i 02b985df59d24adc

by Unknown

  Willa eventually pulled me away from Elora’s body so Garrett could begin the funeral arrangements, and she took me to Matt’s room. He hugged me and let me cry, and I’d never been more grateful for my brother. Without him, I’d feel like an orphan.

  Tove stayed with me in Matt’s room, not saying anything, and eventually, Duncan joined us. I sat on the floor with my back leaning against the bed, and Matt sat beside me. Willa had sobered up rather quickly, and she sat on the bed behind me, her long legs draped over the edge.

  “I hate to leave you like this, but I think I should I go help my father.” Willa touched my head when she stood up. “He shouldn’t be doing this alone.”

  “I can help him.” I started to push myself up, but Matt put his hand on my arm.

  “You can help tomorrow,” Matt said. “You’re going to have a lot to do. Today, you can be sad.”

  “Matt’s right,” Willa said. “I can handle this for now.”

  “Alright.” I settled back down and wiped my eyes. “We need to keep this to ourselves if we can. Keep her death quiet, and hold off on the funeral for as long as possible. I don’t want the King to find out.”

  “He will eventually,” Willa said gently.

  “I know.” I rested my elbows on my knees and turned to Tove. “How long do I have until I’m Queen?”

  “Three days,” Tove said. He leaned back against Matt’s dresser, his legs crossed at the ankle. “Then somebody has to be coroneted.”

  “So we have three days.” I let out a deep breath, my mind racing with all the things that had to be done.

  “We’ll keep this quiet,” Duncan said. “You can arrange a private funeral.”

  “We can’t keep the death of the Queen secret forever,” I said. “We have to begin to prepare now.”

  “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” Willa said, offering me an apologetic smile. “Take care, okay?”

  “Of course,” I nodded absently.

  She gave Matt a quick kiss before leaving. Duncan came over and crouched down in front of me. His dark eyes were sympathetic, but I saw a fierce determination in them too.

  “What do you need me to do, Princess?” Duncan asked.

  “Duncan, not now,” Matt said sternly. “Wendy just lost her mother. She’s not in the right frame of mind.”

  “I don’t have time to get in the right frame of mind,” I said. “We have three days before I’m Queen. If we’re lucky, we have four or five days until Oren comes to claim his prize. I’ve already taken too much time crying over Elora’s death. When this is all over with, I can mourn her. But now, I need to work.”

  “I should tell Thomas,” Tove said. “He needs to have the trackers ready.”

  “Yes,” I nodded. “When Willa gets back, she needs to talk to the refugees from Oslinna. I’m sure some of them will want to fight against the Vittra that killed their families and destroyed their town.”

  “What are you going to do?” Tove asked.

  “I still have to find a way to stop the King,” I said, and I looked up at Duncan. “And Duncan’s going to help me.”

  Matt tried to protest. He thought I needed to process what was happening, and maybe he was right. But I didn’t have the time. Duncan took my hand and helped me to my feet. Tove opened the bedroom door to leave, but he stepped aside, letting Finn come into the room.

  “Princess,” Finn said, his dark eyes on me. “I came to see if you were alright.”

  “Yes.” I smoothed out my black dress, wrinkled from me sitting on the floor for so long.

  “I’m going to talk to Thomas,” Tove said.

  “I’ll wait outside for you,” Duncan offered. He gave me a small smile before hurrying out after Tove.

  Matt, however, stood next to me. His arms were crossed firmly over his chest, and his blue eyes were like ice as he stared at Finn. I was actually grateful for Matt’s distrust. It used to be that I would kill to get a moment alone with Finn, but now I had no idea what to say to him anymore.

  “I’m sorry to hear about your mother,” Finn said simply.

  “Thank you.” I wiped at my eyes again. I’d stopped crying a while ago, but my cheeks were still sticky and damp from tears.

  “She was a great Queen,” Finn said, his words carefully measured. “As you will be.”

  “We have yet to see what kind of Queen I will be.” I ran a hand through my curls and gave him a thin smile. “I have much to do before I am to be Queen, and I’m sorry, but I really must get to it now.”

