I stopped short, feeling like an intruder. Torden’s jaw worked. He faced me, then leaned toward my ear. “Remember—you promised.” And he strode off into the dark.

I got ready for bed and lay thinking silently until Anya bid Skop good night and burrowed beneath her covers. The moon colored her pale blond hair almost white across her dark red blanket knitted with stars.

My godmother’s book was only a few feet away, fresh with another tick mark; but I didn’t reach for it. I didn’t want to read; I wanted her company and her comfort.

Worry pooled in my chest so deep I thought it would overflow, run down my ribs and over my collarbone. Worry about Aleksei and the Imperiya. About Daddy, about myself. About Torden. His reaction to Skop and Anya in the hallway had surprised me.

Skop. Now I was worried for him, too.

Anya lets Alfödr’s drengs chase her hem and tortures Bragi endlessly.

“Don’t break his heart, Anya,” I said softly.

She took in a sharp breath. “I could say the same to you.”

“You could, but I have no idea what I’m doing,” I said hollowly.

Boys like Peter. Boys like Torden.

Alessandra had sized me up so unsentimentally at the council meeting that night. If she weren’t practically his sister, Anya—gracious prinsessa, mead-bearer, tall and lithe—was the kind of girl I would expect to see with a boy like Torden.

“Skop’s my friend,” I finally said. “And you’re really beautiful. So just—be careful, okay?”

I felt, rather than heard, her assent as her nod rustled against her pillow and the blanket. “God natt, Selah.”

“Good night.”

43

Wondering and worry stole my sleep, but I was at least better off than Fredrik. As the Asgard boys set us up for archery practice on the edge of the woods, checking the targets fixed at the tree line and stringing their bows, Fredrik lay flat on the grass and closed his bloodshot eyes.

He’d rubbed his temples all through breakfast, gagging as his brothers passed around smoked salmon. He’d looked near tears at J.J.’s too-loud good morning when I’d flagged him and Cobie down in Valaskjálf and asked them to join us. J.J. had said yes, but Cobie declined, rolling her eyes in Perrault’s general direction.

While Anya and Skop helped J.J., Torden held out a single arrow and the bow he’d strung for me. It looked absurdly small in his hands. “How should you hold this?” he asked, testing me, just as he had the day before.

I glanced over at Hermódr, the most deliberate of his brothers, and tried to notch the arrow as he had, feeling the string wobble beneath my fingers as I drew it back toward my cheek. I looked to Torden for his review.