Page 14 of Blood Beneath the Snow (Blood & Souls Duology #1)

14

“You could be sleeping, you know.”

I jumped and whirled to see the Hellbringer studying me, his entire visage obscured by the darkness. My racing heartbeat began to slow slightly, fear replaced with annoyance. “Can’t a girl at least make a decent escape attempt without being rudely interrupted?”

The crowbar I found yesterday had thus far been of absolutely no use in trying to unlatch the mysterious door at the end of the long hallway. This abandoned prison shouldn’t have been so difficult to escape, and yet the Hellbringer hadn’t truly interrupted any real progress.

“Normally, yes. But we have places to be this morning.”

I frowned. If my calculations were correct, it was still far too early for the sun to have risen—not that either of us would know if it did. Maybe the lack of light was messing with my brain. “It’s too early to be training.”

Did I catch the hint of a laugh in his next words? “If it’s too early to be training, then it’s too early for an escape attempt.”

I threw the crowbar at the Hellbringer half-heartedly. He caught it in one hand. “Then what is so urgent it needs to be done right now?”

“Traveling to the nearest forge to make you a better blade.” He motioned for me to stand.

Exhaustion, sore knees, and my unsuccessful escape attempt had made me irritable. I didn’t move. “Neither of us wants to be here. Can’t you take me back to the front?”

“No.” He stepped forward and nudged me with the toe of his boot. “Get up.”

Groaning, I obeyed. My joints ached with stiffness from kneeling in such an awkward position for so long in the frigid cold. At least I’d been smart enough to bring my cloak this time around.

“Come on.” The Hellbringer turned and began walking toward the dim glow of the main room. “Mira is waiting for us.”

The teleporter glared at me from beneath her hood when we stepped back into the firelight. The Hellbringer adjusted the pack slung over his shoulder. “Make sure you have everything. We’ll be gone for a few days.”

I grabbed my gloves and buckled my sheath and sword back onto my belt. “Ready.”

“Then let’s go. Give Mira your wrist.”

Mira’s blond hair shone in the firelight and she extended her hand to me. I tried to hide my grimace—teleporting had been bad enough the first time and I wasn’t keen to do it again. But the Hellbringer nodded and in a flash we were off.

It was impossible to tell whether I lost my balance landing in two feet of snow or if Mira pushed me slightly upon landing. Either way, I landed face-first in the ice-cold powder. “Fuck this,” I snarled, pushing back to my feet to scowl at the Hellbringer. His companion was already gone. “Where’s the damn forge?”

I looked around, hoping to see something, anything, recognizable. The landscape was all familiar, but not in the way I wanted. The same pine trees and thick blanket of snow that covered the northern half of Bhorglid surrounded us on all sides. To my left stood the foothills of a mountain range that towered over us, the peaks breaking up the gray clouds dominating the sky and allowing an occasional rising sunray to peek through.

The northern wastelands stretched out for miles in either direction. Gusts of wind whistled, tossing loose snow up and around us. A good weather day, all things considered. I suspected the Hellbringer had taken me farther north when he kidnapped me from the battlefield, but we could be anywhere now. It was all indistinguishable when the cities fell from view.

He pointed to the mountain in the distance. “That way. I hope you’re prepared—we have a long hike ahead of us.”

I followed the sound of his boots in the snow. Hiking in these conditions was not going to be enjoyable. “Your soldier couldn’t have dropped us off any closer?”

“No.”

My breath fogged out in front of me in the dawn when I huffed. I’d spent most of the night awake in the dim firelight, my frustration growing in my chest. He didn’t want to be here, training me. He was only doing it because he’d been ordered to. And now it seemed he was trying to make it as difficult as possible for both of us.

“I really hate you,” I told him, allowing the venom in my voice to seep through. It radiated over the snow, echoing slightly and catching in the next gust of wind. I wanted him to feel it, wanted the words to find the chink in his armor and pierce straight through the heart.

But I wasn’t surprised when his only reply was “You and everyone else, Princess.”

Three hours of walking later, the mountains appeared just as far as when we’d started. There was no telling how far the trail of footprints we left behind extended. It could be miles for all I knew. But it certainly didn’t feel like we’d made any progress, and the exhaustion of not sleeping was catching up to me.

