The Girl the Sea Gave Back(44)

I looked down at the open eyes cradled in my arms, glad the man wasn’t alive to see my face. I’d stood alone in the silent village as the Svell searched the forest, bringing the axe down before me and cutting the head from the corpse.

I would never forget that sound.

The camp was still awake when the fires came into view, the Svell feasting on the livestock they’d taken from Utan to fill their bellies for battle. Gunther opened the tent before me and I ducked inside. He hadn’t spoken since we left the village and I’d noticed the strain on his face growing with each day since we left Liera. He stood beside me, his hands tucked into his vest as Vigdis looked up from where he sat over a bowl of steaming, roasted meat.

His hand froze on the spoon as his black eyes landed on the head in my hands.

The table shook as he set his hands down onto it and stood. “Is that him? The one who killed my brother?”

I pulled in a steadying breath, trying to keep from trembling. “It is.”

He came around the table, taking the head from me and turning it around so that it faced him.

Really, the man looked nothing like Halvard except for maybe in the color of his hair. Even his eyes were wrong. A deep brown instead of the sparkling blue. I could still see them in my mind, filled with tears as he wrapped his hands around my throat. I reached up, gently touching the bruised skin above my collarbone. If the Kyrr man hadn’t come from the forest, I wondered if he really would have killed me.

But no one looked themselves in death, and I hoped it was enough to convince Vigdis. He lifted the head before him, as if looking the dead man in the eyes. His brow furrowed as he studied it.

“They arrived in Utan in the middle of the night. He killed two of our warriors before I took him down.” Gunther spoke beside me.

I froze, looking up at his hard face, but he stared ahead, unblinking.

I’d already cut the corpse’s head off when Gunther and Jorrund found me near the gate. I’d told him that I had seen one of the Svell kill him, and he didn’t ask questions. He only walked into the forest without waiting for Jorrund and me to follow. Now, he was lying to Vigdis, but I didn’t know why.

Vigdis let out a long breath before he set the head down onto the table beside his bowl of stew. “Make sure they’re ready.” He spoke to Siv, but his attention landed on me when he finally looked up. His eyes bored into mine, a fragile silence falling over the tent.

Jorrund took my arm gently, pulling me away, and I looked back once more to Gunther, who still stood before the table. He didn’t look at me as Jorrund pushed the canvas open, his arm wrapping around my shoulder. “Are you alright?” He ran a worried hand over my hair and I resisted the urge to push him away.

“Am I alright?” I whispered hoarsely, stopping. “I just cut off a man’s head and carried it through the forest.”

“Of course. I’m sorry.” He lifted his hands before him. “Who was it?” When I didn’t answer, his wrinkled brow arched up over his slanted eyes knowingly. “Whose head was it?” he asked again.

I twisted my hands into my skirt. “Just a dead man in the village. I had to…” I swallowed, the weakness coming back into my legs. “I had to come back with something.”

But the truth was that in that moment, beneath the gate with Halvard staring down into my face, I couldn’t do it. There was something about him that felt too familiar. A feeling that pulled like an anchor in my chest when I saw him. If he was fated to die, he should have died in the glade. And I wasn’t going to be the one to change it. Not this time. I told myself it was because I’d seen enough death, but I knew it was more than that. I didn’t want the man who’d looked me in the eye to die. I didn’t want to think that I’d never see him again.

Jorrund surveyed me, the worry creasing the skin around his mouth as his eyes dropped down to my throat, where I could still feel the ache of Halvard’s hands. “What happened?”

I reached up, pulling the collar of my tunic up. “It’s nothing,” I said beneath my breath. “I need to speak with you.”

His gaze flickered up to my face. “What is it?”

“I think…” I stopped, thinking before I said it. “I think we’ve made a mistake.”

He looked around us warily before he put his arm back around me, leading me to our tent at the end of the row. Once we were inside, he turned to face me, lifting the torch between us. “What are you talking about?”

“It’s a mistake.”

“What is?”

“All of it. Utan, Ljós. Hylli. We have to stop them. We have to go back.”

“Tova, you saw what the future holds. Vigdis made a difficult decision, but it was the right one.”

“What if I was wrong? About the runes. About everything.” I sat down on the cot, putting my face into my hands. It had been haunting me, the thought that maybe I couldn’t see into the future. That maybe I didn’t understand the language of the Spinners or the will of the gods at all.

Jorrund’s hand landed on my shoulder and squeezed. “You weren’t wrong.”

“But I saw something when I took the henbane, Jorrund. Something…”

He crouched down before me. “What?” The firelight shifted in the wind coming in from outside and I watched his face change with it. “What did you see?”