Chapter 32 Freya
I turned my face out of the mud and drew in a breath right as Snorri’s eyes moved from Saga to me. “Freya, help me. You must help me. You must save me from her lies. She is lying!” Bjorn caught hold of his arm, dragging him to the square of runes Saga was marking. “She is lying!”
The urge to stop this was no longer a prickle but a fire across my skin, burning with such ferocity that I screamed. I flung my body from side to side, my hair ripping from my scalp as I pulled from Tora’s grip. I lunged to my feet only to be struck in the back, a jolt that had to be lightning coursing through my body.
Stunned, I lay in the dirt, watching Saga close the square, binding Snorri and Bjorn within. “Stop,” I whispered as Tora knelt on my back and took hold of my wrists. “Stop this.”
I could not get loose. Could not use Hlin’s magic with my hands pressed to the earth. But Hel’s magic was not so easily contained, and though her roots would not pull those with god’s blood to Helheim, it would distract them enough that I might be able to escape. “I curse you, Saga,” I screamed at her. “I curse you to Helheim!”
Power surged through me, calling to my divine mother for her aid, but the ground did not stir. No roots exploded from its surface.
And in my failure, my body burned and burned.
“Get up!” Bjorn kicked Snorri, who had prostrated himself to the ground. “At least die with honor, you lying prick.”
Snorri raised his head. “I will not lift a weapon against my son. I know not why, but your mother has deceived you. Kill me if you must, but there is no honor for you in this. The gods know the truth even if you do not.”
“Bjorn, do not listen to him.” Saga stood outside the wards, hands fisted and tears slickening her cheeks. “Kill him. End our horror once and for all!”
“Bjorn, no!” I tried to scream, but Tora shoved a glove into my mouth, garbling my voice.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m sorry, Freya, but this is how it has to be.”
“She’s lying to you!” Snorri said. “Odin knows her lies and will not welcome her! She is cursed!”
“Get up!” Bjorn kicked Snorri’s sword in front of him. “Fight like a man!”
Snorri ignored the weapon but climbed to his feet, expression resolute. “I will not fight you, my son. You are deceived by one who you have every reason to trust, and I’ll not harm you for that. Kill me if you must but know that this is not justice.”
“No!” I howled around the glove, trying to force it out with my tongue, but Tora’s hand was clamped over my mouth, my body the purest form of agony.
“Kill him.” Saga spat the words. “Silence him.”
“Fight!” Bjorn’s axe flared with the ferocity of his emotions. “Fight me, Father!”
“No.” Snorri lifted his chin, arms relaxed at his sides. “There is no honor in this fight. I refuse it.”
I felt Bjorn snap, and it was like a stab to my own heart. His arm swung in a wide arc, and his flaming axe sank deep into Snorri’s chest.
Snorri stumbled backward, pulling himself free and revealing a blackened and bubbling hole in his chest. He dropped to his knees, and Bjorn lifted his weapon to deliver the killing blow.
“No,” Saga snarled. “Let him die slowly.”
Tora releasedme.
I didn’t stop to question why, only staggered to my feet and snatched up my fallen shield. Springing across the distance, I threw myself over Snorri. “Stop!”
Bjorn wavered, his axe disappearing. “He’s dead, Freya,” he said. “He can’t survive that.”
I knew Snorri wouldn’t survive, and yet I could still feel the threat to the blood I’d sworn to protect so viscerally I could barely breathe.
I pressed my hands to the wound, gagging at how the burned flesh crackled beneath my palm. Snorri groaned in agony. “Don’t. Please don’t.”
“Don’t! Please don’t!” Saga mimicked his voice, and then she began to laugh.
She moved, skipping around the perimeter of the square, her midnight braids bouncing against her back.
“Mother, enough.” Bjorn was watching her with the same unease I felt.
Saga ignored him and kept skipping, but the tone of her laughter began to change. Shifting and warping into deeper, yet familiar, tones. Wild and cruel.
