Page 31 of Cursed Crowns

Wren

Wren was marched through the kitchens of Grinstad Palace at sword-point by a pair of Gevran soldiers. The scullery servants fell out of their tasks to watch her go, muttering furiously among themselves.

“I don’t remember a girl being part of the order.” Harald cast a wary glance at his shipment of spice barrels as though he was expecting more to leap out. “Where in Great Bernhard’s name did she come from?”

“Must have sneaked onto the sled back at the port,” said the female soldier, Marit, who was currently pointing her sword against Wren’s spine.

“Foolish little ship rat,” sneered the male soldier, Vidar, who had been the one to confiscate her dagger and was now pointing a blade at her chin. “Bartering her life for a look inside the palace.”

The cook surveyed Wren with pity, taking in her frizzy auburn hair and crooked teeth. “Where will you take her?”

“To the courtyard,” said Vidar darkly. “Where all trespassers go.”

Wren didn’t miss the way the servants flinched. Even the kitchen tabby cat, who was slumbering underneath the stove, looked at her dolefully. The cook couldn’t look at her at all. “Bernhard save her,”he muttered before turning back to his workbench. “Come now, you shameless gawkers, there’s work to be done. Nina, it’s time to roast the boar. Didrik, fetch the leeks.” He clapped his hands, drawing the servants’ attention away from Wren as she was dragged through the kitchen and up a winding iron staircase that seemed to go on forever.

Wren’s panic reeled with every step. She had been a fool to think this would be easy, that relying solely on her magic would keep her safe in this sunless land. She should have prepared herself for those wolves, been smarter with the food in her pocket. The sand in her pouch. She had no choice now but to use the only plan she had left—the one she had been hoping to avoid.

“There’s been a misunderstanding,” she said, her voice lifting in the stairwell. “I came to Grinstad to see Tor Iversen.” She racked her brains for the name of the soldier’s hometown. “I’m a messenger from the isle of Carrig. I need to speak to him at once.”

The soldier in front of her—Vidar—stopped walking. “You know Captain Iversen?”

“Yes,” said Wren, all too conscious of his sword at her throat.

“How?” demanded Marit.

Wren was seized by a memory of their heady kiss in the library at Anadawn, how Tor had pressed himself against her with abandon, whispering her name against her lips like a spell. “We’re... neighbors.”

Vidar lowered his dark unibrow. “You do not speak like someone from Carrig.”

“And you look like a thief. Dressed up in a man’s coat and reeking of brine.” Marit twisted the sword at Wren’s back. “Where on Carrig are you from?”

Wren ignored the question, since answering it would reveal her lie. “Take me to Tor and I’ll explain everything,” she said instead. “He’ll knowexactly who I am.”

The soldiers exchanged a bemused glance. “I think our little thief is a liar, too,” said Marit.

“She thinks we came down in the last fall of snow,” snorted Vidar. “All that spice must have gone to her head.”

Wren wished for a sword of her own to knock these sneering soldiers down the stairs. She leashed her temper before it unraveled, fighting to keep her voice steady. “I want to be heard.”

“You will be heard,” Marit assured her. “We will take you somewhere you can scream at the top of your lungs.”

The soldiers continued onward, climbing up and up and up, until they reached a bright hallway punctured with huge glass windows and lined with life-sized statues. Wren let her gaze roam along the proud-faced kings and queens of Gevra, each one expertly chiseled in ivory stone. She searched for Alarik’s likeness among them, but the row ended with the statue of a man who shared the same sharp cheekbones and hooded gaze as the king—Alarik’s father, the late King Soren, who had perished in a hailstorm some years ago.

The hallway led to an enormous atrium domed with glittering windows. It was bigger than the ballroom at Anadawn Palace, with a magnificent split staircase bordered by a balustrade of glass icicles that led to the upper levels of the inner palace. The floor was made of exquisite white marble threaded with strands of blue and green, and in the center of the atrium a glass pianoforte sat on a sprawling bear-skin rug. Above it dangled the most decadent chandelier Wren had ever seen, each crystal droplet casting its own rainbow along the pale stone walls.It provided the only whisper of color in this strange and soulless place.

There were soldiers everywhere. Two at each doorway that branched off the atrium, and more lurking in the alcoves. Their wolves prowled about the atrium at their leisure, while the largest curled up on the rug underneath the piano.

“Tor!” Wren called out in a fit of desperation. “Tor Iversen!”

She scanned the soldiers’ faces, but none of them broke their stony composure to glance in her direction. If Tor was somewhere in Grinstad Palace, it was not here. That didn’t stop Wren from screaming his name, louder and louder, as she was dragged through the atrium at sword-point. Her voice echoed back at her from the glass dome, where the silver peaks of the Fovarr Mountains glistened high above her.

The soldiers marched Wren out of the back of the atrium and into a walled courtyard that had been cut into the icy heart of Grinstad Palace. They cast her satchel aside, then shoved her forward.

Wren’s heart thundered in the sudden silence. She looked around nervously. Vidar and Marit were backing away. They slammed the gate, sealing her in.

More soldiers gathered around the periphery. Some climbed the high wall, their boots dangling as they looked down on her. Wren had acquired an audience, but she had a feeling the true spectacle had yet to begin. Then she spotted the iron hatch to her right. She took a cautious step, and then another, until she was close enough to hear the growls rumbling behind it.

Rotting carp.

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