The Nameless Heir, page 13
“Hello?”
Fallon jumped, falling to her side in surprise. She did not think the old woman was breathing, let alone could speak. Fallon gathered her composure and turned to the bars that separated their cells.
But as the woman tucked her hair behind her tall ears, Fallon gasped. Her face was not ancient and wrinkled, but stunningly, absurdly beautiful, and full of youth.
Fallon was too shocked to speak. But the girl reached through the bars, holding out her tan hand as if Fallon was a warm fire. “You feel like the sun.” She smiled softly.
“S-sorry?” Fallon stammered.
The girl scooted closer to the bars. All she wore was a simple green dress that was dirty and torn. Her eyes were the palest shade of green, like a drop of morning dew resting on a leaf. As enchanting as she was, exhaustion covered her angelic face.
Fallon scooted out of reach, resting her back against the far wall. She stared the girl down, who was staring right back at her. “How long have you been here?” Fallon asked.
She scrunched her brows. “Three days, I think.” Then she cocked her head to the side playfully, a wave of white hair cascading down her slim shoulder. “You look like a marigold flower.”
“Thank you?” Fallon almost smiled. As far as being red-haired went, that was probably the kindest comment she had ever received about it. Even if it was strange.
The girl slouched against the bars as if she could hardly hold herself up. Fallon could not make sense of what she was seeing. Something about the girl seemed drained, like an under-watered flower. That stark white hair—so long and yet still shining with health. And those tall, almost droopy ears …
“What is your name?” Fallon asked, officially intrigued.
“Elowen, Elowen Middlemist. What’s yours?”
“Fallon. Just Fallon.”
The girl spoke with a strange accent. Fallon could understand her clearly, but her words seemed to flow differently. It was like Elowen spoke in poetry. Her lips were full and beautiful, but pale. Her face was perfectly heart-shaped, but a darkness was spreading under her eyes.
“What happened to you?” Elowen asked, eyes trailing to the blood stain on her shoulder.
“My plan went wrong,” Fallon said quietly.
The girl swiveled her head around the hall. “Do you have a flower on you?” she asked, as if it were a normal question.
Fallon snorted. “No.” But she could tell Elowen was not joking.
She thought Jaeger was strange, but this girl was the most peculiar person Fallon had ever met. Yet no alarms in Fallon’s head went off. She sensed no threat. On the contrary, her instincts were telling her to trust her.
That was, until she stood up.
Elowen used the bars to pull herself up, the action taking obvious effort. “I will find something,” she said to herself. “Something green.”
Her dirty green dress went to her ankles, and her ivory hair fell to her hips. Fallon could not help but stare as she paced around her cell on her bare feet. At first, Fallon thought it was just a strange belt. But when the girl turned around, Fallon’s jaw hit the stone floor.
Impossible.
Fallon blinked. She rubbed her eyes and tried to make sense of it, but it was clear as day. A tail—the girl had gods-damned a tail. A cow’s tail. Just like the stories.
Fallon’s mind flashed with storybooks full of beautiful women with cow tails dancing and singing, always close to the tree they were connected to. She saw one oil painting in particular; it had been one of her mother’s favorites.
It was in an old fable about a huntsman who fell madly in love with a woman whose beauty was out of this world, but he did not respect nature. One day, he carelessly dumped a bucket of rotten ale outside. It soaked into the earth, poisoning the roots of a nearby tree. The next morning, he found his love lying dead in the grass. Overcome with grief and guilt, he swore to never treat the earth unfairly again, having seen the effect of his actions.
The last page was a picture of the woman he killed. She had a lavender dress as simple and elegant as the one on Elowen’s shoulders. Her brown hair was unbound, and she wore no shoes or stockings. Most importantly, a cow’s tail swung at her side.
The woman died because she and that tree were connected as one. The title of her story was written in gold at the top of the page: The Huntsman and the …
“Hulder.” Fallon breathed. “You—you’re a Hulder.”
