The Girl the Sea Gave Back(32)

“Tell me.” His voice was rough, his face still streaked with dirt and soot. Siv found a place beside him.

“He’s in Utan.”

“How do you know?”

I pressed my palm to my forehead, breathing through the ache between my eyes. “Because I saw him.”

Vigdis stared at the ground, unblinking. “Then we go to Utan.”

Siv and Jorrund both looked up, surprised.

“Get them ready,” he ordered.

“I’ll go,” Siv offered. “I’ll take ten warriors and meet you before you reach Hylli.”

But the edge in Vigdis’ voice deepened. “We all go to Utan. Together.”

The look on Siv’s face turned from confusion to concern. “All of our warriors have arrived, Vigdis. We should move on the fjord and take Hylli. Now. There’s no need to waste time with the border villages.”

“We go to Utan. Then we go to Hylli.”

“You don’t need an entire army to kill one man.” I stood, wavering on unsteady feet.

He turned, towering over me until I was hidden in his shadow. “Speak again, and I’ll cut your tongue out,” he snapped. “I don’t want to only kill one man. I want him to watch us slaughter every soul in Utan before we kill him.” The words suddenly took on a soft, unnerving tone.

“You asked me to find him. Not tell you which village to attack.”

“There are no warriors in Utan. They’ve called them to Hylli.” Siv seemed to agree, but Vigdis’ sharp look silenced her.

Behind them, Gunther appeared the most unsettled. He stood with his arms crossed over his chest, watching Vigdis warily.

My stomach turned, my skin suddenly stinging against the fire’s heat. Jorrund’s arm steadied me as the glade tipped to one side and I leaned into him, almost tumbling to the ground.

“Hylli will still be there when we reach the fjord. They’ll wait patiently for their deaths because they have no other choice.”

He was right. There was nothing else to do unless they ran. And it wasn’t likely the Nādhir would. But the expression that crossed Siv’s and Gunther’s faces looked as if they’d already seen more blood spilled than they wanted to. The Svell were fighters but this wasn’t a generation built on battle. They’d defended their homes and their lands from raiders and thieves, but it had been more than a hundred years since they’d been at war with another clan.

Siv had taken Ljós with Vigdis and the others and she’d cut down the Nādhir in the glade. I wondered if she was willing to destroy another village of old men, pregnant mothers, and children not old enough to hold up a sword.

“We go to Utan. Now,” Vigdis said again, and this time, Siv answered the command with a tight nod.

She turned on her heel and headed back to the Svell gathered before the funeral fire, and Vigdis set his attention to Jorrund. “She better be right.”

Jorrund looked at me, and I could see that he was thinking the same thing. He was wondering. Doubting. He had only the power I gave him and that realization had given way to fear—something I had never really seen on the face of the old Svell Tala.

He twisted his fingers nervously into the wooden beads strung around his neck and I turned, pushing through the Svell making their way to their horses. The fire was still raging, but I could no longer see Bekan. He had disappeared, the ash floating up into the air the only thing left of him in this world.

It was an honor that the Nādhir warriors lying in the trees would never get. They’d have to rely on the sympathies of their gods and the prayers of their people to take them to the afterlife. The same fate would find the young Nādhir who’d killed Bekan, along with every living thing in Utan.

At my word.

The prophecy that had moved over my tongue. Just like the glade.

I’d only ever watched the funerals from the forest, when the people of Liera gathered to send their dead to the afterlife, and I didn’t remember enough about the Kyrr to know what words they spoke or what customs they performed. I eyed the circular symbol on the inside of my wrist, tracing it with my finger. If I knew what the marks meant, maybe I would remember. Maybe the things I’d forgotten would return to me.

The smell of burning flesh and sizzling tree sap filled the air and I stood before the pyre alone, unable to feel its warmth. I was only cold. Deep inside my bones. In every shadowed corner of my soul.

The little house outside Liera didn’t seem like a cage now. It seemed like a refuge. One that I couldn’t reach.

My stiff muscles trembled, sending a tremor through my entire body as the poison moved deeper through my veins. Maybe this was what the undead spirits were like, the ones that filled stories. But I wondered if maybe they weren’t stories after all. Maybe I was one of them. Flesh and bone on a corpse with no soul.

The weight of the rune stones hung heavy around my neck, pulling me forward, to the fire.

For a moment, I wondered if I’d even be able to feel it if I reached out and touched it. If I wrapped myself in its flames like a golden cloak. Maybe death would just feel like going home.

I watched the flecks of white ash floating up from the pyre before me, dancing in the air like lifting snowflakes, and I thought the thing I’d been so careful not to. The words I was afraid could come to life and strangle me. Make me disappear.

That I was the one who’d put Bekan on the pyre, not Vigdis. Just like Vera. And by the time the Svell reached the sea, I’d have a lot more blood on my hands.