Torvin was waiting for her outside Vertigern’s pavilion. Jeren pursed her lips as she noticed them standing there expectantly, watching her approach.
“You don’t have to go,” said Lara. “I mean, you’re about to face the Vision Rock. Surely—”
“No. Better to get it over with. It’s something else about home and it’s better I know before I go with Ariah, don’t you think? Elayne and Vertigern are there too.”
“Well, I’m coming with you. I don’t trust him any further than I could throw his scrawny body.”
“Vertigern?”
“No. Vertigern seems the soul of honour. The other one. Torvin. He makes my skin crawl.”
Jeren blinked at her. “Really?”
“Oh, yes,” said the Feyna girl. “Really. He’s up to something. He wants you to go with them even more than the others. Like an obsessive.”
Ridiculous. Jeren had known Torvin all her life. He was no more ‘up to something’ than she was. And yet Lara was so convinced. Jeren shook her head.
“Come with me then. Whatever they want, they don’t mean me harm. But I think they fear my brother and his power. They are right to.”
And people who were afraid sometimes took steps too far to protect themselves.
Inside the pavilion the atmosphere was no better. Vertigern stood by the door, with Elayne still right by his side. The interior was identical to the previous encampment, a home away from his home. Jeren wondered if his personal chambers in Grey Holt were decorated thus. So grand for what was, in essence, a tent just like the one she had shared with Shan, or the one she now shared with Lara. What did it say about the two ways of life, that the Feyna were content to see something as it was, while the Holters felt the need to dress it in finery and pretend a sheet of canvas was a palace?
Lara fidgeted at her side, and then Jeren saw the reason. Torvin stood behind the desk, a silk-wrapped length in his hands. He held it out to her and bowed his head.
“What is it?” Jeren asked, with an uneasy feeling that she already knew. She didn’t take it. She didn’t dare.
“I brought it for you. It’s your birthright, Jeren.”
Reverently, he laid it on the desk. Despite the wrappings, it gave a metallic clunk and Jeren’s heart lurched within her. Only one thing had ever made her feel so uneasy, so…cold. She watched with horrid fascination as Torvin unwrapped it.
Sunlight filtered through the canvas, glinting off the metal blade. Jeren swallowed hard. Outside, the sounds of the camp faded, dimmed. Her gaze ran up its length to the hilt, a masterpiece of craftsmanship. It was shaped like a hand, reaching out for her, a hand which would take the person seeking to use the sword, and if they were weak, to use them instead.
Jeren knew it well, too well. Felan’s sword, blade of her family line, forged by the Fair Ones for her ancestor to help him contain his magic and stem the tide of madness, her father’s sword, her brother’s sword.
She stepped back and dragged her horrified gaze back up to Torvin’s expectant face.
“What—what do you think you’re doing, bringing that here?”
“Gilliad cast it aside. It should be yours, Lady Jeren. So should River Holt.”
“You’re speaking treason!”
Elayne stiffened and Vertigern looked away, unwilling to meet Jeren’s furious glare. But Torvin didn’t flinch from her.
He laughed, actually laughed. “Gilliad accused my family of treason. And you’ve committed it too, according to your brother. My Lady—”
“Stop calling me that! You’re suggesting I take his place, that I should…what? Murder my brother? Take River Holt by force?”
Vertigern cleared his throat at that moment and Jeren turned on him. He at least had the good grace to look guilty now that he finally faced her. “Jeren, it isn’t what you think.”
“And you’re a party to this madness? Have you thought this through? Any of you?”
Elayne’s fingers flexed beside her own sword hilt. Beside Jeren, Lara stiffened, ready to attack. A Shistra-Phail at her back, albeit one as untried as herself, was a comfort. Strangely, she wasn’t worried about the two men, but Elayne…well, Elayne was another matter. There was no doubting the dislike radiating from the armour-clad woman. It was palpable.
Jeren struggled to calm her outraged breath. “So I am expected to lead an attack on my own home—”
“The intention isn’t for you to lead an attack,” Vertigern interrupted.
That was like a slap in the face with a wet cloth.
“Oh? So you’ll lead an attack on my home? That’s even better. Grey Holt attacks River Holt in my name, because that is how it will be seen, Vertigern. And, finding themselves under attack by another Holt, my people will rally around Gilliad. Perhaps he’ll call on allies of his own. Mountain Holt maybe. And then Grey Holt calls on North Holt and Mountain Holt calls on South Holt and so it goes, on and on, until war has engulfed all the Holtlands. Is that truly what you want? Any of you?”
Vertigern didn’t move as her voice rose, didn’t flinch as she yelled the final words. He waited until she was quiet again.
“River Holt has few alliances left, Jeren,” he said. “Gilliad is unstable, dangerous, and no one wants another insane Scion of Jern loose on the world.”
Ah yes, her insane forebears—monsters like Biran, murderers all. They always came up. No one wanted another one of them rampaging through the Holtlands.
“They were my ancestors too.” She stepped towards him, but as she did Elayne’s sword slid free with a chilling ring of steel.
The two men forgotten, Jeren focused entirely on Elayne, the steel in her hand and in her eyes. Jeren’s own rage faded away to the cool calm of potential combat. From behind her, an answering sound cut through the still air as Lara also drew a blade.
Apprehension tightened in the room but Jeren didn’t flinch. “This is how it begins, you see? I won’t be party to that sort of madness. I won’t be an excuse or a tool to bring about this bloodshed!”
“This is still yours,” said Torvin, his voice unfazed by her anger and her words. “Your destiny, your duty.”
After weeks of training with Shan, her natural instincts took over. He had called it the Dance, that moment in battle when the world around her slowed, when she could move faster and more accurately than any opponent—well, any opponent but Shan anyway. She twisted away from Vertigern and Elayne, pushing Torvin back with one hand while the other seized the sword, the last thing she wanted to touch. So sharp it seemed to cut the air, it sang as she thrust it forward, right at Torvin. Stopping a hair’s breadth from his throat.
His eyes widened in fear and he sucked in a breath. Yes, fear. He knew it now, understood it, and saw perhaps what a Scion of Jern could be. Sweat beaded on his brow, glistening like the tip of the Feyna forged blade.
Shivers ran up Jeren’s arm as the sword battled with her innate magic. For a moment, everything in her screamed that she should kill him. Or drop the sword and run away. But her hand seemed locked around the hilt, or else the hilt itself had closed its grip on her. Instead, her own magic flared inside her and flooded her body. For a moment all she could do was stand there, staring into Torvin’s terrified face, and then sanity returned. More than sanity. Clarity. Healing.
She lowered the sword and Torvin heaved in a breath. His shoulders slumped.