Crystal Kingdom Read online

  Now, staring at the useless phone in my hands, I wanted to scream or throw it against the wall. But I didn’t want to wake up Konstantin and explain what exactly had me so upset.

  So I lowered my head against my chest and wrapped my arms around my head and took deep breaths. My whole body was trembling, and my chest felt like it had been ripped out. I squeezed my arms tighter, trying to literally hold myself together.

  The locks on the door started to click open, and I nearly did scream then. I jumped to my feet, and I saw that Konstantin had done the same—throwing off his covers and leaping out of bed. We were ready for whatever was coming our way.

  Since Bekk had delivered us back to the room after we’d had our meeting, we’d had no visitors. I’d been right about taking the figs, or else we would’ve had nothing else to eat for the day.

  And now someone was coming in, in the middle of the night.

  I saw the orange flame of the torch before I saw the figure coming in behind it. He had to bow down to get in the door, but as soon as he straightened up, it became clear that it was Helge Otäck, the Viceroy.

  “It’s time for you to go,” Helge said with that serpentine smile.

  “What?” I glanced over at Konstantin. “Are the men the Queen is sending ready to go?”

  “No, I’m afraid you won’t be taking any men with you,” Helge continued calmly. “The Queen spoke in haste today, and she’s changed her mind about everything. So it’s best for you to get out of here, since her hospitality has run dry.”

  “But the Queen—” I started to argue.

  “The Queen wants you to go,” Helge snapped. “And if you don’t leave on your own, I’ll get Torun and he can make you go.” He smiled wider then, revealing his jagged teeth, and I had a feeling that he’d get a great deal of enjoyment from watching Torun tear Konstantin and me apart.

  “Bryn,” Konstantin whispered, probably sensing that I wanted to continue fighting with Helge anyway. “We need to go.”

  And since there wasn’t anything more that we could say, Konstantin and I gathered our clothes and fled in the middle of the night, like prisoners making a break for it.

  FOURTEEN

  repossess

  We’d sprung for the Holiday Inn, since we both needed a place where we could feel clean after our time in Fulaträsk. After we had made our way through the wetlands, Konstantin had driven for hours before we stopped, on the off chance that the Omte decided to give chase.

  “It just doesn’t make sense,” I said for the hundredth time as I paced the room.

  “It doesn’t have to make sense. They’re the Omte!” Konstantin was growing exasperated at having the same conversation with me. “Bekk even said they couldn’t be trusted.”

  “But Bodil wanted to do this!” I insisted. “I know she did. The Queen was for it. It’s her stupid Viceroy that interfered.”

  “That’s probably true,” Konstantin admitted. He rummaged through his duffel bag, tossing clean clothes on the bed beside him. “Since you seem too worked up to shower, I’ll go first.”

  “Why would Helge talk her out of it, though?” I asked. “And did he even talk her out of it? Maybe the Queen was still for it, and that’s why he made us leave in the middle of the night. We should’ve fought him.”

  “And what if he’d brought Torun up?” Konstantin turned to look at me. “What then? We’ll somehow bring down Viktor’s army after we’ve been torn limb from limb?”

  “I don’t know!” I stopped pacing and let my shoulders sag. “Why did Helge do that?”

  “Because he was right.” He walked over to me with his clothes in hand. “This isn’t the Omte’s fight—it’s the Kanin’s. They have no reason to risk their people for somebody else’s fight.”

  “But—” I started to protest.

  “It’s just how it is, Bryn. We’ll have to come up with something else.” He put a hand on my shoulder to comfort me. “We’ll figure it out, though.”

  “How?” I asked him plaintively.

  “I don’t know. We will, though,” he assured me. “But first, I’m showering.”

  He left me alone in the main room and went into the bathroom. As soon as I heard the water running, I swore loudly, and then flopped back on one of the two beds. I closed my eyes and tried to think about where we could go from here.

  If we went to the Vittra or the Trylle, they would just hold us captive until the Kanin could come retrieve us for a trial. They were close allies, and since the Kanin had the largest army, they wanted to keep the alliances.

  The Skojare were out of the question. With everything so crazy there, they wouldn’t be able to help us at all, even if they wanted to.

  There might be other expatriate trolls we could team up with, but it wasn’t like I could post an ad on craigslist saying, “Troll seeking other trolls to combat evil troll army.”

  I opened my eyes when something occurred to me. How had Bent Stum gotten mixed up with Konstantin and Viktor? Bodil had made Bent sound like he was rebellious, but I doubted he wanted to attack the Kanin. At least not without an incentive from somebody else.

  So how did Viktor enlist him?

  That would be something I’d have to have a discussion about with Konstantin when he got out of the shower, but all my plans were interrupted when his duffel bag began ringing.

  At first I thought it might be my phone, and my heart skipped a beat. But then I realized it was coming from his things, so I got up to check it out. His cell was sitting right on top of his bag, and the screen said BLOCKED CALLER, but I hadn’t really expected any different for someone like Konstantin.

  I glanced over at the bathroom, where the shower had just turned off. It would be easy to knock on the door and hand Konstantin the phone. But we were friends now, and allies. There shouldn’t be secrets between us anyway.

