The Ever After Read online

  He was talking about changelings, the troll practice that involved kidnapping human babies and stealing their money. Ridley—as a tracker and teacher—had never been a changeling, but he’d helped bring dozens of changelings—and their stolen inheritances—back to the kingdom.

  A decade of that work had really worn on him, and now he excitedly talked about the hydroponics they’d installed. They’d had such a great season last year, the food treasury had made a neat profit exporting pickled beets to the Skojare.

  We had at least another fifteen minutes to go, and we’d run through all the small talk—he’d even talked to me about Bryn’s Tralla horse, Bloom, and suggested I go for a ride while I was here. Everything around us was completely overgrown with the looming evergreen hybrids the Kanin cultivated, with long weeping willow–like branches, helping to conceal the road and the city.

  Ridley wasn’t talking, and the current song on his playlist was a quiet ballad. As I looked out the window at the leering trees, the lysa song grew louder in my head.

  anda varrid ins om ennung / lindanna fjeura blommid anyo / enndast efdar deen orn varrid torrid was the latest refrain—until he bled on the meadows / linden flowers bloomed anew / only after the bird bled dry.

  Finally, through the hungry branches scraping against the hood of the car, I saw the iron gate and the tall stone wall that surrounded the city. As we rolled toward it, the music in my head fell silent.

  Ridley talked to the guard at the gate, who waved us through. The main road was narrow, winding through the rows of small cottages buried in overgrown bushes. Making matters even more slow going, the streets were lined with pedestrians—mostly trolls, but plenty of chickens, rabbits, goats, and several fat donkeys.

  We turned in front of the palace—a large, stocky building of gray stone. The castle’s cold façade was broken up with stained-glass windows depicting various events in the Kanin history. The palace was on the far south side of the city, along the wall, and Ridley drove us around it, past a trio of modern apartment buildings.

  He parked in front of one closest to the wall, and led me up the three flights of stairs. As he opened the door, he announced cheekily, “Welcome to the penthouse suite.”

  Their apartment was small, but the ceilings were high and the sparse, light décor made it feel cool and open. White walls with clean lines, blond wooden floors, and potted plants were everywhere.

  “We don’t really have a ‘guest room,’ but there’s a futon in the office.” He motioned to the open door off the living room. “The bathroom’s next to it if you wanna freshen up.”

  “Thanks,” I told him, and I took him up on the offer. After I finished in the bathroom, I went to the office to drop my bag on the futon.

  It was a small room with pale smoky gray walls, a narrow bookcase, and a sleek blond desk with a laptop, a succulent in a jar, and a notepad. On the walls, photos had been hung in copper frames—an older picture of Bryn with Ember, another of Bryn with a pudgy little boy, a silver Tralla horse, a few others with folks I didn’t recognize—but it was the ones of her family that gave me pause.

  Bryn smiling brightly with her mother, Runa—blond, blue-eyed, a softer, older version of Bryn—and her father, Iver—black hair, dark eyes, olive skin, a quiet intellectual with little in common with the athletic, strong-willed Bryn. But no matter their obvious similarities—or lack thereof—one thing was abundantly clear as I looked at their picture with three smiling faces, their arms around each other: that they cared about each other.

  From the office, I heard the apartment door open, and Bryn asking Ridley if I was there.

  “Hi, Bryn,” I said as I came out.

  She smiled at me, her hands on her hips and her blond curls pulled back into a slick ponytail. “Hey, Ulla. Sorry I couldn’t be there to pick you up. I hope your trip was okay.”

  “Yeah, yeah, it was,” I said.

  “So.” She glanced over to the kitchen. “I don’t know how you’re feeling or what you—”

  “I think you’re my sister,” I blurted out.

  15

  Confessions

  Bryn stood in the living room, her eyes wide and confused. She still wore the crisp white pants of her guard uniform, but the blazer hung on the back of the chair, so she just wore a tank top that showed off her scarred, muscular arms.

  “What are you talking about?” she asked after a tense silence.

