The other men scrambled to their feet when their friend’s scream was cut off as he cleaved the surface. As they started running toward the brow, Darcke chuckled quietly. “My ship remembers,” he called after them as they tried to overtake each other to get away. “Do not fucking try to come within ten feet of her again.”
I raised my hand to my hair, trying to smooth it out where mystruggles had messed it up, as the men followed the crowd that was heading toward the lake. “Thank?—”
“My ship doesn’t like trouble,” Darcke snarled. “You should go. They are bastards, but they’re right. It is tradition for the heirs to be challenged the final night before the choosing.”
The cheers still echoed across the glen where the tents and longhouse stood, bodies that I guessed were heirs being thrown into the air from time to time.
I wetted my lips. I had no desire to go through some type of final trial. I’d survived this far, but I still needed to live until sundown tomorrow.
“Your guard is waiting by the end of the dock,” Darcke said. “Go.”
“How do you know?” When I turned that way, I could see Viljan pacing back and forth across the grass, his hands tense by his sides.
“Because I told him to.”
I opened my mouth, but Darcke interrupted me. “I said. Go.”
“Why can’t you accept my thanks?” I asked as I passed him, keeping my distance. There was still something wild and lethal surrounding him.
“I didn’t do it for you.” The warrior didn’t look at me as he pointed to the brow. “That way.”
Gods, he truly was the angriest man I’d ever met.
When I reached the opening in the railing and took my first step onto the brow, I couldn’t help but spin around and call, “Thank you!”
Darcke’s sigh made my tired mouth snap into a grin. Unfortunately that grin died as soon as I reached Viljan’s side.
“Are you hurt?” he asked, his gaze everywhere but on mine.
“No,” I replied.
“Great.” Viljan started walking.
We were silent while we wove through the dim forest where the other initiates shouted and sang and whistled. After a while the path parted, one trail leading upward, winding through thethick trunks and one taking the majority of the karls to the lake. The heirs were carried up the other one, and a shiver racked my body as we followed.
“Viljan,” I said.
He didn’t reply, but his head tilted slightly, so I decided to continue anyway.
“I’m going to pick Kilia as my third.”
I held my breath, and exactly like I’d known he would, Viljan spun my way, his expression wild. “What?”
“I know,” I said, lowering my voice to try to get him to as well. “Trust me,I know. But he knows, Viljan. He knows about my magic. He knows what that means.”
“How long?”
“What do you mean?”
“How longhas he known?” Viljan demanded. “You told me he didn’t only a few days ago.”
“I think he’s suspected since Svartoarna but understood for sure when I had to walk between the ships.”
Viljan’s face grew taut. “I assume there is no talking you out of this?”
I lifted my chin.
He looked about to say something else when we reached the others. The silence we walked into was as strained as the one we’d brought with us, and I looked around, confused.
