The Girl the Sea Gave Back(58)

“I can end this,” I whispered. “All of it.”

He didn’t move, except for the twitch of his hand on the handle of the knife.

“I’ve seen the future. You should go back to H?lkn. Back to your family.”

His eyes narrowed. “I won’t hide in my home while my clansmen fight.”

I knew he wouldn’t. But I didn’t want to see him lying dead on the battlefield. I didn’t want to stand against him or see him fall. He was a good man.

I reached beneath my sleeve and untied the bracelet around my wrist. “Then take this.” I held it out to him, the copper disk heavy in the palm of my hand.

“What is it?” he breathed.

“It’s a talisman. For protection.” I didn’t tell him that there wasn’t a talisman strong enough to hide him from the wrath of the Spinners.

Gunther looked down at me for a long moment before he tucked his knife back into its sheath. He took the bracelet from my hand, turning it over in the light.

“Why did you do it?” I asked.

“What?”

“Why did you come to the beach that day?”

“Because you were a child,” he said, simply.

He wasn’t a warm man. There was no softness to him. But he’d been kind and he’d done what he thought was right even when no one would have agreed with him. He was maybe the only person I could trust on this side of the sea.

“I have no family left.” He looked up, suddenly. “My son Aaro died in the attack on Ljós.”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

“I didn’t know he was going. I didn’t know what they’d planned. I have no family left,” he said again.

“Then stay alive to find a new one.”

His fingers closed over the talisman until it was hidden in his fist and he walked to the edge of the forest, where his horse was tied to the trunk of a wide tree. He ran a hand up its snout before he lifted my bow from the riggings and untied the quiver.

I smiled as he held them out to me, but he only stared at the ground between us as the shadow of the nighthawk swept overhead again. Its wail rang out above us as I dropped the bow over my head.

“Thank you.” I reached back to feel the feather fletching over my shoulder as I secured it.

Without a word, he turned, giving me his back as he walked away. I watched him grow smaller in the low light and I held my breath as he disappeared between the tents, the lump in my throat winding tighter. I hoped it was the last time I’d ever see him. I hoped his blood wouldn’t pay the debt for what I’d done.

The nighthawk cried again and I looked up, watching him tip his wings and turn to break the circle. He flew out over the forest, headed east, and I knew. The same way I knew the sound of the woman’s voice in the broken memory. The Spinners had answered my prayer. They were leading me. And now it was time to follow.

I didn’t look back, walking straight into the trees toward Hylli until the camp disappeared behind me, glancing up every few steps to keep an eye on the All Seer above. He flickered in and out of view, vanishing behind thick branches and then appearing again against the lambent, cloud-covered sky.

The moon’s path curved overhead as the hours passed and I was swallowed up by the belly of the bottomlands, feeling alone for the first time since the Svell Tala found me on that beach. No Jorrund whispering in my ear or eyes trailing over my Kyrr-marked skin.

He would know as soon as he woke that I was gone. He’d be frantic, afraid. And though I didn’t want to care or worry for him, a very small part of me still did. He was a fragile soul, even if he didn’t know it, built on the power he’d stumbled upon the day he found me. But that power was now slipping through his fingers with each breath, leaving only the man who’d lied to keep from losing his tight grip on everything around him.

I’d been a fool to believe that I belonged with Jorrund. I knew that. In fact, I’d always known. But I’d never had anywhere else to go. He’d come looking, but he wouldn’t find me.

This time, I was really gone.

I walked. I walked until I couldn’t feel anything. My skin numbed in the icy rain, my hair and clothes soaked through. The forest was so quiet, my footsteps pulsing in an echo against the trees as each one hit the ground. I walked until the bones of my feet ached inside my boots. Until my arms were weak from carrying the weight of my skirts. Until my eyes were so heavy that the All Seer’s shape was a blur against the dark night sky. Halvard’s face was the pull that swept me through the forest, coming in and out of focus in my mind. He was the one I owed something to now. The only fate that mattered.

Vigdis was right. I should have died out on the empty sea, but the Spinners had bound my fate to the young Nādhir from the glade. They’d wound our paths together for some purpose I couldn’t understand. It was carved into the Tree of Urer. Written on my soul. And it was the one thing I was going to do right. It was the one thing I was going to do on my own.

And with that single thought, I suddenly wanted to see him. I wanted to be near him, like I was beneath the gate in Utan. The whispers seemed to flutter back to life in the back of my mind, the sound of them melting into the wind and the sway of the trees.

A crack of light split the darkness ahead and I stopped, hugging my skirts tighter to my chest. The scent of the sea met me, the churn of water and the slip of cold rocks breaking the empty silence. I came through the edge of the forest, into a gust of cool, salty air. It hit my face with the moonlight and before me, the black, sleeping fjord unfurled. It foamed white on the shore, my boots at the edge of a cliff that dropped straight down to a rocky beach below. The sound of it swelled and spilled over, washing out everything else until I could feel the hiss of whispers on my skin. The click of tongues on teeth.