Thud.
Thud.
My heart pounded against my ribs with each step I took, blurred faces turning to follow. Then, to my left, someone giggled, and the focus I’d had on the unimpressed king before me shattered.
Against my will, I turned. It was a beautiful woman behind Ottoh who’d laughed. She righted the leather band over her long icy hair before leaning in and whispering something in the heir’s ear, making his face flush from holding back a bout of laughter.
More gazes seared into me, gloating whispers rising across the crowd, and my fingers furled and unfurled by my sides to hinder the flush working its way over my chest.
I had a right to be here. While it was traditional for the firstborn to be the heir, another could be appointed if the chieftain saw fit.
Then snippets of conversation reached my ears.
“Look at her.”
“What is shewearing?”
“Her father must be so ashamed.”
“Probably why Fritiof isn’t here.”
Laughter rippled through the hall like a sickness spreading in winter. Women hid their faces behind their hands, their whispers trailing after me like smoke, while the men watched with the heavy, patient hunger of someone waiting for an anticipated execution.
My skin went cold. Then warm. Then cold once more.
Clammy sweat broke out across my neck and raced down my spine.
Everyone in here was dressed up, some women in dresses and men in formal tunics and fur robes in cuts I hadn’t seen before. But no one was wearing anything like the dress I was in. No one but the group of women standing to the side of the dais where the king now glared at me so intensely with his hazel eyes it felt as if I might burst into flames. Women who were entertainers—captives, their minds leashed by the king’s shaman—from whatever nation Gustief had most recently returned from.
Fuck.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
I caught Ottoh’s eyes, and his smirk forced me to bite down a snarl.
Thatfucker.
Another man I vaguely recognized sat beside Ottoh, his raven hair falling far down his back. There was a flicker of amusement in his handsome face, but the way his eyes darted to the king and then back to me made my stomach hollow.
Ivren. Ivren Solsken. Heir to Chief Solsken of Gotravik, and one of Lika’s friends. That was who it was. And the smile on his face? It was a lie. Ivren was masking fear with that bright grin, but it wasn’t his own blood he was worried about spilling.
I cursed violently in my mind, my hands shaking with the desire to cover the chest every man around me was staring at. It felt like they could all see the severed rune beneath the thin fabric—that they knew what I hid behind this stupid dress.
Beside Ivren was Adrion Leskog of Aaland, another heir I’d met once during a raid a few years ago, and while his dark eyes didn’t betray his emotions, his half-turned-away body assured anyone that he wanted nothing to do with me.
Rakkel was taking her seat on Ottoh’s other side, and she nodded when I caught her eyes. Then her gaze dropped to the dress, and her wince might as well have been an arrow to my back.She lowered her shoulders and spun to face forward, sitting so still she could have been carved out of bone.
A familiar stare burned into the side of my face, a heat that had nothing to do with the sacrificial fires. I knew even before I turned toward the wall behind the heirs that Viljan would be there. He was leaning against the stone like a coiled spring, his jaw tight enough to snap iron. He was furious—not at the crowd but at the gamble I’d just taken with my own life.
His gaze followed mine when I glared at Ottoh once more, and I was unsure who he was most enraged at: the heir for putting me in this position, or me for falling for it.
My nails scratched the meat of my palms, and something reddish tinted my vision as more laughter filled the room. Amusement and disdain swirled together in the air, thick enough to choke on, and anticipation built with every passing second.
My kin smelled blood, and I was the one at risk of being torn apart. I could see it in the way they leaned forward, in the way they hushed their neighbors when the king shifted on his fur-lined throne.
The culling had begun, and my name was at the top of the list.
Blinking rapidly against the smoke so no one would mistake the water filling my eyes for tears, I pulled air into a body that had gone rigid with the instinct of the hunted.
