Crystal Kingdom

by Amanda Hocking

  So we’d headed out to Storvatten that morning with a light drizzle following us everywhere we went. It soon became apparent that the eight-hour drive from Förening to Storvatten was going to be even longer than normal, thanks to the frequent pit stops needed by Tilda.

  We weren’t even halfway through the trip, and we were on our third break. We were on a relatively empty stretch of highway, so Ridley pulled over and Tilda ran out into the thick brush of the ditch.

  I got out with Tilda every time, just in case she might need me. I doubted that she would, but I didn’t like the idea of leaving a pregnant woman alone like that. While she ran through the ditch, I got out and waited next to the car.

  “I told you this would be a long drive,” Konstantin said, climbing out of the backseat.

  “Why are you getting out?” I asked.

  “I need to stretch my legs.” He paced alongside the SUV, unmindful of the fact that the drizzle was getting heavier.

  Beyond the ditch was a cold gray fog. We’d been taking back roads to avoid suspicion, and it had been a while since we’d crossed paths with another car. It felt still and eerie on the side of the road, and I was looking forward to getting to our destination.

  I shivered and pulled my hooded sweatshirt more tightly around me.

  Suddenly Konstantin tensed up, looking around like a hunting dog that’s found its prey. I was about to ask him what was wrong when he said, “We’re not alone.”

  And then Tilda screamed.

  FORTY-ONE

  strike

  Tilda stood on the other side of the ditch, with brush between us, and her eyes were wide and frantic as she pointed toward us. “Behind you!”

  Before I had a chance to look, Konstantin pushed me out of the way, knocking me to the ground, and he lunged at what appeared to be nothing—just empty space. But when Konstantin’s fist collided loudly with his opponent’s bare flesh, I saw the mirage-like shimmer of his skin. The chameleon coloring of the stark landscape around us changing to the tanned tones of Kanin skin.

  “Get my daggers out of my bag!” Konstantin commanded.

  As I scrambled from the ground, the guy Konstantin was fighting had finally shifted back to normal, and I realized that it was Drake Vagn. He’d once been a tracker in Doldastam, but he was more than ten years older than me, so I didn’t really know him.

  But I do remember the big fit he’d thrown when he’d been forced to retire six years ago. He’d eventually left Doldastam and the entire Kanin kingdom over it, and it had not been on good terms.

  “You thought you could switch teams, eh?” Drake asked Konstantin, smirking as he punched him in the face.

  Then came the loud sound of crunching metal, and the SUV lurched to the side, slamming into me and knocking me down. I lay perpendicular with the vehicle, squishing down in the mud as much as I could. For a brief second, the vehicle was actually over me—the metal entrails of it mere inches above my face. I’d turned my head to the side, watching as the tires skidded to a stop in the ditch beside me.

  As quickly as I could, I crawled out from underneath toward the back of the SUV, and I got to my feet. Peering around, I discovered why it had suddenly lurched to the side.

  A massive beast of a man was standing next to the driver’s door, which had been severely dented in, causing the window to crack into a million pieces. That explained why Ridley hadn’t gotten out yet—the angry hulk had punched in the door, momentarily trapping him inside.

  Based on the hulk’s size alone, I guessed he was Omte. He could easily push in the shattered window and grab Ridley, but he seemed to prefer glaring down at him, smiling like a shark. His dark hair went down his back in a thick ponytail, and he was shirtless, displaying a series of thick tribal tattoos that covered his torso.

  Konstantin and Drake had moved their fight to the road, matching each other blow-for-blow, and I registered the insults they were hurling at each other just enough to put together that they’d both been working together for Viktor before Konstantin had defected.

  I opened the hatchback and saw that Ridley was crawling across the seats with the aim of getting out of the back passenger door. I grabbed Konstantin’s worn leather satchel and hurriedly started digging through it.

  Everywhere he went, Konstantin carried two long, sharp daggers. They had been his gift when he’d become the Queen’s personal guard, and they were made with the highest-quality metal with ornate ivory carvings in the handle. They were beautiful, but most importantly, they were deadly.

