“It’s not him,” I said.
I would know.I would.
Ilse chewed her lip for several long moments. “You know I was chosen for the Hird for my skills in watching people?” she finally asked. “Both my parents are spies for the king, and I learned everything from them.”
“Ivren told me.”
That day felt so long ago. I was a different person from the heartbroken eldest daughter who’d taken her first trembling steps up the dock to Nordoen.
Better or worse, I wasn’t sure, but different? Yes.
Ilse lowered her voice. “You don’t need my skills to see there is something going on between you and Darcke.”
My nerves buzzed. “We’re heir and second. Of course something is going on.”
“There is more than that,” she said quietly. “The way he looks at you… I can’t tell if he wants to fuck or kill you half the time, but whatever it is, it’s intense, and I’m sure it’s a lot, sharing his emotions. I don’t know if you’re the best at understanding his intentions.”
We reached the docks where the other heirs and their iron-bound stood, and I kept my head tilted to the ground, avoiding Ottoh’s and Ivren’s searching eyes and Torden’s rigid back.
Anger mingled with the worry within me. Sure, Darcke was confusing most of the time, and I didn’t exactly trust my judgment around him—especially lately, when that lethal side of him had become so alluring. But for him to be a traitor?
“He’s with me all day,” I said.
“And what about the nights?” Ilse asked.
My eyes widened.
“If it was a secret you were staying with him, it wasn’t a very well-hidden one,” Ilse added.
I winced. “Well… we’re not… I’m not sleeping there anymore.”
Ilse pursed her lips, and my chest suddenly felt brittle, my rib cage not strong enough to keep my thundering heart inside.Could I be wrong?
Darcke was angry with the king—with our nation. I’d seen it firsthand in his mind. But going after heirs and their iron-bound? It didn’t seem like his style. He was more of a kill-out-in-the-open kind of man.
“You took your fucking time.” A harried Guner waved impatiently for us, making me even more flustered. “Take your places.”
“Darcke is on the way,” Torden informed the king’s second while Kilia, Ilse, and I took the spots beside Rakkel and Stefen. “He needed to be debriefed about what’s happening.”
“He isn’t a commander anymore,” Guner snapped. “He is the Sweengard second, and he needs to start acting like it.”
“Yes,” Torden said, unable to hide the irritation in his voice. “And he will.”
The way the king’s second and Darcke’s right-hand man glared at each other didn’t help the mounting dread within me. This wasn’t the first time they’d had this conversation.
When Guner continued to grumble about Darcke skirting his duties, I twisted to face the pale heir beside me and touched the back of her hand. “Rakkel, I’m so sorry.”
Her eyes were red—same as her nose—and her clothing was rumpled and twisted. The hollowness of her eyes when she lifted her face was like taking a strike right to the throat, thickness clogging it at the pain marring every inch of her face.
“Fine,” she said in a monotone. “I’m fine.”
That was the least convincing thing I’d heard in my life.
With an eye on the king’s second, who was now arguing with Torden, and the shaman who’d come up to them, I pulled Rakkel backward on the dock, away from everyone, including her guard.Trying to ignore the swells of worry within me, I focused on the heir, who looked on the brink of death.
“You’re not fine,” I whispered. “You haven’t been fine for a while. What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” she rushed out. “Nothing!”
