Authors: Amanda Hocking
Kennet was a few years younger than the King, and they were unmistakably brothers.
Both of them had darker complexions than Linnea, but not by much. Their hair was more
of a golden blond, and they had blue eyes that were dazzling even by Skojare standards.
Mikko had broader shoulders, and his jaw was a bit wider and stronger than Kennet’s.
Kennet may have been slighter and shorter than his brother, but he was just as handsome.
Like Linnea, both brothers had gills—nearly invisible until they breathed deeply.
I had seen them before, but I still always found it hard not to stare.
“Runa is my cousin,” Linnea explained brightly to the men, and motioned across the
table to her. “This is her family, although I am embarrassed to admit I don’t know
them that well.”
“No need to be embarrassed. We haven’t spent much time together, but I am hopeful
that we’ll begin to know each other better.” Mom smiled at her, then touched my dad’s
hand. “This is my husband, Iver. He is the Chancellor for the Kanin.”
“And who is this?” Kennet was across from me, and he nodded toward me.
“Sorry, this is my daughter, Bryn.” Mom squeezed my shoulder gently and leaned into
me. “I didn’t forget her, I swear.”
“No, I didn’t think you’d forgotten about her. I can’t imagine how anyone could.”
He grinned at me and winked, and I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to reply to that,
so I started filling a plate up with berries.
Mom eyed Kennet for a moment, then began to fill her plate too. “So how are you enjoying
Doldastam?”
“It’s a very lovely town. So much bigger than Storvatten,” Linnea enthused. “It is
rather cold, though.” She pulled her silvery fur stole around her shoulders then,
as if she suddenly remembered the temperature. “And we’re so far from the water. How
do you handle that?”
“As soon as it begins to thaw, I swim out in the Hudson Bay, which isn’t all that
far from here,” Mom explained. “The winters are much tougher, though.”
Dad reached over, squeezing her hand. Both my parents had sacrificed so much to be
together, but by leaving her family, her town, the very water she craved, my mom had
arguably given up more.
“How do you get by?” Kennet asked. He folded his arms on the table and leaned forward.
“How do you all occupy your time?”
“We all have our careers to keep us busy.” Mom motioned between the three of us. “I
teach elementary students, and that keeps me on my toes.”
“What about you?” His eyes rested on me again as I picked at a strawberry. “Do you
have a career?”
I nodded. “I do. I’m a tracker, and I plan to be on the Högdragen someday.”
“Tracker?” Kennet raised a surprised eyebrow. “Isn’t that a peasant job?”
“
Kennet!
” Linnea hissed, glaring at him.
“I meant no offense by that.” He leaned back and held up his hands. “I was merely
curious.”
“Forgive my little brother.” King Mikko looked at me for the first time since I’d
entered the room. His voice was so deep, it was like quiet thunder when he spoke.
“He has the awful habit of forgetting to think before he speaks.”
“No forgiveness needed,” I told him, and turned my gaze back to the Prince. “A tracker
is a job mostly filled by nonroyalty, this is true. But as my mother and father both
lost their titles as Marksinna and Markis when they were married, that makes me a
nonroyal. A peasant.”
“I am sorry.” His shoulders had slacked, and there seemed to be genuine contrition
in his aquamarine eyes. “I didn’t mean to bring up class distinction. I was just caught
off guard to hear that you had such a difficult job. I’ve gotten far too used to hearing
people describe their jobs as simply being rich, or on the very rare occasion they
may be a nanny or a tutor. It’s exceptional to find someone who wants to work for
something.”
“It’s very important to Bryn that she earns her place in this world, and she works
very hard,” Mom told him proudly.
“You seem like an intelligent, capable young woman.” Kennet’s eyes rested heavily
on me. “I’m sure you’re a wonderful tracker.”
After that, conversation turned to general banalities. Linnea and my mom talked a
bit about family members and old friends of my mom’s. Kennet interjected some about
the goings-on in Storvatten, but Mikko added very little.
Finally, when the banter seemed to run out, the room fell into an awkward silence.
“I very much enjoyed this brunch,” Linnea said. “I do hope you can visit us soon.
