But I wanted to avoid Kanin bloodshed as much as possible. These were people I had grown up with and trained with. They were good people, and they were going to end up dead.

FIFTY-EIGHT

fortified

Shit,” I swore as I lowered the binoculars.

Baltsar stood up, wiping the mud from his clothes, and turned back toward Finn and Konstantin. “We’re going to have to take on everyone all at once.”

“We can’t do that,” I protested. As I got up, Ridley reached out and took the binoculars from me. “Innocent people will get hurt.”

“You act like all the Kanin are saints and everybody else is a sinner,” Konstantin said harshly. “Those Omte soldiers down there are just following orders, the same as the Kanin. And you don’t have any qualms about killing them.”

I shook my head. “It’s different.”

“It’s different how? Because they’re not like you? Because you didn’t grow up with them?” Konstantin shot back. “Proximity doesn’t make some people more worthwhile than others, Bryn.”

“That’s not what I’m saying. I don’t want to kill anyone, but the Omte volunteered for this fight,” I argued. “The Kanin were manipulated into it.”

“You don’t think the Omte were manipulated at all?” Konstantin arched an eyebrow. “You said yourself that weird things were going down in Fulaträsk.”

And I had. I remembered how the Omte Queen Bodil had seemed eager to help Konstantin and me stop those who had gotten her nephew Bent Stum tangled up in the mess. She’d agreed to aid us in our quest to stop Viktor Dålig.

But later that night, her right-hand man Helge had done a total about-face. Not only had he refused to help us, he’d banished us from Fulaträsk in the middle of the night.

It all seemed very odd, and now it seemed even more suspicious that the Omte had aligned themselves with Viktor and the Kanin. Bodil had wanted revenge on Viktor one moment, and then she was apparently helping him the next.

The Omte were known for being finicky thanks to their short tempers, but this was ridiculous even by their standards.

“Fulaträsk?” Baltsar asked, looking from Konstantin to me with a quizzical expression. “When were you in Fulaträsk?”

Both Konstantin and I had failed to mention our excursion to the Omte capital city, since it hadn’t been relevant before. But now, with the Omte so involved, it definitely wouldn’t hurt for everyone to know.

“Finn.” Ridley stood up, extending the binoculars toward Finn. “You should come see this.”

“What?” Finn rushed up the hill, nearly knocking me over, and he snatched the binoculars from Ridley. “Oh, hell.”

“What?” I demanded.

“My sister is with them.” His shoulders slumped. “I just saw her go into a tent with Viktor Dålig.”

“But she’s not with with him,” I said, almost insisting it when I looked at Baltsar and Ludlow, so they wouldn’t think less of her. “Ember would only work with him to bide time. And this is what I’m talking about. We can’t just storm Doldastam and hurt innocent people like her. We need to get them out.”

“Most of the ‘innocent’ people down there would kill us on sight.” Konstantin motioned toward the town. “They think we’re the villains. So how do we decide who is safe and who dies?”

“Let’s stop this before it gets too heated.” Baltsar stepped in between us, raising his hands palms-out toward us. “It has been very a long day, and pressure is high. It’s getting dark, so we should camp out tonight, and we’ll come up with a plan of attack in the morning.”

Below us, most of the troops were already setting up camp. We’d driven most of the day, and then spent the last four hours making the arduous walk toward Doldastam, through crowded forests and rough terrain. Everyone was exhausted, myself included, but that didn’t stop the adrenaline from surging through me.

Baltsar managed to calm us down, and Finn agreed to a meeting at dawn with Mikko and all the captains. While everyone made their way back down the hill, I lingered behind to walk with Konstantin, who still moved more slowly because of his leg.

Ridley paused, looking back up at me with concern in his eyes. I nodded my head, motioning for him to go on ahead without me. He let out a heavy sigh, but he left me to argue with Konstantin on the side of the hill

“Why are you fighting with me so hard?” I asked him in a hushed voice.