  “I know it’ll sound far-fetched, and I’m sure it doesn’t help that I’m just saying it like that,” I said quickly, and I knew I was talking too fast, but I felt nervous and couldn’t slow down. “I wanted to wait for the right time, but then I saw you, and I just wanted to talk to you about it, and so I’m just telling you, we might be sisters.”

  “Okay,” she said cautiously, and glanced over at Ridley. He was standing near the sliding glass doors that led out to a small balcony, his arms folded over his chest, and he only shook his head.

  “You’re clearly upset. Why don’t we sit down and talk about it?” She motioned to the couch, so I took a deep breath and sat down, and she perched on the arm of the couch.

  “Are you thirsty? I’ll get you some water,” Ridley said, and went into the kitchen.

  “So, Ulla, why do you think we’re sisters?” Bryn asked gently.

  “You know how I was left as a baby in Iskyla?” I asked her, speaking more at my regular speed.

  She nodded, and I launched into the whole thing, from the few things I knew from Mr. Tulin to finding out about Indu from Bryn’s friend Bekk to my journey to Isarna to meet Indu myself.

  “So you’re saying that this Indu is going around impregnating all those women?” Bryn asked skeptically. “Why?”

  “I don’t know exactly,” I admitted. “Most of them don’t seem to survive.”

  “Why not?”

  I shrugged grimly. “I don’t know, actually.”

  Bryn stared straight ahead, out the glass doors, the sunlight shining across the balcony and the city wall beyond. Her face was impassive, and her posture was rigid and still—no doubt from her guard training—except for her right hand, where she twisted the rings on her fingers.

  “This Indu doesn’t sound like a reputable guy,” she said at last.

  Our water sat on the mirror-top coffee table, ice cubes slowly melting in the glasses, and Ridley sat on the ottoman nearby, his fingers tented together.

  “He held me hostage for a month and erased my memory,” I said flatly. “I would not call him trustworthy, no.”

  Bryn looked over at me. “Then why do you trust him on this?”

  I handed her the napkin, the one with the names written on it. “Bekk confirmed he is the father of the child she’s carrying, and I met Noomi in Sweden. I haven’t looked into Asta or Minoux yet.”

  “The mothers are all Skojare and Omte,” she said, almost to herself.

  “He seems to target those two tribes. There’s a Skojare and Trylle population in Isarna, but instead of ‘dating’ there, he made multiple trips across the ocean to find prospective mothers in the Omte capital,” I explained.

  She stared down, her jaw tensing subtly under her pale skin. “Strong women,” Bryn said with a sigh. “He’s looking for strong women to carry his child. Physically, the Omte and Vittra are the strongest, but the Vittra are nearly infertile. The Skojare are surprisingly resilient, with high tolerances to cold, pain, and lack of oxygen.”

  “The Kanin and Trylle got things going for them too,” Ridley chimed in, and his skin rippled, shifting its usual olive to eggshell to match the walls around us. He—like many of the Kanin—had the ability to blend in with the surroundings, like a chameleon.

  “Those are something beyond biology,” Bryn said. “Magical and powerful, yes. But not the main concern if you’re on the hunt for a womb to help you make a big, strong baby.” Her eyes landed on me.

  “There’s only one place to go from here,” Bryn said, and stood up. “We have to talk to my mom.”


  “We?” I asked in surprise.

  “You’re the one who knows about this. She’ll want to talk to you.” She went toward the bedroom. “I need to change, and then we can go.”

  I gulped down some water, and Bryn returned a moment later in jeans and a striped tank top. She said a quick goodbye to Ridley and kissed him on the cheek, then we were out the door.

  “Don’t say anything you’ll regret!” Ridley called after us as the door swung shut.

  As we went down the stairs, I asked Bryn if now was the best time to have this conversation with her mom. In her matter-of-fact way, she informed me that her dad was at work, her mother was a teacher with summers off, and she should just be getting back from her morning swim in the nearby lake.

  They had moved to Storvatten, the Skojare capital, for some time after the Kanin Civil War, but they had found life there too stifling, and they returned to Doldastam. Bryn had briefly lived in the family home while they were gone, so they were able to move right back into the house she’d grown up in.

