Sky in the Deep(69)

I looked at the house, where my father was still talking with the Riki. How did we get here? How could we ever go back? I wanted to push my face into the snow. I wanted to scream.

He stepped toward me, taking my cut hand into his. He turned it over before wrapping a strip of cloth around it, knotting it on my palm. I breathed through the feeling flowing through me, like candle wax melting. “Don’t.” The word hit me in the chest as he said it.

I bit down on my lip until my eyes watered. To keep myself from speaking. I was afraid of what I would say if I did.

“Stay with me and come with us to the valley. We’ll meet the Aska there.”

I closed my eyes as a tear rolled down my flushed face. Trying to escape. Trying to leave this moment and pretend like I hadn’t chosen a path to get here. It wasn’t a command. It was a request. One that I didn’t think I could deny. He’d left his family and come with me down the mountain as his people reeled in the aftermath of a raid. He’d taken me home. Helped me find my father. Now it was my turn to make a choice.

To choose him the way he’d chosen me.

I turned back toward the tree as he left, boots crunching all the way to the door, and the latch clicked again. I crouched down and put my face into my hands, feeling the village spinning around me. I tried to remember who I was.

Strong. Brave. Fierce. Sure.

I tried to summon her to me—that Eelyn who would choose her people over anything else. I searched for her within myself, but she was different now. I was different. And it was something that was already done. Something I couldn’t change.





FORTY-THREE


They were talking about numbers.

The number of Aska.

The number of Riki.

The number of Herja.

After hours of discussion, the Riki village leaders left the house quiet. The fire crackled in the pit between Iri’s old family and his new one. I swallowed hard, wondering which one I was part of now.

My father asked questions, but not too many. He didn’t want too many answers. He just wanted to be happy that Iri’s heart was still beating. But Iri would have to answer for what he’d done eventually, and we all knew it.

Inge came down the ladder with two mats for my father and Myra. “Your cot is still in the loft.”

I knew it wouldn’t take long for them to put it together. The understanding sunk into Myra’s face, followed by my father’s. And the confusion written there quickly turned to disgust. “You were their dyr?” Myra spat, standing.

I sighed, running a hand through my hair. I was exhausted. I didn’t have the will to explain. And there was no explanation that could satisfy them. Not ever. If I were Myra, I’d feel the same way.

My father looked down at Inge with a hard, cold stare before he wrenched the mats from her arms and went outside. Myra followed him, slamming the door behind her, and Inge flinched.

“I’m sorry.” Her face fell.

I didn’t answer. I didn’t say it was alright, because it wasn’t. Instead, I took the newly bound bundles of sage from the table and pulled a torch from the wall. I leaned over the fire, lighting it, and then headed for the door. I needed the sky stretching out over me and drowning out the swirl of everyone and everything in this village.

I walked out into the dark and could sense the bodies behind the closed doors and in the trees. Fela had become a sanctuary, seething with the anger of the Riki. The houses glowed with night fires burning to keep mourning families warm.

I swallowed it down.

The dead Aska. The dead Riki. All of it.

The path curved toward the incline until I reached the cellar. I kicked the snow from before the door so I could open it and put the torch into the mount on the wall. The scent of the sweet sage made my head swim with the memory of the first time I’d walked into Fiske’s home. And I couldn’t understand the feeling that followed it. I wanted it all to fit into a place inside me that made sense. I wanted to hate them all for everything that had happened.

But when I followed the trail back, it had started with me.

I was the one who watched Iri get cut down in battle. I left him. And I was the one who followed him into the forest the night they captured me.

It began with me. I’d made a choice.

Like Fiske had made a choice when he saved Iri’s life.

The hinges on the door creaked and I went for my knife.

Fiske stood at its opening. He pushed the door closed behind him and the moonlight was cut out, leaving only the light of the torch on the wall. My hands clenched tighter around the sage, the scent still fragrant in my lungs. He looked at me and the hardness that always hid his face fell away. I could see him again. The way I had at the river. The way I had in Hylli. The open, tender part of him that was reaching out. It moved across the floor of the cellar and touched me. It lit the inside of me on fire.

Tears stung behind my eyes and I tried to blink them back, but I wanted to see him. I wanted to feel him. And as if he could hear me think it, he crossed the space between us slowly. The toes of his boots almost touched mine as he took the bundles of sage from my arms and he reached up, leaning over me to hang them from the line.

“What are you doing?” I whispered.

But he didn’t answer. He looked down at me before his hands lifted, finding my face, and he stepped closer. His fingers wound into my hair until I tipped my head back and I sucked in a breath.