“No,” I said quietly. “Your secrets are yours. But if they’re heavy, I’ll help you carry them awhile.” I put an arm around his waist, my blood surging. This close, I could hear his heartbeat through his jacket.

Torden’s answering smile was a sunrise.

He shook his head, beard scuffing my temple, apparently uncertain where to begin. “I love my brothers and my sister, but sometimes I do not understand them. I would trust Anya with my life, but she . . . complicates things,” he said vaguely.

Aleksei had said as much. I nodded.

“And I would die for Aleksei, but trouble follows him.”

“Trouble like—his showing up in an Imperiya uniform to dinner?” I suggested gently.

“Among . . . other things. This year has been too much.” Torden passed a hand over this forehead. “I don’t know what he could have been thinking. Another bid for attention, I imagine.” He frowned. “He’s determined to shock, if that’s what it takes to get Pappa to notice him.”

I squeezed Torden’s side. Aleksei’s behavior—his prurient comments, his determination to instigate conflict—suddenly made more sense.

What had made him this way?

“But things are hardest between my oldest brothers and Dronning Rihttá,” Torden said. “She is the only mother I have ever known. But Týr’s mother and Váli and Vidarr’s mother are still living, and my brothers are old enough to remember Pappa choosing Rihttá over them.

“When her sons, Baldr and Hodr, were small, my brothers tried to understand. But now they are gone, and Týr and the twins resent her marriage to my father. And Rihttá’s pain makes her fragile.”

Her sons. Torden had mentioned them at dinner the night before. Did the bonfires bring Baldr or Hodr any luck last year?

“Your toast earlier, to your stepmother,” I said. “What did that mean?”

“Minni,” he said softly. “When we drink, I always drink to Baldr’s memory. He was just twelve. My mother suffers.”

My heart ached as I suddenly realized why the queen watched J.J. so wistfully. “That’s terrible.”

“My father is at his wits’ end. Sometimes I think I’m holding this house together with my bare hands.” Torden shook his head.

I couldn’t imagine Alfödr frustrated. He seemed so controlled—so powerful. As unlike my last memories of Daddy as possible. But Torden’s sigh rustled past my ears and settled in my hair, his breath heavy with doubt.

I’d wanted to comfort him. Had I merely opened old wounds instead?

When we rounded the final corner to Anya’s room, a sudden chill bit my skin as he took his arm from my shoulders.

Anya was leaning against her doorframe, face tipped up toward Skop, who stood much closer than seemed friendly. They flew apart at our approach.