Page 26 of Ties of Starlight (Tethered Hearts #2)

I donea plucked another lily, her legs burning as they kept trekking up the incline. She added it to the crown she was weaving as she walked. The first life she’d had to do this, her crown had been a mess. She’d practiced weaving the flower crown, as Gytha had done so when she’d been taken captive to pass the time, but it had been haphazard and nearly falling to pieces. Now she was an expert at it. She didn’t even have to look at it anymore.

Their guards, also dressed as Night Elves, set the pace, one at the front and the other at the back. Asa and Frode flanked Idonea, keeping their eyes out for Star Lilies as well.

“I take it flower crowns were a hobby of yours as an elfling?” Asa asked, nodding toward the nearly complete crown in Idonea’s hand, almost perfect.

“I’ve certainly spent more than my fair share of time making them,” Idonea said.

She hated this hike. It was always excruciating.

She held the crown up in front of her; she only needed two more lilies and it would be complete. Magic thrummed in the petals and swelled every time Idonea added another bloom to their number.

The entire trip, Frode had been alternating between anxiously examining the trees surrounding the path for Moon Elves and examining Asa. Idonea didn’t know why Asa kept pestering her about her relationship with Nyrunn when she clearly had her own situation to contend with. Was she being willfully blind to Frode’s interest?

This was a first for Idonea. Being invested in someone else’s life this way, interested in seeing how all of this played out for the two of them, wanting Asa’s happiness as her friend.

“Oh, thank the heavens!” Asa huffed, doubling over when they spotted the peak at the top of their last incline. “If I’d known how steep this was, I wouldn’t have volunteered.”

It was funny. Idonea had spent so long among elves, never fully one of them, but they were the only people she could claim, and she knew exactly all the ways she never measured up. How she was more emotional, had less restraint, less poise, more violence, all written into the human part of her blood. How imperfect she was compared to their perfection.

But now that she was looking, she wasn’t actually so sure of that anymore.

Frode laughed, coming up to her, putting a hand on her shoulder as she huffed while they took a quick rest. “Dear Lady Asa, it’s alright. We don’t think any less of you. We all know you volunteered because you couldn’t bear to be apart from me for even a few hours.”

Asa straightened back up, hissing between breaths, “For someone who grovels at His Majesty’s feet any time he looks at you askance, you’re horribly arrogant. Not to mention delusional. ”

Frode laughed, clapping his hand to his chest. “You wound me so. Besides, I thought you were the one who deemed every word I spoke to His Majesty as sarcasm. I can hardly both be truly groveling and also sarcastic at the same time.”

Asa took another deep breath, putting her hands on her hips. “You’re underestimating yourself.”

Frode gaped, then turned to Idonea and gestured to her. “My Lady, do you hear this? Please, mark this momentous occasion, Lady Asa, I believe, has just given me an honest-to-goodness compliment.”

Idonea plucked another Star Lily and added it to her crown. “I’ll be sure to make a note of it.”

Asa shook her head. “Don’t encourage him!”

Frode opened his mouth again, but Asa was already charging up the path again having found sufficient motivation and strength to finish their trek. The guards resumed walking with them as Frode and Idonea followed Asa up the last incline and to the peak.

Idonea and Frode reached the rocky outcrop and they could see down below the crowd gathered, all ready to watch Nyrunn scale the cliff face. There was the distant, muffled noise of their cheering when they appeared. Asa just took a seat on one of the boulders, tilting her head back and catching her breath again. One of the guards passed her a waterskin, and she immediately drank deeply from it. Idonea plucked the last lily she needed from a plant at the inside of the peak. Frode took a seat on the ground beside the boulder, also breathing heavily. He leaned against it and ran a hand through his hair, the dark blue strands sweaty and sticking to his neck.

Idonea sat beside Asa on the boulder as she put the finishing touches on her crown before sliding it onto her head. She turned to Asa. “How does it look? ”

Asa handed her the waterskin. “It looks lovely, especially on you. It goes well with your hair.”

Idonea took a drink, fighting the urge to pull the crown off her head and keep fiddling with it until she received “perfect” as an answer.

It was fine. It was probably perfect, and Asa was just trying to be kind to Idonea instead of focusing on the crown. She could feel the magic humming in it and the magic in her and Nyrunn’s bond hum as if in anticipation for his arrival.

“Here’s what I don’t understand,” Asa said, gesturing to her and Frode and then the peak. “Why exactly did the Night Elves bring Gytha here in the first place?”

Idonea passed the waterskin back to the guards. “They wanted her to use her magic as a witch to find a way to prevent their magic from weakening during the day. She told them she needed to be brought to a high peak, close to the sun, to be able to do so. Legend says she was just buying time for Agnarr to come find her, and another version of the story includes her having a plan to use her magic to fight them off and throw them over the edge to save herself, but Agnarr reached her before she had the chance.”

“Huh. Well, as we can see, that didn’t really work out for them,” Asa said.

Idonea only hummed in response.

It was certainly a bizarre thing, sometimes, coming back again and again. One life, she’d died, and the next she’d come back and a whole other race of elves was wiped out.

If the same happened to the Star Elves, meaning there were no Star Elves left, would she and Olaug continue to return?

Of course, it wasn’t like there wasn’t still Night Elf blood in the world, but as a kingdom and a distinct ethnicity, they were gone, swallowed by their once upon a time allies, the Moon Elves. If they had their way, that’s what would happen to the Star Elves too.

