I opened my mouth to argue but stopped myself when I realized I was being defensive. Because what he’d said was true. Every night when he went home to Tilda and their future child, I went home to an empty loft.

It was the life I’d chosen for myself. But was it really the life I wanted?

THIRTY-THREE

operations

Even a ride on Bloom couldn’t help me shake my unease. The horse tried his best, galloping along the wall that surrounded Doldastam as fast as he could, but when I took him back to the stable I still wasn’t feeling any better. He nuzzled me more than usual, his mane as soft as silk as it rubbed against me, and I fed him an extra apple before leaving.

The debriefing with the King had gone about as I’d thought it would—he’d already heard about Mikko’s arrest and mainly been interested in who would be ruling the Skojare in his absence. But Evert had seemed more distracted than normal, and he left the meeting within a few minutes with brusque congratulations on a job well done.

I wanted to work off the anxiety that Storvatten and Konstantin and even Kasper’s lecture had caused, but that required dealing with everything that went along with going to work. So that left me walking around town, trying to clear my head. My path took me by the tracker school, but I deliberately gave it a wide berth in case I spotted Ridley. I definitely wasn’t prepared to see to him yet.

As I walked by, I glanced over at the training yard behind the school. A split-rail wooden fence surrounded the yard, in an attempt to keep out the children who mistook it for a playground. Most of it was flat, level dirt with the snow shoveled away, but there was a climbing wall and a few other obstacles.

With the temperature just below freezing and the air still, it was a perfect day for the trackers to be out running a course. Instead, I only saw two people, and because of the distance between us it took me a few seconds longer than it should’ve to realize that it was Ember training with someone else.

Her dark hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and she wore a black thermal shirt and boots that went halfway up her calf. Her sparring partner was a guy, dressed similarly to her but with the addition of a thick winter cap. Even though he was taller and broader shouldered than her, Ember had no problem pushing him around.

Since no one else was outside, I decided to walk over and say hi. I’d just reached the fence when I finally recognized her combatant, and I realized with dismay that Ember had just thrown Markis Linus Berling to the ground.

“What are you doing?” I asked, but instead of a friendly greeting it sounded much more like a demand.

I’d never seen a Markis or Marksinna training before, in large part because a tracker was never, ever supposed to lay their hands on one, especially not the way Ember just had.

“Bryn!” Ember grinned at me, apparently not noticing the accusation in my tone. “I heard you were coming back today.”

“Hey, Bryn.” Linus smiled at me, and Ember extended her hand and helped pull him to his feet.

“What are you two doing?” I managed to sound less angry this time as I leaned on the fence.

“Since you’ve been gone, I’ve been working as Linus’s tracker, helping him acclimate and all that.” Ember started walking over to me, and Linus followed, brushing snow off his pants as he did.

“That’s great,” I said, and I meant it. Ember was a good tracker, and I was sure she’d be a great help to him. “But since when did acclimation include combat training?”

“I asked her to teach me.” Linus pushed the brim of his hat up so I could see his eyes better. Freckles dotted his cheeks, and there was something boyish in his face that made him seem younger than his seventeen years.

It’d been nearly a month since I first met Linus in Chicago, when I was tracking him and first ran into Konstantin Black, which set off this whole thing. Since that time, Linus seemed to be doing well at understanding his role in Kanin society as a high-ranking Markis, adjusting quicker than most, but he still hadn’t lost his friendly innocence.

“A lot of the younger Markis and Marksinna are requesting defensive training,” Ember explained as she leaned against the fence next to me. “Things have been crazy since you’ve been gone.”

I instinctively tensed up. “Crazy how?”

“You know how Ridley was training those scouts to go out and look for Viktor Dålig?” Ember asked.

My stomach dropped, fearing that something might have happened to him while I was gone, and it took me a moment to force myself to nod.

“Well, last week, one of the scouts reported that he thought he’d found Viktor,” Ember went on. “He managed to report back with Viktor’s whereabouts, but then all communication went silent. Ridley went with a rescue team to go after him. When they found the scout, he was dead.”

“But Ridley came back okay?” I asked, my stomach twisting painfully.

“Yeah, he’s fine,” Ember said, and relief washed over me. “But they found an abandoned campsite, where they’re assuming that Viktor, Konstantin, and at least twenty or so other people were hiding out. They were long gone by the time Ridley and the rescue team arrived, of course, but the scary part was that the campsite was only three hours away.”

My mind flashed back on Konstantin Black, telling me that I needed to get out of Storvatten because Viktor Dålig wanted me dead. But if Viktor was hiding out near Doldastam, it seemed like I would be an easier target for him here.

Admittedly, we had Högdragen gaurding at every door, and the Skojare had the worst security I’d ever seen. But it wasn’t like I could trust Konstantin either. He could have just been leading me down the wrong path. If I wasn’t dreaming the whole thing up in the first place.