Her hands shook with rage. “The sapphires belong to Heks.”
“I understand. But I won’t be bound by a curse or another oath any longer. I’m tired of the confines in which I live. I want to make my own choices.”
“So be it,” she snarled. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you. There are far worse things than me or even the curse that traps you. When you kill Morlet and your borders fall, Nelebek will be destroyed. The Heks will rise again. With or without your help.”
I ran from the room sensing the truth in her words.
15
I woke up still tired from having tossed and turned on the hard ground all night long. My stomach growled, but I didn’t have any food with me. Crawling out of the cave, I stood and stretched in the light rain.
A laugh escaped my mouth. I’d spent most of my life alone, trying to remain small and unseen. Hidden from the soldats. Then Anders found me, and everything changed. I couldn’t get a moment of time to myself. I was constantly surrounded by Vidar, Anders, Damaris, or the Krigers. Now here I was, finally alone, and I missed my friends. The word friends felt foreign to me. I’d never had friends. Now that I did, I didn’t want to lose them.
With the medallion around my neck, I didn’t need to worry about Morlet finding me. When Norill had given it to me last night, it shielded me from the magic in the world. Did that mean I could use my power without worrying about the magic consuming me? There was only one way to find out.
Releasing my power, I sent it out into the surrounding area to get my bearings. I didn’t sense any people or danger nearby. No shadows appeared, and no voices whispered. I relaxed. The medallion did protect me. I let my power flow farther from me. The treehouse was to the north, so I headed in that direction. My feet and fingers were numb from the chilly air. If I wasn’t in such a hurry to see the Krigers and be reunited with my bo staff, I’d try and find one of those warm pools Anders and I had swum in.
Anders.
My foot collided with a tree root, and I tumbled to the ground. I’d been so wrapped up with my thoughts that I hadn’t been paying enough attention to my surroundings. The medallion was pinned between my body and a flat rock. Thankfully, I hadn’t smashed my head. Standing, I removed the wet leaves from my tunic and brushed off as much of the dirt on my pants as possible. I examined the medallion, hoping I hadn’t damaged it. There was a small scratch on the center portion. I let the light rain hit it, cleaning off the dirt.
The medallion wasn’t scratched—just filthy from years of grime accumulating. Using my fingernail, I started picking off the dirt. The medallion was far more beautiful than I’d realized. The silver that formed the two-inch circular medallion was really chainmail. Situated in the center was a small sapphire. Holding the medallion in my hand, I let the rain clean it some more.
My heart skipped a beat.
The shape was eerily familiar. The sapphire that Vidar had gotten from the previous Grei Heks had a slanted edge on the one side with a notch missing. This sapphire looked like a puzzle piece that would fit with that one perfectly. This was the missing piece of the Heks sapphire. With shaking hands, I put the medallion back on, shoving it under my shirt. The sapphire had never been lost. Grei Heks had hidden it in plain sight.
I reached the lake where the treehouse was located. A whistle rang out and I knew it was one of the Krigers on watch. I whistled back, wanting them to know it was me so I wouldn’t be shot with an arrow. A minute later, two figures, one wide and muscular, the other tall and lanky, came running at me.
Henrik lifted me up in a hug, spinning me around. When he set me on my feet, he scrunched his nose. “You’re wet and smelly.”
“It’s good to see you, too,” I said.
“Come,” Stein said, wrapping an arm around my shoulders. “Let’s get you something to eat.”
After changing into dry clothes, I headed to the sitting room where Henrik and Stein were waiting for me. “Where is everyone?” The only other person I’d seen was Marius.
Henrik knelt and added a log to the fire. “Some went to the nearby village for food, others are out scouting. The king has soldats everywhere looking for us.”
“What have you been up to?” I asked.
“We’ve been practicing a lot,” Henrik said. He added one more log and then joined me on the sofa.
“Some of us more than others,” Stein commented as he propped his feet on the low table.
Marius exited the kitchen holding a plate piled high with food. He handed it to me and sat on one of the chairs. “Where are Vidar and Anders? Did they save the rebels? Have you been…successful with Morlet?” He leaned forward, his eyebrows pinched with worry.
I’d forgotten they didn’t know what had happened these past weeks. So much had changed. Taking a deep breath, I told them everything. About the almost executions, marrying Morlet to save the rebels, the mass murder, and coming here. Not one of them uttered a single word while I spoke. When I finished telling them everything, I folded my hands on my lap and waited for the barrage of questions that were sure to come.
“Well?” I said. The three of them sat there staring at me.
“I don’t know what to say,” Marius answered. “It’s a lot to take in.” He rubbed his face and leaned back on the chair.
“You’re our queen?” Henrik whistled.
“Why did you come back here?” Marius asked.
“I came for my bo staff and to tell you it’s time to end this.” And because I missed you, but I kept that part to myself.
“Okay,” Marius responded. “Once everyone has returned, we’ll begin our trek to the capital.”
Standing in the forest with my feet shoulder width apart, I held my bo staff at the ready, thrilled to finally have it in my hands. My power magnified as I connected to my weapon. I went through the forms Anders had taught me. The movements came naturally, and a calmness radiated through my body as a sense of purpose filled me.