  I followed Bryn down the cobblestone roads, occasionally falling behind her long, purposeful strides. Doldastam resembled Merellä more than it did Förening, but it was strangely greener here, with plenty of bushes and tall evergreens, tangles of vines growing over the houses, gardens bursting with vegetables in the narrow strips between them.

  Bryn stopped at a cottage near the center of town, and she opened the front door without knocking. The house smelled of seawater with a faint undertone of waterlilies, and the walls were pale blue. Old antiques and Kanin artifacts crowded the shelves, but the rest of the space felt airy and open.

  “Mom?” Bryn shouted.

  “Bryn?” her mother yelled from upstairs, and a moment later, she was jogging down the steps. Her short, pale blond hair was damp and wild, and she wore a long sundress with bright teal flowers that brought out the color of her eyes. Runa Aven was a tall, beautiful woman, looking even more radiant than when I had seen her five years ago.

  “What’s wrong?” Runa asked her, then glanced over at me. “Did something happen?”

  “No, we just need to talk,” Bryn said.

  “Yeah, of course.” Runa motioned to the living room. As I walked by her, she asked, “You’re Bryn’s friend, Ella?”

  “Ulla,” I corrected her.

  “Ulla, right.” She smiled thinly and sat on the chair across from us. “I didn’t know that you were visiting.”

  “It was a spur-of-the-moment thing,” I said.

  “Ulla thinks she’s my sister,” Bryn said, apparently having decided that my “blurt it out” method was the best way to go.

  “Wh-wh…” Runa looked between the two of us, her mouth agape. “What?”

  And then Bryn launched into an abridged version of Indu’s story, skipping over my rambling personal bits for the condensed facts. Runa didn’t say anything while Bryn talked, just stared ahead with her lips pressed together.

  Runa hardly reacted at all, until Bryn handed her the napkin with the names. Then she made a small gasp, and put her hand to her mouth as tears formed in her eyes.

  “It’s true, isn’t it?” Bryn asked.

  Runa’s hands trembled as she wiped at her eyes. “I eloped with Iver when I was only sixteen, and our families were furious because we were from different tribes. We were disowned, disinherited, stripped of our titles.”

  “I know what you and Dad went through to be together,” Bryn said icily. “Because the two of you were so in love.”

  “We were,” Runa sobbed, then took a deep breath so she could speak more calmly. “I loved Iver then, and I still love him now.”

  “You’ve been married to Dad—to Iver—for twenty-six years, and I’m twenty-four years old,” Bryn told her mother harshly. “The math says that if Iver isn’t my father, then you must’ve cheated on him.”

  “I’m not trying to defend what happened,” Runa said, speaking slowly and carefully. “I’m merely explaining. After we were married, we moved here to Doldastam, away from my friends, my family, my lake. I was shunned, and Iver worked long hours to support us. The winter was so dark and cold, and I was alone, very, very alone.

  “I went out to the bar one night, and Indu was there,” Runa went on. “No one else would even talk to me, because I was Skojare. But he did. He bought me a drink, and then another. We talked for hours and then … we spent the night together. And I never saw him again.”

  “Does Dad know?” Bryn asked.

  Runa sniffled and nodded. “After you were born. You were a few weeks old, and I thought he should know the truth. Iver already loved you so much, and he never stopped, he never thought about leaving you. With time, he forgave me, and we moved past it.”

  “But I didn’t deserve to know the truth?” Bryn asked sharply.

  Tears streamed down her mother’s cheeks. “I told you the only truth that mattered—that Iver and I love you more than anything. You’re our daughter, Bryn.”

  16

  Birthright

  The visit with Bryn’s mom had been mercifully short, and Bryn didn’t say much on the walk back to the apartment. I took a long shower—both because I needed to wash the stress and grime away, and to give Bryn the privacy to talk to her boyfriend and process what she’d learned today.

  When I came out of the bathroom, Bryn apologized for the awkwardness, and she forced a smile as she suggested we still try to have a good time.

