Sky in the Deep(38)

When he didn’t answer, she took his arm and pulled him to face her.

“Thorpe.” He didn’t look at her.

Her voice dropped lower. “What did you do?”

He tied his hair back, coming to the fire and sitting to take off his boots. “Reminded him not to touch what doesn’t belong to him.”

Inge watched him for a moment before she gave a small nod, but worry hung heavy on her face. “I’ll speak to the Tala tomorrow.”

“I’ll speak to the Tala.” The room fell silent.

“Fiske…”

He stilled, looking up at her.

But she didn’t speak. She only looked at him, her eyes falling from his head down to his feet and meeting his eyes again. Like she was trying to uncover something.

He stood, walking past her to the ladder. She watched him until he was out of sight and then turned back toward the fire. She didn’t move for a long time and when she finally closed her eyes, her mouth was moving, a silent prayer on her lips.

I sunk lower into the blankets. Because Inge didn’t know that I was the past Iri had left behind. I was what she should be praying against.

And it was only a matter of time before she did.

*

I lay in the loft as the others went about their day.

No one talked to me.

No one asked me to do anything.

I pulled my legs up and hugged them into my chest, still trying to feel the warmth down in the center of my frozen bones. Where I felt empty.

When the sun grew brighter, I pulled the blankets up over my head and listened to my heartbeat. Iri climbed up the ladder and stood over me, his worry filling the room. I pretended to be asleep and when he climbed back down, I let myself breathe again. I stared into the dark of the blankets, trying to remember what that feeling was—the feeling chewing at the edges of me while I stood in the dark of the forest tied naked to the tree.

I had never been so vulnerable. So full of fear.

And I had never hated myself until that moment.

I remembered the light reflecting off the snow. The sound of my quick breath in the silence. Thinking that if I died, I wouldn’t reach Sólbj?rg. Then, the all-consuming shame of being afraid to die for the very first time in my life.

I could see the reds and oranges and yellows of the battlefield. The heat and the sting of pain. The burn of a war cry in my throat. I could see myself, alive. Strong.

I blinked.

And there was only the white and cold and quiet of that forest. There was only loneliness. There was only the very barest part of me, waiting for the end to come. It crept toward me in the dark. It came for me. And when it overtook me, my last thought was I don’t want to die.

I had never known real fear until the moment I saw Iri in Aurvanger. I had never considered there was more to life than the most basic explanation—that the gods were willing over us. That they were giving and taking their favor.

But I was without my clan.

I was alone in that forest.

Sigr had turned his eyes from me. I could feel it. And I could only think of Iri, just a boy, dying slowly in the cold. Of my mother, the life drained from her flesh. All her fight gone.

And the Herja, floating in the dark like a harbinger, watching me.

There was a knock at the door below and my eyes refocused.

“Inge.” A warm voice floated up to me and I crawled to the edge of my cot to peer through the cracks of the loft.

The Tala came through the door and everyone stood. Inge took the Tala’s hands into her own and squeezed them. But that worry was still there, hanging over her. It made her look heavy on her feet.

“I have good news.” The Tala stepped over the threshold and into the house. “Runa’s father has accepted Iri’s request to marry her.” She gripped Iri’s arm and smiled.

Relief pushed its way over his face and he looked up to meet Inge’s eyes.

“You’re worthy of it, Iri.” Inge smiled.

The Tala nodded. “The two of you will make a very good match.”

The sweetness in Iri’s eyes reached inside me and touched the raw pain of losing him again. The urge to cry swelled behind my tongue.

“Thank you.” He nodded.

“You’ll need to get everything in order, of course. We’ll make the preparations as soon as you like.”

The Tala smiled again and I studied her. She seemed genuinely happy and the others looked at her with a fondness. A trust. But all I could think of when I looked at the Tala was the way she’d watched me in the forest. The way she walked away from me, leaving me to die.

She sat at the table, folding her hands in her lap, and her manner changed a little, the room going silent with it. “We do need to talk about what happened last night.” Her eyes went to Fiske, who stood on the other side of the fire. “Do you have anything you’d like to say?”

Fiske didn’t seem nervous like Inge was. He stood straight, looking the Tala in the eye. “I went to speak with Thorpe last night after I returned from the hunt and learned that he’d tried to kill my dyr.”

“You spoke with him?”

Fiske’s face bore no expression. Beside him, Iri looked into the fire, his hand twitching at his belt.

She tilted her head to one side. “Thorpe abused your property and he had no right to take what belongs to you. He brought the consequences upon himself.”