A series of whistles rang through the air. I squinted, trying to determine which Krigers were approaching. Two figures neared. The one on the left walked with a dominating swagger. It had to be Vidar. Dread filled me. He was probably furious I hadn’t stayed in the castle like he’d ordered me to.
Holding the bo staff still, I waited until they were closer before asking, “What are the two of you doing here?”
“We were wondering the same thing about you,” Vidar replied.
Anders’s eyes scanned my body. “Are you hurt?” he demanded.
“No, I’m fine.”
“Why did you leave the castle without telling anyone?” Anders asked. “I can’t believe you traveled through the capital unescorted and then through the forest all alone. You could have been killed. Or have you lost all common sense and completely forgotten your encounter with the brubjorn and the fugl?”
“I’m going inside to see everyone else,” Vidar said. “I’ll leave the two of you alone.” He strode away.
I looked at Anders, his eyes intense, posture rigid.
“Why did you leave?” he demanded.
“I needed to get away to think. And I really wanted my bo staff.” My reasons for leaving sounded silly and childish.
“I would have come with you.”
Really? I assumed he was furious with me for sleeping with the king. “Vidar told me to stay there. But I couldn’t be around Morlet. Not after he killed all those people. I had to leave.”
He wrapped his arms around me, cradling my head against his chest, surprising me with his physical affection. “Did he hurt you?” he whispered.
It felt like his words had a double meaning. “No,” I replied with enough force so he’d hear the truth in that single word. “When Morlet killed all those people…that was the worst thing I’ve ever experienced.”
“I came to see you as soon as I could.”
And then he’d found me kissing Morlet.
He released me. “We should go inside. It’s getting dark.” He started walking toward the tr
eehouse.
“Is that why you won’t love me?” I said to his back. “Because I gave myself to Morlet and I’m going to have his child?” I clutched my bo staff for support.
His shoulders tensed. “No,” he replied, his voice gruff. “I’ve already fallen in love with you. As much as it kills me to know you’ve been with Morlet, I know there’s no other way to end the curse. I admire you all the more for it. While I try keeping my distance from you, try pushing you away for your own good, I can’t stop loving you.” He turned to face me, his eyes red.
Words escaped me. This was the most I’d ever heard him say, and he’d admitted to loving me. “I love you, too,” I said.
He closed his eyes. “And that makes it so much worse, so much harder.” He turned and headed toward the treehouse.
And somehow, I understood exactly what he meant.
16
I found Vidar sitting at the desk in his room. The box containing his sapphire was in front of him.
“Do you want some company?” I asked, leaning against the door frame.
He waved me in and I entered, shutting the door behind me. I was about to ask him what he was doing with the sapphire when he said, “Why did you really come here?”
The question caught me off guard. “To get my bo staff.”
“One of the Krigers could have brought it to you. You know that.” He laced his fingers together behind his head, carefully observing me.
I shrugged and sat on the chair across from him. His desk was a mess—papers and maps strewn all over it. There was a black velvet bag next to the box. Was the second sapphire in there?
“I told you to remain at the castle. You understand we can’t end the curse until we know for sure you’re pregnant?”
“I know.” And I was tired of everyone pointing it out to me. “Skog Heks said she felt life in me.”
“Let’s hope she’s right.” Vidar stood and came around the side of the desk, sitting on the edge of it before me. “Did you and Anders talk?”
“Yes.”
“Anders has spent so many years concealing his emotions, I don’t think he knows how to express them. And with you, well, he certainly has met his match. You can be pretty stubborn.”
I hit Vidar’s knee and got up. Going over to his bed, I flopped on the soft mattress. “I don’t want to talk about Anders or Morlet.”
“Fine.” He came over and stretched out next to me on the bed. “Then let’s talk about the sapphire.”
Did he know the third piece was the medallion? Had he known all along? Or was the truth withheld from him, too? “I want to destroy it,” I admitted. Lying on my back, I turned my head to look directly at him, trying to gauge his reaction.
“Good.” He glanced at me, his face not revealing anything. “What do you know about the sapphire?”
“That it broke into three pieces. Once they are reunited, magic seeping in from the world can be used to restore the sapphire’s power, thus allowing new Heks to be created.”
“Legend says that when the war between humans and Heks began, a human stole the sapphire and shattered it into three pieces. Grei Heks had two of those pieces—a larger chunk and a smaller one.”
I removed the medallion and handed it to him. “Here is the smaller one.”
He took it, his fingers gently caressing the sapphire.
“Which means we have all three pieces,” I said. “This one here in the medallion, the one you have, and the one Grei Heks had in her possession.” I assumed that the black pouch sitting on his desk had Grei Heks’s sapphire.
“I wish that were the case,” Vidar said, “but it’s not.”
“I don’t understand.”
He rolled over onto his stomach, propping himself up on his elbows and examining the medallion. “Grei Heks broke the larger sapphire into two pieces in an attempt for it to remain concealed. That way, if anyone found three pieces, they would assume they had them all. They would never know there was a fourth piece. She never wanted all of the pieces reunited.”
