“We need to hurry.” I rode at a swift canter down the narrow trail circling the fjord, knowing that for all my bravado, I had a decision to make. “We don’t have much time to get back.”
Instead of answering, Bjorn drew his gelding to a rough halt, the horse tossing its head in annoyance. “Why return at all? This is your chance to escape. We can head down the coast and find a merchant ship heading south, where we’ll be out of reach of all of this.”
“So that Snorri can execute my idiot brother and my negligent mother?” I snorted. “As tempting as that is at this particular moment, no.”
Reaching out, Bjorn caught hold of my mare’s reins, preventing me from heeling her into a trot and away from this conversation. “Freya, there’s something I need to tell you.”
“If it’s your opinions on my family, I don’t want to hear it.”
“It’s not about your family. It’s about mine.” He dragged his eyes up to meet mine. “My mother’s foretelling…it wasn’t the only one she had about you.”
My heart skipped, unease pooling in my stomach as I ceased trying to extract my mare from his hold. “What did she say? And when?”
Why didn’t you tell me?
“I…” His throat moved as he swallowed. “It was a long time ago, when I was still a boy, but I remember it clearly.”
“You seem to remember everything about her very clearly and yet communicate none of it,” I snapped. “What did she say?”
Bjorn was silent, and nausea twisted my guts. For what he might say. And the fact that he kept it from me at all.
“She went into these strange trances when she was being told something by Odin,” he finally answered. “I was alone with her when she was suddenly seized by one. She told me that the shield maiden would unite Skaland, but that tens of thousands would be left dead in your wake. That you’d walk upon the ground like a plague, pitting friend against friend, brother against brother, and that all would fear you.”
His words settled into my core, and I struggled to breathe.
“Whatever she saw terrified her,” he continued. “I was young, and it sank into my mind that the shield maiden would be more monster than woman. Even as a grown man, I…I had this vision of what you’d be like.” He looked away. “It couldn’t have been further from the truth. Not a monster, but a beautiful and brave woman who rescues fish and walks through fire to protect others.”
My eyes burned and I blinked rapidly to keep tears from forming.
“I didn’t tell you, because you weren’t what my mother described,” Bjorn said. “I was certain that I’d remembered wrong. Or that you’d altered fate and that the future Odin had shown my mother no longer existed, not just the darkness and death, but all of it. Except then the tests began, the gods stepping onto the mortal plane to acknowledge you, and I could not deny that you were destined to lead.” He took a deep breath. “I watched you make choices to protect Halsar and it didn’t seem possible that you would become a monster who’d bring death and destruction. But after the siege of Grindill…”
“You decided that maybe I was a monster after all.” I choked out the words, horror strangling me.
Bjorn shook his head. “No. But that Snorri would turn you into one if you allowed him to control your fate. I thought hearing Steinunn’s song, seeing yourself like that, would drive you to walk a different path, but you just couldn’t escape the need to protect the pieces of shit you call family.”
I flinched. “Don’t speak about them that way.”
“Why not?” he snapped. “Despite all you do, all you’ve done for them, your brother called you a mad bitch. Your mother called you a whore. They aren’t worth allowing Snorri to turn you into a monster to make himself king.”
He wasn’t wrong. But neither was he right.
“I thought when you saw how your mother is living, you’d turn your back on them,” he said. “Yet though I watched you realize she profited from your pain, it changed nothing. I watched you listen to her tell you how time and again she’s chosen your brother and herself over you, and again, it changed nothing. You refuse to change your fate.”
“So you thought to do it for me?” My skin flushed with anger. “Because I’m not the only one with a god’s blood in my veins, with the power to make the Norns alter their plans. You can do it too.”
“I would tear their plans to shreds if it meant sparing you the fate my mother foresaw,” he said. “But I want you to choose to leave, Freya. All I’ve done is given you the opportunity.”
Though I wished he’d told me the whole truth sooner, I still found my anger fading. “I want to say yes, Bjorn. What I saw in Steinunn’s magic terrifies me. But if I go, I’m condemning my family to die.”
“They condemned themselves.”
Turning my mare, I walked a short distance away to stand on the cliffs overlooking the sea. Gulls sailed over the whitecaps, a north wind tugging my hair loose from its braid. It would be so easy to ride down to the shore. To find a merchant vessel from one of the lands far south of here and sail away, never looking back. Never even knowing if Snorri followed through on his threats.
