Page 14 of Tree of Ash (The Runic Saga #2)

Torsten inclined his head, too willing to accept her proposal. “As you wish, Anara.”

Though Darien threw an annoyed look toward his father, he offered his arm to Larissa, as he had done for years.

All at once, Larissa could see it in her mind, the dozens of events where Darien had escorted her, starting when he was only a boy.

The look on Darien’s face told Larissa that he was remembering the same thing.

Surrounded by the rebellion, in the home of the giants, with the unknown fate of the Norn hovering over her, Larissa should have felt fear, but when she took Darien’s arm, it simply felt like home.

They faced the grand ash doors that stood just beyond Torsten and Skaei, upon which two large runes of welcome and hospitality had been inlaid with gold.

Anara walked beside them unescorted as they passed through the opening doors.

Dozens of voices bounced off the banquet hall walls.

They echoed against vaulted ceilings covered with illustrations that spoke of the old magic—Baldr’s mistletoe, Ieunn’s golden apples, Hel’s ribcage, landscapes encompassing dark forests, and misty mountains containing chaotic wilderness.

In the ceiling’s center resided a stone well lined with glowing golden runes.

Only then did Larissa notice that behind every image and intertwined within them all was the great Yggdrasil .

Larissa could have stared at it for hours, but the room itself had become unnaturally silent, drawing her attention away from the mural.

The guests had noticed their arrival.

Although everyone bowed to King Torsten, their stares fell to Larissa. Torsten gestured in triumph at the group behind them. “Might I introduce Princess Lovisa, Prince Darien, and Princess Anara.”

It was only muscle memory and years of etiquette lessons that prompted Larissa to dip into a deep curtsy. Darien too bowed, and although one might argue what Anara had done was technically a curtsy, it would have been a stretch.

“Let us be seated,” King Torsten’s voice boomed.

The guests found their seats around the long banquet table with such ease that Larissa wondered if they had been assigned.

Servants waited behind each chair, already pouring drinks from the pitchers in their hands.

She was guided to a seat closer to the head of the table, where King Torsten resided.

On his right sat the Speaker Skaei. On Torsten’s left sat Darien, whereas Larissa sat next to Speaker Skaei.

Anara took her seat between Darien and another man Larissa did not recognize.

At the sight of the man, Anara’s face hardened as she turned deliberately away from him.

Not all of the guests were from the kingdoms of Evrópa; many were Jotnar like Skaei.

The only physical markers that unified them were their abnormal height and deep amber eyes.

Some Jotnar, like the Speaker, had dark skin, darker even than that of the Smaragdians present.

Others were paler than herself, and some appeared tanned from the sun, but they all moved with an unearthly cadence.

With relief, Larissa found the dinner companion who sat to her right was none other than Halvor, who winked at her from behind his crescent-moon glasses.

“Well done, Princess,” he whispered.

Torsten rose from his seat, a glass in hand.

“My most esteemed guests from the kingdoms of Safír, Perle, Smaragd, Rubin, and Jotunheim , tonight is a night of celebration.” Torsten’s voice was the warmest Larissa had heard since he’d first been reunited with Darien.

“Tonight marks the turning of the tides. A new thread has been strung on the Norn’s great loom.

This is the start of a new era in which we will dethrone the False Empress and reclaim our lands, but talk of strategy and war is best discussed in the light of day. Tonight, we drink!”

The guests followed in Torsten’s lead in raising a glass and downing the ruby liquid within it.

Larissa followed suit. The drink, although chilled, burned her throat the whole way down and left the surprisingly sweet flavor of honey on her tongue.

Talk and laughter broke out up and down the grand table.

“Do you like the drink?” Speaker Skaei asked in her melodic tone.

Larissa cleared her throat. “Yes, but I don’t think I’ve ever had it before. What is it?”

“ Kvase .” She smiled around the glass as she took another sip. This close, Larissa could see that her amber eyes were rimmed in the same dark wine-red of the drink. “It is made from the blood of the god Kvasir mixed with the honey of the dwarves.”

