The Girl the Sea Gave Back(38)

Another body slammed into me and the hilt of a sword found my face, knocking my head to the side. I brought my elbow down with a snap, catching his arm, and when his hands were loosened, I rolled, coming out from under him. The burned flesh at my side tore open and I hissed through the bone-deep pain exploding between my ribs, trying to breathe.

“Get up!” Asmund kicked the Svell’s body to the side, taking hold of my vest with both hands.

As soon as I was on my feet, we ran for the gate. Footsteps punched the ground behind us and Asmund pulled the bow from his shoulder, turning. He nocked an arrow as he spun in a circle, but stopped short, his eyes going wide. Bard was running down the path toward us, one side of his body dragging and his face half-covered in blood.

Asmund dropped the bow and ran to him, taking his brother’s arm over his shoulder and carrying his weight as they climbed the hill to the forest.

“You.”

A soft, even voice found me, sounding over every inch of my skin in the dark, and I stopped beneath the gate, turning with my axe lifted before me. The handle almost slid from my fingers and I stilled, sucking in a sharp breath as the trees seemed to suddenly sway around me. My hand went back to the wound, now bleeding through my tunic as I blinked, but the vision didn’t clear.

There, in the moonlight, the Kyrr girl from the glade stood, watching me.





CHAPTER SEVENTEEN


TOVA


There’s no silence like death.

I shivered against the chill, my body still shaking from the henbane as we waited in the forest above Utan. The homes below were half-eaten up by fire now, an eerie quiet falling over what had been a village only hours ago. The Svell warriors who’d been ordered to stay back with us stalked in the trees restlessly, the tension growing with each passing minute.

“They’re not coming,” Gunther murmured at my back, the words sharp-edged and angry.

I ignored him, my eyes fixed on the gate. I’d seen him. I knew I had. There, beneath the arched opening in the fence that surrounded the village, the Nādhir would stand in the moonlight.

“He’s not here. He never was,” one of the men muttered.

The pain in my head made it hard to keep my eyes open, every sound too loud in my ears. The trickle of the creek and the rustle of birds in the branches above us. The scrape of boots on the forest floor.

“We should be back with the others,” the man spoke again.

“He’s coming,” I said through gritted teeth.

“When?”

I looked up to the moon hanging in the sky. “Soon.” I tried to sound sure. Surer than I was.

But the truth was that I didn’t know why the Nādhir wasn’t there like he had been in my vision. The slow, creeping thoughts in the back of my mind whispered that the Spinners had tricked me as punishment. That they’d used the vision to bring me my own death.

Maybe they had.

I turned back to the village, where smoke still rose up from charred wood and the moonlight caught the white tunic of a woman lying dead in the middle of the path that led up to the ritual house. In my vision, I hadn’t seen death. I’d only seen the Nādhir from the glade. The one who’d looked me in the eye. I swallowed hard, that same sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach returning. There was a part of me that hoped he wouldn’t come. A part of me that was growing by the minute.

“Enough of this.” The man stepped forward and caught my arm, wrenching me back to face him, and I slipped my knife from my belt, pressing the tip of it to the side of his neck.

His eyes went wide as the others moved toward me, but he lifted his hands, stopping them. He stilled, his teeth bared as he looked down at me.

“Tova, stop.” Jorrund reached for the knife but I pushed him away.

“He’s coming,” I said again, meeting the man’s eyes. “Vigdis told me to find him. That’s what I’m doing.”

Behind him, Gunther stared at me with surprise lit in his eyes. I’d never killed another person. I wasn’t sure if I could. But I had to stay if I was going to have any chance at appeasing Vigdis.

As soon as I lowered the knife, the man shoved me hard and I slammed into the tree behind me.

“I told you.” The woman beside Gunther shook her head. “We should go back.”

“Not without the Nādhir,” Jorrund answered, his voice lowering in warning. I wasn’t the only one who’d fall under Vigdis’ wrath if we came back empty-handed.

“Stop it.” Gunther finally spoke from where he stood in the shadows. “All of you. We stay until dawn. If he’s not here by sunup, we’ll go back to the others and Vigdis can deal with her.”

“Wait,” Jorrund whispered, his eyes lifting over us.

I turned to see a figure moving out of the trees on the other side of the village. A man. The moonlight hit the blade of an axe at his side and he stopped at the post before two more shadows followed after him.

“It’s him,” I whispered.

Jorrund leaned in closer to me. “How do you know?”

“I told you. I saw it.”

We crouched down, going silent as the three figures moved through the gate and onto the main path that led through the village.

Gunther nodded to the others and they pushed back into the forest to come from the west side, their weapons drawn out before them as the three men disappeared into the ritual house below. They moved silently down the slope and I sank beside a tree, watching them hop the fence that encircled Utan before slipping into the shadows.