“Daella!” a voice called out from somewhere near the merchant stalls. A familiar voice. A friendly voice.
With my heart in my throat, I turned toward the sound. Thuri was bounding toward me, her pale blue braid thumping against her back. She wore a smile and carried a tankard of Lilia’s famous ale. In her hands, it looked quite small.
For a moment, all I could do was stare at her, as if she were an apparition come to haunt me. How was she here? And where was Isveig?
“Daella,” she said again when she reached me. “What’s wrong? I thought you’d be happy to see me.”
The world seemed to shudder back to life around me, sights and smells and sounds all at once. It was then I noticed the screaming had stopped and the babble of conversation trickled through the festival like a pleasant stream. The merchants were cooking up some food for the evening, and the crowd was milling about as if nothing unusual was happening at all, let alone the arrival of a hostile empire. Even the ice giants looked relaxed, standing around and watching the festival with blatant curiosity.
I blinked. “I am, Thuri. Thank fate you’re alive, but…what’s happening? Aren’t those Isveig’s warriors?”
“Ah. No.” She grinned. “They’re mine!”
I clutched her arm. “Do you mean to tell me you took them from him?”
“I took everything from him,” she said with a conspiratorial wink. “After I got your letter, I decided it was time to do something about my brother’s monstrous rule, and there was far more support for me than I’d ever dreamed. It did not take much convincing for me to gather enough fighters to stage a revolt. They thought the Old Gods were making a statement by saving me. And so, here I am. Meet the new Empress of the Grundstoff Empire.”
I laughed, delight chasing away the tension in my body. “I knew you could do it, Thuri. The empire will be far better off with you in charge.”
“Apparently so. Even the elements are in agreement. Do you know that endless cloud finally dispersed? It drifted off as soon as I locked Isveig in the dungeons.”
“In the dungeons? It’s boiling hot down there.” I shook my head, still laughing. “Isveig will hate that.”
“Yes.” She looked me up and down, then glanced at Rivelin, who stood within an arm’s reach. “Which brings me to you. I thought you might need rescuing, now that it’s safe for you to return home. In my empire, orcs and half-orcs have as much freedom as the rest of us. But it looks like you don’t need saving after all.”
I motioned Rivelin closer and wound my arm around his back. The scent of leather, smoke, and steel flooded my senses. “I think I’m fairly happy with the idea of visiting Fafnir now and again, but I have a new home here. I’d like to stay, as long as they’ll have me.”
Rivelin smiled and tugged me into his arms.
A s Thuri and I caught each other up on everything we’d been through since that life-altering storm, Rivelin made the rounds to explain the situation to the villagers. Everyone seemed to accept the presence of the warriors, but he wanted to let Odel and Haldor in on the details.
Thuri told me most had survived our shipwreck. They’d still been close enough to shore for rescue boats to reach them quickly and return everyone to Fafnir. Isveig had been beside himself when he’d heard I’d vanished, ordering his people to search the waves day after day until he’d finally decided I must be dead.
At a lull in the conversation, Thuri motioned for one of her guards to come closer. He carried a weathered, leather-bound book in his hands. He passed it to me. It was buttery soft under my fingers, smoothed by the passing of time. The words Ris upp ur oskunni were embossed on the cover.
“Rise from the ashes,” I whispered.
“I found that in Isveig’s quarters when I took over. Recognized those words as the same ones from your dagger and realized it was an orc book. I thought you might want it.”
My heart swelled and I hugged it to my chest. Even though I no longer needed the book to learn how to bond with a dragon, just having this piece of my history meant the world to me. There was so much I didn’t know about who the orcs used to be, and I could not wait to spend an evening on Rivelin’s roof flipping through these pages.
“Thuri, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this.”
A hush suddenly went through the crowd, and a string of colorful curses soon followed. Thuri and I turned in unison toward a pack of dwarves leading two chained prisoners across the meadow. Viggo was in the front, jerking and growling at his bonds, but the dwarves held him strong. Gregor stumbled just behind him, his head hung low. Still, he wore no shoes.
“What’s happening?” I asked as Haldor and Odel approached, along with Rivelin.
Haldor scratched the base of his horns. “It’s the strangest thing. There was a dwarf ship in the nearest harbor, over from the Glass Peaks. They were meant to leave an hour ago, but the captain ended up coming into Wyndale asking about two prisoners he was told to put to work in their mines. I asked him who told him such a thing, and he said it was a voice on the wind.”
“And we just so happened to have two prisoners and nowhere to truly hold them.” Odel cut her bright eyes my way, her delicate wings flared wide. “Something tells me this is your doing, Daella.”
“Not me,” I said, understanding at once. “It was the island.”
And perhaps the Old Gods.
As we watched the dwarves haul the prisoners down the hill, pink lines dashed across the sky to signal the setting of the sun. It almost felt like a message from the island itself, as if it were trying to tell us this was the end of any threat against this peaceful land.
“What did they want, anyway?” Rivelin asked. “Did you ever manage to get it out of either of them?”
“From the Games?” Odel asked. “Gregor truly believed Rivelin was behind everything, but he was only looking out for himself. He hoped Rivelin would take the fall, and he could swoop in as the island’s savior. Everyone would love him, then.”
I scowled. “And Viggo?”
“Funnily enough, Viggo was the one who helped Gregor cheat to get chosen for the Games again. Viggo realized he would be the perfect decoy until he could turn suspicion toward you two.”
“To what end?” Rivelin asked.
“Viggo wanted to bond with a dragon. He thought asking the island would prevent him from becoming poisoned by the magic,” Haldor said. “When I asked him why, he said he thought it was the best way to defeat Isveig. He’d take the dragon, fly to Fafnir, and burn it all down.”
My stomach churned. A part of me yearned to do something similar. After all, Isveig had destroyed so much, and the temptation to meet destruction with destruction was intoxicating in a way that only few could understand. But Rivelin could, I realized, as I met his knowing gaze.
But there was a much greater part of me that tempered that desire. In an attack like that, it would be inevitable for innocents to get caught in the crossfire. The castle would burn and so would everyone in it. Besides, his sister had taken care of him now, and he would suffer far more stuck in those humid dungeon cells.
“Here’s one thing I still don’t understand. Why in fate’s name did Viggo burn all my parchment?” asked Rivelin.