My skin blazed. Saltwater and wind and days of constant travel would make anyone unravel, and I’d been too heartsick to braid my hair—or do anything to it apart from getting snot and tears into the crimson disarray falling around my shoulders.
It would probably take more than a night to get the knots out.
The man laughed again. “No need to cry, sweetness. It’s just hair.”
I hadn’t realized a tear had sneaked its way down my cheek, and I cursed to myself when Marion and the man tracked my hand as I wiped at it.
“I’m fine,” I said as the maid stepped forward.
Apparently those words were the only thing I was able to get out at this point.
Marion didn’t believe me, her brows rising as I backed up and used the satchel as a shield between us. But after a deep exhale, she shrugged.
“Ottoh, you head over once you’ve given her the clothing, you hear me? You’re already late, and the king doesn’t like to wait. Better he blames only one of you.” With that she threw me a comb that only bounced off my chest and nearly drowned in the blood when I didn’t react fast enough to catch it. Then she spun on her heel and stalked off toward the rowdy festivities.
The man—Ottoh—turned my way. A vague memory of a male riding a white horse with dark blood running down its side from the enemies he’d taken down brushed my mind as I bent to close my stiff fingers around the comb.
I’d met him before—during my first enemy raid. This was the Briggen heir, the only son of Klara Briggen, one of the most cunning chieftains, who ruled over the Sjomarks—an area nearly entirely made up of water, where the people lived on their boats because the little land they had was covered by dense, dangerous forest.
My mother had warned Lika about their family. Not because they were the strongest, or even the best fighters—their rune was the ratt, the rune for targeting and precision, which made their arrows and spears lethally accurate—but because Klara and her father were unpredictable. They didn’t like to meet at the tings, the regular chieftain meetings that the other chiefs organized, and very few knew what truly went on in Sjomarks.
“Elvara Sweengard.” The way Ottoh said my name sounded like he was testing it out, and a chill whispered down my back. “I don’t know much about you.” He frowned for a second. “Did Lika and Chief Sweengard plan this all along? Pretending Lika was the heir to throw us all off as we prepared for the trials?”
Sweat inched its way across my skin. He might have had the voice of calm seas before an epic battle, but there was something sharp behind it that set off every alarm within me.
Ottoh was almost as tall as Viljan, and while he wasn’t necessarily muscular, more lean, there was something about him—something calculated in the way he moved, almost like the lynx that stalked our forests.
His smirk wasn’t much better. “I know you speak. I heard you before.”
I inched backward. His tone was supposed to sound playful, perhaps even inviting, but there was also irritation behind it.
I was unsettling him by being here in my brother’s place, and he was trying to figure out why.
“Where are the clothes you promised?” I asked.
The Hird was already thick with scrutiny; I didn’t need one of the heirs trying to judge me as well. A few minutes of quiet—of collecting myself. That’s what I needed to be able to face the king. Not to be stuck in some kind of stare-off while my opponent tried to read my intentions.
Ottoh’s laugh was abrupt—as agitated as his tone and posture. “That’s how you’re going to be? Everyone else is in that tent right now, bowing and smarming to the king, while I’m here trying to help you. I could leave, you know.”
I drew myself as tall as I could, even though my bare legs mocked my attempt at authority.
I would not give in to any thinly veiled threats. It was better to come into the crown’s tent dirty and upset the king than to give this man an inch. I had a feeling he wouldn’t settle for a bite but would try to swallow me whole.
Ottoh chuckled before turning on his heel and diving into a circle of cots on the other side of the longhouse. My fingers fidgeted with the edge of my tunic as I waited for him to leave. I couldn’t change until I was alone. I wouldn’t forget ever again what my chest now revealed.
The eerie sound from when we rowed into the harbor returned, whispering through the air like the ghosts our elders sometimes told stories of during bonfire nights.
Only now it sent chills over my skin. Only now it felt like a warning.
Music from the king’s tent built across the yellowed field, filtering through the space, and a knot twisted deep within my gut. I might be forced to greet the king for the first time since I was a child, not only without my father but in leathers my own mother wouldn’t have let through her doors.
I filtered air through my lips. Everything about me was already suspicious. Traveling alone with my guard. A complete change of plans for the heir who’d trained for years to partake in the trials and the academy.
Having to enter that tent and bow to the king all dirty and disheveled?
My groan was interrupted by Ottoh returning.
“Here.” He threw me a bundle of something gold and shimmering, the material similar to the white shirt he was wearing. “You should hurry. Not even that dress will save you from the king’s wrath if you don’t show up soon.” His eyes darted pointedly to the blood. “And you should probably not be here alone for too long. The karls can be a bit… hostile.”
