Page 53 of The Daughter of the Scarred Elf

His eyes widened. “No. Why would I do that?”

“So people know therealyou.”

“No.” Joran shook his head and twiddled his fingers together. “Kolfinna, I want to be friends with you?—”

“Andonlyme?” She sighed loudly. “Just because I’m fae like you?”

He didn’t say anything and chose to peer down at his feet, with his gold locks obscuring his face.

You need to be friends with him, a voice whispered in the back of her mind. She had almost forgotten about her objective: get information on runes so she could free herself. This was the perfect chance for her to swoop in and say that they were friends already, and that he had nothing to worry about. But Kolfinna couldn’t even open her mouth to utter those words.

Joran finally raised his gaze to meet hers. “I don’t have many friends and since we will be together for a while …”

For fifteen years, if she couldn’t break the mark on her wrist. The thought alone made her internally cringe, and it was what finally opened her mouth.

“I understand,” she said.

“Really?” The relief in his voice cracked at her consciousness.

“Yes.” Kolfinna licked her lips. “Joran, like you said, we’ll be spending a lot of time together because of”—she raised her wrist—“this. How did you even find out about runes and how to bind people to contracts?”

Joran hesitated and glanced between her and the golden rune on her wrist. An uncomfortable look passed over his face. “By reading books.”

“Where did you find those books?”

He rubbed his neck. “The lieutenant found some of them. Others …youfound.”

Kolfinna paused. Waited. And when he didn’t elaborate, she whispered, “Me?”

“The Eventyrslot ruins.” Joran watched her. “There were hundreds of books there because it was a school, right? So … the lieutenant got some for me.”

It was all confidential, classified, and sealed away by the king. Or so Kolfinna had heard. Even Fenris hadn’t been able to acquire that many books for her. To hear that Joran had found out how to use his rune magic because of her … filled her with a strange, sick feeling. She had been the reason he had somehow learned about rune magic and how to bind a soul to another.

But it also meant that she needed to get her hands on those books.

Her mind raced to Joran’s room and she tried to remember if she had seen some books there, but she kept drawing a blank.

She would have to sneak in at some point and see for herself, she decided. But not now. If she did it too soon after this conversation, he would obviously become suspicious.

“That’s amazing,” she said instead with a forced smile. “You were able to learn so much from just books. Really, that’s amazing.”

A blush crept up his cheeks. “T-Thank you. Um, let’s get back to training now?”

Kolfinna turned her attention back to levitating the rocks, but her mind wouldn’t remain focused. A plan was already formulating in her mind: sneak into Joran’s room and find those books.

12

The early morninglight stung Kolfinna’s eyes, but that wasn’t what had her blinking up at her crackled, gray ceiling. Her heart was racing a million beats a second and she subconsciously thanked the morning light for waking her from her nightmare. She tried to calm her breathing, but the images of the nightmare flashed before her eyes. She had dreamed of Olia, Sijur’s imprisoned woman. Olia had been screaming and crying, chained up and covered in a mapwork of rune marks over her emaciated body. Beside Olia, there had been hundreds of thousands of similar men and women. Withered and covered with runes.

And then there was Kolfinna, bowing down beside Sijur as he looked upon his little army with a wide, calculated grin.

The dream was too close to potential reality. It reminded her that she was being too idle. She hadn’t figured out anything about how to break herself from the runes and she hadn’t tried hard enough. She had figured she’d give herself some time before sneaking into Joran’s room to find the books, but now with this dream fresh on her mind, she wondered if it was best to work as fast as possible.

Kolfinna didn’t have to glance at Inkeri or Herja to know that they both were fast asleep; she could hear their soft, gentle breathing. Kolfinna laid an arm over her eyes. She had soon realized that the middle bed was the worst bed in the room because the window was directly above her and every morning, without fail, nearly blinded her awake.

With the quiet of the mornings, she was able to focus on the noises of the fortress. Her ears picked up the distant sounds of people walking the halls, the soft hums of voices down below, the stirring of the wind against barren branches. At least focusing on that made the nightmare recede in the back of her mind.

Kolfinna pushed herself into a sitting position and shoved the thick blanket off her body. She would’ve loved to remain in bed, curl up in a ball, and fall back asleep—hopefully without a nightmare this time—but now that she was actively trying to avoid Blár, it was better to wake up at this time, eat, and start her day. Besides, it was easier to squeeze in a bath this early, since most of the women didn’t wake up for another half hour.

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