Sea Witch(46)

“Come, then, to the docks. Let’s go.”

She skipped along beside him, her joyful urgency closer to matching his with each step.

“Where shall we go? Copenhagen? Stockholm? Oslo? Amsterdam? Brighton? Name the place you want to be!”

“Anywhere but here.”

“Then anywhere it is.”

The hero and the girl made it across the strait and to Rigeby Bay that day. The hero’s aunt, uncle, and cousin greeted them first with surprise—both at their arrival and that they’d come alone—and then with dinner.

His mother was the angriest when he arrived back at the castle two days later, wearing his cousin’s clothes—loose at the shoulders, short in the arms.

Still, his mind wandered to the time they’d had—Evie, Iker, and himself, across the strait—even as his parents dressed him down in the royal apartments, far from where any servant could hear.

Beach walks with hvidt?l (his first taste), his cousin’s seafaring stories, and Evie’s hair blowing over her shoulders in the bay’s famous wind. It was the first time they’d all been together since the day Anna died. His cousin drank enough hvidt?l to become wobbly on his feet; the hero stopped short of a full glass.

“You are twelve and an heir, what were you thinking?”

The three of them collecting sap for syrup in the deep forests, the shadows thicker than clouds under a knot of pine.

“You have duties in Havnestad to your people and your father. You are too old to be running off. Too smart, too important for such whims.”

Her grin, crumbs on her lips, at the queen’s insistence on butter cookies at every meal to fatten her up.

“Evelyn is a sweet girl, but you care far too much. Believe me when I say you will only get hurt.”

His cousin escorting the two of them home, ordering his minder down below as the three of them ran the sails, capable hands all.

“Nik, listen to me. I was young once. I know what it’s like to love someone you cannot have.”

The hero blinked then, eyes focusing on the queen. “She’s my friend, Mother,” though he knew the words sounded flat, not at all how he felt.

“I don’t think you should see her anymore. It’s for the best. It’s the only wa—”

“No!” the hero shouted.

“Let him be,” said his father, moving out from a shadow in the room. “She is a good girl, Evelyn. Neither I nor Nik nor you, my dear wife, would be here were it not for Hansa. They can be friends. Just friends. Isn’t that right, Son?”

The hero nodded. “Yes, Father.”





21


THE SUN HAS NEARLY SET, TENDRILS OF GOLDEN LIGHT spraying the beach, when it is time for the close of today’s games. The crowd is thrumming with hvidt?l and excitement for the finale—the rock carry championship. The brine of sweaty bodies mixes with the musk of the king’s summer wine and the fatty scent of fresh-fried torsk.

Annemette and I pick at the remains of a fruit-and-cheese plate—grapes, a few slivers of rye left alongside crumbles of sams? and Havarti that somehow escaped our lips. We share a cup of honeyed sun tea as well—something I badly need to help calm my nerves.

Iker and Nik are warming up in the inner circle, jogging paces down the course, a hundred yards long. With them are six winners of earlier heats, ready to run one more time today after winning two earlier eliminations to get to this point. The princes, of course, get to run just in the final round. Nik hates the special treatment, but it makes the people happy to see him run, so he complies.

The rocks that they must carry are all beached at the end closest to where we’re sitting. They are heavy, each roughly five stone in weight, though they vary in shape.

Little Johan Olsen is getting ready to compete again too. Nik was right: he is a sight. He’s so large, he rivals Nik in height and Iker in strength. The oldest of the finalists is Malvina’s father, Greve Leopold Christensen. His daughters sit across the arena from our side, Malvina ignoring us, her attention either on her father or the hand pie in her fingers. The other four competitors are fishermen I see on the docks in the morning—in their twenties and thirties, the lot of them.

“What happens if they drop the rock on their foot or some such thing?” Annemette asks, watching Nik practice his start by repeatedly hauling the rock to his right shoulder from a dead lift. She’s been nearly silent since the boys left us.

“They pick it up.”

“And then what? Drag themselves home on a broken foot?”

“Most likely.” I laugh, though it’s cruel. “Don’t worry, Mette. Nik has done this before. He won last year, in fact. He’ll surely have two good feet to dance with you tomorrow night.”

He’ll also, unfortunately, have two good feet to dance with the suitors who arrived an hour ago on a steamer so large it could rival the king’s. The docks were full of girls, their chaperones, and some parents. Every mark of ?resund nobility was accounted for from equal kingdoms to landholders of each shape—hertug, markis, greve, friherre, and the like.

It’s overwhelming, and now that they’ve filled the rooms of the castle with their trunks and demands, they’ve crowded around the king and queen on the royal platform. King Asger’s expression is unreadable, but Queen Charlotte is soaking up the attention, flitting among the ladies as if each is a tulip lovelier than the next. And Nik, as usual, is being a gentleman, repeating their names, kissing each hand, but still managing to steal some glances our way. Iker is being Iker—loud, grand, princely—but I can see in his eyes that his heart is not in it.