Page 7 of Heart of Fire (Royal Ice Dragons #3)

DARE

I was tired from the work I’d done in the last village as I turned toward my childhood home, which was always the most exhausting place in the world.

I didn’t want to be seen returning home, so I shifted a painfully long distance from the village and walked the rest of the way. Edric didn’t even remember where he had found me; that had been a difficult bit of magic. We couldn’t take his memories, but we’d been able to enchant him not to care where I’d come from. Still, there was no point in tempting fate, which never seemed to be on my side.

As I passed under the lacy green fringe of the trees high above, I touched my palm to the front of the tunic I wore.

Against my hand, the fine soft fabric turned into the rough undyed fabric of a peasant’s work shirt. I almost stumbled as the boots on my feet shifted into a pair less fine.

The feeling of the clothes, the shape or the color of them, wasn’t drawn from thin air. They were spun from the memory of the place I’d come from. There was a faint scent that came with it, too, one that I’d almost forgotten until I conjured them: the scent of the laundry soap my mother used, made of goat milk and scented with basil instead of lavender or roses like the royal soaps. The scent washed over me along with a wave of nostalgia.

Not that I had appreciated how we had to wash our own clothes. Now servants did that for me. But once, I’d struggled to hang the heavy clothes up on the line alongside my mother. I’d hated those chores.

I caught a glimpse through the trees of the highest spires of the village, the twin spires of the temple. Kaelan had grown up following Audra, the goddess of knowledge—as much as Kaelan was capable of worshipping anything but himself. But I had grown up serving the twin spirits of Earth and Ice. We had been bound by the terrors of the Tithe Festival and comforted by the gods’ presence in our lives, though my sense that the gods mattered had faded.

Royals didn’t need the gods.

I had cousins in the mining village that I’d just flown over—in Lord Kustav’s territory—but I had grown up just over the border in Lord Baelur’s lands. Here our lives had been made from the earth where the ice had been peeled back, growing the crops that made our lord rich; Baelur had powerful magic that also came with formidable power.

Even Kaelan had to leave Baelur alive, and his equally vile son Mattias had only died because of the curse chasing Hanna. I had always dreamt of killing Lord Baelur and his son myself, but I had been denied my revenge.

I skirted wide around the village. They’d know I’d come back soon enough, assuming I didn’t enchant my face, and there should be no need. There were rumors about Lord Baelur siring children with unwilling villagers during the Tithe Festival, and I might be one of them, but he wouldn’t even recognize me. I could be myself back in these lands, among people who had known me since I was a boy.

“Good morning!” The voice was both far too chipper and far too close.

I startled, my sword in my hand as I turned to look for an enemy. An upbeat enemy, which had to be the worst kind.

The kid in the brush who had just spoken to me stared at me with wide eyes and an open mouth. He was carrying a fishing net, and one shoulder sagged low under the burden of the bucket. A fruitful catch then.

I sheathed my sword. Reluctantly. “Morning.” I would make no claim of its qualities.

I had been obsessing over leaving Hanna, and I was pissed about leaving her behind, and I was pissed that it bothered me. I was never in the mood for children, but I was exceptionally not in the mood today for nonsense.

Which probably made it for the best I’d left Hanna behind, since she was practically spun of nonsense. When I thought of her dancing eyes and stubborn smile, the way she looked at me like she knew a secret I didn’t…I stalked away through the forest.

“Where are you going?”

The kid was following me.

“Nowhere,” I said over my shoulder, before I lengthened my stride.

“Are you lost? Are you looking for the village?” He popped up at my side. I wasn’t sure how those little legs could move so quickly.

I would never understand why children always seemed drawn to me. Like cats, they seemed to sense my disinterest and feel some compulsion to win me over.

“No.”

“You’re going in the wrong direction if you’re trying to reach the river.” His tone was helpful in his high little voice. It annoyed me that he thought I was an idiot. Even though I shouldn’t have cared at all.

“I am not.” I’d already seen the river from high above: the curling, silver ribbon of frozen water on top, fast moving water beneath, filled with fish. And then there were the little inlets cut away from the river, thawed and heated with magic so that there was always a source of fresh water. Children played and fished there.

“My name is Dax,” he told me.

“Congratulations.”

“What’s your name?”

I turned to him in exasperation. “If you don’t know who I am, why are you even talking to me? Is it a good idea to talk to strangers? Particularly strangers that you met in the woods?”

He shrugged. “I’m friendly. And we’re going in the same direction.”

“Where are you going?” I asked in exasperation.

He gave me a wide-eyed look and a fake innocent smile and didn’t answer any more than I had.

I started to turn to walk away and then noticed the strange color of his skin. It had a faint bluish tinge, a glow. The kind that came from mining.

“You’re young for the mines,” I said.

I assumed that his parents were poor and desperate, or dead and he was desperate.

“No one’s too young for the mines now,” he said. “Lord Kustav needs everybody in there to meet the demand for bonesteel.”

Now that he said it, I thought that when I had flown near the mines, they had seemed to spread across more territory than they ever had, flush against the boundary between the lords’ territories. I had thought, at the time, of how there must be tension between Kustav and Baelur.

