Kanin: Crystal Kingdom Part 13

"Where's Bryn?" he asked, and that's when I faded out again.

I wanted to stay conscious and find out what exactly was going on, but the pain was too much. It overwhelmed everything, and I blacked out.

Then I felt a hand on my face, strong and cold against my skin. I struggled to open my eyes, but my right eye wouldn't open. The vision in my left eye slowly focused, and I saw a face right above mine.

Dark gray eyes filled with worry, black curls falling forwardit took me a moment to realize it was Konstantin.

"Oh, white rabbit. What have you done?" he whispered.

"Am I dying?" I barely managed to get out, in a voice that sounded far too weak to be my own.

"No. I won't let you die," Konstantin promised me. Then to Ulla he shouted, "Drive faster! We need to get there now."

Gingerly, he lifted my head and rested it on his lap. It still hurt, but I tried to hide my wincing as best I could. He took my hand in his, and it felt sticky from blood.

"If it hurts too bad, just squeeze my hand," he said.

I wanted to tell him that it always hurt too bad. That the pain was so intense, I felt like I was suffocating, drowning in flames. But I didn't. I just squeezed his hand and waited for darkness to come over me again.

THIRTY-TWO.

convalesce Before I even opened my eyes, I felt the difference. My body still ached, especially on the right side, but it was no longer an excruciating fire burning me up from the inside out.

When I did open my eyes, they both opened with ease, which helped quell my fears that I had lost my right eye. They were both there, working properly, as I stared up at the mobile above me.

Sunlight spilled in through the open doorway, but the mobile still managed to cast a few dimly lit shapes of the moon and stars around me. My feet hung off the end of Hanna's small bed. I was back in Forening, at Finn's house.

I looked around, still getting my bearings, when I saw the dark silhouette of Konstantin leaning against the doorframe, backlit by the sun coming in from the front windows.

"What are you doing here?" I asked. I vaguely remembered him being in the SUV with me, but it all felt like a strange, terrible dream.

"I brought you here because you needed medical attention," he said, his voice low.

"But before you said that you couldn't come here because the Trylle would arrest you," I reminded him.

"That Ulla girl didn't know anything about where to go or what to do. I couldn't just leave you with her." He gave a half shrug. "Not if I wanted you to live, anyway. When we got to the gates, I talked to Finn, and he managed to convince the Queen to give me temporary amnesty since I was aiding an injured troll."

"Temporary?" I asked. "How long will that last?"

"I hope it lasts just long enough for me to get out of here without ending up in a dungeon," he replied glibly. His face was hidden in shadows, so I couldn't tell how concerned he really was about being locked up.

"How did you find me?" I asked.

"I'm tracking you, remember? I felt your panic, and I found you as fast as I could. I stopped your car just south of Winnipeg. Ulla didn't want to let me in at first, but I managed to convince her."

"You'll have to stop tracking me eventually," I told him.

"We'll see."

"I should probably thank you for helping me." I started pus.h.i.+ng myself up into a sitting position, but as soon as I moved, my side screamed painfully.

"Easy, there." Konstantin rushed over. He put his hand on my arm, helping me until I was sitting, and then he sat down on the bed beside me. "Finn got a healer to come in and help heal you, but she didn't do it completely. A couple medics fixed you up the best they could after the healer had finished."

Konstantin didn't say it, but I knew why she hadn't healed me all the wayshe didn't want to waste her energy on a lowly half-breed tracker outlaw. To be honest, I was surprised she'd bothered helping at all.

"You would've died without it," he said, supplying a reason. A healer could be moved to help even the lowest of the low if they would die without intervention.

I lifted up my tank top to better inspect my wounds, but they were all bound tightly with bandages stretching from my waist to just below my b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Some blood seeped through, and I gently touched my ribs, which sent a searing pain through me.

"You've got quite a few st.i.tches under there," Konstantin a.s.sured me as I lowered my s.h.i.+rt. "But at least she saved your eye."

I reached up and touched my eye, and unlike my side, it felt perfectly normal and pain-free. There wasn't any sign of injury that I could feel.

"The bear swiped you good across the face, but to save your eye, the healer had to fix it all completely," he explained. "Where the bear tore you open on your side, she mostly just closed up the internal organs. You lost a lot of blood."

