hasn’t changed,” Freya pointed out lightly.
“No, it hasn’t. Stars, but I miss her,” Astrid said. “I loved traveling. Every place had something new. People thought I was so cute as a child. They indulged me when I wanted to see how the blacksmith forged swords, how the archer nocked an arrow, how the falconers trained their birds. I was so hungry for it all. Learning new things made me feel alive. I was good at them, too.”
She didn’t have to be humble, Freya knew. Part of the reason she’d been elected queen was her skill in nearly everything she tried her hand at.
The more Astrid spoke, though, the more Freya realized how limiting queenhood was to her. For someone who wanted to try new things, much of her time was spent on diplomacy and bureaucracy and running the country. Freya had never seen her go to the archery range or forge a sword.
“You never wanted to be queen,” Freya whispered.
Astrid jolted upright in the bed.
Of course. It had been at the tip of her tongue, the side of her brain, an ever-present feeling. But if Astrid, who never wanted to be queen but was so good at it, who had the queenly traits Freya admired so much, didn’t like that side of herself… How could Freya say she really appreciated the whole of her?
“No,” Astrid said. “I never wanted to be queen.” She swallowed. “I wanted to be a soldier. Soldiers have lots of free time to do whatever they please when they’re off-duty. And Iliked things that were physical. All the training and whatnot. It made me feel strong. It made me feel like I was contributing to Ruler Lyn’s success by being able to protect what they had created.”
Freya touched Astrid’s arm. She might not have been as strong as she once was, but she had plenty of muscle left.
“And then you shot Ulfur,” Freya filled in.
“Right time and right place, I suppose,” Astrid said. A darkness came over her face.
Instantly, Freya regretted mentioning Ulfur’s name. “I’m sure there was more to it than that.”
“Can I tell you something, Freya? And will you promise not to share it with anyone?”
“What is it?” Freya asked, concerned. She searched Astrid’s face for what had caused the sudden emotion, and she could not read what was there.
“It wasn’t merely a lucky shot. Ulfur had already murdered Ruler Lyn in combat, and Varin was running things as best as he could. The castle was a disaster. We were divided up, trying to hunt Ulfur down and stop her once and for all.”
Dread clawed its way up Freya’s throat. She had the sense that once Astrid was done speaking, Freya would never see Torden the same.
“There was a brutal skirmish,” she said. Her eyes were wide, frantic, desperate to get the story out. “It was outside Ravn. Hedda and I were posted there under our captain’s command. We fought all day long until both parties had to retreat. We were sore, and injured, and mentally drained.” Astrid’s chest heaved as she caught her breath.
Freya waited. Her fingers itched toward Astrid’s sternum and rested there. Without a word, Astrid closed her hand over Freya’s.
“What I did was cowardly. We were so sick of everything, Freya. All of the fighting, all of the death. I convinced Hedda to sneak with me into the other camp. We donned the slipshod armor of Ulfur’s dead warriors and made our way in. Everyone was asleep or caring for their injuries.” She stopped, looked out the window. “There was no moon that night.”
Freya kept herself completely still. She thought she would be sick.
“We dispatched the guards around Ulfur’s tent. It was almost too easy. They didn’t make a noise, and her tent was larger than the others to show her importance. I think she wasn’t used to it yet. She had only just broken away from Torden and hadn’t developed her strategy. She had killed the head of the country and hoped, in the bedlam, she would become the new queen.”
The way Astrid spoke of Ulfur, like she understood the inner workings of her brain, made Freya’s pulse quicken.
After all, Astrid had had the same idea. To cut off the head of the beast.
