“Are you the Princess?” she asked.
“Yes, I’m the Princess from Förening,” I said, then gestured to Tove. “This is the Prince. We are here to help you.”
“Oh, thank god.” She burst into tears and actually ran toward me and hugged me. “I didn’t think anybody would come.”
“We’re here now.” I patted her head because I wasn’t sure what else to do and exchanged a look with Tove. “We’ll do everything we can for you.”
“Sorry.” She pulled herself away from me and wiped at her eyes. “I didn’t mean to do that. I’ve . . . There is much that needs to be done.” She shook her head. “My father would be angry at me for behaving this way. I’m sorry.”
“There’s no need to apologize,” I said. “You’ve been through so much.”
“No, I’m in charge now,” she said. “So I should act like it.”
“Kenna Tomas?” I asked, hoping I remembered her name correctly. She’d once been a bridesmaid candidate and Willa had told me some about her. The only reason Kenna had not made it into my wedding party was because Aurora approved of her. Otherwise, she sounded like a nice girl.
She smiled. “Yes, I’m Kenna, and with my parents dead, I’m now the Marksinna of Oslinna.”
“Do you have any survivors here?” I asked. “Any people who need medical treatment? We brought a healer.”
“Oh, yes!” Kenna nodded. “Come with me.”
As we followed her into the palace, Kenna explained what had happened. While the townspeople were sleeping, the hobgoblins had come in and started tearing the town apart. As far as she could tell, that was their main goal. People got hurt because the hobgoblins happened to be destroying homes with people in them, or throwing trees that would land on bystanders. It was like a tornado hitting a town in the middle of the night, without any sirens to give warning.
They had very few trackers here when the attack started, but the trackers hadn’t lasted long. Kenna saw a tracker go up against a hobgoblin, and the hobgoblin snapped him in half. But the hobgoblins retreated pretty quickly after the Markis and Marksinna started defending themselves.
In the Oslinna palace, a small ballroom had been turned into a makeshift care unit. Some of the more injured Trylle had left to go to nearby hospitals, but most of them would rather die than be treated by humans.
It was horrifying to see. Cots were set up all over for survivors, and most of them were bloody and battered. Mänsklig children with broken arms and dirty faces were crying as their host parents held them.
Aurora immediately went to work without any prompting from me, which was nice. Willa and I went around talking to the people and giving them water, helping them if we could.
Kenna took Tove, Duncan, Loki, and Matt outside to show them where the most work needed to be done, and I wanted to go out with them. I would be much more useful lifting heavy objects than Matt or Duncan, because I could move them with my mind.
But I felt like I needed to be inside with the people, at least for a little while. Most of them I couldn’t help, other than handing out bottled water, but I think some of them just wanted to talk, to know that somebody cared.
Their stories were heartbreaking. Wives had lost their husbands, children had lost their parents, and most trackers had lost everything. I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t. It felt wrong and selfish. I needed to be calm and assure them that we would fix this, that I would make everything better.
I paused when I passed a young woman sitting on a cot. She couldn’t have been more than a year or two older than me, if that, and even covered in dirt and bruises, she was still devastatingly beautiful. Her long brown hair had warm undertones, like a burnt umber.
It was her eyes, though, that caught me. They were an endless shade of brown, and stared vacantly at nothing. Tears fell from them without a sound.
In her arms she cradled a small child, less than a year old. The little girl had pudgy arms, and she clung to the young woman, reminding me of the way a monkey will cling to its mother. Based on the baby’s appearance—her tanned skin, her dark wild curls—I’d say she was Trylle, meaning she was a tracker baby.
“How are you doing?” I asked. When she didn’t look up at me, I knelt down in front of her. “Are you all right?”
“I’m okay,” she said numbly, still staring off at the floor.
“What about the baby?” I touched the child tentatively. I’d never really interacted that much with babies, but I felt like I should do something.
“The baby?” She seemed confused at first, then looked down at the little girl in her arms. “Oh. Hanna is fine. She’s sleepy, but she doesn’t understand what’s happened.”
“That’s probably for the best,” I said.
Hanna stared up at me, her eyes seeming almost too large for her small face. Then she reached out and grabbed my finger, almost latching on to it, and smiled dazedly at me.
“Hanna’s a beautiful little girl,” I said. “Is she yours?”
“Yes.” She nodded once. “Thank you.” She swallowed hard and tried to force a smile at me. “My name is Mia.”
“Where’s her father?” I asked, hoping against hope that he’d been away when the attack happened.
“He . . .” Mia shook her head, and the silent tears fell faster. “He was trying to protect us, and he . . .”
“I shouldn’t have asked.” I put my hand on Mia’s arm, hoping to comfort her.
“I just don’t know what we’ll do without him.” She began sobbing.
I sat on the cot next to her and put my arm around her, because that was all I could think to do. There was something about her, something so sweet and helpless, and I wanted to fix her problems and ease her pain. But I couldn’t.
She looked too young to be a wife, let alone a mother and a widow. I couldn’t imagine what she was going through, but I would do anything I could to help her.
“You’ll be all right,” I tried to reassure Mia as she wept onto my shoulder. Hanna began to wail, most likely because she saw her mother crying. “It will take time, but you and Hanna will be fine.”