"I'll have to thank her for that if I ever see her," I said, and I meant it. She hadn't needed to help me, especially since I wasn't even Trylle, and I was grateful that she'd gone out of her cla.s.s to save my life.

Then I turned my attention to Konstantin. "How could you not tell me that Mina is Viktor's daughter?"

He inhaled sharply through his teeth. "I didn't know for sure."

"How could you not know?" I asked, incredulous. "You've been sleeping with her for years, and working with her dad? But somehow you never put that together?"

"They're not like a normal father-daughter." He shook his head. "At first I thought they might be former lovers, but I quickly realized that wasn't the case because of how cold they were with each other. They were more like colleagues. Mina never called him 'Dad.' They never talked about family. The only thing they ever mentioned was revenge and how they were going to exact it."

"And you never asked?" I pressed.

"Of course I did! But Mina just told me not to concern myself with things like that."

"And that was good enough for you?"

"No!" Konstantin leaned forward and put his hands to his face in frustration. "Nothing was ever good enough for me with Mina, but she wouldn't ever give more. You don't understand what it was like with her. Everything was on her terms. Everything."

"Fine. I can accept that you couldn't push Mina, but why wouldn't you have told me?" I asked. "You obviously had suspicions."

"Really?" He looked at me with an arched eyebrow. "What would've happened if I told you that Mina was Viktor's daughter, and it turned out not to be the case? Not only would that have destroyed any trust you had in me, it would've destroyed any credibility you had with whoever you'd gone to with that information."

I realized that he was right. If it had turned out that his hunch was wrong, it would've undone any progress we'd made.

By not revealing unsubstantiated ideas to me, he'd protected everything we were trying to accomplish.

"And does it even matter?" Konstantin asked. "Mina is an evil b.i.t.c.h regardless of who her father is."

"Well, now it matters, because the information might be enough to get the Trylle involved and help the Kanin," I said. "This is proof that Mina got the crown under false pretenses, murdered the King, and she should be dethroned."

"By dethroned, you mean executed." He looked down at the floor, his arms resting on his knees.

For the first time it occurred to me what this might mean to him. He'd once loved Mina, very deeply by his accounts, and even though he realized how awful she truly was, that didn't necessarily mean he'd want to see her dead.

"Yes. Mina will be executed. Are you okay with that?"

He breathed in deeply, then nodded. "I will be."

"You can tell me how you're feeling," I said, then added, "If you want this whole friends.h.i.+p thing to work and want me to trust you, you can't keep things from me."

"I think you know all my secrets now," he replied wearily.

"Thank you for coming back for me."

He smiled crookedly at me. "I'll always come back for you."

THIRTY-THREE.

tisane Finn led Konstantin and me down a narrow gravel trail. Hedges grew up around it, blocking out the world and reminding me of Alice playing croquet in Wonderland. The path curved around the palace, and I glanced back at Konstantin to make sure he was still following.

The Queen had invited us to join her for lunch, and Konstantin seemed convinced it was some kind of trick, so I kept expecting him to run off at any moment. But he'd agreed to come and even dressed up for it.

Finn had procured a black dress s.h.i.+rt and vest for him from someone in town. All Finn's clothes were slightly too small, since Konstantin was taller and broader-shouldered. Before we'd left the Holmeses' house, I'd told him that he cleaned up nicely.

He'd looked down at me, his eyes going over my body in a way that made my skin flush, and then he'd gruffly said, "You too, white rabbit," before quickly averting his gaze and walking away.

Mia had given me somethinga lovely white dress with an empire waist and a subtle train in the back. It was slightly too small for me, squeezing a bit on my ribs, but fortunately, my wounds were healing up nicely. It had only been a little over a day since I'd arrived in Forening and begun recuperating, but the psychokinetic healing had lingering effects, causing accelerated healing long after the healer had stopped.

The trail opened up into a lush garden on the bluffs. The balcony from the palace hung over, leaving some of the garden in shadows, but the warm spring sun bathed the rest of it.

Brick walls surrounded the garden, covered in flowering vines, with large fragrant blooms of pink and purple. Fruit trees of all kinds populated the gardenwith pear, plum, and fig being just a few that I spotted right away.

The gravel trail had given way to a soft, mossy covering that felt wonderful on my bare feet, and Finn led us deeper into the garden. Konstantin had to hold back a few branches to keep them from hitting him in the head.