Larissa’s mouth opened, then closed, unsure if the Speaker was serious.

In the seat next to Anara, a man snickered loudly.

His dark-brown hair fell in waves touching the top of his collar.

He threw back the glass filled with Kvase before cocking his gaze in Larissa’s direction.

“I would tell you not to worry about the dwarves, Princess, but here we sit among giants. Apparently, all the stories of old are true.”

Skaei’s delicate eyebrows were drawn into disdain for only a moment before she emptied her face of emotion.

“You are the same as you’ve always been,” Anara drawled, not looking at the man.

“It’s an honor you remember me.” He turned toward Anara. Light danced off the tiny ruby buttons running down his white jacket. “ I wasn’t sure after such a cold reception, Your Highness.”

“I remember you, General Ishaan.” Anara flashed him a set of canines that extended past her lips. “I just didn’t want to greet you.”

“Your tongue is still as sharp as your claws, Your Highness,” he returned, baring a smile filled with his own set of sharpened teeth. The servant refilling his glass pulled back in alarm.

Larissa jolted in her seat as the realization sunk in.

“You’re a shifter?” Darien leaned forward to look past Anara. Beyond Darien, Torsten’s lips turned downward before the king’s attention was drawn away by a man who had come to speak with him.

“I am, Prince Darien; perhaps the only Rubinian here, besides Princess Anara, who is able to access our ancestral galdr . Of course, my skills are nothing compared to hers. We have missed having your tactical advantages on many missions since you left us, Highness.”

“I’m sure you’ve been just fine.” Anara’s nostrils flared as she refused to make eye contact no matter how hard General Ishaan tried.

Larissa had never seen Anara look so uncomfortable, and Larissa had seen her when her insides had nearly become her outsides.

Nowhere, in either set of memories, could Larissa remember this man.

Had Anara met him after Larissa’s and Darien’s disappearance?

One glance at Darien beside her confirmed that he had no recollection of Ishaan either.

A moment of awkward silence pervaded before the arrival of food served on porcelain plates.

The normal buzz of conversation rose up once again, but beneath it Larissa felt the stares of the servants, the generals, and even the Jotnar who analyzed her in obvious fascination.

Everyone watched her movements, weighing her on the scales within their own minds, measuring her up against the prophecy they’d only ever heard in rumors.

Their whispers failed so wholly in their discretion that Larissa wondered if they wanted her to hear them.

“...it’s said that she will kill the Empress…”

“...I heard she has galdr that’s never been seen before…”

“...she’s one of the goddesses returned from Hel’s realm…”

Larissa focused on her own plate. Let the people think what they would. She needed their support.

“We are so pleased to have you returned to us, Princess Lovisa,” came a man’s voice from Larissa’s right. His face was familiar, but strange. She tried to look underneath the wrinkles at the man he would have been fifty years ago.

“Soren?”

“General Soren now, Your Highness.” He inclined his head, his thinning hair more evident at the top. “I represent our people here in the Vienám.” The wrinkled skin around his pale blue eyes creased. “Do you remember me?”

“You were training under my father’s advisors.” He’d been even younger than Lovisa.

“I was,” Soren said, his delight obvious that Larissa had remembered him. “I can’t believe I never realized who you were. All those years, the King and Queen claimed you as a ward. They guarded your secret well.”

“Perhaps too well,” another voice chimed in from the seat next to General Soren.

This man stood out from those at the table as severely as the Jotnar, although he was clearly not one of them.

His skin was light, but with warmer undertones than Larissa was familiar with.

His hair was more than dark; it was the color of pitch.

His dress clearly identified him as another general.

“How do we know for certain that this is the Princess of Perle?”

“Do you doubt King Tortsten’s ability to distinguish fact from fiction?” Anara’s voice dripped innocence, but her words were enough to chill those who heard them.

“No, of course not,” the man added, his gaze far too hostile to be polite. “Although it is sometimes hard to tell the truth when monsters disguised as friends walk amongst us.”