  I just caught sight of one of the blades in the bag when I felt a huge hand crushing me around my waist. I tried to hang on to the bag, but suddenly I was sailing backward, and I lost my grip. The bag tumbled to the ground, and I heard the daggers clattering against the pavement.

  It all happened so quickly, and I was flying through the air before landing painfully against the damp asphalt of the highway. It took me a second to catch my breath, then I pushed myself up onto my elbows to see the giant stomping toward me with that awful toothy grin on his face.

  Across his chest, he had the word MÅNE tattooed in huge black letters, and as he rapidly approached—he walked slow and deliberately, but he took giant steps—all I could think about was Ulla. She was a fourteen-year-old half-Omte and she’d pushed the two-ton SUV out of the snow. And this guy was at least a foot taller than Ulla, with hands the size of her head and arms thicker than her waist.

  He was going to crush me with his bare hands.

  As I jumped to my feet, my mind raced, trying to figure out how I could possibly fight someone as strong as this Måne guy. Behind him, I saw Ridley running toward him, wielding a huge chain. Based on the size of it and the hooks on either end, I guessed it was a towing chain that had been in the back of the SUV.

  Ridley swung it hard, whipping Måne in the back. That would’ve been enough to knock a normal man down, but it barely fazed him. He stopped walking and turned to face Ridley, and he growled. Actually growled, like a wolf guarding a bone.

  But Ridley didn’t back down. He swung the chain again, harder, and this time the hook managed to take hold in the tough flesh of Måne’s shoulder. I think Ridley’s plan was to pull Måne down and tie him up with the chain.

  But that’s not what happened. Måne yanked the chain and pulled Ridley toward him, and I knew that I would have to act fast if I didn’t want Måne to crush both of us.

  I raced past Måne back toward the SUV and grabbed a dagger off the highway. Behind me, I heard Ridley let out a guttural moan that made my blood run cold.

  When I turned back I saw that Måne had gotten the chain around Ridley’s neck. He stood behind him, pulling the chain taut with his enormous hands, and as Ridley clawed futilely at the chain, his face had begun to turn purple.

  I charged at Måne, and holding the dagger with both hands, I drove it into his back. I did it again and again, each time causing more blood to splatter back on me. It took five thrusts of the blade between his shoulders before he finally dropped to his knees. That brought him low enough so I could jab it into his spine, severing his brain stem, and he fell forward onto the road.

  Ridley crawled out from underneath him, gasping for breath. His neck was red and raw and bleeding in a few places, but otherwise he looked like he would survive.

  “Thank you,” he said between breaths.

  “Anytime,” I said, then turned my attention to the fight between Konstantin and Drake.

  It was still going strong, but Konstantin’s face was looking more bloodied than Drake’s. He was taking a beating.

  I moved down the highway toward them. Drake had his back to me, and as soon as Konstantin looked at me, I tossed the dagger to him. He caught it easily just as Drake tried to come at him again. With one quick move, Konstantin sliced Drake’s throat, and he collapsed to the ground.

  Konstantin wiped the blood from his face, then stepped over Drake’s body to walk to where Ridley and I were standing in the middle of the road.

&
nbsp; “That’s it, then,” Ridley said, surveying the carnage around us.

  Someone whistled loudly from the ditch, and I realized too late that we’d forgotten about Tilda. I couldn’t see anything from where I stood, so I ran closer to the SUV, and then I saw them, standing in the brush just on the other side of the vehicle.

  Bayle Lundeen—the former Skojare head guard—had one arm wrapped around Tilda, pressing her to him, while the other one held a knife to her throat. She had her hands on his arm, trying to pull it away, but he didn’t seem to be budging.

  “It’s not quite over yet,” Bayle warned me.

  FORTY-TWO

  avenge

  Konstantin rushed behind me but I put my arm out to stop him, so he didn’t go charging toward them. Bayle’s knife was poised to slice right through Tilda’s throat, and he raised his arm higher, making Tilda squirm.

  Ridley came up beside me, and we stood frozen on the embankment, unsure of what the next move should be.