  With that justification in mind, I answered the phone and grunted hello in as deep a voice as I could muster.

  “It’s done,” came the gravelly reply.

  Before I could say anything, the bathroom door opened, and Konstantin came out wearing only a towel around his waist. When he saw me holding his phone up to my ear, he rushed over and snatched it from me.

  “Hello?” he said, casting an uneasy glare at me. “Sorry. I have bad reception here.” He paused. “Okay. Thanks for letting me know.”

  And that was it. He hung up the phone and turned his attention to me. “What the hell were you thinking, Bryn? You could’ve gotten us both killed!”

  “Why?” I demanded. “And who was that? What’s done?” He turned away, so I grabbed his shoulder, forcing him to look at me.

  “It was Viktor,” Konstantin said, exhaling deeply. “Evert Strinne is dead.”

  FIFTEEN

  notify

  May 16, 2014

  Bryn—

  The King is dead.

  Even writing the words, it still feels so unreal. King Evert Strinne is dead.

  They announced it yesterday. He died in the early hours, just after dawn. The Queen says he was murdered, and everyone is in a panic.

  This is the first moment I’ve had to sit and collect my thoughts about all of this, and I just have no idea what to think.

  Murmurs around town are saying poison. Linus Berling told me his father had heard the King’s lips were stained black from it. They’d been slipping it in his drink for over a week, and it finally took hold.

  That explains how out of sorts the King seemed at Kasper’s funeral. But that just leads to a much bigger, darker question—who exactly are “they”? The Queen says that we have a mole in our midst, but she’ll root them out.

  “We must be on guard always.” That’s what she said when she announced his death, perched on the balcony of the clock tower in the town square. Speaking to us all between tears while we all stared up at her anxiously, wondering what the fate of our kingdom will be.

  And how can we be on guard any more than we already are? The Högdragen are everywhere, but t
hey’re not making us feel any safer. In fact, with them always watching, I feel even more vulnerable.

  What if I accidentally do something and they think I’m the mole now?

  In training today, I heard a few rumblings of your name, that you might somehow be behind all of this. I was quick to tell them to shut the hell up. You weren’t even here. It’s not even possible. And I know you would never do anything like this anyway.

  The whole town is running scared, though. We’re all eyeing up our neighbors. Are they the enemy? Do they know who poisoned the King?

  Delilah came over last night. She didn’t even care if anyone saw her. She was scared, and she needed to feel safe. So she came to me.

  I held her in my arms for a long time, telling her that it would all be okay, when I wasn’t so sure that it would be anymore. But she looks at me with those eyes of hers. (And those eyes, Bryn—they’re unlike anything I’ve ever seen, dark chocolate and so big, I could get lost in them for days, and I wish I could, I wish I could just hold her and look at her, but there isn’t time for that.) Everything is so royally fucked right now.

  I’ve been thinking that you might be the lucky one because you’re not here. The town is on lockdown. No one can leave or come back. There’s a curfew. (But that worked to my advantage last night, because Delilah couldn’t go home or she’d risk getting brought in for questioning, so she spent the night with me.)

  You would be going crazy if you were here. That’s something that you can take comfort in, at least. You’re avoiding all the madness.

  Today, the Queen appointed a new Chancellor to take your father’s place. She said this isn’t the proper time for an election, but with everything that’s happening, they need someone doing the job.

  There should’ve been an uproar. The Queen removed the people’s only voice in our political process by cutting out the election. But nobody made a peep. We’ve all just accepted our fate.

  In slightly better news, your parents are fine—they’re making do with your father’s pension, which the kingdom is apparently still paying. For now. Tilda is holding up okay. Or as well as one would expect given the circumstances.

  Oh! I do have good news for you!

  Tilda and I were walking through the town square this morning to get breakfast. (I try to get her out of her apartment at least once a day.) I saw Ridley on the other side of the square, walking through a crowd.

  He didn’t look well, I’ll be honest with you, but he was free. He was walking without guards. I called his name and waved to him, but he never looked my way. I wanted to run over to him, but Tilda stopped me.

  “He heard you, Ember. I don’t think he wants to be noticed right now,” she said.

  But she promised me that she would stop by his place tonight.

  I just can’t wait for this all to be over.

  The snow has been melting, and it’s been doing this weird cold drizzle thing all day. All the posters they’d had up were getting destroyed by the elements, so the Högdragen were out replacing them. The good news is that they took down the WANTED posters of you.

  The bad news is that they replaced them with a reward being offered for anyone who knows anything in connection to the King’s death. With the King being dead, he can’t always be watching us anymore, so they replaced those with black and white posters of Queen Mina, looking twice as severe as Evert ever did.

  The only thing it says is I AM ALWAYS WATCHING YOU, but somehow I believe it more than I did the King.

  Your friend (no matter what),

  Ember

  SIXTEEN

  duplicity

  For a moment, there was only the shock of hearing that the King was dead.

  To someone outside of the troll community, it would be hard to explain what it felt like to learn that the King was dead. The best I can come up with is to find out that the President and your favorite pop star had been killed at the same time, along with the Pope and the Queen of England.