“It’s probably because of this,” Frode said, gesturing to one of the seams of the leather armor. “Look how easy it is to stab through here. It’s no wonder they didn’t last if this was what they were using to protect themselves.”

Idonea laughed. “That’s not an accurate recreation of their armor. Their extinction was more complicated than that.”

“What did their armor look like then?” Frode asked.

Idonea only had a vague memory of it from her first life, after she and Olaug had completed the ritual, how the king had invited several neighboring kingdoms to see for themselves. The Night Elves had been among them, and she’d seen a few of their guards in passing, but she’d had bigger concerns on her mind than paying too much attention to them.

“It’s hard to describe because we don’t have the same materials they did. It wasn’t leather, not the way we have leather. I saw—in the history books about them—they had this rumored technique about how they would, in the creation of their armor, merge it with their shadows. It was seamless, molding to fit them individually and helping to cover them and preserve their strength even when they were forced to be out in the light. It looked like they were wearing shadows.”

That was as much as Idonea recalled. They’d been terrifying, frankly, and she was much happier as Gytha’s chosen just having Star Elves pretend to be Night Elves for this ritual.

“Idonea, I don’t think I’ve met anyone who knows as much history as you do,” Asa said, shaking her head with a laugh. “When you talk about things like that, it sounds like you were there.”

Idonea’s blood went cold. Had she given herself away? Had she gotten too lax now that Nyrunn had discovered the truth?

Frode nodded. “She’s right. You have a surprisingly, and I mean this in the best way, excellent grasp on foreign politics thanks to that. If I’m being frank, that’s never been His Majesty’s strength. He’s had to rely on his father’s advisors for any decisions in that area.”

Idonea forced herself to relax. She hadn’t really thought of that. Nor had she known Nyrunn had… well, any weaknesses, frankly.

“In all seriousness… May I be honest? No wit or sarcasm or groveling, as some might put it,” Frode said, directing a pointed look to Asa who raised her hands in a peaceful gesture.

“Of course, please, go ahead,” Idonea said.

He glanced around to see the guards had taken up posts by the inside of the peak, guarding the rear since Nyrunn had guards on the ground to protect him as he climbed. He still lowered his voice.

“You’re good for Nyrunn.”

Idonea had to take her laugh and smother it into a breathy, “What? If anything, all I’ve done is make his life more complicated.”

Frode sighed and then gave them both a stern look. “You can tell no one, especially His Majesty, I said any of this.”

“My lips are sealed,” Asa said. Idonea nodded as well.

“Has Nyrunn told you why he was always in the library, Idonea?”

She shook her head. “I assume it was because he was the crown prince and had many duties that required the materials there.”

“If that were the only reason, why would he have stopped when he became king and those duties only increased?”

He had Idonea there.

“Fine. Why did he start coming to the library?”

“To get away from his father, the court, and, well, everyone really. But mostly his father. It was quiet. When he needed to work, he could in peace, hiding in between the shelves. It was something of a sanctuary for him.”

“His father…” Idonea had spent so long fearing Nyrunn because of how much she’d feared both his uncle and father in her previous life, she’d never stopped to wonder if she wasn’t the only one. “Working in the library, I never met him.”

Not in this life. On purpose. Even if the risk was minimal, once Idonea knew about her past lives, she couldn’t risk any interaction with Hrorr that could give her away.

“Be grateful,” Asa whispered, clasping her hands together. “I was always terrified anytime he was in the room.”

Idonea remembered Hrorr as a young elf, like Nyrunn; he’d only just taken the throne after his and Bror’s parents were killed by Moon Elves. Poisoned. Everyone knew it was them, but there wasn’t proof, and she’d known Hrorr was waiting for her and Olaug to finish the ceremony and strengthen their people before declaring war so he could avenge them.

She was certain he was more upset by her failure in her last life than she was.

When she’d died, he’d been young. When she woke up, he was old with a young heir from his second wife.

“He put a lot of pressure on Nyrunn from the moment he was born. He was angry. Anytime I saw him, it was almost palpable in the air. Almost suffocating. Anyone would rather hide away in a dusty library than be around a man like him.”

Idonea stared at her hands and whispered, “Why are you telling me this?”

How did Nyrunn seeing the library as his escape have anything to do with her? Or make her a good wife for him?

“I just… think you should know how much the library meant to him. You—”

The sound of breathing reached them. Idonea leapt to her feet with Asa and Frode on her heels. A hand appeared, gripping the edge of the cliff, and then another. Within a second, Nyrunn was hauling himself up and onto the peak.

He pushed himself to his feet, huffing for breath as he brushed off his clothes. “I believe this is the part where I say give me back my wife.”

Frode held his hands up and backed away, and Asa did the same. Idonea took a step toward him as he caught his breath. She said, “I don’t think they’ll be putting up much of a fight.”

“All the better,” Nyrunn said, closing the distance between them and pulling her into his arms.

She wrapped her arms around him and she could feel the rise and fall of his chest as he continued taking deep, full breaths. She felt him gently brush a hand over her lily crown. “You look beautiful.”

She stiffened in his arms before she forced a slow breath out.

He was not Bror. He was not his father.

He was not just their extension.

Idonea needed to bury those ghosts if she was going to make the most of her time in this life. She couldn’t waste the time she did have with Nyrunn before her next, final, perfect life, constantly being haunted by his ancestors’ ghosts.