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Maude turned quickly, unsheathing her knife to hold under his chin at the comment.

Herrick was faster, though, and had been waiting for her to move because his hand snatched her wrist with the blade and twisted it behind her. The movement forced her to step closer to him. With one hand pinning her arm behind her back and the other still on her waist, he leaned ever closer to her mouth.

“You see what you do to me,minn eldr, and this is why I stayed away.”

“I didn’t go looking for you,” Maude said, trying one last time to slice into him in the name of self-preservation.

Maude finally looked up at him, praying to the Allfather that she would resist him.

“But you still found me,” he said, golden eyes seeing more than what others could.

Maude heard the double meaning in his words. Knew that he also realized that no matter how they fought against their feelings, fate was throwing them together. Maude took a shaky breath as he leaned closer. She watched his will crumble as her barriers followed.

She leaned into Herrick, throwing her anger aside and closing her eyes. His fingers wound their way through her hair, the unrelenting grip he had on her tightening as the tension between them intensified. Their lips were only millimeters apart.

“Minn eldr.”

His voice trailed off as his hands pulled away from her heated skin, his cool breath sighing across her lips as he withdrew. When Maude opened her eyes again, she was alone in the hall.

Breathing heavily and silently scolding herself, Maude headed toward her door and quickly entered her room. Finding herself blissfully alone as her handmaidens had long retired for the night, Maude walked straight for the large windows overlooking the city and thrust them open, allowing cool night air to flood her room.

“Foolish,” she said to herself, running her hands over her heated face and then through her hair, ripping the braids out as the silver clips fell to the floor like heavy raindrops bouncing off a tin roof.

She couldn’t allow him to unravel her like that again. It took only his words and a few soft touches, and she melted for him.

Maude vowed that she would speak with Gunnar tomorrow night and plan her departure. Nodding to herself, she undressed for bed. When she pulled her sheets back, Maude noticed a handwritten letter addressed to her with a gold embossed seal on the front bearing the royal seal.

Hands trembling, Maude broke the seal and withdrew the invitation to Hakon’s Betrothal Ball. Alva would not allow Maude to leave so soon, but perhaps Maude could escape in the dead of night before she could notice.

Thinking back on the memory of her mother makingbullarwith her and Bryn as children, Maude decided that she would leave Veter tomorrow night and head to the Knotted Caverns to retrieve thedalkr Helawithout Herrick and his friends. Then, she would finally kill her father, the King of Flame.

14

“Again,” Bryn called out to her soldiers in training.

As one, the recruits thrust forward with their swords and then blocked an invisible opponent.

“Again.”

The group repeated the motion. Bryn walked along the lines of men and women adjusting stances, adding critique to their thrusts, and seldom rewarding someone with good form.

“Break for the day; return at dawn for final inspection,” she called to the group before turning toward the watchtower outside the Palace of Wind and Embers.

Bryn climbed the stairs, face neutral as it always was, and made her way to the General’s office at the top of the stairs. She passed soldiers and sergeants who all stopped and bowed at her.

She ignored them.

Making it to the door of his office, she banged it open to find a dark-haired shieldmaiden sitting on her uncle's lap, faking a laugh at something offensive he must have said. At Bryn’s sudden entrance, they both looked toward her.

The shieldmaiden scrambled to stand and bow to her Lieutenant General despite having just been entertaining the General of Embers.

“I see you are hard at work reviewing the recruits I rounded up from Logi,” Bryn said between her teeth.

Her uncle waved off the shieldmaiden, a warrior from a neighboring village who Bryn had brought to the barracks to even the imbalance of men and women in their army. The attempt was usually futile as she would pass on her reports of soldiers who passed inspection based on their kingdom standard, and her uncle would not sign off on any woman who Bryn approved of for their armies.

As the shieldmaiden passed her, Bryn grabbed her elbow and said quietly, “Stop by the healer's tower and retrieve a contraceptive tonic before you head back to the barracks.”

The shieldmaiden exited the room, the door shutting quietly behind her.