But I hadn’t thought about the toll of that growth, and something heavy settled into my gut. I’d spent too long among the Royals. They didn’t think about the toll of the bonesteel gathered for the army. They were never the ones dying in the darkness or of the sickness that came after, because bonesteel was toxic until forged and sealed.

As a child, bonesteel had appeared in all our fairy tales; it wasn’t until I left this land trailing Kaelan—and plotting to kill him—that I had realized how much the rest of the kingdom took it for granted. But I had grown up hearing stories of bonesteel daggers. The enchanted blades carried magic lent to the commoners in the army.

There were other stories, too, of daggers enchanted by the gods with higher magic. Kustav was rumored to have a set, passed down to him and hidden in some secret armory, that would always appear back in the scabbards of the bearer. If it were real, it would be mine soon.

I emerged at the top of a hill that had once felt much higher. I stopped dead. There had been a few cottages clustered together, but all of them were abandoned now.

Behind me, the kid was still talking, but my blood had begun to thrum through my ears.

I was home. So, why did I feel the same sense of panic now that I did as a kid when I once left this home behind?

I wasn’t sure how long I stood at the top of the hill, staring at the tumbled down cottage. But after a while, I started down the hill. I used to roll down this hill as a child when it seemed much longer. My best friend, Greia, and I had giggled as we rolled down it over and over again until the world spun dizzily, the clouds in the sky revolving.

When I’d come back to visit once, she tried to get me to play that same game again, to roll down the hill. I knew it would be a different game at the end, where she’d clear on top of me and kiss me. But I hadn’t wanted to pretend I was still the boy I had once been.

My childhood had ended quite abruptly the day my parents were murdered. And I didn’t think I would ever be ready to enter the next phase of life, the one that I knew Greia had hoped to join me in, until I had finally murdered the lord in turn.

But for now, he was useful to Kaelan. My revenge could wait.

As it had waited all these years. For Kaelan’s convenience.

Walking across the yard stirred a hundred small memories that I didn’t possess anywhere else. It was why I kept coming back here. There was nowhere else I still felt so close to my parents’ memory.

When I stepped into the doorway of the house, I remembered hearing the stir of the voices of my father’s friends as they talked about rebellion. As they talked about not being bound to the Royals. Their talk had gotten them all killed.

I thought of the hatred etched across my father’s face when he talked about the Royals, the way his kind eyes had hardened.

As I aged, I had grown to look much like he had in those days. His shoulder length blond hair had often been messy around his angular face. How would he have looked at me if he had known that I didn’t hate the Royals?

Kaelan, Thorn, and Hanna felt like my family.

I could just imagine that same look of hatred etched across my father’s face as he looked at me . What a betrayal, to call the Royals family.

But I couldn’t get Hanna’s face out of my mind. If my parents weren’t dead, if I didn’t have that complicated legacy, would I even hesitate to choose her over them? Over everything ?

The sense that I was being torn apart overwhelmed me. I gritted my teeth, my hands forming into fists, as I tried to fight down the emotions that threatened to overwhelm me.

I’d had to bottle everything up to stay alive in Edric’s castle. To serve Kaelan. To survive until I could return to the life I’d been meant to live.

And now I didn’t even want it.

I wanted her .

My grief exploded out of me, and I was moving before I even realized what I was going to do. I slammed my fists through what remained of my mother’s crocks and baskets, sending them flying to the ground. My breath came in desperate gasps. Almost sobs.

I flipped the battered kitchen table, throwing one of the chairs into the stone wall. This place was already a wreck anyway. I had promised I would come back and would restore our cottage, but I had abandoned it.

This was the place where my memories were most alive, but I was destroying what was left of my bond with my parents anyway if I chose Hanna, wasn’t I? So, I might as well destroy every physical connection too.

I picked up one of the wooden chairs and smashed it into the stone fireplace. Pieces of wood rained down on the hearth, some of them scattering on the moldy straw mat where I had slept at night.

“There’s that temper you never get to show among the nobles.” A voice came teasingly from the door.

And even as I knew the voice wasn’t right, my heart lifted, longing for Hanna. I turned toward the door.

Greia stood there, her hair in its long braid hanging over her shoulder. Her gaze was expectant, in contrast to her lighthearted tone. “Welcome home, Dare.”

“I was just…” There was no great explanation for what I was doing that I wanted to offer anyone.

She shook her head. “You don’t have to tell me. I’d assume you have a lot of pent-up rage from living among the Royals.”

She was still holding her arms out to me. “Now, come hug me and let me show you how grateful we all are for your sacrifices.”

Reluctantly, I hugged her, and she lifted her head to mine, expecting me to kiss her. I pretended not to notice her offered lips, turning my face away even as I hugged her tight.

“I was just thinking about the fun we used to have when we were kids,” I said.

“We’ve had a lot of fun since we were kids,” she reminded me, her voice still teasing.

Maybe I should have kissed her just to make her happy. But I couldn’t. I’d left Hanna behind with Thorne and Kaelan and yet, somehow I hadn’t really left her behind. She was still with me. Haunting my every step, filling me with a sense of longing, even though I shouldn’t want her at all.

