Biting down on my lip, I shook my head. “I wish I knew.”
“This crown.” Icy metal looped around her wrist, the silver reflecting the dance of the flames. “It’s too heavy. It doesn’t fit my head. I don’t want it. I don’t want this. I can’t do this.”
Part of me wished I had the energy to hype her up, but the truth was, I knew the feeling all too well. Thrust into someone else’s shoes that would never quite fit—that would always feel too big, too bold. Unearned.
Words were failing me, so, instead, I tilted my head and rested it on her shoulder, taking her hand in mine. She squeezed back, her chest caving, shaking, and we watched the wood burn while the Northern Lights twirled above.
A falling star shot across the vast sea of midnight.
“The elves used to worship them—the stars. The brightest ones in the sky were said to be gods.” She sniffled. “Have you decided what to ask of them?”
“What do you mean?”
“You enacted elven law. You survived the brutal games of the Terrordome. By right, you are granted a pardon, a mercy, or a wish.”
My head shot up. “But I didn’t defeat the jelmadag.”
“I don’t think the jelmadag was the real opponent,” she said quietly.
Flóki. His stiff body, blood pooling out beneath him, the sword rigid and right.
“I thought that was just it,” I said, cutting off my own thoughts. “A game. Are the old gods even real?”
“Guess we’ll find out.”
I stared at the fire. The smoke billowed, the flames seeming to snap hotter, wilder with the racing of my heart. Sweat tickled the hairline at the base of my neck. A presence weighed on the night. Powerful, ancient, watching with prying eyes, listening with meticulous ears.
Greed and power, vengeance and darkness pulsed in my veins.
There were no limits, something whispered, straight to my soul—I could do anything I wanted, be anything I wanted. A queen. A god. A legend. A ruler of the realm. Endless control.
“River,” Freyja called. Not my name, but an order.
“Yeah?” A wall of flames filled my vision. “Oh, shit!” I was exactly one step away from being engulfed by the fire, as if I were a simple, mindless moth being drawn to the zapper.
How had I not realized I’d been walking towards it?
Wobbling on my chunky heels, I stumbled back to Freyja’s side. The blood rushed to my head. A tightness seized my chest.
Taking a deep inhale, I glanced over my shoulder. The castle loomed a brilliant icy blue in the night. I’d lived through the fight, made it to Jarðarbæli, found Gaia, broken out of my cage.
I got what I wanted. There was nothing else to ask for. My attention snagged on the tower in the thin layer of clouds, glass turret sparkling in the moonlight.
But there were plenty of other souls far less fortunate, still trapped by these ruthless laws, waiting to taste the cool glacial air.
On a silent prayer, I wished for freedom, for life, a soul released from its grate. A nymph and her volcano, reunited with her fiery kin. The power to walk this land once more.
A fierce gust of wind batted the flames, tossing loose snow, the ash, my hair.
And then it was gone, it was done, and somehow, I knew, Eldi had finally left that godforsaken hearth.
“Your Highness,” a guy sang from an outer corridor. Familiar, but too far away for me to fully catch or care. “Your court awaits you.”
Freyja rolled her eyes, and suddenly she was herself again, the cool exterior slotting back into place over the frightened, mourning girl. “Best be getting back.”
She didn’t ask what I wished for. She didn’t say anything about the gust of wind or the inexplicable trance she’d caught me in. She just gathered her green and lilac skirts and trudged towards the castle, the crown a bejeweled burden on her head.
“And what about you, angel?” that same person called, a tease of a smile in his voice. “You going to stay out here all night?”
