The Girl the Sea Gave Back(23)

“Eydis will honor him. He will be welcomed to the afterlife,” Jorrund said gently, but I could still hear the crack beneath his voice. He was scared. Not only for me—for him. He set a hand on Vigdis’ shoulder but he shoved him off.

Mentioning their god would have brought Bekan pause. But Vigdis wasn’t Bekan. He didn’t fear Eydis the way Jor rund did because she wasn’t his only god. Power and strength were what he wanted.

“Leading falls to you now, Vigdis,” Jorrund tried again, appealing to his pride.

He was quiet for a moment, the heaving in his chest slowing as he stared at the ground. His hands unclenched, loosening from their tight fists. “I won’t let the Nādhir go.”

Jorrund nodded. “It’s a debt that can be paid when we get to Hylli.”

“It can’t wait until then!”

“We have to move quickly. Our warriors will be here by sundown.” Siv set a hand onto his arm. “By morning, we can move east. We can be in Hylli in two days and this will be over.”

I looked between Vigdis and Siv, trying to think as quickly as I could. There was no escape. Nowhere to run. It was only a matter of time before Vigdis found a reason to kill me. I had to use the only power I had.

“I can find him,” I said.

“What?” Jorrund’s eyes widened.

“I can do it.” I looked to Vigdis. He would take the first chance he got to cut my throat. I knew that. Unless he needed me. “I’ll find the Nādhir.” As soon as I said the words, I saw his face in my mind. Blue eyes beneath dark, unraveling hair. A gaze that didn’t pull from mine. It sent the same sting racing across my skin that had been there in the glade.

“Tova, I don’t think that’s…” Jorrund stammered.

“How?” Vigdis growled.

“I know a way.” It would buy me some time, but it wasn’t without risk.

Vigdis’ red face stared into the ground. “Alright.”

“But—” Jorrund’s hands lifted before him.

“You say she can see the future?” he snapped. “Then she can find the Nādhir and bring me his head. If she doesn’t, I’ll do what my brother was too weak to do.”

Jorrund stared at him wordlessly.

“I better have his head in my hands before I get to Hylli.” He turned, stalking away with Siv at his side, and I swallowed hard, my stomach turning over. The Nādhir wasn’t the only blood feud Vigdis had. He blamed me for his niece Vera’s death, and now his brother’s. Before this was finished, my head would be in his hands, too.

Gunther stared at me, his hand on his sword and Jorrund turning to ice beside him. “What are you thinking?”

“I can find him,” I said again. “You know I can find him.”

“Vigdis will kill you anyway. We need you, Tova. We need you to cast—”

“The stones? You don’t listen to the stones!” I flung a hand toward the blood-soaked glade, my voice rising. “You want to believe that you can carve fate into a river that leads where you want to go. It doesn’t work that way, Jorrund!”

He recoiled, stepping back as if the words stung, but he didn’t argue because he knew I was right. Since I was a child, he’d been trying to control everything. Bekan, me, the Spin ners, the gods. It would take a lot more blood before he began to understand anything about fate.

“I know what this is about, Tova.” He narrowed his eyes at me. “I saw the Kyrr man in the forest.”

I stilled, swallowing hard. I didn’t think he’d seen him. “This isn’t about the Kyrr. It’s about keeping Vigdis from killing me.”

“That man was a raider.”

“So?”

“So, he was probably cast out of the headlands. He won’t have any more answers for you than I do.”

I tried to read the look in his eyes. They betrayed more than he thought they did. He was afraid of more than just Vigdis. At times, he was afraid of me. And the truth was that it wasn’t just the Kyrr man. It was the Nādhir. The one who’d met my gaze and didn’t look away. The one that filled my head with the sound of a thousand waterfalls. The Spinners were saying something. They were speaking, and if I was going to hear it, I needed to find him.

“I’ll find the Nādhir. I’ll bring his head to Vigdis.”

“And then?”

“And then we find a way to keep both of us alive.”





CHAPTER TEN


HALVARD


There were already over a hundred of them.

We lay flat on our stomachs, watching the Svell army from the ridge high above the charred remains of Ljós. The village was no more than a blackened spot on the earth now, the trees that had once covered the roofs burned clean of their leaves. My brothers had described Hylli the same way after the Herja came, but it was a sight I never imagined I’d see.

Svell warriors young and old were clad in their leathers below, weapons strapped to their sides and their backs. They gathered around fires that snaked through the sparse trees of the eastern forest in a camp that was growing by the minute. In the distance, another trail of them was arriving from the west.

It was clear that Vigdis had planned the betrayal in Ljós. The warriors had already been called in from their villages before we ever met Bekan in the glade. It was the only explanation for how their entire army was gathering so quickly. And if they were gathering this many, they were going to push across the valley to the fjord. This wasn’t about border territory or the divided leaders of the Svell. It never had been. Vigdis wanted to crush the Nādhir. And from the look of their army, he had everything he needed to do it.