Elowen turned around with a bright smile. “Yes! I have not seen anyone else in a very long time. When did they open the tree?” she asked, still on the hunt for a single flower in their underground prison.
Fallon’s mouth opened and closed but no words came out. It was real. There was a real Hulder sitting in front of her, straight out of her mother’s stories. That meant Jaeger had been right all along. Gods, she had been so rude to him. Just because she did not want to accept it.
She stubbornly shook her head. So what? So what if Faeries were real? This did not affect her life. This changed nothing. Because Fallon was still trapped in the dungeon of the Osmund Royal House with no visible way out. She still had to convince the chief to march on Barwyn so Fallon could get the revenge she deserved. Faeries or not, Fallon was going to be chieftess.
Elowen pressed her face in the space between the bars. “Are you alright?” she asked gently. “You seem cold.”
But Fallon said nothing. An awful pain was consuming her heart. She told herself long ago she was over her mother’s death. But seeing Elowen and thinking of these stories again, it felt like a part of her mother was back. Pulled right from the grave.
Asta had spoken of Faeries as if she knew them personally. Now, Fallon understood she did. In this world, Elowen was a swan among geese. Too beautiful, too pure, too good for this realm. And that was exactly how Asta Solveij had been.
Fallon met Elowen at the bars and brought her face close. The girl raised her hand to Fallon’s face and, just as Jaeger had done, ran her finger down the bridge of Fallon’s nose, pausing over her scar.
“How strange,” she said softly.
“You asked me if the tree was open, do you mean a portal?” Fallon dared to ask. Elowen’s slim, pointy nose was an inch from her own.
“Yes. Can you open it? Can you get us back home?”
Fallon gripped the cold bars so hard she thought they would snap. The malice of this world had tainted her mother. Fallon was too young and selfish to understand it then, but she understood it now. If Fallon was able to save this Faerie from Asta’s same fate, maybe her mother would forgive her for all she had done and all she planned to do. If she did this, maybe Fallon could even try to forgive herself one day.
So, she nodded her head. “Where, exactly, is home?”
“Elphyne, of course. The realm of the Fae.”
The days passed slowly, and the nights lasted centuries in those cells. Fallon and Elowen were tired and hungry, with the Hulder falling more ill with each passing hour. They filled their time by sitting back-to-back against the metal bars, talking and asking questions.
Fallon only planned to share her name, but before she knew it, she was telling the tragic tale of a bastard girl and her journey to the southern lands. The girl who miraculously survived a death sentence, scaled a waterfall, befriended the enemy, and killed her way through Halvar. Only to be a failure in the end. She left out the details about her powers, but she told her about Jaeger and Norman. Their names made her throat burn.
Elowen returned the favor by telling her the equally melodramatic story of how she ended up here. Faeries used to be free to go back and forth between the two realms. Until one day when she was eight, the portal she called the Entrance Tree did not open back up. Trapped and alone, she feared for the well-being of her tree back in Elphyne. Their spirits were one in the same; whatever happened to one, the other felt it.
She was captured a few days ago. “I saw the lights and the music,” she said dreamily after finishing up yet another episode of shaking and vomiting. “I thought maybe this time would be different. That they would be nicer to me. I just wanted to dance, I wanted to sing and make friends,” she said. Her voice cracked at the word friends.
People must have been afraid of her, maybe even appalled by the sight of her hair and tail. She said a group of men dragged her here, and Fallon could only hope her strangeness was enough to keep the men out of her cell.
The Hulder was pressed up against the bars separating their cells, as usual. Elowen was always adamant that as much of her body touched Fallon’s as possible. She said it made her feel better, so Fallon allowed it.
Elowen’s tail kept twitching while she slept—the sight making Fallon feel queasy. There was a slit in the back of her dress, allowing the tan appendage to move freely. There was even a small tuft of fur at the end, as white and shining as the hair on her head. It was so strange; Fallon could not help but stare. She was still adjusting to the idea of Faeries being real, despite all the stories Elowen told her about who and what lived in Elphyne. To think there was really an entire realm full of people like her …
Which meant a realm without people like Fallon.
