Maude paused at that. Swimming had been almost instinctive to her as a child, but as she recalled the fuzzy memories of her early youth with Bryn, she realized that she had never seen her sister submerged in water deeper than a few feet.
"I won't let you go overboard, I promise," Maude said, bumping her hip against her sisters lightly.
Bryn only rolled her eyes and jumped over the railing into the ship, choosing a spot in the dead center, right next to the mast. Maude followed her sister, joining in to help the Elven finish loading so they could depart swiftly. Hakon familiarized himself with the Elven longship, but it seemed as though the designs were almost identical to the ones they were used to.
"It's good to see him have a purpose again," Liv said to Maude, her eyes on Hakon. "He's having a hard time accepting who I really am and wonder if I should've told you all who I was from the start. Maybe things would have gone differently, maybe he wouldn't be so angry."
"I don't think it would have made much of a difference, Liv. You kept your identity secret to protect yourself and everyone else in Nida," Maude huffed, tying some extra rope into place before settling down to sharpen her blades. "It may piss me off, but I understand it. Besides, who am I to remain jaded over your secrets when I did the exact same thing? Hakon might take a while longer to get there, but he'll understand."
"I think you whipped him out of his fog," Liv laughed, her eyes glittering in the white light reflecting off the Icewall Mountains. "I couldn't do that for him. You saw what he needed and rose to the occasion."
"Well, I do exceed at pissing people off," Maude said as she slashed a grin at Liv.
Liv returned the smile. "That you do, Princess."
Maude elbowed her in the ribs, causing Liv to retaliate with a shove of her own. The women laughed once more before falling into a comfortable silence. Bryninched closer to them, rolling her eyes at the exchange. Before she could turn away, though, Maude thought she saw a hint of longing in her sister's eyes.
"Pushing off!" Hakon shouted along the longboat, the Elven crew falling into line behind his orders. "Oars!"
Maude and Liv put their weapons down and gripped the oars closest to them, shoving them through the holes to begin pulling the longship along with the crew out of the bay and into the narrow river leading them out of Nida. The rhythmic movement of rowing pulled Maude into a focused state.
It was here that Maude began plotting Herrick's escape. He would be back in her arms in three days, and the gods could either help her or watch as she finally embraced her fate.
5
Herrick watched as a droplet of water formed in the corner of his cell, the liquid growing heavier until it lost against gravity and splashed onto the floor.
Drip, drip, drip, drip.
Each dull splatter that rained on the damp stone reverberated in his ears, the cadence one that he had attached his hopeless mind to. At some point, it had become so in tune with his pulse that he couldn't separate himself from the monotony of the sound. Time was now static, his body eternally painfully raw to its surroundings as the cold air skimmed across his scorched flesh.
Maybe he was losing his senses. It didn't seem to matter anyway.
For hours, maybe days, Herrick listened to the slow drip to pass the time. Baldr had not returned after his last visit. At some point, the man had just stopped asking questions, preferring to hold his flames close enough to Herrick's skin so that it would blister slowly. His throat was raw from how much he must have been screaming, trying everything in his power to separate Maude's flames from Baldr's in his mind. He didn't want the fresh memories of his torture to infiltrate his only memories of the woman he loved.
Except, the longer the sessions wore on, the more he thought of Maude. He had never feared her flames before, perhaps because he had access to his watergalderand could protect himself. But in this imprisoned state of not only his flesh but hisgalder? He was vulnerable in a way he had not felt since he was a youngling.
The last of the burn salve had been used up, his skin still raw and bright red, but it had eased the sting. The day after the salve had appeared in his cell, a smallpouch of dried meat had been left in the same location. The day after that, a flask of watered-down wine that he was still rationing.
Someone in the palace was trying to help Herrick through this imprisonment. After the wine had appeared, he had become suspicious of the person secreting things into his cell when he slept. But when he had eaten and drank his fill from the gifts, he could no longer deny that he felt stronger for it. Even if the salve hadn't been able to heal all of his burns, it had helped him stay healthy from infection. The burns would permanently mar his skin, but Herrick couldn't care less about that.
Rousing himself for the first time in days, he launched into the routine he had created for himself those first two weeks he had been imprisoned. If someone was trying to help him, that meant his friends were coming, and he needed to be ready to fight his way out of Logi so he could finish what Maude had started.
In his isolation, Herrick had turned over every reason for why Maude had left him in Dagsbrun. The note she had left him forced him to believe that she hadn't wanted to leave him in some small part of her soul. Maude was not one to beg forgiveness. He had seen the rage and need in her eyes to get to her father when Herrick had found her on the walls outside Logi, drenched in the blood of the soldiers stationed there. Even then, he could see she had not wanted to leave his side. So he had let her go.
He was just finishing his routine when the torches that burned low on the walls flared to life, casting the dark stone into stark relief as two figures approached his cell. Invisible ropes of air wrapped themselves around his wrists and ankles, pulling him toward the wall against his will. Fighting against the restraints, Herrick stilled when the Flame King came into view beyond the bars of his cage.
“Ah, Prince Kolbeck.” Helvig's velvet-smooth voice rang through the silence of the dungeons, his words a knell that only promised suffering. "My High General reports that you have not been compliant with his questioning."
Tension hung between them as Herrick glared at the man who had sired Maude. Try as he might, Herrick could not find a single thing in Helvig's features that reminded him of hiseldr, only the harsh memories of her youth that she had shared with him in that quiet bedroom in Dagsbrun. Helvig looked at him expectantly.
"Did you need something, King of Flame?" Herrick asked, hoping that by angering the King, he would get to the point of this visit.
"I see now that Baldr has his work cut out for him," Helvig chuckled. "I trust he will succeed. The way he rose through the ranks after my previous general's failure and my lieutenant general's soft heart impressed me. My new regime will need his strength."
Herrick snorted. Regime? This man thought himself above the gods themselves.
"I suppose you'll have heard that I have been proclaimed the High King of this land," Helvig continued as if Herrick was not even there. "Many thanks to you and my daughter for helping me to achieve this goal, by the way. You both played so easily into my scheme."