It can be so lonely in Storvatten. There are so few of us anymore.”
This was an understatement. The Skojare were a dwindling kingdom. By best accounts,
there were less than five thousand Skojare in the entire world—that was half of the
Kanin population in Doldastam alone. That’s why it wasn’t quite so surprising that
Linnea was related to us. All trolls were related, of course, but none so closely
as the Skojare.
In fact, Mikko and Kennet were actually Linnea’s second cousins, and if I understood
correctly, my mom was related to them as well, though more distantly. But that’s what
happened in a community that small when you insisted on royals marrying royals, on
purebloods with gills marrying other purebloods with gills to ensure the cleanest
bloodline possible.
“Yes, we’ll definitely visit as soon as we can,” Mom said, and while I was sure it
was convincing to them, I heard the tightness in her voice. She had no intention of
visiting in Storvatten.
After we made our good-byes, the footman escorted us to the door. I waited until we
were bundled back up in our jackets and walking away in the frigid morning air before
I finally asked my mom why she’d lied.
“If you enjoyed the brunch, and you did seem to really enjoy talking about Storvatten,
how come you don’t want to go back there?” I asked.
“I never said I enjoyed the brunch,” Mom corrected me, and she looped her arm through
mine as we walked next to my dad. “I do like to reminisce sometimes, it’s true. But
there are few things I enjoy less than spending time with stuffy royals. I know you
took that peasant comment in stride, but let me assure you, it’s much better being
raised a peasant than a royal.”
“I’m very happy with the way you raised me,” I told her. “I think you guys made the
right decision giving up your titles.”
“I know we did.” She leaned over then, kissing me on the temple. “And besides all
that, my life is here with you and your dad. There’s no reason to revisit the past.”
While waiting in the entryway of the Berlings’ mansion for Linus to get ready, I pulled
my phone out of the pocket of my jeans, checking it for the hundredth time that morning.
Ember had been gone for over twenty-four hours, and she hadn’t texted me yet.
Ordinarily, she wouldn’t check in with me when she was on missions. We would occasionally
text or call just to chat and see how things were going, so logically it made sense
that she wasn’t briefing me and giving me updates on her trip.
But I would feel better if she did.
“So what’s the game plan for today, teach?” Linus asked as he bounded up the curved
stairway toward me.
“I’m not your teacher,” I reminded him again, since he’d recently developed a penchant
for calling me
teach
. “I’m your tracker. There’s a difference.”
“You teach me things. It sounds the same to me.” He shrugged.
“Anyway.” I decided to move on, since it was clearly a losing battle. “It’s a nice
day out, so I thought I’d give you a tour around town.”
“That sounds great.” He grinned. “I haven’t really seen much outside of the walls
of my house or the palace. It’ll be good to get out.”
While it wasn’t exactly balmy outside, it’d warmed up just enough that the snow had
begun to melt. When we stepped out of Linus’s house, we were both treated to several
huge droplets of water coming down from the roof.
It was the warmest day of the year thus far, and the gray skies had parted enough
for the sun to shine through, so everyone seemed to have the same idea. On the south
side of town, where Linus lived and the palace and all the royal mansions were, it
was usually fairly quiet. But even the Markis and Marksinna were out, going for walks
and enjoying the weather.
I showed Linus around his neighborhood, pointing out which mansions belonged to what
royals. Astrid Eckwell was standing in front of her expansive house, letting her rabbit
roam in the carefully manicured lawn, nibbling at newly exposed grass.
She smiled smugly at me as we passed, and while I told Linus that she lived there,
I neglected to explain that her house should’ve belonged to my dad, if he hadn’t married
my mom and been disinherited. But he had, so everything that should’ve been his was
passed down to the Eckwells.
As we got to the edge of the south side of town, the houses began getting smaller
and sitting closer together. In the center of town, they were practically on top of
each other.
What little yard the cottages did have usually had a small chicken coop or a couple
goats tied up in it. It wasn’t unheard-of to see chickens squawking about on the cobblestone
roads or the occasional cow roaming free from its pen.
