“Sister—there you are.”
Rakel, recognizing her brother’s voice, twisted on the bench. “Did you need something, Steinar?”
“Yes, and no. I am to tell you—on Oskar’s orders—that you are to stop working and partake in afternoon tea.”
Rakel raised an eyebrow. “Oskar made you—King of Verglas—play the role of messenger?”
Steinar laughed and scratched the back of his head. “I offered. I was coming to fetch you anyway. The construction of the new throne room has been finished, and I want to show it to you. Will you come?” He held out his arm for her to take, his eyes bright and hopeful.
She smiled fondly and stood.He is so much happier now that the war is over. He looks young again.“Of course.” She took his arm and let him lead her back to the palace as she broke off her connection with the melting glacier.
As Rakel walked arm-in-arm with her little brother, she remembered something Farrin had told her prior to his defection to Verglas.Ask him why he kept you on Ensom.She pressed her lips together and glanced at her brother, who still wore a sunny smile.
“Steinar,” she started.
“Yes?” he asked when she couldn’t continue.
“You said once you did not bring me back from Ensom because you were afraid.”
He hesitated. “Yes.”
“You were afraid of how I would react after the treatment I had endured,” Rakel stated more than asked as they left the sunshine of the outdoors and entered the palace.
“Partially,” Steinar said. He paused, and indecision flickered in his eyes.
Rakel held her breath, afraid of what he might say.
“It was also because I was afraid for you, and I thought I needed a few years before I would have the power to bring you home.”
Rakel blinked as they started up a staircase. “I beg your pardon?”
Steinar kept his eyes on the steps. “I was crowned when I was very young. And even though I wanted you back, I knew it would make the people…uneasy. As a young, inexperienced king, I didn’t have the power to reassure them—or to force them to accept it. But I hoped in ten years, they would trust me, and then you could come back.” He laughed sheepishly as they left the staircase for a hallway. “It sounds foolishly idealistic now, but I hoped…I always planned to bring you home.”
Rakel rapidly blinked to keep the tears that burned her eyes from falling. “I see.”
“It was stupid—I should have done more for you in the present, not just send you pretty things.”
“I loved my maps,” Rakel said with a surprising amount of fire. “I—their loss, and the loss of my books, I feel more keenly than I thought I would.”
Though Steinar and General Halvor had dispatched a number of squads to Ensom Peak—now Fresler’s Helm—to search for the wreckage of her castle and had found nothing, Rakel had insisted on going herself when spring first arrived.
It was as they had warned her—not ascrapof her castle remained. When she shattered her palace, her magic had sheared the top off the mountain. The village, her library, everything was gone…including the books Oskar had sacrificed to give her and the set of maps Steinar had sent to her that perfectly matched his own.
Steinar smiled. “I will have another set of maps drawn especially for you.”
“It’s not necessary.”
“But it is,” Steinar insisted as they stopped by a set of doors adorned with ornately carved reindeer and snowflakes. “You have endured so much, Rakel. You deserve every happiness.”
“And I have it,” Rakel said. “I have you, Farrin, Phile, Oskar, Halvor—I have more people that I love and cherish than I ever dared to dream of.”
“Having people you love and care for is a basic right—it shouldn’t be something special.”
“But itis. I know that because of what I went through, and I am glad. Because of my exile, because of the hatred I experienced, I can see that love is a treasure and that life and goodness must be protected—even if it means blood is spilled. I cherish my life now.”
Steinar met her eyes and stared. “Do you really?”
Rakel smiled. “Of course.”
