I was pretty sure I didn’t want to know what he meant, so I only shrugged. “What’s your name?”
“Fedic,” he responded, offering me a shallow bow. “Selected for my strength and my skill with my axe. And I’m not too bad at negotiations.”
I believed him when he licked his full lips.
“Climber,” someone mock-coughed.
Ottoh strolled up to us again, his eyes on the karl before me.
Fedic and his men stiffened, and even Ivren’s smile wavered for a beat as more karls followed Ottoh, surrounding us in all directions—crowding us against the railing. The air that had beentense but with a flicker of warmth shifted into a choked heaviness that threatened the breaths I tried to pull into my lungs.
“She already has a second,” Ottoh continued as he gestured toward Viljan, who rested against a mast, pretending he wasn’t tracking every word and movement. “See that burly guard over there with the long braids? He looks about ready to wring your neck, so stop wagging your tail like a bushy wolf. It’s embarrassing.”
“Oh, shut up, Ottoh,” Ivren said. “Nobody asked for your opinion.”
Fedic didn’t miss a beat as he clinked his cup against mine as if we were at a solstice feast instead of whatever the dangerous gathering here could be called. “I only wanted to introduce myself. Out of the heirs, you’re the only one we don’t know.”
He swept his arm across the karls. It wasn’t just the three hovering behind Fedic who stared at me—every pair of eyes belonging to the men before us followed as I lifted my cup to my lips. The bloodlust from the tent was a thousandfold stronger here, a thick metallic heat that seemed to pulse directly from the earth.
More shouts came from the warriors on land, but the karls only moved in closer, not a single head turning. I flexed my hands. If we said one wrong word, I was quite certain the whole night would shatter like thin ice over a black sea.
“We all met Lika, so we knew you must be something extraordinary for your father to send you.” Fedic’s eyes went over me, and there was a strange appreciation in his gaze, one that made Ottoh roll his eyes. “Seems we were right.”
“Please,” Ottoh exclaimed. “Could you be any more pathetic?”
Ivren’s laugh was strained as he shifted closer to me, heat rolling off his body as he sneaked an arm behind my back and ran his fingers along my spine. “Be ready,” he whispered. “He’s trying to rile them up.”
I was very aware of what Ottoh was doing.
He was trying to win the karls’ favor by making me look even worse.
“If she’s not going to fight you, she’s not going to fuck you,” Ottoh said. “She’s toogoodfor that.”
An angry murmur went through the crowd. From where he’d been standing, Viljan inched closer, and even the king’s warriors went still. It was as if the ship held its breath—even the music faded into a lower melody, building anticipation for a fight I had no interest in being part of.
“You don’t need to be here, Ottoh,” Ivren said quietly. “Nobody wants you here.”
There was a chill in my brother’s best friend’s eyes, one I had known lived within him—because it was in all of us; it was the Viking way, after all—but it still jarred me to hear Ivren so cold.
Ottoh’s smile was slow. “She’s not going to go for you either.”
Ivren took a step toward him, leaving a confusing chill where his arm had been.
“Watch it, Briggen.” His voice was impossibly low, and my stomach surged at the power in it. “You won’t have any allies left soon. Your parents already got themselves in enough trouble.”
“As if I want you as an ally,” Ottoh replied, a vicious curl to his lips. “As if I want either of you.” The heir looked me up and down. “Lika is an asshole, and you might be worse.”
“Watch. Your. Mouth.” Ivren stepped into Ottoh’s space.
“Or what?” Ottoh laughed. “You’re going to take me down? You couldn’t even takeherdown.”
Heat burned across my face.
“Or did you let her win because you want to fuck her?” Ottoh tilted his head when my face grew hotter. “Wouldn’t be the first time a Sweengard and a Solsken lied and cheated to get a girl into bed, would it?”
I couldn’t stand the sharpness in the air—the static charge that made the hair on my arms stand up and my skin itch. The karls drew closer, excitedly hovering around us until there was no air left.
“Enough,” I snarled.