Not knowing would be worse. To have the uncertainty of whether those I loved lived or died. Would happiness even be possible, or would the guilt poison whatever life I built?
“Hlin told my mother that if I possessed only avarice, my words would be curses, but if I possessed altruism, what divine power I might make my own was a fate yet unwoven.” I hesitated. “I know there is no way to know what she meant by that, but to me, it means that choosing others before myself will be how I achieve a destiny different from what your mother saw.” Turning my head to look at him, my breath caught, because I knew that making this choice meant giving him up. “I have to go back. I can’t leave knowing that they will die, because that would mean conceding to the avarice that Hlin warned of.”
I held my breath, waiting for Bjorn to react. Waiting for anger and condemnation for my choice. Instead, he exhaled softly. “How is it that the part of you that I hate the most is also the reason I love you?”
Love.
Emotion drowned me, threatening to double me over, and I wanted desperately to tell him that I loved him as well. That I loved him more than I’d ever dreamed was possible.
Except what did that even mean, given that I hadn’t chosen him? So instead I said, “If you want nothing more to do with me, I’d understand that. I wouldn’t fault you.”
Even if it breaks my heart.
“You’re mine, Born-in-Fire,” he answered, reaching out to take my hand. “And I’m yours, even if only the two of us know it.”
I clung to his hand, barely able to breathe. Knowing that if I looked at him I’d crack; instead I stared out at the fjord. In time to see a large drakkar with a blue-striped sail appear around the bend. “Bjorn…”
“I see it,” he answered, lifting his hand to shield his eyes. “Fuck.”
Unease filtered into my chest. “What is it?”
Or who?
“Skade.” Bjorn spat in the dirt. “We need to go.”
Snorri had mentioned the name Skade while we were in Fjalltindr, but I had no idea who she was. “Is she one of Harald’s warriors?”
“His hunter. Who he sends to find those who don’t wish to be found.” His throat moved as he swallowed. “She’s a child of Ullr.”
My stomach tightened, for I knew Ullr’s children had bows with magical arrows that never missed their target. “Who is she hunting?”
Bjorn turned his head to meet my gaze, the muscles in his jaw so tight they strained against his suntanned skin.
“No,” I breathed. “That makes no sense. Everyone thinks that I’m in Grindill.”
“There is no other reason for her to be here, Freya. We need to go. Get a head start before she finds our trail.”
The fear singing in my blood told me that he was right, except there was only one place to dock a drakkar of that size on this fjord. Selvegr. My home.
Ignoring Bjorn’s protests, I dug my heels into my horse’s sides, urging the mare into a fast canter. Too fast for the narrow trail, but I didn’t care. Every man and woman in Selvegr who could fight had been called to join Snorri at Grindill, which meant the village was undefended. Full of women with children, the elderly, and the infirm. Entirely unaware that a drakkar bristling with Harald’s warriors sailed toward them.
“Freya!”
I risked a backward glance at Bjorn, his horse on my heels. “I have to warn them!”
“You won’t make it in time!”
He was right. As fast as I was riding, the drakkar had a strong wind at its back. But I had to try. Had to do something.
Through the trees, I watched the drakkar lower its sail, the rowers maneuvering it to the single, empty dock. They’d have been spotted by now, and everyone would be racing to find their children. To grab weapons.
To hide.
“Freya! Stop!”
In my periphery, Bjorn’s bigger horse gained ground. I urged my mount for more speed but the mare was spent, and as the trail widened, Bjorn moved alongside me. I tried to widen the distance, but he leaned recklessly far off the side of his horse and caught my reins, pulling both mounts up.
Hissing, I leapt off my horse and broke into a run. Boots hammered the ground as he gave chase, easily catching me by the arm. I fought against him, but Bjorn swept my legs out from underneath me, both of us falling hard.
“Quit hissing like an angry cat and look,” he snapped, pinning me to the ground. “They aren’t attacking!”
“I can’t see anything!” I squirmed, trying to get loose, but Bjorn was infinitely stronger than I was, his hips holding mine against the dirt.
“Listen!”
Instinct demanded that I struggle, for my people needed me, but I forced myself to stillness. The only sound was Bjorn’s ragged breathing, the wind, and the waters of the fjord lapping against the shores. No clash of steel. No screams.