  “Yes, of course.” Finn lowered his eyes, but not before I saw the hurt flash in them for a moment. He’d grown accustomed to me turning to him for comfort, but I didn’t need him anymore. “I didn’t mean to keep you.”

  “It’s quite alright,” I said and turned to Matt. “Will you accompany me?”

  “What?” Matt sounded surprised, probably because I hardly asked him to do anything with me anymore. So much of what I did involved the business of the palace, and I couldn’t let a mänsklig tag along with me.

  “I’m going down to the library,” I clarified. “Would you come with me?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Matt nodded, almost eagerly. “I’d love to help you any way I can.”

  Matt and I left his room, but Finn walked with us because he was going in the same direction. The trackers were doing most of their training in the first floor ballroom since it had the most space. Tove had already gone down to work with them, but Duncan had waited for us.

  “How is the training coming?” I asked Finn, since he was beside me, and I needed to fill the space with something.

  “It’s going as well as can be expected,” Finn said. “They are learning quickly, which is good.”

  “Is Loki being of any help?” I asked, and Finn stiffened at the mention of Loki’s name.

  “Yes, surprisingly.” Finn scratched at his temple and seemed reluctant to say anything nice about Loki. “He is much stronger than our trackers, but he’s done a fine job of teaching them how to maneuver. We will be unable to beat the Vittra hobgoblins with our strength, but we have the upper hand with our wits.”

  “Good,” I nodded. “You know we only have a few days until the Vittra will come.”

  “Yes,” Finn said. “We will work overtime until then.”

  “Don’t overwork them,” I said.

  “I will try not to.”

  “And…” I paused, thinking of exactly how I wanted to phrase it. “If they can’t do it, if you don’t honestly believe they stand a chance against the Vittra, do not let them fight.”

  “They stand a chance,” Finn said, slightly offended.

  “No, Finn, listen to me.” I stopped and touched his arm, so he would stop and face me. His dark eyes still smoldered with something, but I refused to acknowledge it. “If our Trylle army cannot win against the Vittra, do not send them to fight. I will not let them all go on a suicide mission. Do you understand?”

  “Some lives will be lost, Princess,” Finn answered cautiously.

  “I know,” I admitted, hating that it was true. “But it is only worth losing some lives if we can win, otherwise the lives were lost for nothing.”

  “What do you propose we do then?” Finn asked. “If the troops aren’t ready to fight the Vittra, what will you have us do?”

  “You will do nothing,” I said. “I will take care of this.”

  “Wendy,” Matt said. “What are you talking about?”

  “Don’t worry about it.” I started walking again, and they followed more slowly behind me. “I will handle things if it comes to that, but until then, we will continue with the plan. We will ready ourselves for war.”

  I marched ahead, walking faster so I didn’t have to argue with Matt or Finn. Both of them wanted to protect me, but they couldn’t. Not anymore.

  On the way to the library, we went past the ballroom. Finn went inside to finish the training, and I glanced in. All the trackers were sitting on the floor in a semi-circle around Tove and Loki. The
y were both talking, explaining what would need to be done.

  “Should I go in with them?” Duncan asked, gesturing to the room of trackers.

  “No.” I shook my head. “You come with me.”

  “Are you sure?” Duncan asked, but he followed me down to the library. “Shouldn’t I be learning how to fight with the rest of them?”

  “You won’t be fighting with the rest of them,” I replied simply.

  “Why not?” Duncan asked. “I’m a tracker.”

  “You’re my tracker,” I said. “I need you with me.” Before he could argue, I turned my attention to my brother. “Matt, we’re looking for books that have anything in them about the Vittra. We need to find their weaknesses.”

  “Okay.” He looked around at ceiling-high shelves filled with books. “Where do I start?”

  “Pretty much anywhere,” I said. “I’ve barely made a dent in these books.”

  Matt climbed one of the ladders to reach the books at the top, and Duncan dutifully went along to start collecting books for himself.

