“Fight, brother,” Jakob said, his tone strained. “Stay with me and fight.”
The king mulled over the words for a long moment, their wisdom sinking deep. No matter how desperate things looked, he had to hold it together. He had to fight. If for no other reason than to prevent Jakob and the others from being distracted out in the field by their worry for him. “All right.”
“Yeah?”
Henrik nodded. “And I’m sorry.” He jutted his chin toward the wall. “I’ll fight. I’ll fight this as long as I can. But you have to promise me something in return.”
“Name it.”
Henrik hated asking this of Jakob, of all people, but his brother was one of the few physically matched enough to heed the request. “I’d rather be dead than a menace. When the day comes that I have lost all humanity, when all that remains is a monster in man’s clothing, I want you to be the one to finish it.”
Kaira Sorensen stood in the gallery and stared at her photographs hanging on the wall.
Pressing the back of her hand to her forehead, Kaira hoped the low-grade fever she was running didn’t get worse. The wear and tear of traveling almost seventeen hundred miles from her home in Denmark to Tromso, Norway, had taken it out of her. And even though she’d arrived two days early and slept for almost eighteen hours straight, exhaustion had left her a little ragged around the edges.
No matter. For the next four days, she wasn’t an orphan who had no memory of her parents. She wasn’t a cancer patient. And she wasn’t sick. She was a photographer. Dammit.
One of the nice things about getting away from everyone you knew was the freedom to be someone else. Even if for just a short while.
Kaira smoothed a hand over the periwinkle-blue gown she’d splurged on. No way did she want to appear down on her luck at the show’s opening night reception. Not with some of the biggest names in aurora photography in attendance.
A man fell in beside her. “Is this your first show?” he asked in Norwegian, similar enough to her native Danish that she could understand him plainly.
She stopped fidgeting and smiled up at him. “No,” she said, in English. “My third.”
“Anders Lang,” he said, returning the shake. “Tell me about your work.”
She turned to the grouping of six photographs—all each entrant was allowed to showcase for the competition. “My series is called Cathedrals. I was inspired by the almost architectural features of high-altitude auroras. And their height allowed me to capture multiple colors.” Green was most common at the lower altitudes of an aurora, usually about sixty miles overheard, while red often dominated the higher altitudes, the colors created by solar energy interacting with atmospheric gases at different altitudes. Kaira stepped closer to her most prized image. “I took this one the second night in the field. The lights were super intense. Much lower than the whole rest of the trip.”
“And you captured yourself some nitrogen emissions, I see.” He leaned in to study the single violet aurora she’d ever committed to film.
The purple ribbon of light thrilled her every time she looked at it. “I did,” she said. “The lights were spectacular the rest of my time out there, but never quite as intense as that night.”
He stepped back from the photograph and tilted his head. “How old are you, if you don’t mind my asking?”
Given that the typical aurora chaser was a middle-aged man with a mile-wide streak for adventure, Kaira was prepared for the question. “I don’t mind. Twenty.”
His eyebrows reached for his receding hairline. “And why Cathedrals?”
Kaira’s gaze drifted to the most architectural of all the images. “My parents died when I was eight. A few months later, I was still having trouble sleeping. One night, I was just staring out my window. Suddenly, the sky exploded. I was terrified at first. I’d seen the lights before, but something about their intensity and their color... But then, it was like the sky was dancing—or speaking—just for me. It made me feel so much less alone. At the time, I wasn’t old enough to think of it this way. But now, looking back on it, it was almost an epiphany, a religious experience. I can’t really look at discrete aurora anymore without seeing great cathedrals in the sky.” She dragged her gaze back to Lang, nerves tossing her stomach. She shifted her stance to alleviate the pressure on her aching hip.
“That’s a big insight for a young woman. And it’s exactly the kind of passion and calling that leads to some damn fine aurora photography.” He extended his hand. “Pleasure meeting you, Miss Sorensen.”
She couldn’t help but grin. “An honor, Mr. Lang. Thank you.”
He nodded and made his way to chat up another of her competitors. She scanned her gaze over the gallery. When had all these people arrived? She’d been so deep into her conversation that she hadn’t even realized that the gallery had opened to the general public. Now, a steady stream of festival-goers perused the long, rectangular exhibit space. Music was the featured art of the annual celebration of the return of sunlight, with dozens of musicians, singers and bands performing a week’s worth of concerts, but, as with the photography exhibit and competition, there were a number of other activities held in conjunction with the music festival, too. Between the show and her energy level, Kaira wasn’t sure how much else she’d be able to see and do, but she hoped to make the most of her visit to Tromso. Who knew when she’d get to do something like this again? There was only so much time she could get off from working at the camera store. And, though her cancer was in the most manageable, chronic stage right now, without the required medical therapy, she’d likely move into the accelerated phase of the disease soon enough. And some months she found herself having to choose between three meals a day and the money she needed to set aside to pay for her incredibly expensive medicine.
She crossed the room to the bar. “There’s no cancer in Tromso, Kai. Live a little, will ya?” She ordered some sparkling water with lime and silently repeated the pep talk.
Over the course of the evening, she met the rest of the judges and all the contestants, too. The photographs were universally breathtaking, and Kaira knew she had her work cut out for her. But whether she placed in the competition or not, being here was a great networking opportunity she had no intention of wasting.
Not to mention, all the photographs were for sale. After the judging announcement three nights from now, purchasers were free to pick up whatever they’d bought. The thought that someone would pay money to buy one of her photographs, that it might hang in a place of prominence in their home or office, that people might ask who the photographer was... It was all such a thrill. No matter how long she got to do this work, she didn’t think she’d ever get used to it.
Kaira returned to her series of images and found a man admiring them intently. Tall and broad-shouldered, he wore a black knit cap over white hair that hung past his shoulders. His long leather coat appeared soft and worn with age. Gray-brown fur surrounded his collar. She approached him from the side and something about him sent a tingle down her spine when she got a good look at his face. His size, posture and bearing had made him seem younger, but the white hair and drawn appearance of his pale face, almost gaunt, gave the exact opposite impression. Not old, really, but older.
Eyes the color of icy blue topaz cut toward her and narrowed. His gaze was penetrating in its intensity. His