Easing off me, Bjorn led me on hands and knees to the edge of a ridge overlooking the water, from which I could clearly see Selvegr and Skade’s drakkar tied up to its dock. Some of the warriors had exited the drakkar, but most sat idle, waiting.
“That’s Skade.” Bjorn pointed, and I made out a woman with crimson hair standing and speaking in earnest to a villager, no weapon in sight. “She’s looking for you, not a fight.”
“Then why does she have a full raiding party of warriors on her drakkar?”
Bjorn didn’t answer for a long moment, then said, “That’s a good question.”
There was an edge to his voice that made my skin prickle, but when I tore my eyes from Skade to look at him, Bjorn’s face was unreadable. “A better question is how do they know we are here at all?”
His brow furrowed.
“The only person who knew where we were going was Ylva.” My guts twisted. “I was a fool to trust her.”
Bjorn gave a sharp shake of his head. “It doesn’t make sense. When you accused her of leaving the message with the runes, she denied it and Bodil confirmed she was telling the truth.”
“What if Bodil was lying?” The thought hollowed out my core because I’d trusted Bodil. Put my faith in her. To discover that she’d lied to me, conspired with Ylva, with Harald…
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Bjorn argued. “What could Bodil have possibly had to gain from such an alliance? And why would Ylva give you up when she’s sacrificed so much to achieve my father’s destiny?”
“Because she’s lost her nerve for it! You saw her face when your father wished to abandon Halsar in favor of ambushing Harald when he left Fjalltindr. Her distress when we returned to find it burned and her anger when your father refused to rebuild. Her fear when she listened to Steinunn’s song. Ylva wants no more of this, and what better way to put an end to it than to give us both over to Harald?”
“You must have hit your head when I knocked you down,” Bjorn snapped. “It makes no sense to hand you over to her enemy. A better answer would be poison in both our cups. Ylva is no ally of Harald’s.”
“Then who? Because we know there is someone in our midst who is a traitor!”
Before Bjorn could answer, a flurry of motion on Selvegr’s docks caught our attention. Skade had returned to her drakkar, and my stomach sank as half the warriors climbed out onto the dock, following the man Skade had been speaking to into the village.
And exiting out the other side.
My skin turned to ice as I realized the direction they were walking, where the man was leading them. “My mother.”
Bjorn grimaced. “She might just question her, Freya. It’s you Harald has sent her to find, else Selvegr and all its people would be dead or dying.”
“Are you certain?” I demanded, my pulse roaring. “You clearly know Skade from your time in Nordeland. If my mother won’t help her, are you certain that Skade won’t kill her out of spite?”
Bjorn stood, pulling me up with him and then drawing me back to the horses. “Do you honestly think your mother won’t tell her everything she wishes to know?”
I bit my lip, tears threatening. “That’s not what I asked.”
“Skade’s a killer,” Bjorn answered. “But she’s loyal to Harald and won’t go against his orders.”
“Bjorn…” Tears trickled down my cheeks because I was the reason Skade was here. I was the reason my mother was in danger. “Will Skade hurt her?”
“I don’t know.” Bjorn kicked a rock. “This…I don’t know what he intends, only that if we go after them, we’ll be giving him exactly what he wants.”
I’d told my mother that I was through with her. It’s time you made your own way in the world.
A lie, because I refused to abandon her.
Catching my horse’s reins, I swung onto the mare’s back. “Are you coming with me, or do I need to do this alone?”
Bjorn swung into his own saddle. “Where you go, I go, Born-in-Fire. Even if it’s to the gates of Valhalla.”
I dug in my heels, taking the lead, for I knew this ground by memory. We swung wide of Selvegr so that those left with the drakkar wouldn’t catch sight of us, then down the narrow tracks and game trails that would take us to the rear of my mother’s farm. We dismounted, leaving the horses and hurrying through the trees, the hunting skills my father had taught me serving well and Bjorn making almost no sound, despite his size.
“Skade does not miss,” he said softly. “Her arrow is no more made of wood than my axe is of steel. The only way to kill her is to catch her unaware, but her instincts are second to none.”
“But my magic can block her arrow,” I said, tightening my grip on my shield. “Just as it blocks your axe and Thor’s lightning.”
“Her arrow doesn’t travel as a mortal’s does,” Bjorn answered. “Skade might appear to aim at your face but be aiming at your back. Kill her before she shoots or die where you stand.”
