“So it begins,” she whispered to the skies.
Conalle leaned into her. “Chills, Solveig. Chills all over my body.”
He was deadly serious, and she noticed the pebbling of his skin when she turned. She laughed and shook her head, feeling the air calm around her.
So it begins.
ConallemanagedtoconvinceSolveig to wait for Westley and Noren.
They had bickered like school younglings—she insisted she leave, without the prince and his companion, to follow what looked like the trail of her people’s escape. And he insisted the Idavoll Fae who’d tortured her join them.
“You might not like it, Sol, but you need them,” Conalle said.
Solveig’s skin itched at the thought of needing her captors. Though he owed her nothing, the prince’s actions felt as much of a betrayal as Latham’s and Laeknir’s.
She didn’t need him. She needed to be rid of him.
“Give me one good reason,” she demanded.
Conalle stared at the sky like he was begging Valhalla for the answer. Or for patience.
“West was just as blindsided as you were, I’d say even more so, at his grandfather’s involvement.” She made to open her mouth, but he continued before she could object.
“Everything he’s been taught, the very foundation he’s lived his life on is crumbling. He didn’t know his orders came from the King ofHel, he didn’t know it had been a vast manipulation of Idavoll. And he doesn’t know why.
“Ragnvald knew your identity and yet he tasked the prince with decades of scouring the Trifold for the traitor ... when all along it had been him who’d gifted the mortals with the power to end the War of Realms and steal magic.”
Sometimes Solveig forgot, given how unserious Conalle could be, that he was the liaison between realms for a reason. He could be quite convincing when he needed to be.
“And he didn’t turn you in the moment he found out who you were. He could have but he didn’t.”
She hated that he made some good points.
“Fine, but if they piss me off, I’m dumping their sorry asses in Idavoll along the way.”
Conalle’s humourless face split into a wide grin and he scampered off to collect her unwanted companions.
She took a steadying breath, not yet decided on where she and the prince stood and unwilling to figure it out.
It was not lost on her that she wouldn’t be alive without him. He’d saved her from dying of the wound his friend had inflicted.
And yet, his position in Idavoll and the fact that he’d kidnapped her were enough to question his motives. Did he need her alive for something else? Was his one of the betrayals from the prophecy? Was it even a betrayal when they didn’t know each other before he captured her?
Three betrayals. One ends in death, one in forgiveness, and the other in Hel.
With the sting of Laeknir’s deception still fresh, she was hesitant to place her trust in anyone, let alone someone who, until recently, had done nothing but harm her.
She could forgive the capture, the torture, for her hands were not clean of war crimes. Crimes she would commit again and again in order to save her people, to restore magic. And that was the problem.
His actions could be forgiven, but she couldn’t trust that he was finished torturing her. How could she be sure this wasn’t some great ploy to further his own cause? And the question she’d mulled over since he’d arrived in the Southern Wilds was why? Why didn’t he turn her over to his parents?
She’d only known the prince for a little less than a year, and in that time they’d both kept secrets from each other.
Not ideal conditions for trust to grow.
His grandfather was the King of Hel, and while she couldn’t fault him for his lineage—gods knew she hoped not to be judged by hers—she didn’t know him enough yet to understand what that connection meant to him. He’d blindly followed his parents. Would he blindly follow his grandfather?
She was brushing down Helle when the three males crested the ridge and came into view.