I gnawed on a stick of dried meat the Hellbringer had broken out of his pack a while ago. My nose was utterly numb and I was shocked my ears hadn’t fallen off, abandoned in the snow behind us somewhere. And since my companion wasn’t keen on conversation, I felt like a petulant child when every half an hour I asked, “How much farther?”

He responded to my current inquiry the same way he had all the others. “A ways.”

I slowed my pace, the piece of dried meat finished, and glared at his back. “That doesn’t answer my question.”

My retort was met with silence. I don’t know what I expected. The Hellbringer had shown me exactly who he was and exactly what he thought of me. I’d spent most of the night tossing and turning, wishing that if he hated me so much, he would have refused this job. Or even left me stranded in the snow. Because discovering a formidable ally shouldn’t have felt the same as dealing with the worst of my brothers.

My patience snapped, worn thin by the cold, the hunger gnawing at my stomach, and the uncertainty of knowing when this trek would end. I stopped walking. I’d been taken from the front no more than two days ago and I was already at my wit’s end with my captor. “What is the point of this?”

The Hellbringer glanced back over his shoulder, but didn’t stop or fully turn around. “To make you a weapon. One that actually has a chance of defeating your brothers.” The rest of his words remained unspoken, but I heard them clear as day regardless. Are you daft?

My captivity was wearing on me, but I was confident I knew what I was doing when I retorted, “If you think you deserve Bhorglid’s throne so badly, then kill me.” I held my arms out.

At this, he did turn, surveying my position with no readable emotion in his voice. “Believe me, I wish I could.”

“You can. Pretend it was an accident,” I snarled, snow crackling beneath my boots as I moved toward him. He stilled, like a prey animal hiding from a predator, aware it had been seen but unable to overcome its basest instincts. When I reached him, I pulled my sword from its sheath in one fluid movement, pressing the hilt to his chest. With only inches between us, I lowered my voice to a whisper. “Tell them I fell on my own damn weapon.”

I stared into the eye sockets of the wolf skull, wondering what he saw in my face. I hoped it was the fury of my helplessness at being his prisoner, the rage of being treated by my enemy as if I were less-than. The Hellbringer made it clear he had no interest in helping me; he did it because his queen had ordered him to. I couldn’t change that.

He made no move to take the weapon from me.

“I’m more than aware you don’t want to be here.” I said every word slowly, deliberately. There would be no misunderstandings on my watch. “I don’t either, in case my escape attempt at the crack of dawn didn’t make that utterly clear to you. But I’m not going to stand for you treating me like mud under your boot. If you can’t manage to act like we’re equals despite your godtouch and my complete lack of magic, then this is where we part ways.”

For a moment we stood there, the only sound the wind in my ears. I didn’t move my weapon, leaving the hilt there, ready for him to take. He didn’t need it to kill me. But his queen had given orders to keep me alive, and the Hellbringer appeared to be her obedient servant, so I wasn’t truly worried.

“You’d die on your own out here.” His murmur, distorted through the mask, was still gentle somehow. “I estimate you’d make it an hour before you came crawling back.”

I shrugged. “You think I’m going to die in the Trials. So does it matter whether I die now—by your hand or the wastes’—or later?”

His shoulders stiffened, and despite the many layers he was wearing, I saw it. He’d tried to call my bluff, tried to make me admit I wanted to live more than I wanted to be rid of his sorry attitude. And in return I’d called his bluff right back.

Still, my heart sank a bit knowing the truth. He thought his task was useless, that training me was for naught. At the end of it all, he expected me to be nothing more than a lifeless body on the arena floor.

I smiled without humor. He was much taller than me, and at this close range I had to tilt my head back to look into the skull eyes of the mask. Was he afraid to move because he worried he would kill me if he did? It was entirely possible. With only a twist of his wrist, the blade would plunge through me irrevocably. There would be no time to get me to a healer before I bled out in the cold. And yet I felt like I’d pinned a moth by the wings with only my gaze.

He was listening. Caught in the truth. It made me all the more powerful.

“Here’s how this is going to work.” Gods be damned if he thought I was going to sit patiently and let him act superior when my life was the one on the line in the first place. “If you want me to continue on with you, there are two requirements. The first is that you convince yourself—even if you believe it’s a lie—that I am going to win the Trials. No matter what happens in the future, you have to pretend. Understand?”

