The Girl the Sea Gave Back(74)

She held the bracelet in her clasped hands as she stared with an empty gaze into the flames. The blazing pyres bathed the beach in red light, only the shine of tears glistening in its reflection.

The bodies of the fallen Nādhir turned to ash on their way to the afterlife, and I prayed that the gods would see it. Sigr, Thora, Eydis, Naer. The gods of the clans that lay farther to the east and beyond the mountain to the south. I prayed that they’d remember the stench of death that rose up to meet them. That they’d remember the way we would.

Tova stood before the fire, her dark hair pulling in the wind, her shape nothing but a black silhouette against the flames. She’d brought death to Utan and then she’d brought salvation to Hylli. Now, she’d summoned the entire clan of her people down from the north and our fates would drop from her hands.

She wiped her face with the back of her sleeve and I resisted the urge to reach out and touch her, reminding myself that she was a smoldering coal in the fire of the Kyrr. Her people had appeared in the storm and now, they stood able to take everything we’d just fought for. And after the stones fell, we could be standing on opposite sides again, her with her people and me with mine.





CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE


TOVA


I could feel it in my bones.

The pounding rhythm of the drums came down from the village, where the Kyrr were gathered in Hylli’s ritual house, and found me on the empty beach. Their voices carried out into the night with songs and I shivered in the cold as they twisted in the back of my mind, flickering dead memories back to life.

“It’s time.” Svanhild’s deep voice found me and I turned to see her, my hands cradling my bandaged arms.

The funeral fires for the Nādhir had finished burning and the beach was dark, but the embers still glowed before the water. I’d watched Gunther burn until the last flames extinguished, wondering if he had made it to the afterlife or if Eydis would punish him for my treachery. I would never know. Wherever he was, I hoped he was with his son.

“Come, sváss.” Svanhild fit her hand into mine and I followed her with bare feet up to the path that wound through the dark village. The Nādhir were still drinking away the battle on the hill where tents ran in rows all the way up to the forest. Tomorrow, they’d be on their way home, back to their villages, and Hylli would empty itself of war. That’s what I wanted to believe. But until the stones were cast, no one knew what the Kyrr would do. What my people would do.

The ritual house stood tall as we came up from the beach, the firelight spilling through the open arched doorway.

“What will they say?” I asked, my hand tightening around hers before she let me go.

“What do you want them to say?”

I knew the answer to that, but it was something I’d never say aloud. I knew better than to tempt the Spinners or to declare my own will before the gods. But the burn of Halvard’s mouth was still warm on mine, and if I’d been brave enough to answer her, I would have said I wanted to stay. With him. Maybe forever.

She squeezed my hand before she let it go. The song rose louder, every head turned as Svanhild appeared before them, making her way through the crowd of Kyrr with Turonn at her side. Every man and woman stepped aside, leaving a clear path stretching out before me that led to the altar fire. As Svanhild lifted her hand, the singing voices stopped, their echo still ringing inside of me.

I pulled the purse from around my neck and the famil iar weight of the runes in my hands grounded me to the earth as I stepped out of the wind and into the warmth of the ritual house. The Kyrr were packed in between the walls so tightly that there was hardly any air to breathe and the stone was hot beneath my feet. Every eye fell on me as I walked the aisle and stopped before the altar, emptying the purse into my hands.

I would cast the stones.

I would look into the future.

But this time, for my own people.

The drums started again, pounding in a rhythm that matched my racing heartbeat, and the sound of the voices changed, dropping low into whispers that wound through the mass of people and tingled up my spine. They were chanting. Or praying. Like the sound of water on hot coals. Like the fall of a thousand rivers over the falls.

I blinked, the realization hitting me so hard that it snatched the breath from my chest.

It was the same. It was the same sound I’d heard when I first saw Halvard in the glade. The sound that had pulled me after him, to Utan and then to Hylli. It wasn’t a memory. It was a moment in the future.

It was now.

The slide of tongues over rasping words and the click of teeth swirled around me and I blinked back the tears in my eyes, Svanhild’s words repeating.

They are the same moment.

Her lips moved with the others as she took a bundle of herbs from the stone ledge and dropped them into the fire. The smoke billowed up behind us until the room was filled with it, casting everything in a fragrant haze that made my head swim. My heart slowed, the blood in my body warming.

I couldn’t see him, but I could feel him.

I searched the faces for Halvard, but there were only the eyes of the Kyrr. The stinging, sweet smoke and the beat of the drums. And though I was surrounded by faces I didn’t know in a land that wasn’t mine, I fit into it in some way. Or it fit into me.

Turonn unrolled a fox pelt on the altar before me and my slick hands clutched tighter around the stones. There was no hiding what the runes said this time. There was no turning of minds. No Jorrund to twist fate into what he wanted. My mother and father stood beside me, waiting, and again, I looked for Halvard.