In the town square, I showed Linus all the major shops. The bakery, the general store,
the seamstress, and a few other stores I thought he might find useful. He was surprised
and somewhat appalled to learn that we had a taxidermist, but many Markis liked to
stuff their trophies when they went hunting.
“What’s that?” Linus pointed to a brick building overgrown with green vines, untouched
by the cold. A small orchard sat to the side of it, with apples and pears growing
from the trees. A swing set, a slide, and a teeter-totter were practically hidden
below the branches.
“That’s the elementary school,” I said.
“How are the vines still green?” He stopped to admire the building with its vines
and white and blue blossoms. “Shouldn’t they die in the winter?”
“Some Kanin have an affinity for plants,” I explained. “It’s a talent that’s much
more common in the Trylle, but we have a few special tricks in play, like keeping
these alive and bright year-round.”
The front doors were open, and he stepped forward to see that the greenery continued
inside, with the plants twisting up over the walls and on the ceiling. Then he turned
back to me. “Can we go inside?”
I shrugged. “If you want.”
“This is the most unusual school I’ve ever seen,” he said as he walked through the
threshold, and I followed a step behind. “Why are the floors dirt?”
“It’s supposed to take us back to our roots and keep our heritage alive. Some trolls
even choose to have dirt floors in their homes.”
He looked back at me. “You mean because we used to live with nature?”
“Exactly.”
Drawings were posted up on the walls outside the classrooms. In child’s handwriting,
the pictures had “My Family” written across the top, and then stick figures of various
moms and dads and brothers and sisters and even the family rabbit.
“All the kids go to the same place?” Linus asked, noticing that some pictures were
simply signed
Ella
or
James,
while others had the title of Markis and Marksinna in front of their names. “The
royals and the other town kids all go here?”
“Doldastam is really too small to support two elementary schools, especially when
so many Markis and Marksinna are changelings,” I said. “When we get older, we split
up, with the royals going to high school, and the others going to specialized vocational
training.”
That was in large part why my childhood experiences hadn’t been the greatest. Standing
inside the school brought back all kinds of unpleasant memories, usually involving
one Marksinna or another making fun of me for being different than the other kids.
Astrid had been the worst, but she was far from the only one.
If it hadn’t been for Tilda, I wasn’t sure how I would’ve made it through. She was
the only one I had by my side, through thick and thin.
But I found my thoughts drifting away from school to the King’s Games as I looked
down the long hall to the courtyard that lay beyond. Every summer we’d have the King’s
Games, which were sort of like a Kanin Olympic event, held out in the courtyard behind
the school. Members of the Högdragen as well as elite trackers and occasionally well-trained
townsfolk would compete in games of sport, like swordplay, jousting, and hand-to-hand,
which was similar to kick boxing.
I remember once when I was ten or eleven, and I’d gone to see Konstantin in the games.
Tilda had helped me climb up onto a fence so I could see, and we’d sat together, watching
with equal fervor as Konstantin knocked his opponents to the ground. Konstantin held
his sword to each young man’s throat until he finally yielded, and the crowd erupted
in applause.
“I almost thought that the other guy wouldn’t surrender,” Tilda had admitted breathlessly
as Konstantin held his hands triumphantly above his head.
“Are you kidding me?” I asked her, with my eyes still locked on Konstantin. “Everyone
always surrenders to him. He’s unstoppable.”
When I was a kid, that idea had filled me with wonder and admiration. Now it only
filled me with dread.
“Hey, that lady looks an awful lot like you,” Linus said, pulling me from my thoughts.
I looked over to see my mom standing in the doorway to a classroom, ushering children
out for a bathroom break.
“That’s because she’s my mom,” I said, and lowered my head, as if that would make
it harder for her to spot her adult blond daughter standing in the middle of the elementary
school hallway.
“Really? Let’s go say hi,” Linus suggested brightly.
“No, we’ve got a lot to see,” I said, and I turned and darted out of the school without
waiting for him. I couldn’t wait any longer if I didn’t want to risk talking to her.
“Are you mad at your mom?” Linus asked, once he caught up with me outside of the school.