  “You’re never in Doldastam, and I never take time off, so we ought to make the most of it,” she announced.

  And she had a point, so I agreed, and we spent the afternoon doing things around town while we pretended that Bryn wasn’t internally reeling. We saw the Tralla horses, and we rode her horse, Bloom, around the edge of the city. For supper, she took me to Juni’s Jubilant Confectionery, and I had the most delicious semla ever.

  After that, Bryn took me on an after-hours tour of the palace. She explained all the battles depicted in the giant stained-glass windows, and when we went around the corridor with all the kings’ portraits, she knew facts about every one.

  I took a picture of Elliot Konrad Strinne, the sixth monarch in the Strinne Dynasty and the twenty-eighth monarch of the Kanin kingdom. Nearly twenty years ago, he’d fallen ill with an infection of the blood, and he’d died when he was only twenty-six years old. According to Pan’s mother, she’d worked as a human trade liaison to the King, and she and Elliot had fallen in love and they had Pan together.

  Since he was half-human and a technical claimant to the throne, the Kanin kingdom refused to acknowledge Pan’s request for a paternity test against Elliot’s blood. The Inhemsk Project worked hard to discover the proper lineages of trolls of mixed blood and find their place in the kingdoms, but they only had limited power within the Mimirin. Pan would likely never get confirmation one way or the other that Elliot was his father.

  But looking at the portrait of Elliot on his coronation, painted when he was younger even than Pan was now, I could see the resemblance was undeniable—the same dark eyes, full lips with the subtle smile at the corners of the mouth, thick sharp eyebrows, and strong shape of the jaw.

  When Bryn had shown me everything of interest—including the new chandelier with a bajillion crystals that had to be replaced after the Invasion of Doldastam—we went back to her apartment. We sat on the balcony, our feet propped up on the railing, sipping wine and watching the late-evening sun setting slowly over the boreal forest that surrounded the city.

  “Thank you for showing me around today,” I told her. “I’ve had kind of a rough summer, and it was nice to have a vacation from that.”

  “Yeah, I know what you mean.” She took a big gulp of her drink. “Sorry for being distant today.”

  “No, I’m sorry for dropping a big downer like that on you.”

  “It’s definitely not a fun way to start the day, but I’m glad you told me. It’s just a surreal thing to think that my entire life has been based around the fact that I was born h
alf-Kanin, and it turns out that might not even be true.”

  “I can only imagine.”

  “You met Indu, right?” she asked.

  I nodded. “Yeah. I think I spent about a month with him, but I don’t remember most of it.”

  “He erased your memory so you wouldn’t remember what he’d done.” Her voice was hard and flat. “He’s a real bastard, isn’t he?”

  “Yeah, I think he is.”

  “You don’t know what he wants? Why he’s going out, knocking up ladies, building up an army of daughters, and stealing your blood?” she asked.

  “He’s also collecting rare flowers from the Vittra,” I added.

  “So he’s an eccentric bastard,” she said wryly.

  “I’m working with a Trylle healer, and I’m hoping that if I get my memories back, I’ll know what’s really going on,” I said.

  “I know some of them. Which healer?”

  “Sunniva Kroner. Her brother Tove is helping too.”

  “Mmm.” She took another drink. “The Kroners are powerful. If anyone can do it, they can.”

  “I hope so.”

  Bryn was silent, and in the fading light, her jaw tensed as she stared up at the sky. “I have to know.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “I have to know for sure if Indu is my father or not,” she said, her voice low. “There’s still a chance that my dad is … my dad.” She looked over at me. “The Inhemsk Project does DNA testing, right?”

  “Uh, yeah.” I pulled my feet off the railing so I could sit up straighter. “But we don’t have his DNA.”

  “No, but we have yours,” she countered. “We can check if we’re sisters.”

  “Yeah.” I nodded. “I mean, I think so.”

  “Good.” She smiled thinly, then downed her drink in one long gulp.

  Bryn offered me another drink, but the length of the day—the last few days, honestly—hit me all at once. I declined and changed into my pajamas just before sacking out on the futon.