Without dungeons and chiefs and lost birthrights. If she were any more of a coward, she might consider going to Elphyne herself. But Fallon did not run from a fight, especially when there was so much at stake.
She did not know how long her thoughts kept her up that night, but by the time Elowen started stirring Fallon already had another storm of questions lined up.
“Is it true Huldra can make people ill?” she asked.
Elowen rubbed her reddening eyes. “Yes, but if you learn to control it then you don’t hurt anybody.”
Fallon arched a brow. “There are some who can’t control it?”
She shrugged. “Watch.” And proceeded to sneeze into her hands.
A second later, Fallon’s nose started to tingle. Surely enough, she sneezed twice into her elbow.
Elowen laughed. A light, bubbly giggle that made this prison feel a little less dark. “See. And if I just had something green, even just a single flower, I could help heal you,” she said sadly.
“You can heal people as well?” Fallon whispered, wiping the snot from her nose.
“In a way, yes. But the healing doesn’t come from me. It is more of an … exchange. Life demands life. That is the way of nature.”
Fallon nodded. She understood that better than anyone. Beowulf had taken everything from Fallon, so she was going to return the favor tenfold. Life demands life—blood must have blood.
“So.” Elowen crossed her legs and smiled at Fallon. “When are we leaving?”
“As soon as I talk with the chief. I will make a deal with him, one of the conditions being your release,” she said. Elowen was clearly ill, she needed to find help soon.
The Hulder seemed to wilt to the side, surveying Fallon with wide eyes. “You’re not coming with me?” her rosebud lips folded into a pout.
For a count of three, Fallon Solveij hesitated. She heard a small, barely audible whisper: Go.
She stared at Elowen, trying to find the words to explain her gratitude. Because for the first time in her life, Fallon was not alone in a dungeon cell. Simply having someone there with her had kept Fallon from falling into a pit of memory and despair she doubted she would ever come back from.
But before she could say a word, before she could explain why she could not go, the door at the end of the hall creaked open. They whipped their heads around to see two men stalking towards them, both wearing metal armor. All the Reapers she had seen thus far wore reinforced leather armor. These must be royal guards, then. Which meant Fallon’s plan might have worked after all.
Which meant that she would not in fact go with Elowen. Even though her fate was leading her elsewhere, Fallon was happy she got to meet the Hulder. Hearing all of her stories had felt like speaking with her mother again.
The guards stopped in front of her cell. Out of the corner of her eyes, she saw Elowen scoot into the wall and lie very still. As Fallon stood, one man tossed a pile of fabric through the bars.
“Change.”
She picked up a too-large blouse and pair of tan trousers. At first, she was confused. The fabric was a disgusting, dark yellow. In Valdimir, colors mattered just as much as names. They showed allegiance and piety. This was not southern greens and browns, northern black and reds, or western purples and silver. This was nothing.
Seeing no other choice, Fallon turned to the side as she changed. Leaving on the wrap of fabric around her breasts and her undergarments. Fallon did not care that the men were watching her; she was only happy they stayed quiet. She knew she was not impressive. Life in Barwyn had left her skin pale and barely nourished. And not to mention, two weeks on the run left her muscles the only thing pulling skin from bone.
There was also a thick, brown belt that she tied around her waist in an attempt to make the clothes fit. Once she finished tying back on her boots, Fallon gave Elowen a sidelong glance: I’ll be back. I promise.
“Give me your wrists,” the man ordered. He was as average as they came; big, gruff, long beard and even longer hair. The only thing that made him special were his hands. As Fallon stuck out her arms to allow him to handcuff her, she stared at his ink-covered fingers. Words in the old language were tattooed into his skin, fingertip to wrist. Fallon stopped studying the Runes long ago, it was not a warrior’s job to partake in divination.
He opened the door and grabbed Fallon by the chains, pulling her forward.
