Page 62 of Court of Treachery

Motioning her companions to a quieter corner of the camp, she recounted the bare minimum of their encounter, omitting how she had told Dimitrius of her heritage, his admission of stealing the Dragonheart—and that earth-shattering kiss. They were too overwhelming to mention. Even skirting around the edges of it left a raw ache in her chest. She reeled inside after what had just passed—for more details returned to her with every second of thought. Dimitrius, revealing he had stolen the Dragonheart from King Toroth! She had not seen that coming. That he had mistakenly sent it to her—which meant he was the reason she was here at all. Harper had no idea what to make of that. It complicated everything yet more. And Saradon knew she was his heir. The danger of that made her stomach roil. She dropped her head into her hands for a brief moment.

“We cannot leave them now,” Brand said. “We gave our word.”

“As I told Dimitrius,” Harper said, folding her arms so no one saw how her hands trembled. It hurt to say his name, scratching at that new rawness in her chest.

“We must tell the dwarves.”

“How? They cannot know that I met with him.” Already, guilt leeched into her very bones. She had done more than that alright—and wanted to go even further. What did that make her? She was no traitor—but she wanted Dimitrius. There was no denying it. And the fact he wanted her too only made it all the more impossible to resist.

“A vision,” said Aedon. Her attention slid to him, her expression carefully blank as she forced the writhing mess of thoughts deep down inside her and closed the door to them. “It’s the only way. You have seen a vision of a great goblin host in the valley before Afnirheim. You saw it once. You can describe it again.”

She nodded, though a coil of unease stirred. She did not want to lie—but it was the only way to pass on the spymaster’s warning without inviting dangerous questions she could not answer. “But won’t they want Vanir to verify the truth of it?”

“We are far from Keldheim now. There is no time to dally,” said Brand. “The könig will not wish to delay, lest the element of surprise be lost.”

With her agreement, they rushed to Jarl Halvar, who camped nearby with his command. When Brand murmured their purpose to him, he took them before the könig at once. Harper recounted her “vision” in short order to the könig, who did precisely as predicted—ground his teeth and vowed to press on.

“I thank you for sharing this warning with me, Harper of Caledan.” He still refused to call her by her house title, Ravakian, though she could understand why, since the name was tied to Saradon. “It changes our path not, only that we are now forewarned and forearmed. We knew there would be battle.Better it be upon the open fields where we may form ranks and sweep the blight away. If they are to be drawn from Afnirheim, it means the halls will ring empty—forourreturn.”

He sounded far more confident than Harper thought he ought to. He had discounted Saradon entirely, which she felt was a great oversight. Dimitrius’s unease and the open shreds of fear and doubt he had shown her were a far greater testament of the true danger of the half-elf than anything else. Did the könig realise Saradon’s power? she wondered.

Dismissed, they returned to their belongings to bed down for the night on the fringes of Korrin’s forces where their belongings marked a small camp for them. Her companions sat in a circle to talk—around where a campfire would be, were fire not forbidden—but their words were a haze. Harper mumbled her excuses and retired to her hollow in the mossy ground. They were almost surrounded by dwarven forces, but she felt utterly alone as she stared out into the forest, watching for any hint of movement—searching for those violet eyes. She found nothing. Only still darkness and unbroken silence, for the creatures of the forest fled with the size of the force disturbing their home.

Conflict raged inside her. She needed Dimitrius to return. Needed to see him again. Needed to finish what they had started. More than that—she needed answers. Her questions only piled higher, and the deserted forest gave her no reply. It was so late that her body ached and her head drooped with the weight of her fatigue. The thrill of her encounter with Dimitrius, which had chased all weariness from her bones, had faded. The excitement of that had been replaced with a constant simmering nausea that would not settle at the prospect of what awaited them as soon as tomorrow—a battle in which she would be on the opposing side to Dimitrius, and in which both of them were quite likely doomed.

52

HARPER

Confirmation arrived the next morning with the return of Korrin’s scouts—Harper and her companions were summoned just after dawn to attend the king. Harper skulked at the back of their group, exhausted and shivering after a long, cold, and sleepless night, haunted by spectres of Saradon and Dimitrius.

The king was especially grim-faced that morning. “Your vision was indeed true. We did not need Vanir to verify.”

Relief and then terror swooped through Harper.

Unaware, Korrin continued, “A great goblin host skulks—thrice our number—massing on the plain before Afnirheim. Though they will retreat into the dark halls with the return of day, they will as surely return when cover of darkness strengthens their daring.”

“We are still to march, König?” Jarl Halvar asked what they all dared not to, what was not their place to question. That they would fight, despite the dubious odds of success.

König Korrin grimaced but nodded—and Harper let out a shaky exhale. She had not realised that secretly, she had been hoping that battle somehow could be averted, and they did not approach an inexorable conflict. “Aye. I know the lay of theland and the halls of Afnirheim. The scourge of goblins stands little chance when we know when and where to position and manoeuvre. Form up, Jarl Halvar. We march at once. I want every dwarf in position to strike after next dawn.”

A tangle of nerves twisted through Harper. Halvar bowed and departed at once to send runners through the camp with the könig’s orders.

That night, there was no merriment in their new camp. Precipitous cliffs hemmed them into a narrow offshoot of the valley that felt altogether too confining and reminiscent of where Harper and her friends had camped the night Ragnar had been taken. Fires were prohibited once more, lest their position be given away to the scourge of goblins that screeched through the peaks. Their harsh calls ricocheted off the cliffs, until it seemed they came from all directions. Everyone was subdued by the sobering reminder of what tomorrow could bring.

Sleep would not be had that night. Though Harper sat in a tight knot with Aedon, Brand, and Erika between the trunk of a giant tree and a rocky overhang, she did not count herself safe. The rhythmic rasp and scrape of Erika sharpening her twin blades was the only sound from their little group, though the clanking of other metal elsewhere in the camp signalled that she was not alone in her ministrations. Brand had laid out all his weapons—the giant blade none of them could hope to lift, plus a surprising number of knives he had concealed upon his body—on the rough ground before him. He checked them all meticulously, cleaning and sheathing them to check he could draw them all with ease. Harper clutched her dagger—the one Aedon had gifted her what felt like an age ago—and a slim, shortblade she had briefly trained with in the dwarven halls. They remained in their scabbards before her.

“Are you all right, Harper?” Brand murmured, pausing for a moment.

“No.” Shame burned a path through her belly as she admitted it. “I want to throw up.” She was terrified, though she did not dare to voice that implicitly.

Brand chuckled quietly. “I understand that. Even for me, the time before a battle is filled with no small amount of apprehension.”

“It’s just…” Just what? Was it the threat she knew they were to meet? The risk to them all? The risk to her friends? To Dimitrius—and herself? Or merely the dark of the night amplifying all her fears out of proportion? “It’s justeverything,” she decided.

“That’s normal. The scouts watch with extra vigilance tonight. We are safe. Tomorrow with the dawn, the threat begins, but we will stand together, as we have always done, and we will weather the storm.” He glanced at his other companions and gave a small smile. Harper knew they had fought together many times before.

“What if we don’t?” she whispered. To voice her worst fears aloud scared her even more.

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