Forged by Magic (Falling for Fables, #1)(15)

I knew what was coming the second the words left my mouth. I’d walked right into what she’d say next.

She snorted. “It sounds like you two have a lot in common.”

I lifted a brow. “Did you just snort?”

Ignoring me, she turned back to Skoll, ruffling his gray fur. “He’s very cute and fluffy. So maybe you don’t have that much in common, after all. Where was he last night?”

“Out hunting. He likes to roam the nearby forest at dark.”

She stood, and it took me a moment to remember what I’d been doing. I hadn’t noticed when she’d first walked in, too focused on what Skoll’s reaction to her might be. Then she’d been crouching, so I hadn’t seen but…fate be damned, those trousers hugged the curves of her long legs, and that tunic accentuated a pair of perky breasts I hadn’t noticed in the shadowy night. And now that her hair was no longer plastered to her long, slender neck…

I frowned at myself. None of those things mattered. She was not unattractive, but she was Isveig’s murk, and appreciating even a hint of her felt like a betrayal to everyone I’d once loved.

I turned back to the bacon sizzling on the skillet above the fire. “You hungry?”

“Famished,” she admitted.

Feeding the enemy also felt like a betrayal. I hoped my parents weren’t rolling in their graves back in our homeland, the Kingdom of Edda.

Still, I couldn’t very well starve the girl if I wanted to keep her on my side, so I tossed some bacon and eggs onto a plate, along with some freshly baked bread from Milka’s shop down the road, and passed it to Daella before making a plate for myself. By the time I sat at the kitchen table I’d built myself a few years ago, she’d already finished half her food.

“So what’s the plan?” Daella asked between bites. “We’ve got four challenges to do, right? When do we get started?”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. First, I have to get chosen for the Games. The opening ceremony is today.”

Her chewing slowed, and strangely, I could have sworn a flicker of disappointment went through her eyes. “You mean, we might not even get to compete in these Games of yours?”

“Suddenly eager to help me now, are you?”

“Well, we have a deal. If you don’t get chosen, then what? Going to make me sleep curled up in the stables, after all?”

“Then you’ll help me out in my shop for the summer until the next ship arrives.”

“Hmm. I don’t really know anything about smithing.” She stabbed her last piece of bacon with her fork and popped it into her mouth.

I folded my arms and leaned back in my chair. “No, I suppose not. Your skill is more on the murdering side.”

Her fork scraped against her plate, and she glanced up at me with narrowed eyes. But then the tension vanished, and she smiled—fake again. “Keep talking to me like that, and I’ll give you a first-hand demonstration of just how skilled I truly am.”

“Careful. Skoll doesn’t take kindly to strangers threatening his master.”

“Ha. Then why is his tail wagging?” Delight danced in her eyes as she lowered her plate to the floor to let Skoll have the crumbs. He greedily licked them up, and his tail was in fact thumping away with wild abandon. The traitor.

“Skoll,” I called out.

He lifted his shaggy head, and I tossed my last slice of bacon toward him. With glee, he snapped his teeth at the air and gobbled it up, and then immediately went back to Daella’s plate to thoroughly inspect it for any crumbs he might have missed.

“Competition aside,” Daella said, lacing her hands on the table and leaning forward. She blinked her big brown eyes at me. “I have an exceedingly important question. How in fate’s name do you have water coming out of a spout?”

“Ah. I should have known you’d wonder about that. It’s called running water. We got it after one of the Games a few years back. The winner, our baker Milka, asked the island for an easier way to bathe. It gave us this, far beyond anything we could have dreamed up ourselves.”

Her eyes widened. “You’re telling the island gave you something as significant as that?”

“I told you,” I said. “It can give us anything.”

“Then why not ask it for something bigger? Something that could change the world?”

“Most people here don’t want to change the world. They just want to improve our lives bit by bit each year.”

“You could ask for the death of the emperor.”

I draped an arm across my knee and eyed the distance between her hand and my knife. I hadn’t given her one with her own plate for very obvious reasons. And now she was trying to lure me into saying I wanted the emperor to die. According to her laws, that would be worth my head. Isveig was a fucking tyrant.

“You can’t ask for the death—or even harm—of anyone,” I said carefully. “But especially not of someone who isn’t on the Isles. The magic only works here, like I said.”

“But that would solve all your problems, wouldn’t it?” she asked. “The death of Emperor Isveig?”

“You speak very casually when your words could get you killed.”

She raised her brows. “So you have heard about what it’s like in the Grundstoff Empire these days.”