  While the history of the Vittra was interesting at times, it was irritating how little we knew about stopping them. So much of the Trylle past had been about avoiding them and making concessions. We’d actually never stood up to them.

  By all accounts, Oren was the cruelest King the Vittra had had in centuries, maybe ever. He’d slaughtered the Trylle for sport and executed his own people for simply disagreeing with him. Loki was lucky to even be alive.

  “What’s this say?” Matt asked. “It doesn’t even look like words.” He was sitting on one of the chairs on the far side of the room, and he pointed to the open book on his lap.

  “Oh that?” Duncan was nearest to him, so he got up and leaned over Matt, looking at the book. “That’s Tryllic. It’s our old language to keep secrets from the Vittra.”

  “A lot of the older stuff is written in Tryllic,” I said, but I didn’t get up. I’d found a passage about the Long Winter’s War, and I hoped it would give me something useful.

  “What does it say?” Matt asked.

  “Um, this one says… something about an ‘orm,’” Duncan said, squinting as he read the text. He didn’t know very much Tryllic, but since he spent so much time researching with me, he’d picked up some.

  “What?” I lifted my head, thinking at first that he’d said Oren.

  “Orm,” Duncan repeated. “It’s like a snake.” He tapped the pages and straightened up. “I don’t think this will be helpful. It’s a book of old fairy tales.”

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  “We grew up hearing these stories,” Duncan shrugged and sat back down in his chair. “I’ve heard that one a hundred times.”

  “What is it?” I pressed. Something about that word, orm, stuck with me.

  “It’s supposed to explain how trolls came to be,” Duncan said. “The reason we split up in different tribes. Each of the tribes is represented by a different animal. The Kanin are rabbits, the Omte are birds, the Skojare are fish, the Trylle are foxes, and the Vittra are tigers, or sometimes lions, depending on who tells the story.”

  The Kanin, Omte, and Skojare were the other three tribes of trolls, like the Trylle and Vittra. I’d never met any of them. From what I understood, only the Kanin were still doing reasonably well, but they hadn’t thrived as much as the Trylle or even the Vittra. The Skojare were all but extinct.

  I’d only heard of five tribes, and all of the tribes were accounted for, yet Duncan had mentioned the orm.

  “What about the orm?” I asked. “What tribe does that represent?”

  “It doesn’t.” He shook his head. “The orm is the villain of the story. It’s all very Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.”

  “How so?” I asked.

  “I can’t tell it with the same flourish as my mom did before I went to bed,” Duncan said. “But the basic idea is that all the animals lived together and worked together. It was peace and harmony. Orm, which was this big snake-like creature, had lived for thousands of years, and he was bored. He watched all the animals living together, and for fun, he decided to mess with them.

  “He went to each of the animals, telling them that they had to watch out for their friends,” Duncan went on. “He told the fish that the birds were plotting to eat them, the birds that the fox had set traps to ensnare them, and the rabbits that the birds were eating all their clover.

  “Then the orm went to the tiger and told him that he was bigger and stronger than all the other animals, and he could eat them all if he wanted to,” he said. “The tiger realized he was right, and he began hunting the other animals. None of the animals trusted each other anymore, and they scattered.

  “The orm thinks this is all funny and great, especially when he sees all the other animals struggling without their friends,” Duncan continued. “They had all been working together, and they couldn’t make it on their own.

  “One day, the orm comes across the tiger, who is starving and cold,” Duncan said. “The orm begins to laugh at how pitiful the tiger is doing, and the tiger asks him why he’s laughing. When the orm explains how he tricked the tiger into betraying his friends, the tiger becomes enraged, and using his sharpest claw, he cuts off the orm’s head.

  “Usually, the ending is told more dramatically than that, but that’s how it goes,” Duncan shrugged.

  “Wait.” I leaned forward on my book. “The Vittra killed the orm?”

  “Well, yeah, the tiger represents the Vittra,” Duncan said. “Or at least that’s what my mom told me. But the tiger is really the only animal capable of cutting off the snake’s head. At best, a fox could just bite it and the birds could peck out its eyes.”

