Page 17 of Kingdom of Embers and Ruin

Maude’s eyes flew open as someone fell on her. She had been having a dreamless sleep when she was forced awake to find Herrick, of all people, on top of her. She batted at him to get off while making what one could only describe as a sound of hysterical frustration. She had been so deeply asleep that she hadn’t even heard him come up tothe roof.

“What the Hel is your problem, Herrick?” Maude almost screamed as she kicked at him to get further away from her.

She was ignoring how she had felt when she realized Herrick’s full weight was pinning her down and lashed out at him instead.

“It was an accident! Stop kicking me!” He grunted, but they were still too close, and she felt every vibration. Delicious chills ran up her spine.

“Just get off me!”

“Gladly!”

They scrambled apart as quickly as they could, still panting from surprise and a feeling she chose to ignore. It seemed her heart hadn’t fully caught up to her mind yet, in more ways than one. She turned her back to Herrick and put a hand to her chest, willing herself to calm down enough to breathe normally again.

She felt his eyes on her back, studying her tattoo, cooling her raging soul. Maude’s back tingled under Herrick’s scrutiny as she knew what he was seeing: the phases of the moon down her spine to the small of her back flanked by the Valkyrie wings that also appeared on her fatemark. Her tattoo took up most of her back, but he couldn’t have known about her abnormal fatemark. She had never told anyone about it except Bryn.

Maude stooped to pick up her clean, sleeveless shirt and pulled it over her head. With her back covered again, she felt Herrick’s gaze finally leave her. He cleared his throat as she tucked her shirt loosely into the flowing harem pants and slipped on her boots. Finally, she wrapped her mother’s shawl around herself and pulled her hood up around her face.

“Why are you up here?” She asked, avoiding his eye.

“I could ask you the same. Why were you sleeping up here?”

“I couldn’t sleep in the house.”

“I don't know what answer I expected,” Herrick grumbled to himself.

“Are you going to answer my question?” She snapped, irritated with how he kept avoiding answering her.

She buckled on her weapons belt and checked to see that her dagger was still strapped to her thigh within reach through the slit she had cut in her pants for access.

“I came to see if you had left us yet. I wanted to talk to you about the plan for tomorrow night,” Herrick sighed.

Right. The plan to leave Logi so she could finally hear what they had to say about this “weapon” to kill Helvig. She turned back to face Herrick, who had been looking up toward the sky as if he was trying to give her privacy. She motioned for the stairs.

“After you.”

Herrick rolled his eyes and descended. When they finally arrived on the first floor, Liv had her assortment of knives laid out on the table and was placing them in various hiding spots on her person. Gunnar also seemed to be waking up from an afternoon nap as he was stretching in the chair closest to the hidden passage. He smiled warmly at Herrick and then turned to greet Maude with a slightly more reserved smile that was friendly nevertheless.

“What were you two up to? We heard Maude shriek and then a commotion,” Gunnar grinned cheekily at Herrick, standing up to finish stretching out his back.

“I don’t shriek,” Maude muttered as she headed for the jug containing drinking water, pouring herself a healthy glass and downing it in one drink.

“Maude decided to take a cat nap on the roof, and I tripped over her,” Herrick said as he took a seat on the long, low bench in the living space that had a selection of multicolored pillows and cushions.

“If we are just going to talk about how Herrick has big feet and no coordination, I’ll go back upstairs,” Maude said to the room as Gunnar laughed and Liv eyed her from the table.

“Children, play nice,” Hakon’s voice drifted in from the back door as he strode in and washed his face in the wash basin.

Liv rolled her eyes now, and Herrick raised his middle finger at him in a rude gesture. It was Gunnar who responded to Maude.

“We will be going over the southern wall of the city and make our way the short distance to Engate, the coastal city that lies a few leagues to the southwest. There is an innkeeper who puts us up a few times a year when we venture to this city. We have to make a southern loop around the Bone Chasm to get back east.”

Maude shivered. The Bone Chasm was the rift in the earth created two hundred years ago during the Elemental War between kingdoms. The seated Elven King of Light had wrought the power of the sun to stop the collision of elementalgalderthat was being launched at opposing armies.

The power was so great that the Elven King had been incinerated for being the conduit of that muchgalder,and the Elven of the solar Kingdom of Light were wiped out. Their northern relatives, the Kingdom of Shadow, were never seen or heard from again after the war. Rumors circulated that the complete wipeout of Light Elven had wounded the Elven race so grievously that they never recovered.

Now, the Elven were just stories told to noble children to warn them of attempting to wield too muchgalderat once. Scary stories passed on from generation to generation, muddling the truth of what happened on that battlefield. The treaty that is honored today between territories was a result of that complete demolition— the Chasm is the only physical reminder of the war that ravaged these lands.

There was no way across the Bone Chasm as it ran over a few leagues across at its widest point and harbored jagged rocks and old bones at its bed that would impale anyone who fell into it. Trade between kingdoms had become tenuous over the years as the routes to each kingdom’s trading posts were fraught with raiders and wild beasts. More goods were lost than the trade seemed worth, but the resources from each kingdom proved necessary enough to keep trying.

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