I was met with only the rush of wind in my ears, and I took it for an answer.

“Good. Next, I need you to understand that you’re being an absolute asshole. I know it’s part of your natural charm, but I’m sick of it. So, Hellbringer”—I pulled my arm away from him, ignoring the warmth in my fingers and wishing the memory of his heartbeat wasn’t pressed permanently into my knuckles—“tell me something true.”

My last command seemed to bring him back to himself. For a long moment there was only stillness and silence.

“Something true?”

I nodded. “Don’t fling an insult at me. Don’t say something vague just to get under my skin. If this is going to work, then you need to be honest with me. So tell me something true.”

I waited with bated breath. The next moments would decide whether I followed him the rest of the way to the forge willingly or if he’d have to drag me kicking and screaming.

“Mira dropped us off so far because no one knows the true location of this forge but me.” His hands flexed at his sides. I wasn’t sure what it meant or what he was feeling beneath his monotone voice. “It’s abandoned.”

Not just any truth, but the one I so desperately needed to hear. The one that eased my suspicions. He wasn’t trying to kill me and leave me for dead out here, wasn’t trying to make things harder on me than they needed to be. There was a legitimate reason for our long trek.

My next thought soured my relief. He hates you so much, he couldn’t even tell you that until you gave him the chance to kill you and make it look like an accident.

I stepped forward, smiling thinly, and clapped a palm across his chest. “See?” I raised an eyebrow. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

I might have been imagining it, but I could have sworn a shiver ran up his spine before he turned and walked onward. “An hour and a half before we arrive,” he said gruffly.

Readjusting my gloves, I followed. If I’d known telling him to kill me would change his attitude so significantly, I’d have done it the moment I met him.

True to his word, we arrived at the forge after ninety more minutes of trudging through the snow.

It reminded me of the prison we were staying in. The architecture was obviously from the same time period—the slate-gray metal of the prison also made up the walls of the forge. The biggest difference was that the forge was built into the side of the mountain, woven into cave walls so seamlessly that, without studying them closely, the melding of metal and stone might have gone unnoticed.

We stepped through the open entrance, stretched wide like a gash against the mountain, and the world dimmed. I didn’t realize how loud the wind whistling in my ears was until it vanished. I could hear my own breathing again, the sound of my own thoughts like music.

There were no doors to close behind us and snow followed our footsteps inside. The ceilings were tall, held up by strong beams of wood reinforced with metal in some places. I wondered how the material survived the damp weather.

The Hellbringer moved to the wall and lit a lantern, pulling it from where it hung and handing it to me. When his gloved hand brushed against my own, a fresh patch of goose bumps appeared on my arm—and not from the cold. I staunchly ignored it. He gave himself his own light before gesturing for me to follow him.

I obliged without complaint. We hadn’t spoken any more on our trek here, but he’d at least glanced back every few minutes to make sure I hadn’t died in the snow behind him. Generous of him, I thought now as we continued further into the cave lined with evidence of man’s conquering. The pathways twisted and turned and I wondered how much of the cavern was man-made, carved away from the rock by godtouched.

“How long has this forge been here?” I asked as we moved into a bigger, more open part of the cavern. The ceiling was higher here and the temperature dropped. A quick glance upward explained it—there was a giant hole in the ceiling, exposing the clouded sky. A few flakes of falling snow drifted down through it, landing in a small pile on top of a giant firepit positioned in the center of the room.

The Hellbringer grabbed a broom leaning against one of the walls and began using it to brush the snow off the firepit. “Not sure. I found it ten years ago or so, long after it was abandoned.”

Why would there be a fully functional forge abandoned in the northern wastes of Bhorglid? I frowned and walked a circle around the edge of the room, studying the dusty equipment. The Hellbringer had obviously made improvements to what he found all those years ago—the wall had an impressive number of hammers and anvils hung on it, obviously curated by a careful hand. But the existence of the structure itself bothered me.

Especially because the Hellbringer had no reason to be wandering the Bhorglid wastes ten years ago, before the war even started.

“We’re in Bhorglid still, right?” I asked, glancing over at him. Faste was the only country touching ours, but their northern border didn’t extend as far. When the Fjordlands were first divided, no one had wanted to claim the desolate land. Callum and Arraya eventually brought it into Bhorglid, thinking the extended territory would increase their power. If we weren’t in Bhorglid, we had to be outside of the Fjordlands for it to be this cold.

