“Surely you can protect her?”
“I don’t know.”
Ylva moaned. “Tell me they won’t harm her.”
“No, but they might send her away.”
“Exile?” Ylva threw her arms around her daughter. “I won’t allow it. We waited too long to have her back with us. I won’t let her be taken from me again.”
Nina watched Hanne’s mother cling to her daughter in fright and didn’t know what to do. She could feel danger speeding toward them. She was good at anticipating threats, she’d had to be, but this one had seemed to come from nowhere in the fragile body of a boy.
A knock sounded at the door. It was a young man in a drüskelle uniform. Nina recognized him from the prince’s retinue in the ballroom.
“Joran.” Brum waved him in. “Joran is bodyguard to the prince.”
“Is he all right?” asked Hanne.
Joran nodded. His training was too good for him to twist his hands together or fidget, but Nina could see he was nervous. “Sir,” he said, then hesitated. “Commander Brum, the royal family has ordered the presence of your daughter and her maid.”
A soft sob escaped Ylva. But Brum simply nodded. “I see. Then we must go.”
Joran cleared his throat. “They were specific in their invitation. Only the girls are wanted.”
“Djel, what is this?” Ylva said, tears streaming down her cheeks now. “We can’t let this happen. Hanne cannot face them alone.”
“I’m not alone,” said Hanne. She was trembling slightly, but she rose. “I have Mila.”
“Change your dress,” said Brum.
She glanced down at the bloodstains. “Of course. I’ll need a moment.”
Ylva grabbed Hanne’s arm. “No. No. Jarl, you cannot let her do this.”
“She must.” He laid his hand on Hanne’s shoulder. “You are my daughter and you will not hang your head.”
Hanne lifted her chin. “Never.”
The look in Brum’s eyes might have been pride.
Hanne and Nina hurried to their rooms to change their clothes.
As soon as they shut the door, Hanne blurted, “I didn’t mean to.”
“I know, I know,” Nina said, already choosing a new gown for Hanne, chaste ivory wool, with none of the glamour of the sparkling amber thing she’d gotten to wear for such a brief time. She selected a similarly drab brown gown for herself.
“Do you think the prince knows?”
“No. Maybe. I don’t know. He was in no condition to think straight.”
“My father—I thought he saw.”
“I know.”
Nina couldn’t believe that Hanne had healed the prince before Brum’s very eyes without his knowledge. But people saw what they wanted to see. Brum would never believe his daughter had been born an abomination.
Hanne pulled on the gown. She was shaking. “Nina, if they test me…”
There were Grisha amplifiers kept as prisoners at the Ice Court, people gifted with the ability to call forth another Grisha’s power.
“There are ways around that,” said Nina. She’d learned them from the Dregs. Jesper Fahey had covered his arms in paraffin so that he could play in high-stakes card games where Grisha—able to manipulate everything from a shuffle to a man’s mood—were not welcome. But there might not be time to deploy those techniques. Nina didn’t know if she could protect Hanne. They were trapped on the White Island in the middle of the Ice Court, and if Hanne was revealed to be a Grisha, there would be no path open to escape. “If they find you out, they’ll put you in prison to face trial. That will give me time.”
“Time for what?”
“To make a plan. To break you out.”
“How?”
“I learned from the best in Ketterdam. I’ll find a way.” She held Hanne’s gaze. “Never doubt it.”
Joran was waiting when they emerged. He led them out of their chambers and back to the palace through a series of confusing passages. Nina didn’t think she’d be able to make her way back. Maybe that was the point.
“The prince is well?” Nina asked.
Joran said nothing. His shoulders were rigid. Nina knew the drüskelle, especially those still in training, were fastidious about maintaining protocol, but this one seemed even more tautly wound. He was tall, even by Fjerdan standards, but he couldn’t be more than sixteen or seventeen—still a boy, made even more boyish by the fact that he wasn’t permitted to grow any kind of beard.
“How long have you been the prince’s bodyguard?” she asked.
“Nearly two years,” he said curtly.
Nina and Hanne exchanged a glance. They weren’t going to get much out of him. Nina reached for Hanne’s hand; her fingers were cold.
They arrived at a door flanked by royal guards and were escorted into a sitting room layered in cream and gold cushions. Its vast windows looked out over the gleaming expanse of the Ice Bridge, which linked the White Island to the outer ring of the Ice Court, and they could see soft flurries of snow gusting past the glass in the gray afternoon light. Nina had assumed they’d be brought before some kind of royal tribunal, but other than the servants in their royal livery, the only other person in the room was Prince Rasmus, propped on a sofa embroidered with gold brocade.
“It’s not much of a view, is it?” said the prince. He was pale and fragile as an eggshell, nearly the same shade as the heap of white pillows upon which he was settled. There was a blanket over his legs, and a cup of tea in his hands.
When Hanne said nothing, Nina murmured, “I was just thinking it was very grand.”
“Only if you never want to see more of the world. Sit.”
They lowered themselves onto two plush chairs that had been designed to ensure that no one would ever be seated higher than the crown prince.
“Leave us,” the prince instructed the servants with a wave of his hand. Joran closed the door behind them and stood at attention, his gaze fixed on nothing at all. “I trust Joran with my life. I have to. We have no secrets from each other.” Nina noted the slight clenching of Joran’s jaw. Interesting. Maybe some secrets after all.
“Joran is two years younger than I am, barely sixteen, but he is taller and stronger than I’ll ever be. He can carry me up a flight of stairs as if I weighed no more than kindling. And to my great shame, he’s had to do so more than once.” Joran’s face remained inscrutable. “He never shows emotion. It’s quite comforting. I’ve had more than my share of pity.” He studied Hanne. “You look nothing like your father.”
“No,” said Hanne, a slight tremor to her voice. “I take after my mother’s people.”
“I don’t seem to take after anyone,” said the prince. “Unless there was a goblin somewhere in the Grimjer line.” He leaned forward and patted Hanne’s hand, then Nina’s. “It’s all right. I’m not going to let them exile you. Go ahead and pour yourselves tea.”
Hanne still looked terrified, and Nina felt only wary as she served first Hanne then herself. It was hard to indulge in much relief after everything Brum had said.