Anara’s and Ishaan’s faces tightened. Lightning flashed in Darien’s eyes. His gaze roved pointedly up and down the man’s stature. “Sometimes monsters look just like men, don’t they?”

Before he could do more than bluster at Darien’s statement, Anara asked, “How would you test her authenticity, General?”

“She could explain where she has been for the past fifty years while her people have bled under the hand of the False Empress.”

The table fell silent. Even King Torsten was pulled away from the man with whom he had been engaged in a deep conversation only a moment before. His eyes, like all of those who sat at the table, turned to stare at Larissa.

“And you are?” Larissa asked, more to compose herself than out of actual curiosity.

The man’s mouth moved as if he were chewing on something sour; begrudgingly, he tilted his head as if remembering his place. “General Aiko, Your Highness.”

“Aiko.” Anara twirled the stem of her glass between her fingers. “That’s a Diamantian name, isn’t it?”

Red splotches crept up the man’s cheeks. “I have renounced my commonwealth and the False Empress.”

“Naturally”—Anara tilted her head—“but you might want to rethink calling anyone at this table a monster in disguise when you originate from the home of the monstress herself. One might question your loyalties.”

The man started to rise.

“ Enough. ”

All faces turned, surprised the sharp voice had not come from King Torsten but rather from Speaker Skaei.

Towering over the table, she demanded their attention with a single glare.

If Skaei had appeared large before, she was enormous now, her head nearly touching the ceiling.

The calm countenance Larissa had grown accustomed to had all but disappeared.

Her eyes raged and burned as if on fire.

Galdr poured from her frame, seeping into all in attendance. The only guests that did not flinch from the onslaught were the other Jotnar who watched in comfortable silence, sipping at their Kvase .

“Might I remind you that you are all guests under the Jotnar’s care?

What do we care if you originate from Rubin or Diamant?

Are you united against the False Empress, or will you allow yourselves to be destroyed by your own pride as the AEsir were on the day of Ragnarok ?

” Skaei’s voice rose. “Those haughty gods believed they might rewrite history. They were consumed in fire and water. With their deaths came the destruction of our world, the Separation of our Nations, the reclamation of Ancestral Magic, oh yes, but at what cost?”

King Torsten stood, laying one hand at the Speaker’s elbow.

Like a flash of lightning, Skaei turned on the King.

All around the table, hands fell to waists where men clasped at their weapons.

But instead of attacking, the Speaker quieted, shrinking back into the composure of serenity.

As if Skaei’s galdr had flooded through Larissa’s system, every nerve burned a slow but steady fire that raced through her, strengthening her.

Her own galdr raced to the surface, but something was blocking it, keeping it just under her skin.

Larissa’s voice cut the silence. “General Aiko, you want to know where I’ve been? For the past year, I lived amongst the Safírians, taken in by the farmer Dal and his wife, Vern, and their daughter, Halla. I have witnessed first hand the abuse that you reference and have endured it myself.”

Knowing her words would not be enough, Larissa willed her mind to dig into that pit in her stomach where she could feel her galdr coiling within her.

She pushed past the resistance she felt and opened her hand toward the glass on the table.

Like tiny explosions, electricity crackled between her fingers as the glass flew into her palm.

She took a long sip of the fiery concoction to settle her nerves, well aware of the eyes that had widened at her nonchalant use of Perlian galdr that had not been seen for decades.

Setting down the glass, she flicked her fingers, extinguishing the remainder of the glow, but she still had one last card to play.

“Before that, I lived amongst the Norn.”

True, she couldn’t remember most of it, but they didn’t need to know that.

Aiko’s face paled, as did many others at the mention of the goddesses of fate. Darien smirked into his goblet as Anara grinned openly at Aiko, her teeth bared against his disdain.

“Does that answer satisfy?” Larissa asked.

Although he regained his composure, General Aiko could only nod. The arrival of the first course broke the tension. In time, conversation resumed down the table. Once she was certain no one was looking, Larissa allowed herself a small moment to release the breath she had held tightly in her chest.

This wasn’t going to be as easy as she’d thought.