But she was a Heks. Keeping the pieces hidden meant her breed would die out.
Vidar continued, “Grei Heks didn’t know where the last piece was. She suspected it was still in the ruins somewhere. She said if we ever had a jordskjelv, that meant it had been found.”
We’d had several jordskjelvs lately.
“We have three of the four,” he said. “I believe the fourth one has been unearthed by a miner.”
“I didn’t find it in Morlet’s castle.”
“Maybe the miner still has it?” Vidar suggested, turning the medallion over in his hands.
If that was the case, the miner probably intended to sell it. That meant the rebels should be able to track it down. “Do you know how to destroy the sapphire?” I asked.
“I know a Grei Heks and a Skog Heks must come together to use it. I’m wondering if instead of using the earth’s magic to reunite the pieces, we use it to destroy them. Since you and Morlet have the ability to wield magic, I’m hoping the two of you can do it.”
I started laughing. We’d never convince Morlet to work with us. Not only that, but this sounded like a long shot.
“For now,” Vidar said, “we need to make sure Norill and Morlet don’t get their hands on the three we have.”
“I agree.” My list of things to do kept growing. Now I had to locate the last piece of the sapphire, somehow destroy it, join with the Krigers, and kill Morlet. Oh, and then I needed to be the queen that Nelebek needed me to be. Just thinking about the tasks ahead was enough to make me want to run deep into the forest and live in solitude. Unfortunately, that wasn’t a viable option. I’d promised my father I would end this, and I planned to keep that promise—no matter the personal cost.
“Let’s go,” Vidar said. He climbed off the bed and held his hand out to me.
“Where to?”
A sly smile spread across his face. “We’re going to have a proper celebration.”
“What are we celebrating?” I took his hand and he pulled me off the bed.
“Being alive, being here together, and our friendship.”
Before we left his room, he set the medallion on his desk with the other two sapphire pieces. He led me down to the forest where the Krigers and Anders had gathered around a large fire.
Stein cooked skewered rabbits over the fire while the others passed around a bottle of ale. For the next several hours, we talked, laughed, and joked with one another. No one spoke about the curse or Morlet. We were all thankful to be together. For the first time since I’d discovered I was a Kriger, I felt happy and free.
Standing in a circle with my fellow Krigers, I shivered from the early morning dew that coated the ground.
“Why did you ask all of us to meet you here?” Marius asked me.
I looked around at my fellow Krigers, each holding his weapon. Not all of us would survive our encounter with Morlet. While we understood that, it still made it difficult to stomach. “The battle with the king will take place in the Tower Room at his castle,” I explained. “In that round room, there are markings from the old language—the language of Heks. I believe each marking etched into the floor corresponds to the markings on our weapons.”
The symbol for choice was carved into my bo staff. “When we reach the Tower Room, each of you will need to find your mark and stand on top of it. From there, we will connect to one another.”
“Do you remember the order of the markings?” Henrik asked.
“No.” I should have sought the room out and memorized the markings. It was too late for that now. “You need to know that when you’re in the room, standing on your mark, you will feel the magic within the world calling to you. It will be strong and powerful. You will need to resist it. Instead, focus on your weapon and harnessing its power.”
“We’ll do what we’ve been practicing,” Marius said. “Whoever is standing to Kaia’s left will start. Connect to the person on your left so that Kaia is the last person connected
to.”
“Agreed,” I said. “Once I feel us linked together, I will direct our power toward Morlet and kill him.” Ending this wretched curse. If I focused on that aspect of it, it made the killing part easier to bear.
“Something tells me he won’t be just standing there waiting for us to kill him,” Jorgen interjected, leaning on his javelin.
“I agree,” Marius said. “Most likely, he’ll try to take us out.”
“He can’t kill us until we are linked together,” Gunner reminded him.
“When we are connecting to one another, our faces will reveal nothing,” Marius said.
“We should practice that,” I suggested.
“Can you control our powers once we’re linked?” Harald asked.
Morlet had a tremendous amount of magic. Our power would equal his, only instead of it being evil and dark, it would be good. Wouldn’t it? “Yes,” I assured him. I had no choice and there were no other options.
“Will you be able to kill Morlet?” Geir asked. “Especially since you’re carrying his child?”
Henrik hit Geir’s arm. “She’s not in love with him,” he said. “She only did what she had to do so we can end this curse. Show her some respect.”
I tried to withhold my smile. “I will kill Morlet when the time comes.” All I’d have to do was remember him murdering all those people on the street in his misguided attempt to save me.
“Now that’s enough talking,” Henrik said, adjusting his grip on his ax. “Let’s practice.”
17
My eyes flew open. My hands stung with acute pain. Something was wrong. The faint smell of smoke reached my nose. Throwing off the covers, I climbed out of bed and peered through the window. Nothing looked out of place in the dark night. Going over to my door, I opened it a crack and listened. I heard hushed whispers coming from directly below the treehouse.
Anders stepped out of the shadows beside my door, startling me. “What’s going on?” I asked.
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