In the center of a small clearing, surrounded by flowering trees of white and blue, was an elegant wooden table with high-backed chairs. Wendy sat at one end of the table, while her husband Loki sat directly across from her, leaving two chairs open on either side.

A spread of tea and fruits was laid on the table. As Konstantin took a seat next to me, I was again reminded of Alice in Wonderland.

"Thank you for joining us for lunch today," Wendy said, smiling at us.

I returned her smile warmly. "We're more than happy to."

"It seems like you're recuperating all right, then?" Loki asked as he leaned over and took a crumpet from a plate.

"I'm doing much better. Thank you," I said, alternating between looking at the King and the Queen. "I wanted to come see you yesterday, but Finn insisted I rest."

Finn was pouring himself a cup of tea and looked over at me. "You're better off taking your time and making sure everything is healing okay."

"Finn has always been the cautious one." Wendy laughed lightly, then turned her eyes onto me.

While she still held herself with the same authority I'd seen in the throne room, she seemed relaxed today. Her gown had been traded in for a peridot sundress, and the suns.h.i.+ne played well on her bronze skin. She'd done her hair more casually today, so the soft curls were ruffled by the breeze that went through the garden.

"We invited you to lunch to see how you are all doing and what your intentions are," Wendy said directly, looking from Konstantin to me.

Loki laughed. "You make it all sound so formal." With a softer gaze, he turned to us. "We're just curious to know how long you planned on staying."

"Since you granted me temporary amnesty, I hadn't intended to outstay my welcome," Konstantin said, speaking in the low, formal way a Hogdragen would speak to authority. "I only wanted to make sure Bryn was stable, and now that she is, I am prepared to head out on my own again. If that's all right."

I shot him a look, unable to hide my surprise. He'd spent most of the past twenty-four hours with me, trying to get me to rest by reading to me, preventing Liam from climbing all over me, telling Ulla and me old Kanin stories, and just generally keeping me company. And he'd never once mentioned leaving.

I knew that he couldn't stay here forever, and I hadn't planned on it myself either. But I hadn't expected him to leave so soon, and the thought sent an unwelcome pang straight to my chest that had nothing to do with my injuries.

"If you want to go, we won't stop you. You're not a captive here." She'd leaned back in her chair, appraising him with the calculated gaze of a ruler twice her age. "But we're also not throwing you out."

Konstantin had taken a sip of his tea, and he dabbed at his mouth with an embroidered napkin before replying. "Thank you, but I think it's best if I take my leave sooner rather than later."

"What about you, Bryn?" Wendy asked. "Finn told me you absconded to find out what was happening with the Kanin. Did you find what you were looking for, or are you planning to leave again?"

"Thank you for extending your amnesty to me again, My Queen," I said as gratefully as I could, clearing my mind of thoughts about Konstantin's departure.

"You can thank my husband for that." Wendy turned her loving gaze to Loki. "He pointed out that if I want the Trylle to be a more welcoming, accepting kingdom, then it must begin with myself."

"What better way to do that than housing those that no longer have a home?" Loki asked.

"I cannot thank you enough for your hospitality," I said, and turned to face Wendy. "But there is something that I wanted to talk to you about. You know that there is a great deal of unrest in Doldastam right now."

The lightness fell away from Wendy, and she pursed her lips. "The loss of your King has had a tragic effect on the kingdom, and my sympathies go out to you."

"I appreciate that, but I was hoping that perhaps you'd be willing to go beyond sympathies," I said carefully, knowing that I may already be pus.h.i.+ng my luck.

"I thought that Chancellor Bain already spoke to you and explained that while I am empathetic to the plight of your people, we are in no place to get involved with a possible civil war." Wendy spoke with the air of a Queen giving a proclamation, but that was sort of what she was doing, so it made sense.

"I'm not advocating civil war," I clarified. "The Kanin people are innocent bystanders. It's only Mina Strinne that needs to be dealt with, and I have found new evidence that I thought you might find more compelling."

Wendy exchanged a look with her husband, her expression unreadable. He shrugged one shoulder, then turned his attention to me.

"Go on," Loki urged me.

"Do you know who Viktor Dlig is?" I asked.

"The Kanin have apprised us on him previously," Wendy said. "We know of his attempts on the King Evert's life in the past."