He appeared to materialize out of thin air—the brown brick of the wall and the dirty yellow of the straw quickly shifting to his normal skin tone. Konstantin had his hands up defensively, but since he had been eavesdropping on me, I punched him in the arm anyway. Not very hard, but enough to let him know that I was annoyed.

He scowled at me as he rubbed his shoulder. “That was uncalled-for.”

“Why were you stalking me like that?” I demanded.

“I wasn’t. I just came out to talk to you, and then you were in the middle of something, and I didn’t want to interrupt the moment, so I just thought I’d hide out and wait for it to be over,” Konstantin said. “And it’s over now.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “That’s creepy. Don’t be creepy.”

“What was going on with that guy anyway?” he asked. “Is he your boyfriend?”

I ran my hand through my wet hair and turned away from Konstantin. “Never mind.”

“That’s just as well. I didn’t come out here to talk about him anyway.”

“What did you come out for?”

“Mia got a call from the palace.” He motioned vaguely behind me, in the direction of where the palace sat hidden among the trees a mile down the road. “Those friends of yours came in through the gate, so the Queen got word of it. She wants to meet with you and Ridley in the morning to discuss what’s happening.”

“Discuss what?” I asked.

“Probably why there’s like half a dozen people hiding out in Finn’s house, and how long everyone plans on staying here,” he said.

I nodded. “That makes sense.”

“I overheard Mia say that Ridley is the Överste now?” Konstantin asked.

“He was before I left. I’m not sure if he still is. I’m not sure about anything anymore . . .” I trailed off.

“Ridley’s younger than me, and he wasn’t on the Högdragen, so I didn’t really know him,” Konstantin explained. “But you know how small the tracker school was, so I knew of him. He always seemed like a punk kid with a chip on his shoulder. I didn’t know he had it in him to be the Överste.”

“That was a long time ago,” I reminded Konstantin. “He’s grown up since then. We all have.”

“Time does have a way of doing that to you.”

He was right, and I realized how much the last few months had changed us—me, Ridley, Tilda, and even Konstantin. It was strange to look back and realize how much simpler things had been before I caught sight of Konstantin following Linus Berling.

“That one moment changed everything and put it all in motion,” I said, thinking aloud.

Konstantin’s thick brows rose in surprise, and then, as if reading my mind, he said, “When you got into my car in Chicago. It changed the course of my life entirely.”

“Good. Your life needed a change of course.”

He smirked. “That it did.”

I turned away, staring out at the pouring rain around us. “Now where do we go from here?”

“I don’t know. But I can’t see anything good for you in Doldastam.” He shook his head. “Only death and destruction.”

THIRTY-EIGHT

gathering

An awkward night spent in Finn and Mia’s increasingly cramped house did nothing to ease the tension between Ridley and me. I wanted to talk to him, to find out what was going on, but it was impossible to get a moment alone. There was always someone—usually Liam—in the way.

I’d taken the floor in Hanna’s room, so Tilda could have the bed, and Ulla had gone back to Liam’s room again. Ridley slept on the couch, while Konstantin strangely took the stables, insisting he’d gotten used to sleeping anywhere.

In the morning, I awoke with an awful crick in my neck. The bandages on my side were a bit bloodier than normal, probably from pressing too hard on the floor, but it was nothing that I couldn’t survive.

First thing after breakfast, Ridley and I walked down to the palace for the meeting with Queen Wendy. We spoke very little on the way there, mostly commenting on the weather or the way the gravel stung my feet. Even though we were together for the first time in ages, the distance between us stretched further than ever before.

We’d been shown into the palace and left to wait outside the Queen’s office. Presumably, she had some business to attend to before she’d let us in. There was no waiting area, so we stood in the hall just outside the office.

Ridley leaned back against the wall, staring down the corridor with a look of boredom and annoyance. The top few buttons of his shirt had been left undone, the way they usually were, but I noticed that his rabbit amulet was absent. It had been his gift from the kingdom upon becoming Rektor three years ago, and I’d never seen him without it before.

I wanted to ask him where it was or why he wasn’t wearing it, but I doubted I’d get any kind of answer from him. Everything he’d said to me since he’d been here had been little more than a word or a grunt. It was like he couldn’t even bring himself to speak to me.

I did my best to keep my head up and my expression neutral, like this wasn’t breaking my heart all over again.

“One thing’s for sure,” Ridley said at length. “We can’t all keep staying at Finn’s house.”

“I plan on leaving soon anyway,” I told him honestly.

He jerked his head to look at me. “Why? Where are you going?”

“Doldastam.”

His eyes darkened. “You can’t go back there. Mina will have you killed.”

“I didn’t realize you even cared,” I replied wearily.

“What are you talking about? Of course I care,” Ridley said in an angry whisper.

I studied him, standing across from me. His hands were clenched on the chair rail that ran along the wall behind him, and his expression had softened. For one of the first times since he’d arrived in Förening, I could actually see the guy I’d fallen in love with.

“Do you?” I asked softly.

He stepped away from the wall and moved toward me. With only inches between us, he stopped, and looked down at me in the way that made my heart beat erratically. He had this wonderful, dizzying way of making the whole world disappear for a few moments, so it was only me and him, and all the rest of my fears and worries fell away.

Ridley opened his mouth like he meant to say something, but I’ll never know exactly what it was, because the Queen’s office door opened, interrupting us, and Ridley quickly stepped back from me.

Chancellor Bain leaned out into the hallway, hanging onto the door as he did, and offered us an apologetic smile. “Sorry to keep you waiting. But the Queen is ready to see you now.”

“Thank you,” Ridley said. He glanced at me from the corner of his eye and straightened his shirt, then followed Bain into the office.

I took a second longer to collect myself. Thanks in part to my much fairer skin flushing so noticeably it was a bit harder for me to return to normal after moments like that with Ridley.

The Queen’s office was smaller than I’d expected. The entire exterior wall consisted of floor-to-ceiling windows, which helped it feel a bit larger than it actually was. Two of the three interior walls were all shelves filled to the brim with books.

A large oak desk sat in the center of the room. Along the edges, vines had been carved into it, but that was a reoccurring theme throughout the room, with vines carved into crown molding and the frames around the window.

On the wall across from the desk were two large paintings—one of the previous Queen Elora, Wendy’s mother, and the other was of Wendy, her husband, and an adorable boy of about three years old, presumably their son, Prince Oliver.

When I came into the room, Bain sat cross-legged in one of the leather chairs in front of the desk, while Ridley preferred to stand, leaving the other chair empty. Wendy was standing with her hands on the desk, leaning forward to look down at the papers spread over it.

“Can you close the door behind you?” she asked absently, still staring down at the papers before her.

I did as I was told, and when I came back to stand beside Ridley, I got a better look at what held her attention so raptly. It was a scroll, with a quartz paperweight placed at either end to keep it from rolling up. Still, a portion had flipped just enough for me to see the wax seal at the top—a rabbit pressed in white wax. The symbol of the Kanin.

Trolls weren’t completely prehistoric—they would call or send e-mail, even text. It was so much faster than airmail, even though that scroll had probably been overnighted to a local town by FedEx and retrieved by a Trylle messenger. But we used scrolls for formal business, like invitations, gratitude, proclamations, and declarations of war.

I waited, holding my breath, to find out which one of those it was, although with Mina, I feared I already knew the answer.

THIRTY-NINE

proclamation

That Queen of yours has gone totally mad,” Wendy said finally.

“She’s no Queen of mine,” I replied without thinking, and Bain smiled in approval, causing his blue eyes to light up.