Mia struggled to stop her tears and rocked her baby. Hanna stopped crying almost as soon as Mia did, and she let out a deep breath.
“I’m sorry to be like this, Princess,” Mia said, looking at me. “I shouldn’t be crying on you like this.”
“No, don’t worry about it.” I waved it off. “But Mia, listen, when we leave Oslinna, I want you to come back to Förening with us. We’ll have a nice place for you to stay, and we’ll figure out what you’ll do there. Okay? But you and Hanna will always have a place at the palace.”
“Thank you.” Her eyes were brimming with fresh tears, and I was afraid I would send her sobbing again, so I left her alone to cuddle her daughter.
Something about Mia lingered with me. Even as I went around the room, I couldn’t shake the image of her heartbroken eyes. There was a warmth and kindness about her that I could see underneath the devastation, and I hoped that someday she would be happy again.
I stayed long enough to talk to every person in the room, but then I had to move on. I could be of more help to them outside than I could in here. Willa went with me for the same reasons, leaving Aurora alone to heal them as much as she could.
As we were leaving, Willa was tearing up. She had a small, dirty teddy bear clutched in her hands, and she wiped at her eyes.
“That was pretty rough in there,” I said, holding back my own tears.
“A little tracker boy gave me this.” She held up the bear. “His whole family died. His parents, his sister, even his dog. And he gave me this because I sang him a song.” She shook her head. “I didn’t want to take it. But he said it was his sister’s, and she’d want another girl to have it.”
I put my arm around her, giving her a half hug as we walked down the hall toward the palace door.
“We have to do more for these people,” Willa said. “That little boy isn’t hurt, but if he was, Aurora wouldn’
t heal him. She wouldn’t want to waste her energy on a tracker.”
“I know.” I sighed. “It’s insane.”
“That’s got to change.” Willa stopped and pointed back to the ballroom. “Every one of those people in there has been through hell, and they all deserve help just as equally.”
“I know, and I’m trying to make it better,” I said. “When I’m going to all those meetings, this is what I’m trying to do and why I want you to help me with them. I will change this, and I will make it better. But I need help.”
“Good.” She sniffled and played with the teddy bear. “I will start going to the meetings. I want to be a part of what it is you’re doing.”
“Thank you,” I said, feeling some small bit of relief in that. “But right now, the best way to help these people is to get this place cleaned up so they can start rebuilding their homes.”
Willa nodded and walked with me again. Outside, I could see some improvement. Half of a roof had been on the palace lawn, but it was gone now, as well as the uprooted oak by the cars. I could hear the men a few houses down arguing about what to do with the debris.
Matt suggested they make a pile in the road for now, and they could worry about moving it later. Loki started to argue against it, but Tove told him to just do it. They didn’t have time to waste fighting.
Willa and I joined them, and we all went to work. Loki, Tove, and I did most of the lifting, while Matt, Duncan, and Willa tried to clean things and straighten up the houses. Just moving the garbage out of the way wouldn’t solve the townspeople’s problems, but it was the first step in being able to go back and fix it up.
As the day wore on, I started to feel exhausted, but I pushed through it. Loki had to move everything physically, so despite the chill, he ended up warm and sweaty. He took off his shirt, and the ordinarily pleasing sight pained me. The marks on his back looked better than they had before, but they were still there. Reminders of what he’d gone through, for me.
“What happened to him?” Willa asked me while we cleaned out one of the houses. A tree had gone through the window. I got it out, and she cleaned up the glass and branches.
“What?” I asked, but I saw her staring out the open window at Loki as he tossed a destroyed couch on the garbage pile in the road.
“Loki’s back,” she said. “Is that what the King did to him? That’s why he has amnesty?”
“Yeah, it is.”
Wind came up around me, blowing my hair in my eyes, as Willa created a small tornado in the middle of the living room. It circled around, sucking all the glass and little bits of tree into the funnel, so Willa could send it out to the garbage.
“So what’s going on with you and him?” Willa asked.
“Who?” I said. I tried to pick up one of the couches that had been tipped over, and Willa came over to help me.
“You and Loki.” She helped me flip the couch back on its feet. “Don’t play dumb. There’s something major there.”
I shook my head. “There’s nothing anywhere.”
“Whatever you say.” She rolled her eyes. “But I’ve been meaning to ask you, how’s the marriage going?”
“The past three days have been fantastic,” I said dryly.
“What about the wedding night?” Willa asked with a smile.
“Willa! This isn’t the time to be talking about that.”
“Of course it is! We need to lighten the mood,” she insisted. “And I haven’t had a chance to talk to you about any of this yet. Your life has been all drama since the wedding.”
“You’re telling me,” I muttered.
“Take five minutes.” Willa sat down on the couch and patted the spot next to her. “You’re visibly exhausted. You need a break. So take five and talk to me.”
“Fine,” I said, mostly because my head was beginning to throb from all the objects I’d moved. That last tree had been hard to get going. I sat down next to her, and a bit of dirt billowed up from the couch. “This is never going to be clean.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Willa said. “We’ll get this place picked up, and then we can send out all the maids in Förening to help them with the finishing touches. We’re only focusing on getting them on the path to recovery right now. We can’t do the entire recovery in one day, but eventually we’ll get it all taken care of.”
