Grief and a rage so powerful it launched him into his rebellion against the Kingdom of Flame.
32
On the path back to the cabin, Herrick came across Gunnar leisurely strolling along the quiet path he had taken to the temple. Though he had known that his friend was healing rapidly these days, he still worried about him venturing off on his own.
"Where is Dahlia?" Herrick asked instead of greeting his friend.
"I do not need to be tended to like a sickly child," Gunnar gruffed as he stopped in front of Herrick.
His friend had more color to him every day, his strength growing and hisgalderreturning to him in full force. Stooping down to the forest floor, Gunnar placed his fingers in the damp soil and closed his eyes. Herrick watched as his friend took a few steady breaths before a small bud sprouted under his palm. Gunnar lifted his hand to hover a few inches above the ground before opening his eyes to inspect the small bloom that had grown under his coaxing.
The flower bed that grew quickly under Gunnar's influence sprouted small, pink petals and grew taller before his very eyes until the small bushes of heather lined the pathway. His friend had not even broken a sweat wielding his power like he had only days before.
Herrick tried not to allow the sting of envy to darken his mood further, but it had been too long since he had felt hisgalderbeneath his skin. The constant flow of water and budding life that seemed to live within him had gone silent under the iron band's restrictions. He knew the Soothsayer was going to help him, but he grew impatient.
"See? I am doing just fine without having to be watched over constantly," Gunnar continued. "I grow stronger each day, and today, I'd like to train with you."
"It would be my honor to knock you on your ass," Herrick said with a mock bow, shaking his troubles from his mind.
Gunnar, having known him for most of his life, could pick up on the lingering remains of Herrick's dark mood.
"Why are you up so early? I would have thought Maude would keep you both too exhausted to wake before the sun," his friend asked quietly.
Herrick hesitated to answer, but his friend knew what plagued him already. The benefit of knowing someone so deeply is that they can always tell that something is wrong. It also meant that hiding turmoil beneath indifference became impossible. It was incredibly frustrating to Herrick as he tried and failed to find a way to skirt the conversation.
"I'd rather not talk about it right now," he replied instead of confiding in his friend.
Herrick moved to push past Gunnar, but the man stopped him before he could get further than a few steps around him.
"Tough," Gunnar said before grabbing Herrick's arm, dragging him to a fallen log, and forcing him to sit on the soft moss that had grown over the top. "You don't just get over what you went through."
"Gunnar—"
"Shut up," his friend said, standing in front of him as if he were a parent scolding his child. "I've missed quite a bit, it seems. Dahlia has been kind enough to inform me of some of the details— Liv as well— but I want to hear it from you. Tell me what happened so you can stop being a shadow of yourself when right now we need you to be strong."
"What if this is all I am now— a shadow of who I was before?" Herrick shouted, surprised his anger had slipped through as quickly as it did. "What if this is all I want to be now?"
Gunnar only crossed his arms over his chest.
Herrick observed his friend and took note of the changes in his body since the belladonna poisoning had wreaked havoc on him. Once a formidable opponent, Gunnar now stood thinner than before. Muscles that had been like iron were now wiry, his face thinner than he had ever seen. The words rushed out of him before he realized what he was saying—a confession he had not even made to himself yet.
"When we were running from the palace, right after Maude had… I wasn't in my right mind. I knew we wouldn't get away from the soldiers chasing after us, so I told myself that staying behind would give you all the best chance of escape. I told myself that my life was forfeit because I didn't want a life without Maude. Hakon and Liv needed to get you to a healer. I promised to get Bryn to safety. There were probably a hundred reasons I could come up with in those moments for why I stayed behind, but the truth is, I didn't think I was going to survive. And I was okay with that."
Gunnar listened intently, his light blue eyes never betraying what he thought about what Herrick was saying. His friend's silence spurred him on as the truth continued to spill out of him.
"Then, to wake up in a cell, I felt it was a just punishment from the gods for trying to keep what I could not have. I lay in that dark hole beneath the palace grounds for weeks, wondering if you were alive, wondering if Hakon and Liv had managed to escape. I wallowed in my grief, never accepting the events that happened but choosing to drown in them anyway. I think that kept me sane, as backward as it sounds. But it kept my grip on reality tight," Herrick whispered.
The walls of the cell seemed to press in on him even as he sat in the open forest, his freedom within grasp despite the cold iron around his throat.
"When Baldr showed up in my cell the first time, I knew that my time was coming to an end. The 'sessions,' as he called them, were long, but I never knew how long. I had no way to track the time; I was lost in my pain and my grief, so it didn't really matter at that point. But I still expected this from Helvig and his minions. What I hadn't expected was the help. Notes with medicines, food, and even a weapon that came with a warning to be ready, all appearing in my cell with no trace of who left it."
Gunnar sat next to him on the log, each of them facing the misty forest that extended beyond their line of sight, before he asked, "Did you ever discover who left you these means of survival?"
"No, I didn't," he said quietly. "Now I suspect that it was Baldr, seeing as he is Aeric's spy. Not that it matters— the man's cruelty, no matter how false it was for him, was real to me."
Herrick paused as he tried to reconcile the man who tormented him and the man who also saved him. He took a shaky breath before revealing the worst of his truth to Gunnar.
"The day Hakon showed up outside of my cell, the day I was to be made a spectacle in front of the entire city of Logi, I told myself that if I had the opportunity to run, I would take it. It wouldn't matter to me if I had died trying, but then I saw my brother running toward me…"
