Daughters of the King |✓|

Chapter Twenty-Eight

"What's wrong with her?" were the first words Bjorn spoke when I arrived at camp a week later.

Wolfe and I hadn't travelled on the train for very long. We'd disembarked at the next station, just outside the City of Clouds, where a vehicle awaited us, and we'd travelled the rest of the way by car. It had taken us an eternity, but Wolfe said it was safer, and I was too exhausted to argue—too worn out to offer a different option.

I didn't have a different option, anyway.

"She doesn't even look like the same person," Bjorn's voice floated over to me, disappointment heavy in his tone.

"She's in shock," Wolfe replied, voice sharp, like a true military man. He carried me from the car. "And she hasn't been eating properly."

"That can't be good for the baby," Bjorn said, falling into step at our side.

"Or for her," Wolfe snapped back, and there was an edge of defensiveness to his tone that I latched onto, grateful for his presence.

He was already feeling like an ally.

I was barely aware of my surroundings as they moved me into a hut, onto a cot. The same lady I'd watched sew Gunnar up came to see me, and though I did nothing but cry, nearly hysterical at the sight of her—at the memories she brought—she inspected me and announced it was nothing serious. She prescribed a lot of rest, and some good meals and lots of fluids.

Of course, they forced me to eat and drink before they let me sleep, but then finally, finally, I was left alone, and I could rest my head on a real pillow and drift off into nothingness. I longed for nothingness more than anything.

...

I slept on and off for several days. I could never fall into a deep sleep, but I also couldn't summon the energy to get up and move. I just laid there, hating every second of every day, and thinking of nothing except how much I wanted a steaming hot shower. Knowing that I was back at camp, with only a river of ice water to wash in, suddenly seemed like the worst thing in the world.

Wolfe visited me often to check if I was getting better, but he rarely said anything. I think he was afraid of shattering me even further than he already had.

Bjorn came by only once, and afterwards I heard him standing outside, still complaining that something was wrong with me—that I wasn't the person he thought he was rescuing.

"Maybe if we tell her the truth..." I heard him saying through the thin walls of the hut.

Wolfe told him to shut up, while I just closed my eyes and pretended I hadn't heard a word.

I had never indulged in so much uselessness and selfishness before in my life, as I did during those first days back at camp. I had no purpose, no will to move, never mind the will to run. I was done running. After weeks of being in confinement, I was well practiced in the art of stillness. I didn't care if I was a burden, didn't care if I was an inconvenience. I'd never been good at caring for others, and now wasn't any different.

I thought of Gunnar, pondering the impossibility of death. My mind refused to accept a reality in which he didn't exist—refused to deal with reality at all. Everything felt too weightless and detached somehow. Days and nights blurred together while my mind swam in denial, until one day Wolfe stopped by, like he usually did, except this time he started talking.

"Olya," he said, voice careful. Guarded. "I'd hoped you would get better than this, but there are things I need to tell you."

I said nothing. I was facing the wall, and I didn't turn to face at him. I'd gotten in the habit of looking away whenever someone came by to check on me, having grown sick of their tired expressions, the constant disappointment that would flicker across their faces.

"King Vilhelm," he said, "has died."

To say I was surprised would be an understatement. I sprung up in my cot and whipped around to face him, and he jerked, startled.

"What does that mean?" I asked, although I already suspected what he was going to say.

"Your mother has been appointed Supreme Leader of the King's Country," he confirmed, and I cursed aloud.

Wolfe blinked at me in shock.

I didn't speak the words, but the truth was my mother must have killed him. There was no other possible explanation. I knew her too well. She had killed him and gotten away with it somehow.

"Before I deserted the army," Wolfe recovered and continued, "the country was declared in a state of perpetual war, and your mother had called back the troops to guard the City of Roses, effectively shutting herself in and abandoning the people."

I nodded, mind racing now, thoughts working fast.

"She's not going to waste her time trying to control a country determined to destroy itself," I said. "She's going to act in her best interest, and she's going to divide us."

"This is exactly what we've been working so hard to avoid," Wolfe went on. "Our entire cause has been to try to prevent the dissolution of the country. Now, we're going to become nothing but a wasteland."

And there it was. The truth behind their cause. A cause shattered single-handled by my own mother.

It gave me the strangest sensation. I'd always lived in my mother's shadow. She was the impressive one, the one that conquered anything that stood in her way. Now she had conquered the country, and I'd been there all along to witness it from the sidelines, I just hadn't known. Not completely. I'd only ever been dragged along, a pawn in her games.

Now suddenly I was free of her. Left to fend for myself.

"Wolfe." I kicked the blankets off me and swung my legs over the side of the cot. "Get me some soap, and I want a basin of hot water and some cloth for washing. There's no way in hell I'm going down to that damn river again. And I want something to eat besides potatoes and dried meat."

His mouth twitched. "Anything else?"

I nodded. "Tell Bjorn I want to see him."

He inclined his head once, and like a man accustomed to taking orders, he turned on his heel and ducked out of the hut, marching away to do as I asked.

I pulled my hair off the back of my neck and leaned my elbows on my knees, exhaling slowly. So, this is what it had all come to. My mother had claimed the country, and now she had broken it.

It would be each man for himself from now on. My specialty.