Page 97 of Dance of Kings and Thieves

Thorvald looked over his shoulder, grinning wide and viciously. With his lips curled over his teeth, the slightly longer points of the fanged canines gleamed in the sunlight. “As I was saying, we do not travel the same, land fae.”

A small boat peeled from the side of the large vessel. Two men aboard rowed toward the shore. Thorvald spoke a few joyful words in a language I didn’t understand as the lead man stepped out.

The newcomer had gangly locks braided in bone beads that dripped in sea water. His beard was split down the middle and through the center of his nose was a gold ring. His ears were pointed much like Valen’s and Thorvald’s, and his eyes shone in the vibrant red, but with a touch of gold around his irises. They gleamed like gemstones polished and smoothed from the constant ebb and flow of water.

“Thought I’d be taking the crown,” the newcomer said, laughing.

Thorvald bellowed a throaty chuckle. “Half surprised to see you still lying-in wait.”

“Aye. Another day and I’d have left you for dead.”

Grinning, Thorvald clasped the man’s forearm with a firm shake. “Harald, these land fae have a plan to retrieve the heir.” Thorvald made a quick gesture to the man at his side. “This is Harald, my brother and seneschal.”

Harald narrowed his eyes. “What’s it to them?”

“The heir is being held with some of their own,” Thorvald explained.

“You actually trust ‘em?” he asked in disbelief.

Thorvald hesitated, looking to me, then Valen. “I trust them enough. We’re to bring them a land witch of some kind to help us retrieve the heir.”

I ground my teeth together. If Thorvald addressed his boy as nothing butthe heirone more time, I’d devise a plan to fake the boy’s death and keep him here. Callous fathers and mothers were the sort of folk I had little patience for when such innocent young ones depended on us to keep them breathing, fed, and loved. Littles deserved a safe place, a safe family.

Harald snorted something wet and thick in the back of his throat, then hocked it out onto the sand. “Where’s this witch?”

“To the west,” Thorvald said. He pocketed his gold coin. “We will be crossing through the Undersea channels to reach her.”

Ari stepped forward. “You’re certain I can go where you go?”

I didn’t like this side of the plan, but understood the merit. Ari had offered himself up to join Thorvald in the journey to find the storyteller. The woman would recognize him, and Thorvald would hopefully think twice about betraying us.

Then again, he might gut Ari where he stood and disappear into the sea. It was not as if the fae seemed to hold much affection for his missing boy.

“Watch your back,” Valen muttered to Ari.

“Always, My King. Always.”

“I will be back before tomorrow’s moon,” Thorvald said.

I raised a brow. “Impossible.”

The sea king merely scoffed. “Meet us where the small sea opens to the endless waters.”

He had a strange way of speaking, but I knew enough to deduce he meant where the Howl spilled into the Fate’s Ocean. “Why there?”

“I do not want to be around this witch without the ability to drown her if she is as powerful as you say.”

Coward. I bit the word back.

Valen didn’t hold his tongue. “If you find her and harm her or my ambassador, I will kill you, then raise your son as a land fae.”

Thorvald’s lips curled. “No need for threats, land king. I’ll bring your little witch, and if she behaves, she keeps breathing. Meet us at tomorrow’s moon.”

He turned back to the sea with Harald before we could utter a reply. We watched in a bit of stunned silence as the sea fae joined his brother in the small boat, Ari in tow, and returned to the massive, black vessel.

The ship tilted, and with violent tides, the massive barque was soon swallowed up by the currents the same as it was spat out.

CHAPTERTHIRTY