He continued to clean off the firepit. “Where else in the world is this damn cold? Yes, we’re still in Bhorglid.”

It was difficult not to imagine a Hellbringer of ten years ago stumbling upon this place. It was impossible to tell his age now, but he couldn’t be much older than Erik. Was he a gangly teenager, taking shelter from a blizzard in the nearest cave he could find? Had the helmet been too big for his features back then?

A crackle made known the fire in the center of the forge was coming back to life. The Hellbringer retreated from the tiny flame he’d coaxed to grab larger logs off a pile behind him, carefully adjusting them with no regard for the heat.

“You’re a dancer.”

I jumped when he spoke, startled gaze shifting to his face. I’d been utterly absorbed by the fire, wondering what my brothers might be up to now that I was gone. “What?”

He didn’t look at me, merely continued working. “You’re a dancer. What kind?”

“How do you know that?”

He sat back on his heels and brushed soot and wood shavings off his gloves. “I spent a long time watching you. I was there in the tavern when you found out your friend had been conscripted. And when the other one was arrested.”

My mouth twisted at the realization. How many of my private moments had he observed with me none the wiser? “Without the mask, I assume,” I said drily, stepping forward to observe the preparations he was making.

The Hellbringer had swept the snow from the firepit into a large bucket earlier. Now, he moved it next to the fire, keeping it far enough away that it wouldn’t melt easily. It was obvious he knew this space well. None of his movements revealed uncertainty. Something unfamiliar swooped in my stomach at his confidence, his competence. “Good assumption.”

“Why even bother with the mask?” I asked. His next acquisition was a table on which he placed a large…anvil? I wasn’t sure what to call it. I forced my eyes to remain on his hands, nimbly arranging tools. If I looked at his face, he would notice the flush of my cheeks. A flush I didn’t want to think about or rationalize.

“So that I can do things like spy on you without being noticed. You think your bartender friend would have let the Hellbringer walk into his tavern without a fuss otherwise?”

“You do a lot of reconnaissance work, then.”

The Hellbringer shrugged as he took off his cloak and tossed it to the edge of the room. “Enough.”

“Why ask about my dancing if you already knew?”

He assembled materials on the table. I moved forward, curious. Hammers and long metal tongs. A small assortment of broken sword blades. I wondered who had taught him to forge in the first place. “I asked because it might help your fighting if you think of it as a dance. Many of the steps to some dances are similar to the footwork and positions. Like dancing, swordfighting uses every muscle. Both are underappreciated arts. As part of your training, we could dance a bit.”

I choked on a laugh. “Are you serious?”

He moved a strange contraption over to the fire, hooked a cast-iron bucket onto it, and then placed the broken blades inside. “I’m always serious.”

The inside of the cave was beginning to grow warm, and I discarded my own cloak, trying to decipher his new motive. The thought of teaching the Hellbringer to dance was utterly ridiculous—but then again, the man flowed like water when I tried to nick him with my sword yesterday. Maybe he wouldn’t be half bad.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I finally answered him. I gestured to the pot of melting steel. “Can you explain what you’re doing? I’d like to have an idea of what I’m getting into before I handle scorching-hot metal.”

He twisted sharply to look at me. “You’ll only be watching. I’ll be doing the forging.”

I scowled. “Nice try. If this is the blade I’ll be using to kill my brothers, then it will be made with my own two hands—no one else’s.”

“You think I’d sabotage you? There are far easier ways to do so than by tampering with your sword, especially since I’ll be spending the next month teaching you how to use it properly.”

“I don’t think you’re going to sabotage it.” Now, I frowned. Should I be worried about treachery? “I want to learn. I want to forge my own weapon. I don’t want you doing it for me.”

For a long, unbreakable moment, he was silent. Finally, he nodded. “Fine. But it’s backbreaking work. You can do all of it or none of it. No in-between.”

I smiled. “Let’s do this, then.”

He wasn’t wrong about it being backbreaking.

In truth, it was the most physically strenuous thing I’d ever done. But the budding truce hovering between us made it bearable. The once-aggravating Hellbringer turned patient in the face of a challenge, especially one that could be hammered into submission.

“Is this the secret to controlling aggression?” I panted, lifting the mallet in my hand to bring it down again on the newborn blade held in the tongs.