“Because you’ve got to get the fantasy out of your head that you can ride in on a horse like some white knight and vanquish the dragon and save the kingdom,” he replied wearily.

I stopped. “I don’t have that fantasy.”

“You do,” he insisted, and he stopped so he could look at me.

It had started to rain, and it was just above freezing, so the rain felt like ice. We stood on the side of the hill, among the trees that smelled of damp pine. The light was fading, thanks to the expanding cloud cover blotting out the setting sun, but I could still see the steel in his eyes.

“There is no such thing as a good war, Bryn,” Konstantin said. “Good people will die. Innocent lives will be destroyed. And in the end, one unfit person will still hold the crown.”

“But Mina is evil, and she needs to be stopped,” I argued. “How do you propose we do that without war?”

“She does need to be stopped, and you’re correct that this is probably the only way to do it,” he agreed. “But that still doesn’t make it good or easy or bloodless.”

FIFTY-NINE

kingdom of ice

The flaps to the tent were frozen shut when we awoke, and when I kicked them open with my foot, ice shattered to the ground like broken glass.

My tentmate had found herself another place to sleep, and Ridley had taken residence in my tent. Despite our exhaustion, we had stayed up for a while, trying to concoct a plan to save our families from the worst of this war, but eventually we succumbed to sleep, our bodies pressed together for warmth, as the rain beat down on the canvas.

While we were sleeping the temperature had finally dropped enough to freeze, but the rain must’ve kept on for some time. When we emerged from the tent, the sky was beginning to lighten, casting us in an ethereal blue glow, and everything around was covered in a thick layer of ice.

Overnight, the world had turned into a frozen wonderland. Branches were encased in ice, their early buds trapped in crystal tombs. As difficult as it was getting around on the ice, there was something oddly magical about it. The way it changed the landscape completely.

Mikko held court in a large round tent, the sides of which now looked like panes of glass. He stood inside, hunched over a table with a map of Doldastam spread out on it, wearing a dark gray fur coat. Someone had made a pot of tea over a fire, and he sipped from a chalice as he studied the map.

The large hill kept our armies and the fires mostly hidden from Doldastam, but the Skojare tower guard cloaked any smoke or light that might be visible. Still, the guards’ powers weren’t very strong, so we kept the fires to a minimum.

Ludlow, Finn, and Baltsar were already in with him when Ridley and I arrived. None of them were speaking, so it didn’t seem like we’d missed much.

“It’s damn early for all this,” Ludlow muttered, pouring himself a cup of tea.

Darkness only lasted for roughly six hours this time of year, and the plan before we’d gone to bed was that we wanted to hit Doldastam as close to daybreak as possible. Well, that was the old plan, at least. I was hoping to change it.

“If we go around—” Finn began to say, but I cut him off and stepped closer to the table.

“Sire, I would like to make a request,” I said, and Mikko slowly lifted his head to look at me. “I would like it if you waited to launch the assault against Doldastam and allowed myself and a few others to sneak in past the walls so we can get people out before the bloodshed starts.”

Mikko straightened up, resting his solemn gaze on me. “I know that you’ve grown up here, so you have friends and family to consider. But you can’t evacuate half the town, at least not without everybody noticing.”

“I’m not asking for half the town,” I persisted. “I’m asking to get my parents out, and Ridley wants to get his mother.” I motioned to Finn. “Finn’s parents and sister are there.”

Mikko’s gaze hardened, and though I wanted to go on and on listing people I’d like to get out of there—like Tilda’s parents, her sister and brother-in-law, and her three-year-old niece, or Kasper’s family, which had already had enough loss. Even Linus Berling and his parents, who had been nothing but kind, a rarity among royals.

I knew Mikko’s fear. I would evacuate the whole town if I could, but that wasn’t an option. But I’d be damned if I left my parents trapped behind those walls. Tilda had told me that the town was already turning against them, and I wouldn’t let them die there.

“Do you know a way that you can get in without being seen?” Baltsar asked, his curiosity clearly piqued.