Page 37

She had worked to keep the Flame Soldiers off her trail in Logi and had the patrols conveniently steer clear of wherever she had been staying.

Their father thought he had control over the manipulation of where his Heir was hiding, thinking he could bring her in whenever he grew tired of his games, but Bryn had worked for years to undermine him at every turn .

What the King saw was Bryn controlling her sister's movements— that she was excellent at it.

The reality was that she only controlled the external forces trying to corner Maude by setting them on another course while Maude carved a life out for herself.

The only direct interference Bryn had committed was pointing Maude in the direction of Sigurd, the earth vitki who helped other vitki train and hide in plain sight.

She had looked the other way when she heard what he had been doing with the fighting pits, but she was grateful that he had given Maude a productive, if not circuitous, way to channel the unrelenting anger that burned in her.

When her uncle had caught on to her last week and found out about the fighting pits, he had ordered a raid.

Bryn could do nothing to stop it as she couldn’t afford to give herself away, so she watched the innocent vitki either be slaughtered or arrested for her uncle to play with.

When Bryn had heard that a woman with Maude’s description had been arrested, she sequestered her so she could find a way to free her from the jail before the King or General found out.

Before Bryn could act, however, some rebels had blown through the walls with an exorbitant amount of finely ground wheat, and Maude had disappeared entirely from Bryn’s monitoring.

If the King and the General found out Bryn had been secretly sabotaging them since she rose into her role, they would have her killed; she had been playing a dangerous game for some time now in this palace.

Bryn had gotten close enough to her father that he had begun trusting her through the war meetings, discussing his grand plans, thinking that she was on his side, ever the loyal daughter and Lieutenant General.

As the second born in the royal family, Bryn was never formally announced to the public, which was typical in their kingdom, as she was to be groomed to lead the armies for her sister one day.

Maude had run away before she had ever been announced, so rather than face the embarrassment of admitting she had left her family, the King pretended she never existed.

He claimed that his wife had never produced an Heir for him before her untimely death.

Bryn was known around the castle only as the Lieutenant General; those who had been working in the palace ten years ago knew she was a daughter of the King, but they had been sworn into silence.

Shortly after Maude’s escape, her father had gone on a rampage and wiped out more than half the staff in his fury, having set the servant's quarter aflame in his rage.

In Bryn’s grief, she had been unable to process what he had been doing, having only had enough time to save some of her mother’s belongings before he’d destroyed her bedroom and all traces of her existence next.

Bryn flicked her fingers, closing the door on a gust of her wind, and then extended her palm to the smothering embers in the fireplace, lifting her arm in a sweeping motion to the ceiling.

The crackling sound of a new fire burned in the room and warmed the stone surfaces that had grown cold in the absence of the King's eternal flame that followed him.

She sank into a cushioned chair and let her head fall into her hands, letting out a long breath as she considered what her sister was doing in the Kingdom of Rivers. The usual feelings of betrayal and anger followed the thoughts of Maude, longing taking its place in her heart shortly after that.

Gods, she missed her sister.

When they were children, she and Maude had been so close that their mother had joked they were one soul that had been split into two bodies.

She had always felt a close kinship with her older sister, and she always felt like they would go through life together as one.

When Maude had left, it felt like she had taken a vital piece of Bryn with her over that wall that she could never seem to find in herself again .

She had mourned for their mother in those months after, yes, but also for her sister and herself. Ten years was a long time to be apart from someone you understood on a cellular level, and Bryn wasn't sure that she would even know her sister anymore if they ever met again.

Bryn breathed through her exercises to control the rise in the emotion she was feeling, noticing that the fire was rising with her. Bryn’s galder had always had to remain a secret in the palace, not because she would be considered a vitki , but because she was able to manipulate both air and fire.

The royal families were allowed to rule because of their gifts for both elements that ruled their kingdoms, but as Bryn was not recognized as a royal, her fire galder remained a secret.

She had chosen her air to be known because she had always been more proficient with her air galder.

It made her faster than other women her age and stronger than most of the men, as she was able to land her hits harder with the push of a bit of wind behind her.

Bryn sat in the silence of the empty war room long enough that through the large windows, the orange rays of sunset began streaming through.

Finally finding the strength to stand again and don her mask of the heartless Lieutenant General, Bryn smothered the fire she had created and flicked the doors open to find her soldiers still lining the walls with faces forward, unreadable.

She exited the war room and the emotions that had gagged her these last few hours behind, heading straight to the training pitch to work off the rest of her troubles.

Several hours later, long after the sun had set and the moon had risen high in the night sky, Bryn entered her quarters.

Dripping with sweat and exhausted from her training, she dropped her axe and shield on the floor unceremoniously and walked straight into the washroom where a giant bronze tub had been filled with water and had cooled hours ago.

She heated the water with half of a thought and stripped.

Her slim body had filled out with lean muscle in the years she had spent training with her sword and shield, learning to make them an extension of her arms. She had been envious of Maude’s curves when they had been growing up together, but Bryn had learned to love her body as she grew into it.

Her long limbs were as graceful as they were deadly, and her heart-shaped face gave her an air of brutal elegance.

Bryn’s hazel eyes matched her father's and were almond-shaped with a slight slant upward, completing the look of a savage cat ready to pounce.

She twisted her braided copper hair into another knot before she stepped into the scorching water, sighing as she sank further into its depths.

The most striking thing about Bryn’s face was the tattooed runes she had running down the left side.

She had woken one morning shortly after Maude had made her escape with three runes burned into her mind: thurisaz , nauthiz , and tiwaz .

She had told the palace’s seer to place tiwaz on her forehead above her left eyebrow— the rune for logic and leadership— nauthiz under her eye, the rune for willpower and endurance— and thurisaz— the rune for defense and intelligence, underneath nauthiz .

These runes were a daily reminder to herself of who she was and what she was fighting for.

Bryn loved her kingdom, and her father was destroying anything good about it with his iron fist. She undermined him whenever she could so that the people of Logi had a fighting chance to rise together and overthrow him, and these runes kept her mission at the forefront of her actions.

The King had not disapproved of them only because they could be twisted to support her future position as General .

She had a few seconds of blissful silence before her mind ramped up and directed itself back toward Maude and their mother, both lost to her on the same day.

Bryn disappeared beneath the surface of the bath and held herself there until her lungs burned for air and her mind had emptied. When she couldn't hold her breath any longer, she burst out of the water, gulping down fresh air before she settled again against the edge of the tub.

Thoughts of her mother and sister plagued her today more than usual with the news of Maude’s escape to the Kingdom of Rivers.

Accepting that she was not destined for a peaceful night, she exited the now tepid water and pulled her mother’s dressing robe around her, the sage green silk sliding over her warm skin.

Bryn made her way to the loose stone block that she had hidden her mother’s belongings underneath to save them from the King's destruction.

Pulling at the corner of the rug in her room and then the stone away, Bryn lifted it high into the air with her galder before she reached into the hole to withdraw the last pieces of her mother’s memory.

Bryn withdrew a few of her favorite books, trinkets from the Logi markets during the summertime, dried flowers that Bryn and Maude had picked for her one spring, and six of the leather-bound diaries her mother had always kept.

When Maude was young, she had tried to open the diary before to see what thoughts their mother had written down but found herself unable to open it. They both had torn at it, but it was as if the pages had sealed themselves off from anyone but Mama’s eyes.