Reaching the edge of the tree line, we dropped low, keeping behind brush and scrub as we pressed closer to my family home. My mother stood in the field, grazing goats around her. Birger was on the roof, likely repairing the leak my mother had complained about. I opened my mouth to shout a warning when he abruptly stiffened, and I gasped at the sight of a glowing green brand jutting out the back of his head. It disappeared almost immediately, and Birger fell backward, rolling off the roof to land with a heavy thud.
My mother heard the sound and started, eyes searching, but Birger had fallen out of her line of sight. I moved to rise, to defend her, but Bjorn pulled me down a heartbeat before Skade appeared from the trees on the other side of the clearing.
“Who are you?” my mother demanded, pulling out the seax she wore, the short blade glittering. “Birger! Birger!”
“I am known as Skade,” she answered, her voice carrying the accent of Nordeland. The same accent as Bjorn’s did. “I am King Harald of Nordeland’s warlord.”
My mother took a step back, but Skade’s warriors were encircling the clearing, leaving nowhere to run. I held my breath as two passed only a few paces from the brush behind which we hid. Which meant there was no chance of us getting close enough to attack Skade before she killed one of us.
Sweat poured down my back, my fingers icy cold where they gripped the handle of my shield and the hilt of my sword. Please, I prayed to Hlin, protect her.
“You are Kelda. The mother of Freya, Erik’s daughter, yes? Also known as Freya Born-in-Fire, child of Hlin?”
My mother didn’t answer.
“We know it is so,” Skade said. “Your clansman brought us to you.”
Traitorous bastard, I wanted to scream, but at the same time, I understood why he’d chosen to help her. He’d smelled the danger and chosen to protect himself and his own.
“Has your daughter come to see you?” Skade asked. “It was her intent.”
“Why do you want to know?”
“I don’t,” Skade answered. “King Harald does. So you’d be well to give me the answers he seeks, else meet the fate of Snorri’s man.” She smirked. “He died with a fist full of thatch, so I think he is not on his way to Valhalla.”
Tell her the truth, I willed my mother. Tell her what she wants to know so that she leaves you alive.
My mother hesitated, then said, “She came. Left an hour past.”
Next to me, Bjorn’s hands tightened around a handful of dirt, his knuckles turning white.
Skade didn’t answer, only tilted her head.
“On horseback,” my mother swiftly added. “The jarl’s son, Bjorn, known as the Firehand, was with her.”
“Just the two of them?”
“That I saw,” my mother answered. “There could have been more waiting elsewhere. She didn’t say where she was going, but I expect back to Grindill. If you hurry, you might catch them.”
Good, I silently told my mother even as Bjorn seethed next to me. Clever thinking.
Skade nodded slowly, then glanced sideways. “The house is searched, yes?”
“There’s no one in there,” a man’s voice called. “And the hoof tracks in the mud tell the same story. Two horses came and went, heading in the direction of the fjord. Do you wish us to take horses from the village and pursue?”
Skade tilted her head, her eyes distant as though what she saw was not what was before her. “No. I think we have the answers we seek.” She inclined her head to my mother. “You have been most helpful.”
She turned to walk away, her warriors following her. I slumped, breathing a sigh of relief because there could be no better outcome. My mother was safe. Skade did not intend to pursue. And we knew now with certainty that Harald plotted to try to take me again.
But when Skade reached the tree line on the far side of the clearing, she paused, her voice loud and clear as she said, “Only a cowardly bitch betrays her child.” A glowing bow of gold appeared in her hand as she turned, along with an arrow, green from fletching to tip. Before I could move, before I could call to Hlin to protect me, so I could protect my mother, the arrow was loosed.
It flew through the air, punching through my mother’s heart.
Bjorn clamped a hand over my mouth to silence my scream as she dropped slowly to the ground, the arrow disappearing from her chest.
“Return to the drakkar,” Skade ordered, and she and her men disappeared over the rise, footfalls fading and leaving behind only the wind in the trees and my muffled sobs.
“They’re gone,” Bjorn said, and I pulled from his arms. Abandoning shield and sword, I raced to my mother. My foot caught on a rock, and I tripped, sprawling on the ground. Sobbing, I crawled onward, reaching her.
She was still breathing.
