“He never mentioned anything like that,” Mia said. “Johan and Sarina had lived in Eftershom since before Nikolas was born. They never even talked about living anywhere else.” She paused, thinking. “At an anniversary party once, Sarina did say something about them moving into their house right before the big thunder snowstorm.
“Not much happened in Eftershom, so everyone talked about the big thunder snowstorm that happened two years before I was born,” Mia said. “So that was 1989.”
“That was before the book was published,” Finn said. “At least, according to the publication date on the back page.”
“He wrote that book for Nikolas, when he was still a baby,” Mia explained. “So he had to have published it from Eftershom. But by the time I started dating Nikolas, we were teenagers. We didn’t want to talk about fairy tales or his father.”
She looked out the window, watching pensively as the branches of a weeping willow swayed in the breeze.
“I just haven’t thought about any of this in such a long time,” she said finally, still staring off. “I can reach out to Johan. Obviously, he’ll know more about his own life than I do.”
Finn got up and went around the table to sit beside her, and he put his hand on her arm. “Are you okay?”
She nodded and wiped at her eyes. “I don’t know why, thinking of Nikolas just…” She managed a sad smile and pushed her chair back. “I just need a moment.”
Mia went into another room, and Finn waited a beat before going after her. I knew that she loved Finn and their children and their life together, but she had also loved Nikolas. She didn’t talk to me about her first marriage much, but I knew they’d both been young and in love. Mia had only been nineteen when she became a widow, and Hanna was still in diapers.
It was nearly ten years ago, when the Trylle and Vittra were at odds, gearing up for what would be known as the War for the Princess. It officially kicked off when the Vittra attacked the sleepy Trylle village of Oslinna, where Mia, Nikolas, and Hanna were living at the time. Hobgoblins with supernatural strength snuck in during the middle of the night and completely decimated the town.
Mia said once that it looked like a tornado had gone through afterward, with houses completely flattened. Nikolas was killed trying to protect Mia and Hanna.
While Finn was off comforting Mia, I reached across the table and pulled Johan’s book back over to me. I flipped through it, scanning the worn paper, until I spotted a passage underlined in bold ink.
“A bird will fall in love with a magi but where will they hatch their egg?” Senka asked sadly.
I turned through more pages, searching for other underlined passages, and I finally found another, thirty-three pages later.
The suns set in the green sky when the good morning becomes the violent night.
And then another twenty-one pages later, a similar message underlined:
“Remember the words of the häxdoktor—the suns will set in the green sky when the good morning becomes the violent night,” Jo-Huk warned his brother.
The final lines I found underlined were at the very end of the book, in the unsigned acknowledgments. There were only three sentences, brief but impactful.
Some stories demand to be told, and this was one of them. I thank my family for allowing me the time to take my hand at telling it. All of this was written before, and no doubt it will be again.
Finn’s cell phone rang from the other room, a shrill tone loud enough to easily be heard over the sound of screaming children if need be. A few minutes later, he came into the kitchen with a hopeful smile.
“That was my friend, the one that might be able to help you recover your memory,” he said. “They can meet you at the palace right now, if you’re up for it.”
I nodded. “Yeah. I’m ready to remember everything.”
4
Exchanged
Finn and I waited in the parlor, and I was happy that I’d changed out of my ill-fitting attire into a much more presentable crocheted romper. I had been to a few events at the palace—ancillary invites, thanks to Finn—but those had all been in grand ballrooms crowded with other guests. This was my first time in the smaller, more private but still luxe areas of the Queen’s residence.
The Trylle palace was the most modern I had seen, an opulent white mansion near the top of the bluffs with plenty of windows to make the most of the lush view of thick forests and a wide river.
The parlor was in the corner of the palace, with the two outer walls made entirely of glass. The wallpaper was cream colored with a subtle shine accentuating a pale green vine pattern. Books lined the shelves on one wall, and on the other, above a marble fireplace, was a painting of a stunning young woman, sitting in a garden.
We waited, Finn poised and still, one leg crossed over the other as he sat on the settee. I sat across from him, literally on the edge of my seat. I had an irrational fear that the delicately carved legs and embroidered satin would collapse under me, like it was made of matchsticks.
“Who are we meeting?” I asked as I watched the hands tick slowly on the bronze grandfather clock behind Finn. Before we’d left, all he had told me was that it was a mutual friend of the Queen’s, and she wanted to meet with us too.
“Tove Kroner,” Finn said. “You’ve met him before.”
I had, but only a handful of times, and he’d hardly spoken to me. The few times he came by the house, I was usually busy with the kids, and he generally seemed very soft-spoken. What I knew of him was that he was an advisor to the Queen, and he’d married the Chancellor Bain Ottesen several years ago.
“He can help recover memories?” I asked in surprise.
The kids talked a lot about all the cool telekinetic abilities he had, and I had personally seen him make the kids “fly” by lifting them in the air with his powers at Liam’s birthday party last year. But I’d never heard he was capable of something like this.
Many trolls had the ability of persuasion—a telekinetic power to get someone to do something using only their thoughts. Basically, a mild form of mind control.
Finn had attempted to use it on me earlier today, at my request, by thinking Remember the last twenty-four hours, but it had been completely ineffective. So I couldn’t imagine that he’d brought me here for Tove to try that, but I didn’t think that Tove flying me around the room would help either.
“No, he’ll be here as support mainly,” Finn said. “His younger sister Sunniva has a unique set of abilities. Their mother is a great healer, and Sunniva’s inherited some of her skills. Both Tove and Sunniva can see auras, but she can also heal them.”
“She can heal auras?” I shook my head in confusion.
I didn’t understand what that meant or how it could recover my memories. Admittedly, I didn’t know much about auras, just their general definition. Auras were the luminous radiation that surrounded all living beings, emanating from within, and their coloration could give indications about someone’s health, mood, even true intentions.
But auras weren’t visible to everyone, and since I couldn’t see them, I didn’t study them.
“Auras appear to be light floating around you, but they’re really a part of you,” Finn explained. “But they also can work like a road map, darkening in the areas you’re hurting or need help. Sunniva’s had some success with working on those dark spots to ease psychological trauma and pain.”