Knowing now that they’d been under the influence of Ragnvald and his thirst for power, she felt justified in her choices. Nothing good ever came from tyranny, and she would do well to remember that.
Change took time, and amongst practically immortal beings, time was longer. She wished they could go back to before Idavoll had split from Asgard to see what could have prevented the divide. But it was no use to dream such dreams.
Banners were being raised, replacing the black emblems of mourning with brilliant green ones, ushering in the new queen. It had been a month since the death of her parents and her coronation was set for this evening.
She’d been forced to order their captain of the guard to investigate the deaths of the monarchs—an essential charade in order to ascend the throne. He concluded that poison was the cause of death, though no trace could be found of any one person. North’s guard had doubled, planting the idea that someone was after the entire royal family.
Little did they know that the poison lay within the blood.
Her first act for the greater good. She had liberated her parents—Solveig had found darkness rooted deep within them, proving there’d been no hope of their recovery.
North missed her parents deeply. She missed who they were when she was a youngling. They had lost their way, and she was not responsible for who they became. If she could separate the people from their titles, both as monarchs and her parents, she saw they were cowards, foolish to follow Ragnvald so blindly—standing on the sidelines and watching as their people grew hungrier and more divided.
They would not change their ways to accommodate for the lack of magic.
And so, day by day, year by year, for one hundred and fifty-one years, North watched as her people fell prey to mortals, to themselves, and to demons from Hel as Ragnvald clutched the hearts of her parents and ruled through them with an iron fist.
He may not have worn the crown, but he controlled it from the shadows.
Westley was still not speaking to her or to Easta. From what Solveig had told them, though she was reticent to express her thoughts, it had mostly to do with his own guilt.
North liked Solveig. She was good for her brother, though the two had been quite secretive since her parents’ deaths—it made her nervous. Were they plotting against her? Westley had never wanted the throne,but maybe with someone like Solveig at his side, he was considering his options for their future.
She shook the paranoid thoughts from her head. Her brother was loyal to a fault and would not do that to her.
A knock came from outside her door, and she slipped back into her rooms. When she was ready, she nodded to the guard, granting her sister entrance.
Easta surveyed the guard, raking her eyes up and down, a smirk growing on her face as he turned and left.
“Don’t.” North raised a hand to stop Easta from making whatever crude remark was brewing on her wicked tongue.
Easta batted her lashes innocently. “What?”
“Don’t play coy with me. I do not want to hear how much good it would do my soul to take my guards to bed. I’ve heard it all before.”
“Munin would understand,” Easta insisted. “Hel, Anders likes it when I bring others to share our bed,” she said with a waggle of her eyebrows.
“That’s just it though, Anders is with you when you do. And your relationship is different than ours was. We were not so ... open.”
East snorted. “That’s putting it lightly.”
North had once taken offence to the way Easta spoke of her apathy towards sex. Where Easta craved that physical connection, that passion, North had basked in the closeness of another soul. She missed the feel of his heart more than the feel of his body.
“It would be a betrayal to take someone to bed. I can’t feel the bond, so I don’t know if he’s alive.” North placed a hand on her heart, trying for the millionth time to sense the bond of her mate.
Their bond—and relationship—had been so fresh when the Block hit. They’d just started to get to know each other.
“I never liked Munin,” Easta said, flopping down onto North’s bed.
This was not the first time, nor would it be the last, that her sister said that about her mate.
“We’re even then, because Anders is a bore.”
It was true. Anders was a doorknob.
Dead boring and utterly devoid of any and all personality. North had been shocked when Easta announced she’d met her mate. North hadn’t even noticed he was standing beside her when she made the announcement—that’s how nondescript the male was.
In the two hundred years they’d been mates, North had heard the male speak maybe ten times. In the beginning, North had tried to be supportive, but when she’d found Munin and Easta went off about how he was basically walking muscles with no brain, North had lost it.
