Page 17 of Of Ash and Iron (Flame Cursed Fae #3)

Chapter 17

Maddy

I t's almost dawn when I emerge from my new home.

After spending so long sleeping in the healing rooms, I'm not even a little bit tired. And besides, who in the name of Freya's tits could sleep when there is an entire new building to explore?

I'm confident we've covered every inch of the Bear Wing, and I figure I have enough time to gather my things and move in properly before washing up and heading over for breakfast.

Sarra isn't in the workshop when I go in to get my large bag and the few clothing items I keep in there. I pack my bag carefully, leaving some books and drawings behind on purpose. It feels wrong to leave no trace of myself.

At that thought, I open the left-hand drawer of Sarra's workbench, my stomach tightening.

The mirror.

I gave it to Sarra to see if she could find out if it was broken, but she had no luck. It feels wrong leaving it behind.

Impulsively, I put it in my pocket. I already know I'm going to try it later. I can't help myself.

I shove the rising emotion and torrent of frustrated thoughts down before they can get a hold and make my way to my shared sleeping chamber.

I'm just stuffing all the other shirts and trousers I've rescued from laundry since I've been here into a large sack when Navi comes into the room, her short hair wet.

"What are you doing?" she asks. Thyrvi is out in the hall, so if she's come from the washrooms, I know she's seen her.

"Moving into the Bear Wing."

"So, you learned to control the bear?"

I turn to look at her. "I didn't need to learn anything. I just needed to embrace her."

Navi tilts her head. "I…" She trails off, and it's the first time I've ever heard uncertainty in her voice. "I don't agree with what they did to you."

Navi is all practical logic and honor, so I believe her. She wouldn't condone cowardice.

I don't know what she wants me to say, though, so I shrug and turn back to my chest.

"Inga has a bear."

I sigh. I know where this is going now. "Yeah. So she'll be my new roommate."

My stomach squirms at the thought, and I swear the mark on my arm is about to burn through my shirt. I feel ice prickle along my skin in response and will it away, relieved when it vanishes immediately.

"You should take care."

This makes me turn again. "I thought—" I start, but she holds a hand up to stop me.

"I was wrong. You are different, not useless. I hadn't considered that there could be a new way of being strong. Or that your strength might be so well"—she pauses, and I know she's trying not to look disdainfully at my round body and poor outfit—"hidden."

"You saw Thyrvi in the hall?" I say wryly.

"She's magnificent," Navi breathes, the look in her eyes confirming her awe.

"Well, she'll watch out for me when it comes to Inga. She's here to stay."

"Is it true you can speak with her?"

"Yes."

"How will she come to classes with you? She's so big."

"She won't. She'll roam around Featherblade, terrorizing rabbits and foxes, I imagine, while I'm studying. But she'll train with me in combat classes."

A fierce look of desire lights the fae's face. All Navi wants is to be one of the world's greatest warriors, at any cost. And now I have something she covets.

It's a strange feeling. And not unpleasant.

I finish shoving the last of my clothes into the bag and stand up. "See you around," I say, not quite sure what the appropriate farewell is. Navi has never been kind or even nice to me. In fact, she's been pretty nasty. But she's never hurt me, and she has just admitted she was wrong, which I can't help but respect a little.

"I regret underestimating you," she says quietly.

"All you've seen is my bear," I say. "You still haven't seen me fight or use magic. I might still be a shit warrior."

She shakes her head. "Any idiot can feel the power from that creature, and she's part of you. Has she made your magic stronger?"

I lift my hand, will it to freeze, and cause a flurry of snow to storm around my head in ribbons of glittering whirls.

Satisfaction floods me when her eyes widen.

She nods. "I thought so."

"You know, being nice to me now that I'm powerful isn't going to make me like you."

"I don't need you to like me."

"Then why are you apologizing to me?"

Her face twists. "I never used the word sorry ," she says, and she's right. "I just wanted you to know that I'm aware that I was wrong about you. For honor's sake."

I stare at her. She's not exactly normal either. She's all practical thought, no emotion. She has no friends here, and she doesn't seem capable of empathy beyond the honorific rules of what is right and wrong.

Maybe she's spent time feeling just as beleaguered in this world as I have.

"You can go now," she says, snapping me out of the sympathetic thought.

Maybe not.

My private bathing room in the Bear Wing is somewhat different to the shared one I was using before, and knowing there is nobody else in the building—or anyone else who can even see the building, for that matter—I take my time washing my hair and soaking in the warm water.

When I'm clean and dry, and as relaxed as I can manage, I settle onto the big bed and go to the gallery. I have to store what happened, both the good and the bad, so I head straight to the sculpting room.

