Hilda sighed and looked down at the wooden table. “Has he told you abouthis mother?”
I could not look her in the face as I answered. “A little. He told me she cannot walkor speak.”
Hilda nodded, still keeping her grey eyes on the table. “Astrid has been, well,afflictedever since Riyan was born. She may have survived the birth, but we lostour daughter.”
She looked up at me and smiled softly. “Little by little, though, parts of her have come back to us.” She took my hand as it rested on top of Riyan’s shirt. “Come, I would love toshow you.”
I did not know what to expect, but I followed the warmth of Hilda’s hand and rose from the table with her. Hilda took one glance at my loose-fitting blouse and reached into a wicker basket on the table. She pulled out an iced bun and popped it into my mouth without so much asa word.
I chewed through the sweet icing and bread and held the rest of the bun in my hand as she led me to the stairwell on the opposite end of the room. We climbed another spiral staircase to a similar dark hallway withred runners.
We stopped in front of a door with a rainbow of painted flowers on the wood and Hilda pushed the door open. Inside was a large bedroom with paintings on parchment tacked to the wall. The paintings were smeared in smudges and dots like they hadbeen finger-painted.
I noticed a painting of domineering and dark figures. Then a painting of a large pool surrounded by tall rocks and snow. Then a painting ofBloodstone Fortress.
“The magic of Nordingaard is not just giants and destruction,” Hilda said as she looked at all the paintings. “Now that you are in the House of Bloodstone, you get to knowour secrets.”
Hilda’s sweet words sent a warm hug around my heart as I ate the rest of the bun. My blood bond with Riyan was not even sealed, but Hilda still considered me her family. The dagger burned on my leg as I swallowed my bitter guilt along withthe icing.
I had always wondered what having grandparents would be like. Hilda was so kind and Nikkolas…at least cared enough about me to be concerned for my fate. I had seen the mysterious Baron and Baroness of Bloodstone as potential allies, but they saw me as their family—for betteror worse.
Would life at Bloodstone Fortress be an endless cycle of Nikkolas giving me hard advice and Hilda soothing me with warm pats to the hand and a sweet treat? Would Hilda teach me new embroidery techniques? Would Nikkolas show me how he commanded his army? Would we sit next to the hearth at winter solstice, sipping hot milk as they told me oldmountain legends?
My stomach fluttered. I was…excited to bea Bloodstone.
Hilda looked at me with a smile and a twinkle in her pewter eyes, likeshe noticed.
She gestured to the paintings. “We know of a magical healing spring near Nordingaard’s peak. Ever since Riyan’s birth, we have taken Astrid to the spring as often as we can and let her bathe in it. Each time, she comes back with something totell us.”
She placed her hand on a painting of a woman with light brown hair holding a little blonde girl. “As soon as she comes back from bathing in the spring, we give her a parchment and paint and she recreates a memory—a picture from what is left ofher mind.”
Hilda lovingly stroked the painting, running her fingers gently over the little blonde girl’s face. “This one is my favorite. A few years ago, she came back from the spring and painted her and I together. My precious daughter has only spoken five words since Riyan’s birth, but she can still tell us she loves us in her ownspecial way.”
She crossed the room to Astrid’s bed, where someone had tacked a dozen paintings of a blonde baby and a blonde child. Hilda pointed to a portrait of the yellow-haired child with blue thumbprintsfor eyes.
“This is how she remembers Riyan,” she said in a wistful voice. “I do not think she even knew he was her son, but she enjoyed being around him for the most part. He would sit in her lap and she would stroke his hair. He brought her flowers nearly every evening and told her she was the most beautiful lady in the world. She could not understand him, but he still tried every day, hoping one day she wouldanswer back.”
I hugged my arms. I had only pictured splintered bones and a shattered mind when I thought of Astrid, not the little boy on the other side who just wanted his mother. Riyan went his entire life with a ghost of a mother, hoping every day a flower or a smile could bring her backto life.
But itnever did.
Hilda’s face fell as she sighed. “Then, Riyan started growing. Riyan was always big, but he started having these fits of rage when he was six. Every time he would have a big outburst, he would grow again. By the time he was nine, he was bigger than most grown men. Astrid got so scared of him because of his size and that only made Riyan’s fits worse. He loved her so much and…and he never understood why she was so afraidof him.”
Riyan’s words in the courtyard were a hammer against my granite heart.“That’s what I do, I scare people! I’ve scared people since I wasa child!”
Fat tears rolled down Hilda’s face. “Nikkolas made a deal with General Hyton to send him to the academy to try to fix him.” She mopped up her tears with the edge of her sleeve. “He might have been as big as a man, but he was still only a boy,ourboy, and we had to sendhim away…”
I could not bear to see Hilda cry alone—not when she was my new grandmother. I released my arms and gently placed my hand onher shoulder.
“He…he got to see us right before the first Nordingaard battle,” she said through her tears. “He was fifteen and passed for just a very tall man. He could have had a normal life…but he got even bigger. General Hyton wrote that Riyan’s rage had not stopped—and it has not! We all saw it today! But I know it is not all just rage, he isjust scared.”
I could not imagine Riyan being scared of anything. “What would a man like him bescared of?”
“Astrid is at the healing spring today,” she answered. “As the Baron of Bloodstone, Nikkolas knows of a secret pass to get up and down the mountain quickly and safely, and we send a party of our best soldiers with Astrid just in case, but we always worry when one of our own goes upthe mountain.”
Hilda looked at a picture of a small boy holding purple flowers. “Riyan has not seen his mother since he went to the military academy. He must know that she will come back from the spring safely, but I know he is terrified of what she will do when she sees him athis size.”
I stared at the smudged images of child-like Riyan. Astrid had made enough paintings of him that she at least had a fascination with the blonde boy who lived in the fortress, but she had no idea who he was. I hated my mother for her disgustingaffiliationwith Duke Hyton, but at least she knew me. At least she could understand me. Riyan did not evenhave that.