The Hellbringer, who was shaping a dagger on another anvil he’d brought over to the working area, huffed a laugh. “I suppose.”

My limbs shook and sweat poured down my face as I hit the metal over and over, the clang drowning out my thoughts. There was only the weapon in front of me, beginning to take shape, and the finished version I saw in my head. Each time the metal cooled, unmalleable once more, I returned it to the fire. The Hellbringer had kept it burning all day, steadily adding more logs to keep it hot.

I had no idea how long I worked before I needed a short rest. My clothing was damp with sweat, and while the smoke rose and drifted out the hole in the cave ceiling, I wanted to lie down in the snow and take a nap there. I put down the tools and stripped the heavy protective gloves from my hands. “I’m going to step outside for a minute to cool off.”

The Hellbringer grunted in response. I rummaged through his pack for more dried meat, snagging a couple of pieces and taking the waterskin. I could refill it with snow outside, leave it to melt by the fire so we’d have enough for the rest of the day.

The path to the entrance was winding but solitary. Impossible to get lost on my way back. I wondered whether I should be offended that he didn’t insist on coming with me. He truly believed I had no chance of escaping on my own.

As the late-afternoon sky came into view, I remembered again why he was right. The lightly falling snow must have continued through the day, settling into a thick crust over the powder. The mountains stretched for miles. The howl of a wolf echoed in the distance, and I sighed.

There was no war front here. Nor anywhere remotely close to here.

I relished the cold air on my face, though. My sweat froze quickly and I felt the hairs escaping from my braid stiffening. Best to be quick, then.

After draining the last of the water and refilling the flask with snow, I stepped into the shadow of a tree to relieve myself. By then I was ready to be out of the cold once more.

Without hammering steel resounding in my ears, my worries returned with a vengeance. Was Freja suffering in the prison? Was she still angry with me?

Was I still angry with her?

I sighed as I walked, uncertain of the answer. We’d both said things we didn’t mean, all because our lives were falling apart around us. I didn’t blame her for lashing out. I hoped she knew my reaction had been purely emotional, not vindictive.

I hoped I’d have the chance to tell her.

The light dimmed as I entered the forge and I traced a hand along the wall to keep from tripping. Were Frode and Jac worried sick about me? Or were they grateful they didn’t have to worry about keeping me alive in the arena anymore?

One question was louder than the rest: Would training with the Hellbringer honestly help me win the Trials? Or was I wasting time here when I could be planning with Frode and Jac to ensure we were united in our strategy for victory?

Every question vanished from my mind when I stepped back into the largest cavern and saw the Hellbringer—utterly shirtless.

My breath caught in my throat. I desperately hoped the flush warming my cheeks was from the heat of the fire and not a blush. Thank the gods he had his back turned—though whether I was more grateful to have a moment to compose myself or to get a good look at him unobserved, I couldn’t say.

Wouldn’t say.

He still wore the mask, but the expanse of pale skin that was his back glistened with sweat in the firelight. A jagged scar traveled over his right shoulder, carving into the flesh. A few moles stood out, landmarks on a map I found myself wanting to explore. Trace. Connect the dots.

I’d never really appreciated a torso before now. Not like this.

As he slammed down the hammer on the dagger blade he was shaping, muscles rippled in his arms and back. He was strong, but not in a way that boasted. It was honed strength, the kind derived from a life of hard work.

I was struck with the realization that Arne was a boy. The Hellbringer, on the other hand, was a man.

What if I…

I took a half step forward. An image appeared in my head as desire formed like a hunger deep within my gut. It would be so easy to trace a finger down the length of his spine—to make him shudder beneath my touch, to feel the bump of every vertebra and memorize it.

I blinked back to the matter at hand, shaking my head. Where had that thought emerged from? The Hellbringer was physically attractive, but he was also my captor. He represented everything I hated.

It’s your subconscious, I told myself, waiting for my racing heart to slow. You don’t know when you’ll get laid next, now that you’re not with Arne, so you’re redirecting your desire elsewhere. He just happens to be closest.

I shrugged the unwelcome thoughts away and returned to my own working space, hefting the tongs and returning the steel to the fire for another round of shaping. The blade was nearing completion, the closeness spurring me on.

