The Girl the Sea Gave Back(70)

The Kyrr leaders had disappeared into the ritual house as soon as the Svell were gone and hadn’t come out. Their boats filled the shallows, their warriors covering the beach, and a sinking feeling had pulled in my gut as I walked through the village gates. The Nādhir watched from the path and the hill, waiting their turns with the healers, and their faces betrayed the same thought that was resounding in my mind.

The Kyrr had saved us. But there was no way to know why. Or what they’d do next. They were a clan of warriors descended upon a bleeding people and if they wanted to, they could take everything from us.

“Do you think it’s to do with the girl?” I didn’t miss the way Fiske’s gaze met my mother’s.

It had to be about Tova. And Kjeld. Both of them, somehow. “Yes.”

But if they’d come for more than the girl, we were ripe for the taking.

I looked down at Eelyn, running a hand over her hair. Her fair skin was more ashen than I’d ever seen it, the exhaustion glazing over her eyes. She didn’t fight against my mother’s hands anymore. She didn’t have the strength left for that. I took a new bottle of ale from the shelf on the wall and opened it. Her shaking hand lifted to take it from me and she tipped her head back to drink.

The village was almost silent when I pushed back outside, walking up the path to the ritual house. The Nādhir were already dragging the bodies of our people down to the beach and the Svell that the Kyrr found in the forest were lined up on their knees at the top of the hill, their hands bound behind their backs. Three lines of warriors looked out over Hylli, their muddy faces watching the serpent ships that filled the cove, anchored in the calm water beneath the clearing storm clouds. A few of them already lay dead, facedown in the slick grass.

“Halvard.” Freydis called to me from where she stood on the beach, her eyes reddened beneath a bleeding gash on her forehead.

Latham lay at her feet, his hands folded over his middle and his eyes closed. The wound that killed him was splayed open across his chest, his woven leather armor vest torn and unraveling in a diagonal line. I swallowed back the pain in my throat, sinking down beside him.

“The others?” I asked, wiping a streak of mud from his face with the back of my hand.

“We lost Egil, too,” she answered quietly.

I set my hand onto Latham’s shoulder, squeezing before I stood. I hoped it was the quick death he deserved. I hoped he was in the afterlife with my father, meeting faces of long-lost friends and telling the story of what had happened. He’d been ready to die, but I hadn’t been ready to lose him. Now, I would look to Freydis and the others who were left to guide me.

The doors to the ritual house opened in the distance and from where I stood, I could see Kjeld’s blond hair as he stepped into the sunlight. His eyes found me down the path before he made his way toward us.

Asmund appeared in an open doorway as I passed and I stopped to take his arm, clapping him on the back as he leaned into me. “Alright?”

“Alright,” he answered, his attention on Kjeld. Together, we walked to meet him and he stopped in the middle of the trail, waiting for us.

“What is this, Kjeld?” I watched his face, looking for whatever he may not say aloud. But he looked me in the eye, standing tall before us.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I had to be sure.”

“Of what?”

He rubbed the place between his brows, putting the words together. “The girl—Tova—she’s the daughter of the Kyrr leaders.”

Asmund took a step backward, staring at him. “How did you know?”

“The marks,” Kjeld answered. “I knew by her marks.”

I remembered the way he reacted when I told him about the girl in the glade and the eye inked onto her chest. The way he’d changed his mind so quickly about coming with us to Hylli and the way he’d stared at her in Utan. As if he’d seen a ghost. “You went back to tell them their daughter was alive.”

He nodded. “Yes.”

“And what is she to you?” My hand went on the hilt of my sword.

“What?”

“Did you use her to set right whatever made you run from the headlands?”

“She is the reason I left the headlands. Tova is my sister’s daughter,” he said, swallowing hard.

Asmund cursed under his breath, half-laughing as he looked between us.

“What are they doing here, Kjeld?” I lifted my chin to where his people were still gathered by the hundreds.

“They’re here for her. For Tova.”

“What else?”

I could tell by the way he pressed his lips into a flat line that he knew what I was asking. It didn’t matter why they’d come. The only thing that mattered was what they’d do now that they were here.

Kjeld shook his head, looking at his boots. “The Kyrr aren’t like you.”

“What does that mean?” Asmund narrowed his eyes at him.

“They see the world through the omens and the runes. They don’t have Talas or councils or elders, they cast the stones to consult the Spinners. There’s only the stones.”

I waited, trying to read him, but Kjeld never gave anything away. With him, everything was always hidden. But he’d never struck me as a liar. “What does it have to do with Tova? Why did you say she isn’t supposed to be alive?”