  It’s this mixture of impossibility—even though Kings die all the time, they still have this bizarre sense of immortality to them. Then there’s the reverence and loyalty. Despite our differences, Evert was my King, and I had sworn to protect him.

  The wind felt like it had been knocked out of me, and I actually had to hold on to the dresser for support.

  “Bryn?” Konstantin asked, moving closer to catch me if I needed it. “Are you okay?”

  And that was enough to snap me out of it. I glared up at him, and there must’ve been something harsh in my eyes because Konstantin took a step back.

  “Why is Viktor still calling you?” I asked, my voice a low hiss. “Why did he think you’d want to know that the King was dead?”

  “I told you that I’d defected, and that’s true.” He hesitated. “But they don’t know it yet.”

  “You lying asshole!” I shouted at him. “How could I have been stupid enough to trust you?”

  “Bryn, it’s not like that.”

  I turned away from him to start packing my bag. “Don’t try to sell me your shit anymore, Konstantin. I’m not buying it.”

  “I did it to protect you!” he insisted.

  I looked back at him in disbelief. “Fuck you.” And then I couldn’t control my rage anymore, so I lunged at him.

  He grabbed my wrist before I could hit, and when I tried to kick him, he grabbed my other wrist and pushed me back, slamming me into the wall harder than he needed to. He held me there like that, pinning my wrists beside my head, and his body pressed against me, still wet from the shower.

  “Let go of me,” I growled, too angry to think properly about how to get out of the hold. I just wanted to hit something, preferably his handsome face.

  “No! You have to calm down and listen to me!”

  “I don’t have to do anything you tell me!” I shot back.

  “Bryn!” Konstantin yelled in exasperation. “Just listen to me for five minutes, and I’ll let you go, and then you can do whatever the hell you want.”

  I grimaced and fought against his grip. His legs were pressed against mine in a way that made it impossible for me to kick. So I finally relented, since I didn’t have a choice.

  “Viktor sent me to find you and kill you,” Konstantin explained. “He thinks you know too much about what’s going on, and if you find someone that might believe you, he and Mina are screwed.”

  “So when are you planning on killing me?” I asked.

  “I already told you—if I was going to kill you, I would’ve done it by now,” he said, meeting my gaze evenly. “I went after you to keep you safe and because I didn’t want to keep doing what they were doing. I’m done with Viktor and his men, but if I tell them that, he’ll send people after us both and kill us. You can’t just quit Viktor’s army.”

  I pursed my lips, hating that his reasoning sounded plausible. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

  “I didn’t think you’d believe me. Was I wrong?”

  I looked away from him, considering everything he’d said. “I listened. Now will you let me go?”

  “Fine.” He sighed, then let go of me and stepped back. He stood with his hands on his hips, watching and waiting to see what I’d do.

  “Who killed the King?” I asked, rubbing my wrists.

  “Viktor didn’t say, but I would assume that Mina did.”

  “How?”

  “He didn’t say that either, but when they’d spoken of it before, poison had been their top choice.”

  “Why did Viktor think you wanted to know?”

  “I’ve kind of been his right-hand man. He’s kept me apprised of everything.”

  I arched an eyebrow. “So when everything big is about to go down, he sent you out on an errand?”

  “It was supposed to be quick. He thought I’d be back by now.”

  I walked closer to him, stopping so I was nearly touching him, and I looked up at him. “What does he think you’re doing now?”

  “Tracking you. I told
him that you’ve been very elusive.”

  “And he believes you?” I asked.

  “For now.” He paused. “But he won’t for much longer.”

  “What happens then?”

  “He’ll send men to kill us.”

  “So what do we do?” I asked.

  “We?” A soft smile touched his lips. “Does that mean you trust me?”

  I sighed. “I don’t have much of a choice, do I?” I moved away from him and sat back down on the bed. “So what is our plan? Where do we go from here?”

  “We keep moving. We can’t sit still.” He motioned to the bathroom. “You should shower, and then we should get out of here.”

  SEVENTEEN

  summoned

  From the window of our room, I could see the mountains behind us. Since Konstantin had gotten the phone call, we’d been driving nearly nonstop for over twenty-four hours until we finally stopped at a bed-and-breakfast in Wyoming.

  Konstantin had insisted on driving most of the way, so he crashed as soon as we’d checked in—sprawled out on top of the covers on the bed. It was a small room with a kitschy western feel, but it wasn’t bad. Besides, we didn’t need a credit card to check in, and the less of a paper trail we had, the better.

  Between using a card at the Holiday Inn and our interlude with the Omte, Konstantin felt especially paranoid that Viktor would be able to find us if he wanted to.

  On the long drive, I’d tried to talk about what to do next, but Konstantin seemed unable to think of anything beyond “get away right away.”

  And truthfully, I didn’t know what to do or where to go from here. With Konstantin sound asleep, I decided to go outside to get some fresh air and think.

  The bed-and-breakfast held eight rooms, and it was a quiet place. There was a wraparound porch with a few rocking chairs facing a magnificent view of the mountains. It was a bit chilly out—only in the fifties and breezy—so I had it all to myself, and I sat on one of the chairs, crossing my legs underneath me.