We worked in silence for another hour or two. My focus stayed mostly on my own weapon, but occasionally my disobedient eyes wandered to the Hellbringer, unable to keep from tracing the lines of his chest or studying the trail of dark hair disappearing beneath the waistband of his pants.

I suppressed a grumble and turned back to my task. For someone who claimed his identity was his closest-kept secret, he certainly didn’t seem too concerned about revealing his body.

“You have a natural talent for this.”

I blinked back into the moment at hand to see the Hellbringer studying me. When I didn’t say anything, he nodded toward the metal clasped in my tongs, steadily cooling. “Your new weapon is coming along nicely.”

“It’s close,” I said. “I can’t get it to the exact width I want, though. I’m worried I’ll make it too thin and it will break.”

He set down his own equipment and ambled toward me. I swallowed thickly, begging my eyes to move upward to his face. The last thing I needed was to study him like a piece of artwork, a living sculpture, without a mask to hide my own expression.

I turned my gaze back to the metal in front of me as he stepped closer, examining it. “Here,” he said, reaching for the hammer I was holding. “Try this.”

But when I tried to hand him the tool, he shook his head. “No. Let me show you.”

Before I knew what was happening, he crowded behind me, far too close for comfort, and wrapped his hand around mine over the hammer.

I understood how forearms could be muscled. But how was it possible his hands, so much larger than mine, seemed to exude strength?

I inhaled sharply, trying to focus on the logistics of what he was explaining and not the hard planes of his body pressed against my back. He pulled my hands into a new placement, changed the angle, and murmured, “There. Now try shaping it like this.” He guided my hand, and together we began hammering on the sword once more.

The scent of pine, fresh snow, and smoke filled my senses. He radiated heat. Could he hear the thud of my heartbeat in my ears? Was he as acutely aware of the flush in my cheeks as I was? Or was this—being so close to another person you found terribly attractive—a normal occurrence for him?

He doesn’t find you attractive, my thoughts whispered. He can barely stand to be here with you. He’s only following orders.

I shrugged them away. That was fine. He was my captor, nothing more. And I’d seen a naked man before. This was nothing new. Not to mention he still smelled good after working for hours in the heat. I’m sure I smelled terrible.

And if he was affected by our closeness, I’d never know. Not with the mask on.

“Good.” He surveyed my work, releasing my hand and allowing me to continue on my own. “Keep doing that and you’ll be done in an hour. Then we can break for dinner.”

I examined my blade, which looked more refined from the technique he’d shown me. A hint of pride shone through my distraction. I was crafting a weapon with my own two hands. I didn’t have to be godtouched to make something new, something good .

I lost myself in the sword and my thoughts, but only for a few precious moments. Soon the memory of the Hellbringer pressing against me reared its head once more. The reasoning for his actions, for removing his shirt and encroaching on my personal space, was impossible to parse. Was he testing me? Trying to get a reaction from the prim and proper princess he’d been stuck with? Or perhaps he was making fun of me. The confidence in his voice when instructing me how to work the sword…

Gods, the number of innuendos interspersed with my lustful thoughts was absurd.

The knowledge didn’t keep me from wondering whether he’d be just as commanding—just as confident, just as capable, just as careful—in bed.

You hate him! I reminded myself. The refrain was on steady repeat in my mind for the rest of the afternoon.

The Hellbringer twisted the makeshift spit, evenly roasting the meat cooking over the fire. The too-big eye sockets of the skull mask made him an enigma in the dying light of day. A creature of the night, preparing to rejoin its brethren in the dark.

The finished blade lay next to me in the snow. It wasn’t sharp yet—he’d explained I’d need to grind the edges down in the morning, after we rested through the night—but I was too proud of it to let it sit in the forge, in the dark.

My blade deserved to see the light of day before it slept. It would stay by my side, this creation of mine, until it was ready to spill blood. Until it was sharpened and honed along with me, ready to win freedom for my people.

The Hellbringer didn’t agree.

“Leave the blade in the forge,” he’d argued when I picked it up, cradling it in my arms as we cleared the room, putting out the forge’s fire and preparing to move to the cave entrance for our meal.

“No,” I’d snapped. Maybe he didn’t understand the beauty of making something with your own two hands when they’d done nothing but destroy in the past. But I knew the blade was precious, and I wasn’t letting it go.