Greia pulled back to search my face. I pulled back, too, knitting my arms over my chest and staring back.

“Why are you destroying things?” she asked, with her brows arched. “I thought you always wanted to restore this place. To build off it, add rooms.” She glanced around the small kitchen and living space and then up at the loft above. “To come home to us.”

“It’s complicated.”

“It’s not complicated,” she said. “Life only feels complicated to you because you’re not where you belong.”

“Do you think we could spend more than three minutes together before you begin to nag me?”

“No. Especially when you are so obviously, desperately, in need of nagging.” The smile she offered me was winsome, and once it would have stirred me to lean over and kiss her as she so obviously still wanted my kisses. Even after catching me in such an embarrassing moment. As much as I wanted to distract her, I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

I wanted to be alone at the cottage, but I didn’t want her in here with me, surrounded by the wreckage of my tantrum. “Let’s go down to the village. Have a meal and catch up.”

As we walked toward the village, she kept glancing at me as if she wanted to take my hand. But maybe she felt that something was different, because she didn’t try.

We walked past the little inlet. Steam rose off the water where the magic melted away the ice.

She tugged me closer to the shore and then abruptly scooped her hand in and splashed water at me. The water was warm, dotting my face and tunic before it began to freeze in the cold air.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

She pulled a face at me. “You’re no fun anymore.”

There was certainly a time that I would have tackled her into the water—when we would have torn each other’s clothes off and covered each other’s damp skin in kisses. It was the grown-up version of the play we once indulged in.

“No, I’m not.” I admitted.

“Do you remember the time we skipped out on our chores when we were kids? And came out here?”

Now that she mentioned it. It had been another thing I didn’t think about much. “Which time? You were always tempting me away from my chores and getting me in trouble.”

She let out a disbelieving laugh. “You were always getting me in trouble! When we saw your mother coming, we thought you were in so much trouble. But then she just waded in and splashed you.” She let out a laugh. “She played with us. Your mom could be so playful when you weren’t driving her mad.”

“She’d done my chores for me,” I remembered. Somehow, that act of playfulness when I expected to be punished had left me feeling as if I had to make it up to my mother, and I’d been far more diligent about my chores afterward…for a while. Every enticement to good behavior faded for me eventually.

Somehow, the memory felt more real, more vibrant now. As I was standing at the edge of the river, I could see my mother, with her skirts pulled up in one hand to keep them from getting wet, her shape bent over, scooping up handfuls of water. She’d been laughing. That’s how I wanted to remember her. Not the way I had seen her in those last moments.

But now every good memory was tangled up with how it ended. I couldn’t think of her alive without thinking about her dying.

Still. It was only when I came home that there was anyone who shared the memories of my parents.

They wouldn’t welcome me home anymore if I chose Hanna. Already, I felt a separation between us when I came home, as if they spoke a language that I used to be fluent in but had lost.

Greia’s knuckles brushed mine as we walked, but I still didn’t take her hand.

As we crested the hill, the familiar thatched roofs of the village came into view. My heart quickened, a mix of anticipation and nostalgia flooding through me.

“Do they know I’m coming?” I asked Greia. “Or did you keep it secret?”

A mischievous smile lit her face.

“I see.” It was time to brace myself.

“Dare! Is that our Dare?” Aunt Mara, her silver-streaked hair escaping from her bun, burst out of the house as if she had been waiting for me. Close on her heels was Uncle Finn, his weathered face split by a wide grin.

Finn looked so much like my father would have, if he had aged, that it felt like a blow. But I made myself smile through it.

Finn clapped me on the shoulder. “You look strong as an ox. Just like your father.”

“Thank you for bringing him home to us, Greia.” Mara’s eyes welled with tears that we both pretended weren’t there as she hugged me. “How long are you staying?”

“Not long. I’m going across the border—I shouldn’t stay too long on Baelur’s territory.”

“But tonight,” Mara said firmly, though she didn’t finish the sentence. “Oh, child,” she murmured, her voice thick with emotion as she cupped my face. “Your mother would be so proud.”

Eamonn, my cousin, the village blacksmith, muscled his way through the growing crowd. “Must you maul him, Ma?”

“I must,” she said, before Eamonn pulled me into a tight hug himself.

“I miss your father in this season with the greenhouses,” Finn said, eyes twinkling, “Remember how your father used to sing to the crops? He swore it made them grow taller.”

“He was always singing,” Mara said. “It was part of why your mother fell in love with him—gods know the man could barely talk about his feelings. But he could sing.”

Greia grinned, glancing at me as if she thought it was one more way I was like my father.

Each story was a balm, filling the ache of loss with warmth and fond memories. As I stood there, surrounded by familiar faces and the echoes of my parents’ love, a sense of peace washed over me.

I knew I couldn’t hold onto that peace for long, but I soaked it in for now.

“Now,” Eamonn said, throwing an arm around my shoulders, “the real question is, where will you be staying tonight?”

I knew this sense of warmth couldn’t last. They’d be a lot less impressed with me if I stayed. Sooner or later, they would realize I was a real, flawed man, and not a mirror of their memories.

But it was hard to let go of the last place that felt like home.