Gasping, I pressed my hands to the wound in her chest, bending over her. My mother’s eyes latched onto me. “Freya?”
“I’m here.” Blood flowed around my fingers, soaked the front of her new dress, her cane lying next to her in the grass. “I’m so sorry. That this happened. For the things I said.”
But the light was fading from her eyes, her chest stilling beneath my hands. “No!” I screamed. “This wasn’t supposed to happen!”
Bjorn was behind me then, pulling me into his arms. “I’m sorry, Freya,” he said, and I buried my face in his neck, the force of my sobs making my body ache.
“The things I said to her.” I sucked in a mouthful of air, trying to get enough breath. “I didn’t mean them. I didn’t. She died thinking that I didn’t love her.”
“To nearly her dying breath, she betrayed her own daughter,” he said. “She earned her fate.”
“Just because she was a coward doesn’t mean she deserved to be murdered!” My fingers dug into his arms, hard enough that it would leave marks, but I didn’t care. “I brought this fate upon her. I chose to come here. My decisions led to her death. Everything I do, it always means death.”
“This is why you need to go,” he said, breath warm against my ear. “Not because you are a bringer of death but because those who are seek to use you to achieve their ends.”
Like Ylva.
“I’m going to kill her,” I hissed, my grief turning to rage. “I’m going to fucking kill that traitorous bitch.”
“You have no proof it was Ylva.”
“My proof is that it could be no one else! Ylva was at Fjalltindr. She witnessed Snorri declaring his intention to take Grindill. Has the skills to use rune magic. Was the only one who knew where we were going.”
“None of which is proof! If you kill her on speculation and hearsay, my father will punish you,” Bjorn retorted. “Regardless of what she did or did not do, killing Ylva changes nothing. What you need to do is run, Freya. To get yourself out of this mess before you lose any more of yourself!”
“And lose the chance to avenge my mother?” I pulled away from him. “Not just on Ylva, but on Skade? On Harald himself? You more than anyone should understand that the need for vengeance is worth any sacrifice.”
“It’s different.” He caught hold of my arms again. “I know exactly who came into my mother’s cabin that night with murder in his heart. Saw it with my own eyes. And still, I will give it up for your sake.”
He’s not going to let you go back, my rage whispered. He’s going to deny you your vengeance.
“Just as I know exactly who knew we were coming here.” I stared into his green eyes, and he recoiled at whatever he saw in mine. “It can be no one but Ylva. Why won’t you believe me? Why are you protecting her?”
“I’m protecting you!” His fingers tightened. “I’m not letting you do this. Not while you’re consumed by this…this rage. You need to be yourself to make this decision.”
“I am myself.”
“Your eyes are red again! Your rage is controlling you!”
You’re going to have to elude him, the voice whispered. Be clever.
“Fine,” I said. “Let us see to my mother and when I’ve calmed down to your satisfaction, I’ll prove to you my choice is the same.”
There was unease in Bjorn’s expression, but he nodded. On my directions, he carried my mother’s body inside the home my father had built and put her on the bed where my life’s story had begun, then muttered, “I’ll retrieve the horses.”
I stared at my mother’s body. There were things that needed to be said. Words that needed to be spoken from deep in my heart, but my fury refused to allow them to my lips. Everything seemed tinged with red, a pulse throbbing in my temples that whispered only vengeance. My focus sharpened as I heard hooves against the ground when Bjorn returned, and I abandoned the home to go outside.
Taking my mare’s reins from him, I said, “Please burn it.”
Bjorn didn’t answer, only handed the reins of his own horse to me before muttering Tyr’s name, his axe blazing bright. My mare recoiled, and I allowed the animal to draw me back several paces, Bjorn’s horse following.
You’ll need to be quick.
My heart pounded, sweat slicking my palms as I fastened my shield to my saddle and flipped the reins over my horse’s head. Bjorn cast a glance at me, and I nodded, waiting until he pressed his axe to the side of the house, the wood instantly blackening.
I flung myself into the saddle and dug in my heels.
Bjorn’s gelding snorted as I hauled on its reins, dragging it along with me.
“Freya!”
My anger faltered at Bjorn’s shout, but the dark voice whispered, He’ll stop you if given the chance. The voice was right. I kicked my horse into a gallop, leading his horse away from my family’s farm.
I didn’t allow myself to look back.
