The Girl the Sea Gave Back(59)

And I knew before I looked up that he’d be there. I knew it the way I knew the weight of the stones around my neck.

I blinked, my gaze following the edge to the feet that stood down the cliff, the moonlight on his white tunic a faint glow. It pulled around him in the wind, his hair blowing across his forehead. And when I looked up into his face, Halvard’s eyes were on me.





CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX


HALVARD


I could feel her. Like the creep of silent fog winding through the trees.

The Truthtongue stood like a ghost against the night, her skin white as frost beneath her black dress. She looked down to the water below, dropping her skirts from where they were bundled in her hands, and they blew back behind her like unfolded raven’s wings.

I blinked, expecting her to disappear the way she had that night in the forest. The way she had before the altar fire, the vision of her vanishing like smoke. But she didn’t. She stilled before she looked up, her hands tucked against her chest as her eyes met mine. And the same feeling that had come over me in Utan returned, like needles moving over my skin. It was something I’d never felt before the day I’d seen her in the glade, but now, it was becoming familiar. It was becoming something I recognized.

I looked past her, to the trees, as I pulled the knife from my belt. “Are you alone?” My voice was lost in the wind shooting up the cliff.

She stood frozen, as if she expected me to disappear, too. “Yes,” she said, stepping back from the cliff’s edge.

Her eyes fell to the knife in my hand. The braids that fell over her shoulder were almost completely unraveled, the pieces falling into her face and dripping with rain. I tried not to watch the way it ran in rivulets over her skin.

The length of her dress snapped in the wind, her fingers twisting into the ends of her hair at her waist. I lifted a hand between us slowly and her lips parted on a breath as I caught her wrist and pulled her toward me. And she was real. Not like the spirit I’d seen in the forest. The back of her hand was cut through the middle of the mark of the yarrow inked there and her skin was ice cold, but she was flesh and bone before me. And still, there was something haunting about her. Something more shadow than light.

“You’re really here,” I said, letting go of her.

She closed her hand into a fist, covering the mark where I’d touched her with her fingers as she took a step back.

“What are you doing here?” I said, moving forward to close the space she’d put between us.

“I came to tell you…” But she didn’t finish, her feet shifting nervously as she tucked the unwoven hair behind her ear. She pulled my axe from her belt and held it out to me. Its blade was almost completely covered in mud.

I took it, rubbing at the iron with my thumb until the engraving of the yew tree glinted.

She wrapped her arms around herself, shivering. “The Svell are coming to Hylli.”

“You think I don’t know that?” My voice rose over the sound of the waves crashing below and she bristled.

She turned back to face the water, hooking her hands onto the bow over her shoulder. “I’m sorry.” Her lips formed the words but I couldn’t hear them. She looked suddenly small. Delicate.

I sighed, letting the weight of the axe fall to my side. “Why did you help me?” I asked, my voice softening.

She looked surprised at the question, studying my face before she answered. “Because you’re not supposed to die.”

“If I’m not supposed to die, then I won’t.”

She searched my eyes, making me feel unsteady on my feet again. “That’s not how fate works.”

The moonlight broke through the clouds overhead, catching the eye on her chest. It stared up at me, unblinking. “Then how does it work?”

“It’s always changing. Every moment. I’m trying to undo what’s happened. I didn’t know when I cast the stones that they would—”

“So, it was you?” I ran a hand through my wet hair, realizing that Kjeld had been right.

She said nothing, but the answer was in the way her gaze flitted back to the ground. “I didn’t know.”

But that wasn’t good enough. An entire village was dead. Aghi was dead. “What are you doing with the Svell?”

“I’m not with them. Not anymore.” Her voice faded. “I want to help you.”

I tried to read the look that lit on her face. She was afraid, and even if I’d never seen war, I knew people. I didn’t trust her, but the fair skin at her throat was still bruised, the welts from where I’d had my hands around her neck visible even in the darkness. She’d come here, even though I’d almost killed her only days ago.

“And I have nowhere else to go.” She swallowed hard, the shame of it heavy on each word.

I blinked, the picture of her becoming instantly clearer. I could see it. There was something hollow about her. Something worn thin.

“I can help you. I can try to keep you alive.”

“You can’t help us.” I slid my knife back into my belt and turned, starting back up the path, but she followed.

“Please.” She took hold of my sleeve, stopping me, and I flinched at the feeling of her cold skin through my tunic. Her fingers wrapped around my arm and I swallowed hard, looking down into her face. The marks painted every inch of skin showing in the opening of her dress and I followed them with my eyes until they disappeared. “I want to help you.” Her grip on me tightened.