Page 49 of Twin Crowns

Wren flashed her teeth. “Don’t worry, soldier. I won’t be drowning dear Ansel in a river. I’m nothing like that horrid witch Mirella.”

Tor caught up to her in three easy strides. “I’m not sure I believe your tale about her lover. It sounds more like a bedtime story.”

“Bedtime stories have happy endings.”

“Not in Gevra. In our stories, everyone gets eaten by wolves at the end. We like to scare our children at the earliest opportunity. After all, a fearful child is a safe child.”

“That’s awful!” cried Wren, but when she glanced at the soldier, she found him smiling. “Oh, it was a joke. I didn’t know you had a sense of humor.”

“You have much to learn about the Gevrans, Your Highness.”

“Why don’t I start with you, then?” she said coyly. “Where do you come from? And how did you end up on these shores, protecting a prince who loves puzzles?”

Tor was silent for so long, Wren wondered if she had pushed their conversation too far, but then he fell into step with her again and they ambled onward, side by side. “I grew up on the isle of Carrig. It’s a place of rugged wilderness and little else. A full day’s journey from the capital of Grinstad, and that doesn’t include the boat ride. It’s... remote.”

“I bet it reeks of seaweed,” said Wren dreamily. She was thinking of Ortha, and suddenly missing it with the fullness of her heart. “What’s on Carrig?”

“Farms, mostly.”

“So, you’re a farm boy.” Wren slowed her walk, seized by the absurd urge to tell him about the animals of Ortha—how the first time she volunteered to help Banba during lambing season, she vomited on herself. Twice. “What kind of farm?”

Tor turned to look at her. “Do you really wish to know?”

“Yes,” said Wren, and the truth of it surprised her.

“A wild one.” She could hear the smile in his voice now. “My family are wranglers. We raise and train beasts. Snow tigers. Stallions. Foxes. Wolves. Ice bears...”

“Sothat’swhere the beasts come from,” mused Wren. “And I suppose then they are trained for your bloodthirsty king and his bloodthirsty wars....”

Tor’s voice changed. “It was not always that way.”

Wren stole another glance at him. “You don’t like it, do you?”

“It doesn’t matter what I like. I don’t live on Carrig anymore.”

“But you’re still a wrangler?” Wren could sense it in him—the keen-eyed observations, the careful watchfulness. In some ways, he was just like his wolf.

Tor shrugged. “A wrangler by heart, perhaps. But not by trade.”

The golden gates glittered up ahead, yet Wren found herself dragging her feet. If the palace guards spotted her out walking with the Gevran soldier, Chapman would come down on her like a thunderstorm. She shuddered to think how Rathborne would react. “Why did you choose to leave it behind, then? Did your father make you enlist?”

Tor slowed to match her pace. “My father had an accident ten yearsago. My mother cares for him, and my sisters run the farm in his stead. They are wranglers, too. But they are young, and the beasts can be brutal. The hours are long, and the terrain is tough.” A shadow crossed his face. “Some winters, there is barely enough food to get by.”

Wren stared at the soldier and saw him for the first time. Without his armor and his suspicion. He was a son. A brother. A protector. That earlier shiver of danger was fading into something else—something warm and fluttering in her stomach. Which was almost certainly worse. “So the wrangler went to war.”

“A wrangler is well suited to war,” he said, without much enthusiasm. “Our natural affinity with animals means not only can we tame them, we can fight like them, too.”

“Is that how you became Alarik’s most trusted soldier? Yournaturaltalents?”

He shook his head. “I trained with Alarik as a boy.”

“Wait.” Wren’s jaw dropped. “You’refriendswith the evil king?”

“He was different back then,” said Tor.

“Howdifferent? I hear he feeds his enemies to his tigers.”

“Grief changes people.”

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