Now, he handed me a skewer of cooked rabbit, steaming in the cool air. I breathed in the smell, my growling stomach eager to begin. But I paused with my mouth open when he took his own portion and rose.

“What are you doing?”

The mask was impassive as always, but I could hear the raised eyebrow in his voice. “Going to eat.”

He trudged off, presumably to find a private spot to take off the mask and have his own meal. I chewed thoughtfully on a bite of my own dinner as I watched him disappear into the trees, then stood up to follow him.

I wasn’t certain of much, not when I didn’t know whether I’d live to see more than the next month and a half, but I did know the Hellbringer had a distinct advantage over me. He was the captor—the one with all the knowledge and all the power.

Seeing his face would more than level the playing field.

I stayed as far back and out of sight as I could, stepping in his footprints where possible. His stride was long enough that in some places my legs wouldn’t stretch far enough. But I figured it was more important to get to him without being noticed. I’d worry about returning to the fire after the fact.

The trees kept me hidden, shielding me with their shadows, and I crept along in near silence as the Hellbringer took his leave. About a quarter of a mile from the entrance to the cave, he stopped and sat, his back against the trunk of the nearest pine.

I remained unseen but wouldn’t for long. Carefully, I reached for the nearest weight-bearing branch and hauled myself up, climbing the tree until I was confident he wouldn’t see me. Frode and I had spent hours playing hide and seek as children, his godtouch forcing me to find more unique places to hide throughout the years. The tops of trees were among my favorites because they presented a convenient loophole: if Frode could hear my thoughts but couldn’t see me, then I technically hadn’t been found. I’d leap from pine to pine, forcing him to chase me down to win the game.

The skill would come in handy now. The Hellbringer was still far enough from me that I wouldn’t be able to get a good look at his face, though. I inched to the edge of the branch I was perched on, grateful the trees grew as thickly as they did, and clambered onto the neighboring pine. I repeated the motion again and again until I could see the mask from a distance. He still wore it: Why hadn’t he started eating?

I settled in, waiting for the precise moment.

The Hellbringer pulled one of the freshly made daggers from the sheath at his waist, flipping it over and over in his hand. I waited for him to cut the meat off the stick, use it as a makeshift utensil.

Instead, he flicked his wrist, sending it hurtling through the air straight toward me, to bury itself up to the hilt in the bark of the pine. Right next to my face.

The impact startled me, my sudden flinch sending a pile of snow from the branch to the ground below. I gritted my teeth, barely holding onto the branch. If I had spent any less time perfecting the skill of balancing in trees, I’d have fallen ten feet to the ground. “Fuck you!”

“Can I eat in peace, or will you force me to starve through the night?” he called, ignoring my expletives.

I wrenched the blade from the trunk and swung down from the branch, landing nimbly on my feet in the powder. “Why won’t you eat in front of me?” I demanded, brandishing the knife as I approached him.

“I’d happily eat in front of you if I could. But I won’t remove my mask.”

“Why not?” I resisted the urge to throw my hands in the air with exasperation. “Are you secretly hideous? Or do you truly believe you’re so important that your identity must remain a secret?”

He leaned back, and without being able to track his eyes, it was impossible to know whether he was looking at me or the green needles stretching out above him. “I have no idea whether you’d think I’m ugly.”

I pursed my lips to keep from interrupting. With a body like his, I highly doubted he was an eyesore. Then again, stranger things had happened.

“Can you imagine trying to live any kind of normal life having a Lurae like mine?” His voice was quieter now, almost pensive. “I kill people, Princess. Not just the bad ones. And not just when my country is at war.”

“You’re the perfect weapon.” Bitterness seeped into my voice, uncontrollable. I couldn’t stop it if I tried. “You could show up anywhere, anytime, kill them all. Leave no one the wiser. If all the witnesses are dead, why protect your face? If you’re the most powerful man in the world, why hide?”

Freja’s father had been one of the bodies left in the Hellbringer’s wake. She rarely spoke of it, preferring to grieve in her own time, in her own way. But I never forgot.

He stood, retracing his footprints in the snow. The sun sank further below the horizon, casting long shadows over the blanket of white. “Is the most powerful man in the world the one who can kill without a second thought?” he asked, looking away from me. “Or is it the one who holds his leash? The one who knows his weakness and holds it at knifepoint?”

When he set off for the cave in silence, I followed.