From then on my companion transitioned from teasing to teaching. At first conversation was difficult-  Marc had a lot to say and I needed to listen, but as the lessons turned from basics to tips, I found my concentration breaking off Gull and onto the trill of bird and brook, the horses' steady footfalls, and the thoughts buzzing through my head. I almost felt as though I was breaking a library's no-talking rule by clearing my throat.

"What do you guys do for fun?" I called, fidgeting in the leather saddle, half-anticipating a 'shh!' from an ornery librarian.

Marcus had in the past hour mostly stuck to pointing out landmarks and correcting Gull's direction when I inevitably steered her off course with blatant overreactions to mundane forest obstacles like fallen branches and mud. He slowed his horse until Gull drew even with the stallion's steady head-bobs.

"Work."

An answer to make Mom proud. Disgust would've eventually overtaken her approval of his strong work ethic, Marc being a young man from a distant corner of nowhere with no formal education beyond some secondary schooling. He and his brothers, apparently due to family traveling, had private tutors. None of them had gone on to university. 'He's nice enough,' Mom would sigh upon meeting him. What she'd mean was, 'He's not enough.'

"Everyone needs a break," I said. Everyone except Mom.

"We are very busy."

"And when you aren't?"

He scratched his head. "Ice fishing, skiing, hiking . . ."

"Any games?"

"Pranks and bets these days, unless Hanna is involved."

Ahead, a small deer bounded across the path. Leaping after it, as if in some macabre parade, came the ghastly apparitions of bears, bloody fingers and tortured tongues. My head spun. I didn't realize I'd frozen until Marc's hand touched my shoulder.

"Are you okay?"

"No," I said, shrugging against a leaden weight in my chest. I felt trapped, defensive, cornered; hoped the man searching my eyes for understanding knew it wasn't anything to do with him. "Just remembered something, but it's fine. I'm fine."

He kept an eye on my handling of Gull for a stretch, not that the horse needed instruction. Stallion and mare walked alongside one another contentedly. Marc and I, on the other hand, had fallen into awkward quiet. It reminded me of the car ride home from touring Rutgers University. While Mom'd been busy nagging a guide about a pamphlet typo, we'd passed a student-run booth handing out condoms. I grabbed a couple, hid them in my purse, and thought nothing more until two hours later when the car doors were locked, my hands were on the steering wheel, and she fished for gum.

She'd known what I'd been thinking and didn't want to say. Marc knew what I'd been through and didn't bring it up.

The morning sun had matured to a stately afternoon glow by the time the scenery widened into a grassy valley. Sunlight winked and beckoned across the sheer blue waters left behind by a retreating glacier. 

"Gull's freaking gorgeous," I said, admiring her coat as we cut through the marvelous greenery. "What's her name mean?"

"Gold." He patted the thick curve of the stallion's neck. "This is Styrke. 'Strength.'"

"Very on the nose, aren't you?"

"The names fit. Can you do better?"

"I have a turtle called Stir-fry," I volunteered. "And Amy just popped into my head from a teddy bear my mom named on my behalf. So I guess not." My gaze drifted to the ever-distant treeline. God, I hoped she was okay.

"No wonder you dislike horses. Turtles are much faster."

I smiled. "I'm far more turtle than horse in a lot of areas."

"You said you are a runner though?"

"Was until I got hurt." I touched my knee. "Still am, I guess. But only for exercise."

"You are not enjoying it?"

"Lost the passion."

Marc looked thoughtful, then his eyes met mine. "Would you like to feel that passion again?"

"I'm honestly not sure I can."

With the tip of a hat he kicked Styrke into a smooth canter. The stallion cut ahead, a flash of storm clouds through yellow wildflowers. "Stretch her legs!" Marc called over his shoulder. "Ask Gull to remind you what it feels like to fly!"

He wasn't kidding. The mare's ears pricked forward, back, forward, fixed on Styrke. At my hesitant urging away she went, veering into a hard leftward gallop. Wildflowers rushed under-hoof,  pops of petals, bursts of blossoms. She moved beneath me with the fury of a summer storm. My chant of "go, go, go" flipped into "slow, slow, slow!" as we soared past Marc and Stryke, birds without wings.

The mare's neck stretched toward the glacial horizon. She might've run the miles to that icy base if a combination of luck and instinct hadn't overridden my fear. I pulled the rein right and felt her hip move, breaking the quick stride and deadening the thunder to a gradual roll. As she and Styrke harmonized, I loosened the grip and directed her beside him in a jerky series of stops and direction changes.

