Page 166 of Kingdom of Embers and Ruin

She was glad she had changed into leggings in anticipation of the desert heat that now bore down on her, but sweat was still running in rivulets down her spine and plastering her hair to the side of her face. What she found odd was that the further she got into the city, the quieter it got. A crowd had gathered in front of the palace if what she had heard from a passing child was to be believed.

Maude tried and failed to push Herrick from her mind. He had traveled for days to find her and help her, not knowing that she would lead him to his death. She had tried to fight him off when he would not leave her side, had tried to spew hateful things. Maude had seen the hurt and betrayal in his eyes and been glad for it if it meant he would not follow her.

And then, as he always did, Herrick surprised her by helping her escape the soldiers. He was buying her time to get to the palace and end her father on her own. Her hateful words and betrayal had not dissuaded him from helping her. Not for the first time, Maude thought she could never deserve a man like him.

Herrick was good and kind, and she was… not.

He would understand one day when she was in the shadows again. She could not return to him or their friends just as surely as she could not return to the palace as Maude, the Heir Apparent.

Maude couldn’t think about Herrick anymore as she feared she would turn around and go back to him if she did. She turned her thoughts to all the reasons she had to destroy her father, the faces and stories of each person burning into the front of her mind.

She thought of her sister, Brynna, who she had abandoned to her father’s grasp and the punishments she knew he could inflict. She thought of her mother and how she walked away from her entire life to marry a man she could never love, all in the name of protecting Ahland.

She thought of the pit fighters of Logi who scraped together some kind of living for their families in the grossly unbalanced world they lived in that was governed only by power. She thought of the children she stole food for over the last ten years, knowing that they, too, ended up in the fighting pits because of hierarchical bullshit.

But mostly, she thought of Sigurd, thevitkithat taught control to those in Logi who needed a place of solace and caring in a harsh world. A man who had felt he never did enough for his family when her father’s soldiers came to drag them away. A man who had been her only friend in a lonely existence when she needed one, even if she hadn’t known it yet.

I do what I can now because when it mattered, I didn’t do enough.

She would do what she could to ensure their survival. In a world that her father would rule, the bright lights of this country would burn out under his smothering control.

Maude ran through the now-empty streets with a fire in her soul that burned brighter than her anger ever had. Only the sound of her breathing and her boots hitting the bricked pavement beneath her feet rang outaround her as she approached the empty gates to the palace, just as Revna promised.

Maude did not slow her pace as she sprinted toward the open gates, spying the entrance to the servants’ corridors that would lead her to her father’s war room.

Herrick’s breath came out in quick pants, the hot air of the desert drying out his lungs faster than he would have liked. To his right was Gunnar, looking pale and sickly, fighting off a soldier with tremendous effort. To his left, Liv was finishing off two soldiers who had surprised them as Hakon took care of the last of the new soldiers who came to help their compatriots.

“We need to go after Maude,” Gunnar huffed, bending over as he held himself up on his knees.

“We will,” Herrick agreed. “But you need to stay here.”

“Fuck off,” Gunnar waved a hand. “I’ll catch my breath, and we’ll be on our way.”

Herrick was about to argue when he spied the slice on Gunnar’s bald scalp. Fresh blood was oozing out from under the bandage faster than he liked.

He felt a hand on his arm and turned to face Liv. Sweat glistened on her ebony skin, the sun radiating off the beads like diamonds. Her gray eyes looked radiant, like the sun, for a moment before they dimmed and appeared normal once more.

“Go,” she panted. “Find Maude and help her, regardless of what she says. We’ll catch up.”

Herrick nodded reluctantly before sprinting down the stairs to where Hakon was. He paused before his older brother, his future King, unsure of what he wanted to say. Hakon’s blue eyes were bright with the bloodshed from battle, his grief finally having an outlet that wasn't whiskey.

They stood awkwardly in front of each other before Herrick spoke, “Til Valhalla, brother.”

Herrick extended a hand. Hakon eyed it before grasping Herrick’s forearm and pulling him in close.

“I will see you shortly, not in Valhalla,” Hakon said. “That’s an order, General.”

Herrick chuckled and patted his brother on the back, releasing him. Before he could say another word, Herrick turned and sprinted for the palace gates in the same direction Maude had taken off toward.

He followed the unusually strong scent of burning cedar that belonged to Maude through the deserted streets of Logi’s noble district; the subtle jasmine that usually lingered under the smoke was almost undetectable.

Odd, he thought.

The further into the empty city he got, the heavier his fatemark felt on his chest. The Norns were pushing him in the right direction, but the burning on his chest was not a good sign. He needed to find Maude.

Maude silently crept through the empty halls of the servants’ corridors in her first home. The interior red walls were a comforting sight that she had not expected, as she was so used to the horrid obsidian stone her father had ordered to cover the original walls of the palace.

Depending on her memory, Maude navigated the secret halls until she knew she was close to the war room. She had checked her father’s quartersand had found it empty, as she expected. In the late hour, she had taken the chance by going there first in hopes that he had retired for the night, but she knew him better than that.

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