Page 75

“I don’t know everything about your kind. I thought you were all gone. I know you are looking to me for answers, but there’s much I don’t know.” She breathed then, a deep sigh that was like a cold wind against shutters, clawing to get inside... or out. “You... here... I cannot help but think it might have something to do with Vala.”

“Vala?” Where had I heard that name before?

Her eyes glinted. “Yes. Vala, my grandmother’s sister. She always had too much magic for her own good. She was born with too much power and not enough cunning or caution. She was a vain and stupid girl. Fancied herself in love with King Alrek. Even worse... she thought he loved her.”

“King Alrek?” I looked up then. Alrek was Hamlin’s grandfather. I would know. I had been thoroughly educated on the royal lineage. “That was a long time ago.”

Thora chuckled then, shaking her head as she recounted the story. “Yes. He was young and handsome, and, well... a king. My idiot great-aunt thought he would make her his queen. This was before he was married, of course. He asked Vala to cast a spell for him, the final nail in the coffin for dragons.”

I listened, riveted, feeling like a small girl sitting at the feet of one of the visiting bards. I was certain that was where I’d heard mention of this Vala, in one of those stories that had floated like a mesmerizing melody in the Great Hall.

Thora gave a sad little sigh and shook her head. “My grandmother told her not to do it. Not to cast such a spell. Putting something like that into the world... it comes back on you.” Thora’s voice faded away, and she shivered, her lovely face suddenly grim, a hint of her age peeking out in the lines and hollows, in the weary wisdom of her eyes, reminding me that, for as much as she appeared a maiden, this woman was older than me, at least twice my age... at least as old as the king and queen. Perhaps even older. Who knew exactly how many years she had walked this earth? Were witches like dragons, blessed with unnaturally long life? “She was asking for trouble.”

“What happened?” I recalled some of the details now. In the aftermath of the Hormung, Vala had been appointed to cast a spell. If the remaining dragons could not breed and multiply... well. The dragon problem would solve itself. Time would see to that.

So how could I be here like this? How couldIbe explained?

How couldIexist?

“She could not do precisely what he asked, which was to kill all dragons, but she did the next best thing. The only thing she could think of. She cast a spell that ended all hatchlings. Dragons could no longer spawn. Once the remaining dragons died or were killed off... well, King Alrek got his wish.” She shrugged. “And what did Vala get for her effort? For her loyalty? The king decreed her a traitor and fed her to the fire. A hundred years ago. She had the notable distinction of being the first witch cast into flame. We’ve all been running and hiding ever since.” Thora lifted her mug of tea in salute, her lips twisting bitterly. “So there you have it. My family’s proud legacy for you.”

I could only stare in horror. King Alrek had done that? He had romanced and seduced this Vala? Inveigled and entreated her to cast a spell for him, and then he let her burn? No. Notlet. He had commanded it. Decreed it with all his imperial power. I had not known that part of the story. It had been left out of my history lessons.

What else did I not know? What else had been omitted?

I stared into my congealing oats like the answer hid there, thinking about the things Ididknow. I set aside my tender feelings for the king and queen, my parents, and opened the long-bolted door inside me, allowing in thoughts I had always blocked.

Would loving parents take a baby, praise her with love, rear her gently, call her daughter, and then turn her over to be whipped for the transgressions of others?

And then, later, would they force her to trade vows with a man deemed unworthy for their true daughters?

Was that not perhaps in keeping with their history, with the heartless legacy of King Alrek?

My stomach lurched. I felt sick. The memory of my father’s warm hand on my shoulder. His kind words of praise when I did something well. His laughter when I performed a silly skit with my sisters. It all felt like a lie now.

Could I have been wrong about him? Wrong about everything? My life? My mother? My sisters? It was a sobering thought. One I had never permitted myself.

Thora ran a hand over her face. “I don’t know which is more treacherous. Humans or love. In the end, both will fail you.” Thora glanced around her cozy cottage. “I’ll take solitude.” Her eyes went cloudy, and I studied her face. In profile, she was an etching in sadness. Aloneness. Loneliness. I could be a friend to her. A companion to break the long stretch of her lonely days in this unrelenting wood.

And yet she did not want that. She didn’t want me here. I was a problem. I would only bring her trouble, and she had enough of that breathing down her neck simply by being who she was. The life she had carved out for herself here, hewn from a cursed forest, was a place of refuge.

This was the curse of witchkind, I realized. They could live. Suppress their nature and blend in when forced to do so. Or embrace what they were and find safety in seclusion. But never solace. Never freedom. Not really. It was a sentence. A punishment to live out their days in a cage of isolation. Too many of them in a group would attract notice, would draw witch hunters and those who would burn them alive. So this was what she had. Herself. Only herself. A small life.

I saw my own future in her. Life in a cage of isolation—or death.

An existence so different from the one I’d thought I might have with Fell a day ago. My grim fate yawned ahead, posts in a fence, one after another, days falling in succession, in sameness, in tedium.

Steam wafted from her mug, and for a moment I was back amid trees dappled in morning light, watching as smoke lifted off Arkin’s charred remains, like fog curling off a dark body of water.

Except here there was no stink of death, no scorched flesh... no villain put down. Just a sweet herbal aroma of mint and juniper tea.

Thora lifted her mug for another sip, and the movement broke my reverie.

“These woods have their shadows,” she murmured. “Places where the light cannot reach. You must watch for that. Be careful.”

Could she be any more vague? “What do you mean?”

“Magic is a complicated thing. Sometimes it is... dark.”