"Still alive?" Marc asked.

"Feeling a little like death warmed over," I said through a smile I couldn't take off. Through all week's pain and strain, something inside me felt alive. Probably because my heart was still galloping toward the glacier, but alive was alive. And it felt so good, running toward something, not away.

Gull picked her way through the field, head raised and tail lifted, blowing soft exhalations as if she wanted to carry on. The purity of the summer landscape, from swaying grass to crystalline water, was nothing like home. There on her back, I thought about hot asphalt and car exhaust. I thought about the surgeries and my parents and Becky and it all felt like another life because nothing in that one would ever lead me here. In that moment I wondered if I would ever see Boston again, if I could ever be that girl again.

I felt pretty certain about the answer.

"Marc," I began, tightening my grip on the reins. "I have a confession."

"There is a minister in Veum. He is to marry Nils and Raziya."

Marc was quick, I'd give him that. 

Water dripped on my hand, rolled between my knuckles and soaked into the reins. I looked up at the sky as if expecting a raincloud and in the process caught Marc's expression. From the way he was looking at me, smiling uncertainly, I realized he'd been trying to make a joke, trying something lighthearted to make me feel better because he could see I was crying.

"Sorry," I said, wiping my cheeks. "Don't even know what these tears are for. I'm losing my mind."

"Pretty place to lose it," he said quietly. He pointed further away, where ice had long ago scored the earth on its retreat beyond mountain peaks. "Tonight we stay there."

I tabled the matter for another time and listened and felt how Gull's body reacted to the navigation of the glacial perimeter. Down in the valley scarred by the tumbled stone claws of a dying leviathan, the sun sank to the lowest I'd seen since June. Shadows deepened the azure walls and icicled wind tussled hair and mane alike. The Fjord horses stepped stones with daring grace, bringing us by nightfall to the charred remnants of a traveler's campsite. 

"Wanderers," Marc said, pointing to stacked logs and weather beat charms and trinkets. "Would you wish to leave something?"

"Don't have anything to give," I said, with an eye on the painting.

"Sometimes it isn't what you give; it's what you sacrifice." Marc said, fishing a horseshoe from his bag to lean against the pile. 

"Well I'm not about to go carving my eye out to gain extra knowledge. If I absolutely had to, I guess I could stand to lose the tip of my pinky or something."

Marc laughed. "You have bled enough for one journey. Think we can be skipping the pinky." 

I picked a smooth, blue-grey stone from the ground and balanced it carefully on the curve of the horseshoe. "What about you, what would you lose?"

"The better question is what would I want to gain?"

"And?"

He shrugged.  "I am a very lucky man. If I put in the work, I am usually getting what I want."

Exactly what I would have said a year ago. 

I brushed Gull's tangled mane while Marcus started a fire. Halfway finished, I rested an arm against her withers and watched Marcus transfer an ember of mossy tinder into the heart of a twig nest. With a little breath, the fire ignited. As if drawn by sudden warmth, the swarthy twilight of arctic nights draped itself around our campsite with a breezy purr.

"You know," I said, "I haven't wanted a horse this bad since I believed in birthday cake wishes."

"So you will keep her?"

"Maybe if we could get a long distance thing going," I said. "Me and the horse, I mean."

Marc laughed.

"What I really mean is, I don't have a stable and can't afford to put her up in one."

"She will always have a home here."

"Thanks," I said, resuming my work with an eye on the approaching gloom. 

He waved a hand at the ground beside him. "Have a seat. I would like to talk with you."

"We've been talking."

"Not the deep kind." At my hesitation, he added, "You have brushed her three times now. All your work will be undone the moment she moves."

As if to prove his point, Gull shook her head, gave me one brown-eyed blink beneath mussed bangs, then strolled away to graze near her four-legged friend. Defeated, I dragged an old log closer to the spreading heat then plopped and started plucking hairs from the brush. The brush was gold, had something inscribed that looked like it probably was 'champion' or 'number one' or something victorious given its heft and quality.

Marc passed me a dinged flask. We had water but this was vodka- something strong and warm to brace against the frozen dark. And it increased the appeal of tonight's dinner: homemade granola and dried salmon.

"Anders did not explain why the professor brought you all the way to the arctic to do what a bullet in a lonely city alley could."

In the grey valley ice sheeted from the glacier's edge. Marcus looked toward the white giant's grumbling. I frowned at my belongings, where the painting and probably quite extensive damage lay rolled away.