Except as soon as I get there, I'm turning on the spot in shocked circles as the gallery whizzes and zooms around me. Abruptly, it stops.

I'm standing in front of the bear statue, and it is no longer frozen.

All my fear of what might be inside vanishes in a heartbeat.

It's Thyrvi.

The bear before me is Thyrvi, a perfect, beautiful, magnificent re-creation of her. Beneath the ice in my mind, all that time, she was here.

I reach out eagerly, and when I touch her fur, I'm taken instantly back to the healing rooms, to the gut-wrenching, soul-deep realization that she was a part of me. It is exactly as though I'm there, and I realize I don't need to store anything. It's all here, in her, already.

How, I have no idea. It doesn't stop me beaming at the bear, though. It feels right that she has always been here, in the same amount of measure that the wolf feels wrong.

At the thought of the wolf, I can't help myself checking the last statue before I go. The eagle.

It is still frozen solid, and when I tentatively reach out to touch it, nothing happens. So there's still one more secret locked in here.

Birds fly. Maybe—just maybe—the eagle is connected to earning my wings?

Filled with hope, I return to reality. I paw through the wardrobe in my new room and am delighted to find trousers and breeches, in both thick wool and supple leather, and cotton shirts in blue, green, and tan in various fits. There are also weapon straps, belts, greaves and thigh ties, piles of socks, shifts, and even chest supports and underwear in the drawers in the chest I find at the end of the bed.

A calm confidence is settling over me as I dress in clean clothes, then tie the leather wrap armor that used to belong to Brynhild around my middle. As I'm brushing my hair, I realize with a start that there are streaks of much brighter blue shot through it, a distinctive one at the front. I hold the lock, staring at my reflection.

I look a little like my sister. Only a little, but more than I did before. My posture is straighter, my middle still round but firmer. My clothes are decorated and bold, rather than befitting of a maid, and now streaks of my pale hair are the same color as Freydis'.

I go to my bag and pull out the mirror, holding it sadly. I want her to see my new blue hair.

The mirror turns to solid ice in my palm.

I gasp and drop it on the floor in sheer shock.

"Shit!" I've just frozen the infernal mirror!

I drop to my knees and scoop it up from where it is still sliding across the wooden planks. It hits the leg of the bed as I catch it, and falls open.

My breath stops.

Freydis .

She's there, in the mirror, frowning out of the small piece of glass.

"Freydis!"

"Maddy." She exhales, relief on her face.

"Freydis! It's really you?" She nods, and words tumble from my lips as I snatch the mirror up in my hands. "Why haven't you answered before? Why did you ignore me when you were here? Freydis, I have so much to tell you, and I'm so, so sorry it's me who ended up here, I really am, but the gods weren't wrong! They must have known?—"

"Maddy, stop," she says, and I'm so used to obeying her that my torrent of unchecked words halts. "I have seconds before I must go. Father is coming to Featherblade."

"Wh-what?"

"They need information from you, and Mother said you wouldn't help her."

I stare at my sister's face in the small mirror, trying to find some trace of the fae I grew up with. The fae who loves me.

"Will you not even ask how I am? Tell me you're happy I've survived so far?" My voice is a whisper, and the scratch in my throat is audible.

"I can see you are well. I do not need to ask," she says.

Knives pierce my heart. "Freydis…"

"Maddy, you need to look up Lord Vitsa and find out what it was he sold to the Earth Court last year. It is important. It will be in a ledger that Father got from the Shadow Court smuggler on his last visit to the palace."

"I can use magic now." I clench my jaw, refusing to acknowledge what she just said.

"When you've got the information, use the mirror to tell me, and please do it before Father tries to leave. It will be easier for all of us if he doesn't try to gain access to Featherblade again."

Again ? Has he already tried? Why would they let him in, just to talk to me? The arrogance of my family, and their continued desire to use me for nothing but my memory magic, causes a burn of rage to flare to life painfully in the pit of my stomach.

It's a physical feeling, as though a dormant part of me has just been awoken, a bonfire that has been waiting for a spark to finally light it.

"I was the first here to get my val-tivar ," I say. I will not acknowledge her words until she responds to mine. "That's my magical Valkyrie animal. She's a bear, and she's not like any val-tivar they've ever seen here before?—"

"Maddy, for Odin's sake, be quiet and look up the accursed information Mother and Father want!"

I snap the mirror shut, and when the tears escape my eyes, they are like liquid fire. My skin freezes instantly, and the tears with them. I lift my fingers, running them down the ridges of frozen sadness on my solid cheeks.

The fire in my gut leaps.

I will never give my family information on anything ever again.