  “You don’t have to do this,” I said, trying to remain calm, and I was acutely aware of the bloodied blade clenched in Konstantin’s fist.

  “I really didn’t want it to come to this,” Bayle admitted, but he didn’t relax his stance.

  When I’d been at Storvatten before, it had been hard for me to get a clear read on Bayle. He’d been standoffish but professional when Kasper and I interacted with him. We were never able to entirely discern what Bayle’s role was in everything that had transpired in Storvatten, but as the head guard, he’d definitely had his hand in things.

  It had been his guard, Cyrano, who attempted to murder King Mikko, and it had almost certainly been Bayle who falsified the safe records that got Mikko arrested. From the best I could gather, he’d been working with Kennet from the start of the fallen Prince’s plan to dethrone Mikko.

  If it hadn’t been for Bayle, I wasn’t sure how much Kennet would’ve been capable of on his own. But I doubt Mikko would’ve been arrested, which meant that Kennet wouldn’t have come to Doldastam to pay Mina for her help, and then Kasper wouldn’t have been killed.

  “I worked my ass off for that kingdom, if you can even call it that,” he said, his words dripping with venom. “For years. All I wanted was to be paid my dues! And Kennet came up with this plan, and it would all be so simple.”

  “It can still be simple,” I said. “Killing an innocent will only complicate things.”

  Bayle snorted. “Since Kennet turned against me and deposed me, I’ve been sentenced to doing Viktor’s dirty work. I’m up to my neck in blood! What’s one more bitch?”

  “Viktor will turn on you too,” Konstantin warned him. “The same way he’s turned on me.”

  “I’m not an idiot like you. I just wanna get paid,” Bayle sneered. “And right now, Viktor is offering a massive reward for delivering the three of you.” He nodded toward Ridley, myself, and Konstantin. Then he looked down at Tilda, almost speaking in her ear. “What’s one more body to add to the pile?”

  “If you hurt her, you will not leave here alive,” I growled at him. “I will kill you with my bare fucking hands, Bayle.”

  Bayle started to laugh. “Oh, you really think so?”

  Something flashed in Tilda’s eyes, and her body tensed up. Her expression hardened, and there was a resolve in her that I knew all too well from training with her. Tilda was a master of restraint, but she could destroy someone if she wanted to.

  “Wait,” Tilda said in a stilted voice. “This is Bayle Lundeen? Bayle, who conspired with Kennet? Bayle, who’s one of the reasons my husband is dead?”

  I nodded once. “Yeah. That’s him.”

  For the first time, Bayle seemed to realize he might have bitten off more than he could chew, and he looked down at Tilda with new appreciation. Tilda may be pregnant, but she was still tall and strong, with muscular arms and powerful legs.

  I was sure that when Bayle had first captured her, she’d been more docile so as not to risk him hurting the baby. But now she was pissed.

  With one sudden jerk, she flung her head backward, smashing into Bayle’s face. From where I stood several feet away from her, I heard the sound of his nose crunching. Before he could tilt the knife toward her, she grabbed his wrist, bent it backward, and, using her other arm as leverage, she broke his arm with a loud snap.

  It all happened within a few seconds, and Bayle screamed in pain and stumbled back. His arm hung at a weird angle, and blood streamed down his face. But Tilda wasn’t done yet.

  With a swipe of her leg, she kicked his legs out from under him. He fell back into the mud, and Tilda kicked him hard in the groin, causing Konstantin to wince beside me. Then she jumped on top of him, punching him repeatedly in the face with both fists.

  His body had gone limp, but I wasn’t sure if that was because he was unconscious or dead. Either way, Tilda apparently decided that she wanted to be certain. She grabbed the knife that he’d dropped on the ground beside them, and she stabbed him straight through the heart.

  And then she just sat there, kneeling on his dead body and breathing hard. None of us said anything or moved. It felt like she needed the moment to herself.

  When she finally stood up, she shook her arms out, probably both because her fists hurt from hitting Bayle so hard and also to get rid of some of the blood.

  “Do you feel better?” I asked her.

  She nodded, still catching her breath as she walked over to me. “Yeah. We have to do something about these bodies, though. The humans will get suspicious.”