"He didn't act alone, if that's what you're asking."

"Did he act with reason?"

"I've had nothing to think about except how close I came to dying, and the logical conclusion I've arrived at is the Queen put him up to it."

Marc continued to build the fire, did not watch me like a hawk though he certainly sounded wary. "I have heard tell you have stolen from a dead man. Have you stolen from the Queen as well?"

"Jon was dying when I found him."

"Where did you find him?"

I studied Marc carefully. "In his house, which yes I'll admit I broke into, but in my defense I knocked first. I'll be damned if I'm going to let the scumbag who tried to murder me walk away with a priceless piece of history. Over my dead body. . . What exactly did Anders tell you?"

"Very little." Marc dusted his hands. "When I am missing a piece of a puzzle, it is usually because one of the cats or our dog has taken or eaten it. I cannot ask them to find out. But you, I am missing pieces of your puzzle. From what I hear and from what I have seen, you are a young woman far from home. What are you to the professor and the Queen?"

"You don't know who I am?"

"I know who you are, Allison." He shook his head. "I am just wanting to know why."

Describing the events of my breakup to a man a little older than Nik somehow felt immature. Were it not for a big gulp of liquid courage, I'd probably have kept quiet. "My boyfriend Logan was taken the night has was supposed to propose. He resurfaces as Prince Niklas, Crown Prince of Norway and not once does he contact me. I become some tabloid mistress that probably knew all along about his secret. Logan and I were together for two years before this mess began. Yet just about the whole world knew he was royalty before I did."

"I think many women have wished to have a secret prince as a boyfriend."

"Yeah, but their fantasies don't involve Prince Charming steadfastly committed to another woman." My voice dipped into winter and if I didn't thaw, we'd be in for a frosty night. I edged closer to the flames. "So I'm sitting there heartbroken reading into how his face looks in a dumb press photo thinking something's wrong, he would never just abandon me like this without a word.  We love each other. If I could just see him, he'd love me again and I don't know, I was an idiot and didn't think past meeting him. I knew in my heart if I could get one meeting with him, we'd be in for a fairytale ending. So I met with him, he turned me away and, needless to say, for that I ran afoul of his mother."

Marc watched my expression, as if confirming what Anders and Emma had already told him or he'd determined on his own.

"Long story short, she told me a little truth and somehow I was blind to the big fat lie hiding behind it. She wants what's in that tube. I wasn't supposed to live long enough to steal it.  Come to think of it, I don't think Jon Tveit was supposed to be where he was, either. Now I'm on the run while the Royal Family is releasing commemorative plates and spoons."

The fire skipped and crackled; Marc put his hands to the blaze and rubbed. Given long sleeves and layers, I was positive he wasn't very cold. Bad weather didn't exist in Norway, Helena had told me over multiple lunches spent shivering in her office, only bad clothes.

"Should I be knowing what you have got inside that container there?"

"You guys never looked while I was delusional?"

"It is yours," Marc said with a dumbfounded expression. "Why would I open something that belongs to you?" 

"I appreciate that, but what it is doesn't matter so much as who is after it. The less you know, the better able you are to escape."

He tapped his chin. "Is it evidence of a crime?" 

"I should think so."

"If I said I could take it off your hands?"

"I wouldn't put you or anyone else in that situation," I said. "I'm not claiming to be going about this the right way; I'm stumbling blind here. I just need this to stay with me."

He nodded. "Alright," he said, and I felt tension slide off my shoulders. "Thank you for sharing. I will get you and that where you need. And when I see Papa again and  he asks why you are not interested, I know what to be telling him."

"Oh?"

"A royal crown is more valuable than all my awards."

Tiny embers laughed with me. "Are you calling me a gold-digger?"

"If it will get him off my back I might. It would give me a more time to find a woman who likes horses and does not mind a straw mattress."

"With the right kind of persuasion, the mattress might not be a complete deal breaker," I said and dropped another log onto the fire. "You ever, you know, find someone you saw a future with?"

He looked away. "She died."

"I'm sorry."

It was Marc's turn to pick at the fire. "It happened years ago. I am not much liking that I have let go or moved on, but it is what it is. I am still here."

He was well-layered, but I couldn't help but think about his scars, and when they might have happened and if that woman's death was related. I couldn't bring myself to ask. Instead, I moved to sit beside him and with my hands in my lap announced, "So I want to talk about going home. I can't."