When she woke alone, he knew there would be Hel to pay, but how could he face her about his terror when he had not faced it himself?
He wasn't sure how long he had walked, but soon, Herrick found himself in front of Odin's Temple. The doors were still open, though the temple was empty, and the sound of the stream was the only other noise in the room besides his breathing. He didn't know why he had ended up at the temple again, but the emptiness and quiet of the space invited his broken soul in with a stronger pull than he thought possible.
Except he couldn't manage to pull himself further than the threshold. Herrick toyed with the iron band on his throat again— a habit he had picked up when his nerves got the best of him. He could feel the vile presence in the back of his mind— watching the world through his eyes, feeding off hisgalderand his pain.
A ghostly chuckle came from the back of his mind but the creature inhabiting his soul did not say more. It was like the creature knew that he didn't need to contribute words to what Herrick was feeling all on his own. Never having been plagued by such self-doubt and hopelessness, Herrick didn't know how to deal with what had happened to him in Logi. He had never been one for devout prayer, nor was he one who generally opened up to others about his anxieties and traumas.
In truth, the battles and fights he had been a part of— whether they had been with pirates, Flame Soldiers, or criminals his soldiers had apprehended— had been easier for Herrick to compartmentalize. There was always a clear-cut reason for why he felt the way he did. His honor, his duty, or his fate had always comforted him in his decision-making, never leaving enough doubt in its place to cause worry.
Maude had once called him a fool for that. Herrick now feared she had been right all along.
Baldr may be a spy who truly works for the Kingdom of Shadows, but the torture he had put Herrick through was real. And was that supposed to be his fate? To be apawn for the gods, another avenue for them to spur the people of Ahland on toward rebellion?
If his fate was to be tortured, why then did he feel so abandoned by the gods he trusted? The answer to why he had been put through such an ordeal was as clear as the morning sky, and yet, he woke in the night covered in sweat, his heart racing and breath thin from the continued mental abuse Baldr had inflicted. He hadn't been able to separate himself from what had happened.
Even now, Herrick still struggled to separate Maude's fire from Baldr's. They both had the same golden sheen to its edges as they burned, but how could he ask hiseldr, his fire, to dim who she is? He could already see her trying to limit her fire around him even as all the elements have been finding their way to the surface recently.
But every flame, every candle that flickered in his periphery, forced a cold sweat to break out over his body that he couldn't stop from overwhelming him. And Maude always noticed when he wasn't himself.
He had chosen to remain behind, his decision clouded by the grief that had clung to him in the wake of Maude's death. Now, that reasoning no longer held, however right it had felt at the moment. Herrick had accepted his capture when he thought it would result in death and had been relieved when Maude had freed him. But what happened, happened. There was no going back to the rigid duality of right and wrong. Now, the world was grey, and his actions thus far had shown that he was slipping further and further from who he had been before he'd crossed paths with Baldr.
He may have heard Maude's words about fate before, but now he understood.
Standing at the entrance of the temple, Herrick made a choice. The gods were following his decisions and had laid out a plan for him, but he was not going to be a willing, mindless victim of their whims anymore. His blind acceptance of their plan for him led him to make rash and impulsive decisions, trusting that the gods would follow through with their divine guidance. But no longer.
31
Baldr lay in his cot as he tried to allow his mind to calm enough to sleep. It wasn't going too well.
In the days leading up to the Midsommar Ball that the palace was hosting, Baldr was busy with War Council and setting up security details for the event and both Helvig and Vilde. As her first public appearance, Helvig wanted to make sure that his future Queen Consort was well protected in front of the masses who were about to learn the Elven were still involved in their day to day lives.
As if she actually needed the protection. Vilde could surely level this entire city if she felt like it. But Baldr bit his tongue and created a detail for her anyway.
It didn't help that the citizens of Logi were becoming more restless.
The Flame Soldiers who he had been sent to the slums of the city to sniff out any hidingvitkihad been enjoying their raids entirely too much, it seemed. Reports of complaints had flooded his desk ranging from the destruction the unruly Flame Soldiers caused to the unpaid tabs in taverns and pleasure houses. Every day, more and more rowdy groups of residents ranging from Logi's middle class to the poorest of their city had started to gather at the gates.
The punishing taxes Helvig had implemented to fund the rebuilding of his palace after the Heir had destroyed it was a tightening noose around Logi's neck and did the King no favors in getting his city to support him. It didn't matter, the Flame King was too busy plotting his dominance over Ahland to care about how the people in Logi suffered.
Baldr had needed to send more patrols into the markets of the noble's district and the slums with orders to keep the tensions from already anger prone civilians from attacking the soldiers stationed there. Though his sergeants and lieutenant all outwardly obeyed his orders, he could see their disagreement and resentment at being sent to the poorest part of the city. They didn't care about the residents there, they only wanted to continue to indulge themselves on the power the King gave them.
They were to remain present in the public squares and prevent any conflict from escalating. That was all— no orders to arrest or raid the homes nearby. Just be a presence in the square. He hoped that the higher numbers would prevent any catastrophe from occurring, but Baldr knew his people well. It would only work for so long before the final match was lit by the people to set ablaze their oppressive rulers. But it would only end in their deaths if they tried to do this alone.
He didn't want to stop the rebellion; Baldr only needed to delay the inevitable until the Kingdom of Shadows was ready to help them.
The meetings that took place to plan their invasion of the Kingdom of Rivers went slowly as the King often met resistance from his advisors. Baldr tried to deflect the plans as best as he could by questioning the source of the information and its merit, but Helvig was relentless in his ambition. Vilde attended a few of the meetings, her presence sucking the warmth out of the room, but she did not offer anymore input.
When he wasn't in meetings or assessing new recruits, he was searching every inch of the palace dungeons for any of thevitkihe could find. While he had known about thevitkidungeons that had been freed the day Kolbeck was rescued, Baldr had never had access to that part of the palace. The few times he had tried to get in, his own soldiers had barred him from entry. Faced with the same predicament that had plagued him since he took this role, he chose not to push the subject with the soldiers who had clearly come from Helvig's personal guard in the name of preserving his position.
The rationality behind the decision never sat well with him so when he sent the sketches of the palace dungeons to the pit keeper in Logi, he had included the onesfor thevitkiin the hopes that the rescue party would free them as well. It would never be enough for the choices he'd had to make, but it was a start.
His search for anymore hiddenvitkiwent unfounded which frustrated Baldr to no end. Vilde was missing from so many meetings, what else could she be doing? But the more he obsessed over it, the more his gut told him that if she was working on new innocent souls, it wasn't happening inside the palace walls.
Shadowdraugr. The vile creatures that had become a side effect of whatever darkgalderVilde was using were being forced onto unsuspecting innocents. He had clamped one of the iron bands on Kolbeck's throat— and Baldr was too stupid or too complacent in his role that he didn't even question what it was before he was ordered to place it on the General of Rivers. He'd assumed it was the usualgaldernullifying iron that all prisoners had worn. How horrifically wrong he had been.
Nausea crept up his throat, squeezing the breath from his lungs as he tried to get a few hours of rest.
Sitting upright, his body and his mind losing the fight against his burning remorse, Baldr vomited into a small basin that usually contained water for washing ones hands after relieving themselves in the washroom. Bile, sour and caustic, swept over his tongue as he retched again and again before finally he collapsed back onto his cot, chest heaving and tears streaming down his cheeks.
