“How did he end up with the Vittra?” I asked. “Did he leave for your mom?”
“No.” He shook his head. “He was the Chancellor in F?rening, and he met your father when Oren came around courting your grandparents for Elora’s hand in marriage.”
“I didn’t realize your father was a high-ranking official,” I said.
“That he was,” Loki nodded. “In arranging the marriage, my father had to work with Oren a lot, and Oren’s lust for power appealed to him. Evil attracts evil, apparently.”
“So he left to join the Vittra?” I asked.
“Not exactly,” he said. “The plan at the time was to unite the kingdoms. Oren would rule both of them, once your mother was Queen. This was before she’d even come back to F?rening, but they had already begun working on it. As Chancellor, my father was sent as an ambassador for the Trylle to the Vittra kingdom. That’s how he met my mother.”
“I thought you said he didn’t leave for her,” I said.
“He didn’t. She was a means to an end. He married her so he’d have a reason to leave, not the other way around,” Loki said.
“So he didn’t love her?” I asked.
“No, he couldn’t stand her,” he said. “She was beautiful.” He paused, thinking of her. “But I don’t think he even cared. She was a powerful Marksinna. My father wanted power, and she had it.
“For a time, he was both the Trylle Chancellor and a Vittra Prince,” he went on. “I’m not technically a Prince, and neither was he, but since we have the title as the highest-ranking Markis, they refer to us that way.”
“Your father committed treason, didn’t he?” I asked.
“Do you know?” Loki glanced over at me. “Did they tell you what my father did?”
“Elora said that your father told Oren where my grandmother and mother were hiding,” I said. “Because of that, Oren found them and killed my grandmother.”
“He did,” Loki said. “He did more than that, actually. He tried to tell Oren where you were, but he was never able to find out.
“And because he did that, he became Oren’s right-hand man,” Loki continued with a bitter smile. “He got everything he ever wanted, and you think that would make him happy, but no.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“When I was nine, Oren married Sara, and my father was furious,” Loki said. “There was a chance they might produce a healthy child, and my father didn’t want that. Without a child, I was the only viable heir to the throne.”
“But Sara can’t have kids?” I asked.
“We didn’t know that at the time,” Loki explained. “She has some Trylle blood in her, two generations back, and that’s how she has the ability to heal. But the Vittra blood must have thinned out the Trylle in her too much, because she’s been unable to have kids.”
“But when she married Oren, your dad thought they might have a child?” I asked.
“Right,” he nodded. “My father wanted nothing more than for me to be King. It didn’t matter that I had no urge to be King, or that Oren might live forever and I would never be King anyway.”
“Why did he want you to be King so badly?” I asked.
“He wanted power, more power,” Loki said. “He thought if I became King, we could rule the world or something. He never got specific about his plans, but he just wanted more.”
“So what happened?” I asked. “I heard he tried to defect back to F?rening.”
“Yes, that was after everything went to hell,” Loki said. “My father came up with some plan to kill Sara. I don’t know exactly what it was, but I think he wanted to poison her. My mother found out about it, and she was…” He stopped and shook his head.
“My mother was kind,” Loki went on. “I’d been betrothed to Sara, so she’d become like a member of our family. My mother invited her for supper and treated her as a daughter. Even after Sara married Oren, my mother remained close to her.”
“And your father was going to kill her?” I asked.
“Yes, but my mother wouldn’t let him.” He chewed the inside of his cheek and stared straight ahead at the snow coming down. “So he killed her.”
“What?” I asked, thinking I’d misunderstood. “Sara’s alive.”
“No, my father killed my mother,” Loki said flatly. “He hit her in the head with a metal vase, over and over. I was hiding in the closet, and I saw the whole thing.”
“Oh my god,” I gasped. “I’m so sorry.”
“The King found out, and he didn’t really care that my father had murdered someone,” he said. “But then I told the King why my father killed her, about his plan to assassinate Sara.
“My father tried to make it back to the Trylle,” Loki continued. “He offered Elora trade secrets, anything she’d want to know. I’ve been told that she accepted, but he never made it there. Oren found him and executed him.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, unsure of what else to say.
“I’m not,” Loki said. “But I am lucky that the King didn’t kill me too. Sara took pity on me, and I moved into the palace with them.”