I felt a tap in my mind that turned my gut.
“Doesn’t feel so good, does it?” he asked.
“Who is she?” I asked again.
“Was,” Darcke corrected me. “Shewasone of our council leaders.”
“And why—” I swallowed.
“Why does she look like you?”
I could feel it. Deep within me something twisted and turned until the ugly truth started to make itself clear. Memories of my mother treating me differently. Of my father going above her head each time they made a decision about me: with Viljan, with the men she suggested for my husband, with my upbringing.
A jab of pain stabbed at my chest.
Viljan’s questioning.Did you have your brother killed to be here?
My mother coming here even with the danger it posed to our people.If their suspicions are true, we have a traitor in our fylki.
Njord showing up instead of the other gods. It wasn’t because of Darcke.
It was because of me.
“Is… are we related?” I asked. “Is she… Am I?”
I couldn’t finish, and Darcke didn’t voice histhoughts out loud, but we were both thinking the same thing. A light flickered ahead for the first time since the darkness had swallowed us, and the world went so quiet I had to grip Darcke to make sure he was still there. But it was my mind becoming my own once more, no longer threatened by the foreign presence.
“I think we passed,” Darcke said quietly.
Thirty-Two
Ilet him drag me toward what looked like the end of a long hallway.
When the dim light stung my eyes, I savored the pain for the second of relief it offered me. It felt like days should have passed, but as we stumbled into a new part of the forest where low bushes and golden oak stretched to a glimpse of the sea ahead, the waning moon’s reflection glittered near the horizon.
I shook off his hand and went to sit by one of the trees, where I pulled my legs against my chest and folded into myself. As if that could make sense of the world. As if that could protect me from what I’d just found out.
“Are you all right?” Darcke asked as he took a spot beside me, although he stretched his legs out instead, rolling his neck before leaning back against the trunk of the oak.
“Is that why you hated me?” I asked.
“What?”
“From the moment you saw me… I felt it,” I said. “I mean, even without being in your mind. Sure, I stole your ship and I lied and I might be an heir and I know you hate us all, but it was different with me. You couldn’t stand me. Is it because… I remind you of her?”
He chewed his cheek for a second. “Yes.”
“You thought you heard the call,” I said slowly. “Was that my call? In the river.”
Darcke didn’t respond, but his eyes trailed over my face.
“You can’t respond because the king has forbidden you to speak of anything related to your people and your magic, isn’t that true?”
He lay his hand on my knee when I groaned in frustration.
“My father’s longship. I saw it on your island. He must…” I clenched my hands. “That’s why Viljan and my mother are worried about me. They think I found out and—” I covered my face with my hands. “Gods, I can’t believe this.”
“I thought you knew,” Darcke said as he turned his head to the sea ahead. “That you were taunting me.” The muscle in his jaw worked. “That the one person left of my people was an heir to one of the chiefdoms in Skagerik. I couldn’t stand it.”