“I hope so.”
“But Wendy, how was your wedding night?” Willa asked.
“You really wanna talk about this?” I groaned and leaned my head on the back of the couch.
“Right now there’s nothing else I’d like to talk about.”
“You’re in for a real disappointment,” I said. “Because there’s nothing to tell.”
“It was that bland?” she asked.
“No, it was nothing,” I said. “And I mean literally nothing. We didn’t do anything.”
“Wait.” She leaned back on the couch as if to look at me better. “You mean that you’re married and still a virgin?”
“That is what I mean.”
“Wendy!” Willa gasped.
“What? Our marriage is weird. Really weird. You know that.”
“I know.” She looked disappointed. “I was hoping you could have a happily-ever-after is all.”
“Well, it’s not ever after yet,” I pointed out.
“Wendy!” Matt yelled from outside the house. “I need your help with something!”
“Duty calls.” I stood up.
“That was barely even a minute,” Willa said. “You do need to take a break, Wendy. You’re running yourself ragged.”
“I’m fine,” I said as I walked out of the house. “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”
We worked well into the night and ended up getting most of the big debris cleared out and piled up. I might have pressed on to do more work, but it was clear that everybody else couldn’t.
“I think we need to call it a night, Wendy,” Loki said. He rested his arms on an overturned refrigerator, leaning on it.
Matt and Willa were sitting on a log next to the pile, and Tove stood next to them, drinking a bottle of water. Only Duncan still helped me as we struggled to pull a shredded mattress from a tracker house. I had to stop using my powers, because it killed my head every time I did.
Only three streetlights in the entire town still worked, and Matt, Willa, Tove, and Loki had taken their break near one. They’d stopped working about fifteen minutes ago, but I insisted that I keep going.
“Wendy, come on,” Matt said. “You’ve done as much as you can do.”
“There’s more stuff to do, so clearly I haven’t,” I said.
“Duncan needs a break,” Willa said. “Let’s quit. We can do more tomorrow.”
“I’m fine,” Duncan panted, but I stopped pulling on the mattress long enough to look up at him. He was filthy, his hair was a mess, and his face was red and sweaty. I’d actually never seen him look so terrible.
“Fine. We’re done for the night,” I relented.
We walked back over and sat down on the log next to Matt and Willa. She had a small cooler of water and handed a bottle to each of us. I opened mine and drank greedily. Tove paced in front of us, fidgeting with his bottle cap. I don’t know how he had the energy to walk that much.
“We’re getting this cleaned up, and that’s good,” Matt said. “But we’re not doing anything to rebuild. We’re not even qualified.”
“I know.” I nodded. “We’ll have to send another team down that can rebuild and do more specialized cleaning. After we get back to Förening, we’ll really have to get people down here.”
“I could work on some blueprints, if you want,” Matt offered. “I can design stuff that’s quick and easy to build but doesn’t look cheap.”
“That would be fantastic,” I said. “It’d be a great step in the right direction.”
Matt was an architect, or at least he would’ve been if I hadn’t dragged him to Förening with me. I wasn’t entirely sure how he spent his days at th
e palace, but it would be good for him to work on something. Not to mention that it would be good for Oslinna.
“The good news is that the damage seems to support what Kenna was saying,” Loki said. He stopped leaning on the fridge and walked over to sit next to me.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“The hobgoblins aren’t vicious or mean, not really,” Loki said. “They’re destructive and irritating, sure, but I’ve never known them to kill anybody.”
“They have now.” Willa gestured to the mess around us.
“I don’t think murder was their ultimate goal, though,” Loki said. “They were trying to destroy the town. And even when they fought with that team the other night, they didn’t kill most of them.”
“How does that help anything?” I asked.
“I don’t know.” Loki shrugged. “But I think they aren’t as hard to defeat as we once thought. They’re not fighters.”
“I’m sure that will be real comforting to all the dead people here,” Tove said.
“All right.” Willa stood up. “That’s enough for me. I’m ready to go inside and get cleaned up and get some sleep. What about you guys?”
“Do we have places to sleep?” Duncan asked.
“Yes.” Willa nodded. “Kenna told me that most of the bedrooms in the palace weren’t that damaged, and they have some running water if we want to wash up.”
“Well, I definitely want those things.” Loki got up.
We all walked back to the palace, but Tove lagged behind. I slowed down to walk with him, and he twitched a lot. He kept swatting at his ear, like there was a mosquito or a fly buzzing by, but I didn’t see any. I asked if he was okay, but he just shook his head.
Kenna showed us to the extra rooms in the palace, and I felt bad taking them when there were so many people without homes. She pointed out that there were too many people for the bedrooms, so she didn’t want to divvy them up among the survivors because it would only create discord and add misery to a difficult situation.
Besides that, the rooms she showed us weren’t in such great shape. They were small, and while they didn’t have major damage, they were in disarray. Our whole room seemed to slant slightly to the side, and books and furniture were tossed all over.
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