Free Web NovelChapter 478: Chapter 478
Gonan pulled his horse to a stop and was out of the saddle before Ragnar had fully dismounted. He crossed the distance between them in a few quick strides and pulled Ragnar into a firm embrace without preamble, one arm locked around his shoulders, the other gripping the back of his neck.
Ragnar heard Gonan sigh in relief.
When they broke apart, Gonan kept both hands on Ragnar’s shoulders and looked at him with a broad grin.
"Gods," Gonan said. "I am glad to see you standing. We have been riding for days after word reached the capital about the fenrars—" He stopped himself, shook his head slightly. "Three of them. Three. And here you are in one piece."
"More or less," Ragnar said.
Gonan let out a short breath of a laugh. "More or less," he repeated.
Ragnar found himself smiling as well. He had not realized how much he had missed his friend until now.
He gave Gonan a brief account of what had happened, keeping the details orderly and moving through them without dwelling too long in any one thing. The attack during the hunt. The way the fenrars had torn through the group.
He told him about the injury to his leg, that he had lost consciousness at some point and come to in the home of a couple who had taken him in and seen to his wounds.
"Many of the hunters were killed. The beasts did not go down without a fight." Ragnar said.
When he reached the part of the journey where he had encountered Dougol and his men on the road, he kept it vague. He said only that there had been a confrontation with several armed men and that he had dealt with it and continued south. He did not say more than that. He did not mention the fire that had burst out from his hands.
Gonan listened attentively. But as Ragnar finished, he noticed that the broad smile from moments ago had faltered. It had waned somewhat, settling into something more guarded.
Ragnar noticed it before Gonan said a word.
"What is it?" Ragnar said.
Gonan’s hands were still resting on his shoulders. He did not move them. Instead, his expression turned serious, as he held Ragnar’s gaze.
"Your father passed away while you were gone," he said.
Ragnar was speechless.
Something in his chest became heavy and impossibly tight. He had known that his father was unwell. But knowing a thing was coming and standing in front of it once it had arrived were not the same thing at all.
He thought about Zeriel. Not the king, but the man. The man who had occupied a place in Ragnar’s life for years without ever quite filling the space a father was supposed to fill.
Zeriel had not been cruel to him. He had simply been absent in all the ways that mattered, present in body and not in much else, and Ragnar had grown up learning to make his peace with that.
He thought he had made his peace with it. But standing here now, he found he wasn’t just feeling the loss of his father. He was grieving the version of Zeriel that had never existed. The father who might have intervened when Nheera turned her cruelty on Ragnar with spite. A father who might have sat with his sons and known them properly instead of at a careful distance.
That version of his father had never lived, not for a single day, and Ragnar was mourning him anyway.
If Ragnar had been there, if the hunt had not taken him so far and kept him so long, he might have been able to sit at his father’s bedside before the end. He would have wanted that. He would have wanted to look at Zeriel one last time while the man could still hear him, and tell him that he forgave him for everything.
Zeriel had not been what he needed, but he had kept him alive when others would sooner have seen him gone, and for that alone Ragnar was grateful and had never once stopped being grateful.
The chance was gone now.
He did not speak for a long moment as he slowly processed this new revelation.
Gonan gave his shoulder a gentle squeeze without saying anything at all, a comforting gesture.
"I’m sorry for your loss," Gonan said finally, breaking the quiet.
Ragnar gave a short nod.
"It will be alright in the end," Gonan said and he meant it. "The burial is in a few days, if you want to attend."
Ragnar exhaled through his nose. " The queen would sooner have me thrown in the dungeons before she let me anywhere near my father’s corpse." He said. "Right now I want to go home. My wife doesn’t know I’m alive. That is where I need to be."
"Then that is where we’ll go."
He turned and started back toward the waiting riders.
Ragnar’s attention moved over the men Gonan had brought with him. There were twelve of them. They sat on their horses, intently watching the surrounding road. They were large and able bodied and most importantly, they looked like they would be able to hold their own in a fight.
"Are they yours?" Ragnar asked, low enough that only Gonan could hear him.
Gonan glanced at him sidelong. "Every one of them can hold his own. You have my word on that."
"Good."
"They are loyal to me," Gonan added, reaching his horse and gathering the reins. "But they will serve you just as well if the need arises."
It was not the first time Gonan had said something to this effect. He had always made his position clear.
"Thank you," Ragnar said gratefully.
Gonan gave him a nod and swung himself up.
Before Ragnar followed, he looked down at his hands. He turned them over once, studying the palms. They looked no different than they ever had. There was nothing to suggest that they had been burned at all from the fire earlier. Yet his mind lingered on the memory of the flames that had burned through Dougol’s men.
He closed both hands slowly, putting the thought aside. He would think about it later.
He climbed back into the saddle, put the ache in his leg out of his mind as best he could. Behind him, he heard the others fall into formation without needing to be told and they resumed the journey.
***
The summons that Elka had been dreading came just before midday.
A servant boy she did not recognize appeared at her door with a folded slip of paper, waited while she read it, and was gone before she could ask any questions.
The note was brief. It had a location and time scrawled on it and even without a name on the note, she still knew who it was from.
She thought about not going.
She stood by the window with the note pressed flat against her palm and considered it seriously for the better part of an hour.
The king had been dead for two days, which meant she had been functioning on borrowed time.
She folded the note in half, tucked it into the bodice of her dress, and headed for the door.
The room he had chosen for their meeting was in one of the older wings of the palace, a stretch of corridor Elka had passed through only twice before.
Azul was seated when she entered, one leg crossed over the other, a glass of wine resting loosely in his hand.
She stepped inside and closed the door behind her.
"You came," he said.
"You gave me little choice."
"I gave you a great deal of choice." He turned his head then, his gaze settling on her. "You simply made the sensible one."
Elka kept her back near the door.
"The king has not yet been buried," she said. "This is not the time." frёewebnoѵēl.com
"On the contrary." Azul set his glass down and rose. "I would argue it is precisely the time." He moved toward her slowly. "He’s dead, Elka. Three days ago you still had the luxury of delay. That luxury is gone."
"I understand that."
"I don’t think you do." He stopped a few feet from her. "You’ve been handling this situation like a negotiation. As if the longer you hold out, the better terms you’ll eventually secure."
"What do you want from me?" she asked not for the first time. She couldn’t understand why he was so bent on her when he was a prince and could have any woman he wanted.
"You already know the answer." He said.
"And if the answer is still no?" It was stupid to push him like this but she also didn’t want to give in.
He considered her for a moment.
Then he crossed to the table, opened a drawer she hadn’t noticed, and withdrew a folded letter. He walked back to her and held it up.
Her stomach dropped. It was the letter she had written to Rycoff.
"I’ve had this for quite some time," he said pleasantly. "Long enough to have grown rather attached to it. I’ve shown it to no one. But that changes today, unless you stop wasting both of our time."
Her hands were very still at her sides. "You would destroy me," she said.
"Your actions nearly destroyed an entire house," he replied.
"I had my reasons."
"I’m sure you did." He sounded completely indifferent to what those reasons might be. "I don’t particularly care what they were. What I care about is what happens next. And what happens next depends entirely on you."