“It’s about time.” She rolled her neck and stretched her legs, trying to shake the exhaustion out of her system. But Fallon had not eaten in days, so a task as simple as changing her clothes left her out of breath and woozy.
The men sneered at her in disgust. “You should be honored that the chief made time for you at all. You are not worth a single breath, bastard.”
Fallon lurched forward, grabbing him by the collar. “Call me a bastard one more time and I will skin those Runes from your hands and wear them as gloves,” she hissed.
Just as she hoped, he pushed her back into the bars of Elowen’s cell and gave her a good smack across the face. The sound of the impact was loud enough to obscure Fallon tossing the key she had snagged from his breast pocket into Elowen’s cell. The faint clank of metal hitting the stone floor was nothing more than an echo as the men growled and grabbed her by the neck.
Fallon knew there was a chance she would not make it to sunset. This meeting would end or restart her life, but that did not change her promise to Elowen. If Fallon did not come back, the Hulder would have her own way out now.
She knew Elowen saw and understood, because Elowen started singing softly as the guards dragged her down the hall. The light, gentle sound sent a wave of relaxation through Fallon’s body, easing her mind enough to keep her power under control. A small, parting gift from Elowen. From a warm body in a cold dungeon who saved her from being alone.
They climbed the stairs and started to follow the same path she had entered from. For a moment she thought she was simply being thrown out, but then they turned down a hall she had yet to see. The ceiling got taller, the wooden floors turned into mosaic tiles, and more guards in metal breastplates stamped with the Royal House sigil walked past them.
Fallon practiced what she wanted to say in her head, but it was hard to concentrate when she was being vigorously manhandled.
“Where are we going?” she demanded.
“To the Great Hall,” the man answered. “Where you will keep your barking mouth shut. You will kneel before Chief Sigurd,” he said.
She balked at the thought. If someone had spoken to her that way a month ago, Fallon would have spilled his throat on the floor. But now, Fallon had no pride to protect. No honor to uphold. So she kept her mouth shut and let them drag her so she could save her energy.
Servants in simple, beige clothing rushed past them in fear. Her apprehension grew with every clamoring step they took. Every waking moment since she chose to get up from that cliff had led up to his. Every detour, every failure, every breath had gotten her here. To fulfill her destiny. She had to keep reminding herself that Beowulf failed, too. And he was about to be so, so sorry for it.
At last, two massive mahogany doors came into view. They were slightly ajar, and through them she could see a man on a wooden throne. Nothing but quiet whispers met her ears as they approached. But when she stepped through the threshold, a silence as still as death overtook the room.
The Grand Hall did not impress her. They were all the same to an extent: tall ceilings spiderwebbed with wood beams. Always ten or so long tables on either side of a long rug that led straight up the stairs to the podium.
What Fallon was not expecting, however, was every single seat on those long tables to be full.
This was a bigger crowd than the one at her execution. Her heart pounded so violently in her chest, she feared the men gripping her arms could feel it through her clothes. They kept walking, the clank of her chains the only sound as she was shoved to her knees before the small set of stairs.
She inclined her head slightly, meeting the cold gaze of Sigurd Osmund.
He was not a large man, not in the way Beowulf was. Chief Osmund was of normal build, above average height, and reasonably handsome. His blue eyes pierced her to the ground as he did not bother to stand upon her entrance. None of them had.
This room felt wrong … something was not right. It felt like she interrupted a funeral service.
There was a slightly smaller throne to his right, and one even smaller to his left—both empty. Not even his wife or heir was interested in this meeting.
After a few moments of paralyzing silence, he rested his hands on the arms of his birchwood throne and spoke. “What is the name of the first person to call upon grio in the last hundred years?” he asked, sounding rather bored as he picked at the cuffs of his dark gold robes.
A test. He knew exactly who she was. Fallon glanced over to the man holding her chains with his Rune covered hands, making sure this counted as permission to speak. He gave her a curt nod, and Fallon turned back to the southern chief.
