The Girl the Sea Gave Back(5)

I hooked my fingers into the leather string around my neck and lifted the purse from inside my tunic. I hadn’t cast the stones since the night Vera died, and the memory slicked my palms with sweat, my stomach turning. I opened it carefully, letting them fall heavily into my open hand. The firelight glimmered against their smooth, black surfaces where the runes were carved in deep lines. The language of the Spinners. Pieces of the future, waiting to be read.

Jorrund unrolled the pelt and my palms pressed together around the stones.

“Lag mund,” Vigdis whispered.

“Lag mund,” the others repeated.

Fate’s hand.

But what did these warriors know about fate? It was the curling, wild vine that choked out the summer crops. It was the wind that bent wayward currents and damned innocent souls to the deep. They hadn’t seen the stretch of it or the way it could shift suddenly, like a flock of startled birds. Fate’s hand was something they said because they didn’t understand it.

That’s what I was for.

I closed my eyes, pushing the presence of the Svell from around me. I found the darkness—the place I was alone. The place I had come from. The call of the nighthawk sounded again and I pulled my thoughts together, sending them into one straight line. My lips parted, the words finding my mouth and I breathed through them.

“Augua ór tivar. Ljá mir syn.

“Augua ór tivar. Ljá mir syn.

“Augua ór tivar. Ljá mir syn.”

Eye of the gods. Give me sight.

I held my hands out before me, unfurling my fingers and letting the stones drop until they were scattered across the pelt in a pattern that only I could see, reaching out wide to either side. The silence grew thick, the crackle of fire the only sound as I leaned forward, bringing my fingers to my lips.

My brow furrowed, my eyes moving from one stone to the next. Every single one was facedown, the runes hidden. Except for one.

I bit down hard on my lip, looking up to see Jorrund’s eyes locked on mine.

Hagalaz, the hailstone, sat in the very center. Complete destruction. The storm that devours.

For more than ten years, I’d cast the runes to see the future of the Svell. Never had they looked like this.

But the stones never lied. Not to me.

My eyes drifted over them again, the pace of my heart quickening.

“What do you see?” Jorrund’s voice was heavy when he finally spoke.

I stared at him, the weight of silence pushing down on me in the hot room until it was hard to draw breath.

“It’s alright, Tova,” he said, gently. “What lies in the future of the Svell?”

My eyes cut to Bekan, who stared into the fire, his gaze as hollow as the night his daughter died.

I reached out, the tip of my finger landing on Hagalaz before I answered.

“In the future, there are no Svell.”





CHAPTER TWO


HALVARD


“How many?” Espen barked, the pounding of his boots hitting the rocky path ahead of me like a racing heartbeat.

Aghi struggled to keep up, leaning into his staff and rocking from side to side as we made our way up the narrow trail that led away from the beach. “More than forty.”

Espen stopped short, turning on his heel to face us. “You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.” Aghi’s eyes met mine over Espen’s shoulder.

I’d known by the look on his face when I saw Aghi standing on the dock that something was wrong. But this … the entire village of Ljós was gone. Aghi and I had been there only a week ago, meeting with the village leader. Now, it was most likely nothing more than a pile of ash.

Espen drew in a deep breath, his hand tangling in his beard as he thought. “Are they waiting in the ritual house?”

“Yes,” Aghi answered.

I looked up, feeling eyes on us. The people of Hylli were tending to their morning chores, but their hands stilled on their work as we passed. They could feel that something was happening even if they couldn’t see it.

“It was the Svell?” I kept my voice low as a man shouldered around us, a line of silver fish slung over his back.

Espen’s jaw clenched. “Who else would it be?”

A fire was lit in his eyes that I hadn’t seen since the day I’d first met him, after the battle against the Herja that nearly wiped out the entirety of both our clans. It was something I recognized, the same fire that had lit the eyes of so many warriors I’d known as a boy up on the mountain. The hunger to spill blood was something that ran through the veins of both the Aska and the Riki, but we were the Nādhir now. And it had been ten years since that part of us had been awakened.

“What will you do?”

He didn’t answer aloud, but I could see in his face the weary look of a man who’d seen far more death than me.

We’d spoken many times about the tensions growing along the border with the Svell. The call to act had grown more insistent in the last few months, but we needed another ten years before we’d have a strong enough army to defend our lands and our people with better odds. We’d lost too many when the Herja came, and now many of the warriors who’d survived were too old to fight.

As if he could hear my thoughts, Aghi’s gaze drifted back to me. His leg had never recovered from the wound he suffered in the battle that defeated the Herja.