“Yes, you could’ve,” Sara snapped. “You don’t ever think anything through.”
He groaned and flopped into one of the King’s chairs. “I don’t need a lecture, Sara. You’re not my mother.”
“Your mother was a good woman, and she’d give you a lecture much worse than this one,” Sara shot back. “You have to stop being so rash. The things you do have consequences.”
“I was trying to do the right thing!”
“You thought letting her getting away would be the right thing?” Sara asked dubiously.
“Kind of, yeah,” he admitted.
Sara rubbed her forehead, as if talking to him gave her a headache. “You’re so foolish sometimes.”
“I screwed—”
“I don’t want to hear it!” Sara shouted suddenly and held her hand up to him. “You let her get away! And that’s unforgivable.”
Loki didn’t say anything. Her voice trembled with hurt, and he couldn’t take that away. Swallowing hard, he stared down at his lap and let her finish.
“This attack on the Trylle should work,” Sara said. “But if it doesn’t, you will do whatever the King asks of you to bring her back. No, that’s not enough. You will do anything and everything you need to do, even if that means going above and beyond the King’s orders.
“Because so help me, Loki, if you let her get away again, I will not stand in the way of his wrath upon you.” She took a deep breath. “Do you understand me?”
“Yes,” he said quietly, still looking down.
“Loki?” Sara snapped. “Do you understand me?”
“Yes!” He lifted his head, and he could see the conviction her eyes. She would let the King kill him if he didn’t bring back the Princess.
“Good.” She smoothed back her hair and looked away from him. “Now get yourself together. They could use you for their training exercises.”
Loki did as he was told, too afraid to argue with her. The bizarre part was that he’d told her the truth because he thought she’d understand. He thought she’d agree with him that he’d done the right thing by letting the Princess escape from all this, but Sara was too blinded by her own needs.
With no allies, Loki had no choice. If the King didn’t get the girl with this attack, then Loki would have to get her later.
FOUR
We should’ve heard from them by now,” Sara said, pacing the King’s chambers with Froud at her heels.
“It’s a long drive to F?rening,” the King told her, his gritty voice doing its best to come across as soothing. “Give them time to attack. The coming-out ball only started a few hours ago.”
Loki sat behind the King’s desk, flipping through a book of Vittra lullabies. All of them were surprisingly disturbing, usually involving a disobedient infant being dragged off by hob goblins or rival tribes to be eaten or turned into a slave.
He found the one his mother used to sing to him, and it was the least horrific of them all. It still involved a human turning into a bird to try to steal a Vittra baby, but at least the baby lived in the end.
In reality, he’d rather be anywhere but in these chambers, waiting to see how the battle turned out, if they got the Princess. But both the King and Queen had commanded him to wait with them, and the whole time the King sat stoically in his chair while Sara paced.
The tension in the room was exhausting, and the book of lullabies wasn’t distracting enough. He thought about getting the book on torture, because that would definitely take his mind off things, but he didn’t want to see all the horrible acts the King would eventually do to him someday.
“What if they don’t get her?” Sara asked, turning to her husband. She wrung her hands, and her smooth skin was uncharacteristically ashen.
“They’ll get her,” Oren replied, staring past her at the doors to his chambers.
“But if they don’t?” Sara sounded as if she might cry, and Loki looked up from his book. “Oren, this might be our last chance to ever get her.”
“It’s not like they’re going to kill her,” Loki tried to reassure her. “Even if we don’t get her today, the Trylle won’t hurt her. They’ll just hold her for safekeeping. So you’ve got nothing to worry about.”
The King motioned to him. “Loki’s right, for once.”
Sara nodded, but she didn’t look convinced. She returned to her pacing, with Froud practically tripping over the train of her gown.
Loki went back to reading the lullabies, but he didn’t get much farther in the book when they heard a commotion in the hall. Footsteps running, and then the door to the chambers was thrown open.
When Kyra burst into the room, Loki stood up. She looked positively horrid. Her short hair had been singed. Dirt and blood stained her skin and clothing, except for two streaks down her cheeks that were clean from her tears.
“We couldn’t get her.” Kyra’s voice trembled, and she shook her head. “They overpowered us. They killed Jen.”