  “That’s it, isn’t it?” I asked, and it suddenly seemed so obvious to me. I pushed aside my book and jumped up.

  “Wendy?” Matt asked, confused. “Where are you going?”

  “I have an idea,” I said and ran out of the room.

  21. Preparation

  In the ballroom, all the trackers were busy practicing moves on each other. Loki stood near the front, teaching a young tracker how to block. I tried not to think about how young that kid looked or about how he’d fight in battle soon.

  “Loki!” I yelled to get his attention.

  He turned toward me, smiling already, and his attention dropped from the tracker. Seizing the opportunity, the tracker moved forward, punching Loki in the face. It wasn’t hard enough to hurt, and the tracker looked both frightened and proud.

  “Sorry,” the tracker apologized. “I thought we were still training.”

  “It’s fine.” Loki rubbed his jaw and waved him off. “Just save the good stuff for the hobgoblins, alright?”

  I smiled sheepishly at Loki as he made his way across the ballroom over to where I stood at the door. I couldn’t see Finn or Thomas, but I knew they had to be somewhere in the room, working with the other trackers.

  “I didn’t mean to distract you like that and get you sucker punched.”

  “I’m alright,” Loki assured me with a grin and stepped out into the hall, so we could have some privacy from onlookers. “What can I do for you, Princess?”

  “Can I cut off your head?” I asked.

  “Are you asking for my permission?” Loki tilted his head and cocked an eyebrow. “Because I’m going to have to say no to this one request, Princess.”

  “No, I mean, can I?” I asked. “As in, am I capable of it? Would you die if I did?”

  “Of course I would die.” Loki put one hand against the wall and leaned on it. “I’m not a bloody cockroach. What’s all this about? What are you trying to find out?”

  “If I cut off Oren’s head, would that kill him?” I asked.

  “Probably, but you’ll never get close enough to him to do that.” He put his other hand on his hip and stared down at me. “Is that your plan? To decapitate the King?”

  “Do you have a better plan?” I countered.

  “No, but…” he sigh
ed. “I’ve tried that before, and it didn’t work. You can’t get close enough to him. He’s strong and smart.”

  “No, you can’t get close enough to him,” I clarified. “You don’t have the same abilities as I do.”

  “I know that, but I can’t knock him out,” Loki said. “His mind is impenetrable. Even your mother couldn’t use her powers on him.” His eyes softened when he mentioned my mother. “I’m sorry about that by the way.”

  “No, don’t be.” I shook my head and lowered my eyes. “That’s not your fault.”

  “I wanted to see you, but I knew you’d have your hands full,” Loki said, his voice quiet. “I thought you’d rather I be here, helping the Trylle.”

  “You’re right,” I nodded.

  “But I still feel like a dick,” he said. I could feel him studying me, his eyes all over me, but I didn’t lift my head. “How are you doing with all this?”

  “I don’t have time to think about it.” I shook my head again, clearing it of any thoughts of Elora, and looked up at him. “I need to find out how to stop Oren.”

  “That’s a noble goal,” Loki said. “Cutting of his head would probably do it, or running him through with a sword. It’s never been a matter of killing him. It’s getting close enough to do it.”

  “Well, I can do it,” I insisted. “I can find a way. I have tiger blood, so I’m strong.”

  “Tiger blood?” Loki arched an eyebrow. “What are you going on about, Wendy?”

  “Nothing. Never mind.” I smiled thinly at him. “I can stop Oren. And that’s what matters, right?”

  “How?” he asked.

  “Don’t worry about it.” I took a step back, walking away from him. “You concentrate on getting them ready. I’ll deal with Oren.”

  “Wendy,” Loki sighed.

  I hurried back to the library where Duncan and Matt were still waiting. I didn’t let Matt know of my idea, because he would only disapprove. The last few days felt epic and long, and I told Matt to get some rest. We could pick things up in the morning.

  I did need to rest myself. One thing I had learned from Tove was that my powers weakened and got more uncontrollable if I was overly tired. I’d been so completely exhausted lately that I wouldn’t stand a chance against Oren.