  “That girl is a fucking beast,” Konstantin whispered as she walked by, and he looked at her with newfound admiration.

  “You should see her when she’s not pregnant,” I said.

  Tilda went into the SUV and used a bottle of water and a shirt from her bag to clean off the blood. Eventually, the rest of us would probably want to do the same, but right now we needed to focus on getting the bodies out of here before another car came by.

  While Ridley and I went to grab Bayle’s body, Tilda moved all our bags into the backseat so we wouldn’t bloody all our things. Konstantin grabbed Drake’s body, throwing it over his shoulder, and then dropping him unceremoniously in the back.

  The challenge was not only moving Måne’s massive body—which took all three of us—but also loading it into the back of the SUV. We had to fold him into a very strange position to get him to fit.

  “There’s still one big problem,” Tilda said. While we stood at the back of the vehicle, beside the open tailgate, she was still sitting in the backseat and turned to look at us over the pile of bodies. “These guys were clearly Viktor’s men, and they found us. How?”

  Ridley shook his head. “When we left Doldastam, we threw out our phones, and we ditched the Range Rover and rented a car. I don’t know how they could possibly track us.” Then he looked over at Konstantin. “Unless someone told them where we’d be.”

  “They tried to kill me too, remember?” Konstantin snapped. “And how would I know that we’d be at this exact spot on this exact shitty road at this time while Tilda was taking a piss?”

  “Then how did they find us?” Ridley asked defensively.

  “Probably the same way I found Bryn.” He turned back to the bodies and pushed Måne out of the way so he could dig in Drake’s pocket. Then he pulled out a lock of dark curly hair and held it up to Ridley. “He was tracking you.”

  Ridley’s face fell, and he ran a hand through his hair, as if he’d be able to feel a missing lock of hair. “Shit.”

  “Shit indeed.” Konstantin gave him a hard look, then he slammed the hatchback shut. He walked around the car and got inside, leaving Ridley and me alone.

  “I’m sorry,” Ridley said, staring off at the empty field beside us. “I shouldn’t have come. Mina knew I would lead her right to you. It’s my fault.”

  “She tricked you,” I said. “She’s tricked all of us. It’s what she’s good at.”

  He set his jaw. “I should’ve known better.�
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  “It’s okay. We’re all okay. You’re the one that got hurt the worst.”

  His skin had been red and raw, but it was starting to darken as bruises began to form. He just shook his head. “You guys need to leave me here and go on without me. They could have more people tracking me. You won’t be safe with me.”

  “Ridley, I’m not going to leave you on the side of the road. And even if they do track us, they’d follow us straight to Storvatten, where they plan on attacking anyway. We’ll be fine.”

  He lowered his eyes, swallowing hard. “I’m sorry, Bryn. I shouldn’t have come. I just…”

  “You just what?” I stepped closer to him, and he lifted his eyes to meet mine.

  “I just had to see you. I needed to know that you were all right.”

  I wanted to ask, Then why are you pushing me away? If you just wanted to be with me, why are you being so distant?

  But I didn’t think he would answer, so I just looked up at him, wishing I understood the pain in his eyes.

  A car door opened and Konstantin leaned out. “We should probably leave before backup gets here.”

  FORTY-THREE

  crusade

  This was the first time Tilda had been to Storvatten, and her eyes widened as she took in the palace. With luminous walls tinged in aqua, curving to mimic waves, it rose from the still waters of the great lake like an enchanted sapphire.

  Thick fog had left the palace hidden from the shore, since it sat several miles out in the water. Ridley, Konstantin, Tilda, and I walked almost halfway out on the dock that connected the palace to the land before it started to take shape, a shadow looming behind the gray.

  And then there it was, in all its glory. Tilda—who wasn’t easily impressed—actually gasped when she saw it. While I still found it magnificent, all the events of the past few weeks seemed to have left me somewhat numb to its magic.

  As we approached the large wooden doors of the palace, they opened before we’d even reached them. The entrance glowed pale white as we walked toward it, and an imposing man stepped forward, reminding me of an alien overlord descending from the mothership.