He expected a smile, so I gave him one. But I still had to ask, “Root them out? Or kill them?”
“Don’t pretend you don’t enjoy handling a sword. I’ve seen the look on your face when you train.”
“There is a very big difference between dancing with a sword and taking a life with one.”
“You may hate me, Daella, but I know you hate the Draugr just as much—if not more. They’re dangerous. Their blood is poisoned by madness. I did conquer your kingdom, but only because someone had to do it before the Draugr burned it all down instead.”
I ground my teeth and glanced away, hating that he’d torn away my mask so easily this time. “Please. Anything but this.”
“I’ll free you.”
I whipped my head back around so fast, I felt dizzy. “What?”
“You heard me. Do this, and I’ll free you.”
The pounding of my heart echoed in my ears. I had been his prized prisoner for seventeen years. He’d told me time and time again he would never let me go. As one of the few remaining half-orcs in the world, I was too valuable. There were still so many ways he could use me.
To dangle this carrot in front of me, he must be desperate.
“Explain,” I said, blinking back the tears that threatened to fill my eyes. I refused to give him the satisfaction of seeing exactly how much hope ballooned in my heart.
I could be free, I could be free, I could be free.
“I just need you to do this one last thing for me, and I know you need more motivation than the ice shard in your hip. So here it is: I will free you if you do this. Rid the world of the Draugr once and for all.”
Rid the world of anything and anyone who could ever stand against him.
Because everyone else had given up.
For a moment, I couldn’t bring myself to speak. I’d abandoned hope a long time ago, accepting the reality of my future—the fact I would never have one. Eventually, Isveig would use the shard he’d embedded in my hip to transform me into an ice sculpture he would proudly display to the rest of his empire.
The last of the orcs, he would say. Look at how I conquered them.
But that hope—it was a seed budding in my hollowed-out heart that I could not ignore. I wanted to say no to him, but I couldn’t. I would do anything to gain freedom, and he knew it.
“Fine. I will search for the Draugr, but I won’t raise a weapon against them if I do locate where they’re hiding,” I said. He opened his mouth to argue, but I cut him off before he could. “You have dungeons. Lock them up, but don’t kill them. This is your chance to prove the rumors wrong and show that you aren’t scared of the flames.”
“Me, scared? What a ridiculous notion.”
I shrugged. “That’s what people are saying. And if I heard these rumors while being locked away in the tower, I can only imagine the words that pass through the streets.”
“You have no negotiating power here, Daella.”
“All right, then.” I turned to go. “No deal.”
He let me walk halfway across the Great Hall before he cleared his throat. “Wait.”
Got you. Smiling, I faced him once more.
He stood from his throne and ran his fingers through his thick head of pale blue hair, and for a moment he looked like the youthful boy of sixteen who had passed me sweets from the dinner table when his royal family had come to visit. I’d been a serving girl then, barely six years old. But he’d been kind to me.
And then three years later, he’d invaded with his army after his entire family, save his sister, was killed in a Draugr attack.
“All right, then.” He nodded. “I’ll lock the Draugr in my dungeons if you agree to find them. And then you’ll go free. But I’m only giving you two months. If you don’t return before then, I’ll assume you ran off, and I’ll be forced to use the shard.”
Which would mean certain death, as he could control it from afar. And still, I could not say no to this.
“Swear it,” I said, my heart pounding. Emperor Isveig was a lot of things, but an oath-breaker was not one of them. “If I do this, you won’t kill them, and you’ll let me go free.”
“I swear it.” He folded his arms. “So do we have a deal?”
Freedom. My heart clenched. “We do.”
O nly a few hours later, I stood on a ship with my mother’s dagger strapped to my side, watching the city of Fafnir vanish on the distant horizon. The ancient city was nestled in the lush hills along the coast, the stone-baked roofs reflecting the summer sun. Centuries ago, it had been built by orcish tools and orcish hands. You could see the remnants of our people in the architecture: towers that cut toward the sky in the shape of tusks, stone skulls decorating each corner of the battlements, and a portcullis made of bones. But now, only humans and giants roamed the winding streets.
It turned out Emperor Isveig had about as little patience as he had battle experience—he had done little of the fighting himself during his conquest. We’d set off as soon as I’d dressed in my gear—thick leathers with Isveig’s wolf sigil stamped on my shoulder—and packed a satchel of clothes and dried meat.
“I bet you’re glad to be out of your tower.” Isveig’s only living sister, Thuri, swaggered across the deck, the harsh wind tugging at her long, blue braid. She stepped beside me and closed her eyes, coming alive beneath the saltwater spray.
I smiled despite the unease threading through me. Yes, my blood sang in response to the elements of the Galdur—magic—that wound through the very essence of the outside world. And yes, my heart pounded with that desperate hope for freedom. But a haze of gray wrapped around me, drowning that hope in darkness. We sailed for the Isles of Fable, which no one had ever been able to find. We were just as likely to get swept into the Elding, the near-constant storm that churned through the rough waters of the Boundless Sea. It was one of the many reasons the Isles of Fable had never been found. It was too dangerous.
As if the ancient Old God of Thunder heard my thoughts, lightning spiked through the distant, dark skies.
Thuri frowned. “We’ll have to sail south if we want to avoid the Elding.”
“The long way around, then,” I said in a chirpy voice. “Just warn me if we’re going to get rain, so I can get below deck in time.”
She gave me a look. “I don’t understand how you can be so happy about this.”
“It’s like you said. I’m glad to be out of my tower.”
“He’s sent us to our deaths, and you know it.” Her face clouded over as she gripped the wooden railing. “Better ships than this have been lost to the Boundless Sea, and the Elding.”
Surprised, I took in her dark expression. “Why would he want to get rid of you? You’re his heir.”
Thuri frowned, glanced over her shoulder at the warriors—a collection of giants and humans—stationed around the deck, then shook her head. “In case we survive, I cannot say.”
For the first time in a long while, I looked at Thuri—really looked at her. And I recalled laughing with her in the kitchen when she’d wanted an extra dessert, back when we’d both been no more than six and eight. I thought of all those letters we’d exchanged before her brother had invaded. We’d written each other in a secret language that only we understood, gossiping about meaningless court romances. I remembered her bright smile that I rarely saw anymore. Even her eyes carried sadness now. The recent rumors were about more than Isveig’s fear of flames. They also told a tall tale about Thuri and how all those years ago she’d tried to stop her brother from killing every dragon and every orc he could find.