Not Saga’s laugh.
But Harald’s .
Horror pooling in my guts, because it was Harald’s laughter pouring from Saga’s lips.
“What madness is this?” Bjorn whispered, even as Saga’s features shuddered and blurred, her shape distorting and then suddenly re-forming as the king of Nordeland.
“Child of Loki!” Snorri choked out, blood running down his chin. “A shape-shifter. A trickster.”
Harald laughed, the sound turning wild and maniacal even as he clapped his hands like a small child and continued to skip around the square. “Long have I waited for this moment,” he said when his mirth finally calmed. “And it was more perfect than I’d ever dreamed!”
“Where is my mother?” Bjorn demanded. “What have you done to her?”
Harald snickered, his demeanor entirely different from what I’d ever seen, yet every part of me screamed that this was the real him. That I’d been fooled.
“Most of Saga is nothing more than ash on the wind.” Harald’s mouth spread into a wild grin. “You can ask Snorri where he buried her bones before he expires. Though I think that will be very soon.”
Oh gods oh gods oh gods.
All this time, Harald had been impersonating Saga. Been pretending to be Bjorn’s mother. Manipulating him with lies and false sentiment.
Just as he’d done to me. Bile burned up my throat as I realized I’d sat naked in a sauna with this monster, spilling my heart out, and for Bjorn, it was so much worse.
“I’m going to kill you,” Bjorn hissed, his axe appearing in his hand. He lunged at Herald, only to stagger backward as he struck the ward.
Fear filled my chest and, drawing my sword, I lifted my hand and walked forward, my worries confirmed as my palm encountered an invisible barrier.
“Silly, foolish girl.” Harald laughed. “Racing into your own trap, never stopping to look at the runes before you crossed. Not that you’d understand them anyway, ignorant fishwife that you are.” He rolled his eyes skyward. “Pretending to hold you in any level of esteem was more challenging than mimicking Saga all these years.”
A thousand curses rose in my throat, but I bit down on all of them, looking instead to Tora. The child of Thor stood beyond, shoulders slumped, eyes dull with resignation. “Tora, help us.”
“I cannot,” the other woman whispered. “I am sorry, Freya.”
“She was another foolish girl.” Harald glanced back at Tora. “So quick to make promises she shouldn’t have.”
“I hate you,” Tora whispered, but Harald only huffed out an amused breath. “To be hated holds more power than to be loved. You serve either way, Tora. Now be silent.”
Tora’s jaw shut with an audible click, bound to obey Harald in all things.
We were trapped.
Behind me, Snorri gurgled out a curse, and Harald said, “It has been a pleasure to steal your fate, old friend. Give my well-wishes to my half sister when you arrive in Helheim, and my thanks for her restraint.”
Half sister? I remembered, then: Hel was Loki’s daughter.
That was why the roots hadn’t attacked him.
And I had no doubt that if I tried to curse him now, Hel would not answer my call.
Whirling away from the barrier, I raced to Snorri’s side and pressed his sword into his hand. “You’re an arse and I hate you for all that you have done,” I said. “But you are no coward. May Odin take you into Valhalla if for no other reason than to put you in your place.”
Snorri’s hand tightened on the hilt, his eyes fixed on me. “Protect…the…blood.”
“I will or will die trying,” I promised, then watched as the light faded from his eyes. Beneath me, the ground trembled, and anger burned in my heart. Pressing my hands to the ground, I whispered, “Hel, grant me your powers.”
Simmering strength filled me, and clenching my teeth, I said, “You will not take him.”
All too familiar anger smashed against me, my divine mother enraged at being denied something she wanted, but I warred against her. “No.”
The ground shuddered, Snorri’s body bouncing with the force of it, but I only dug my fingers into the wet earth. “No.”
The ground went still.
“Impressive,” Harald said. “But in the end, of little consequence. I control your fate, Freya. And soon I will control all of Skaland.”
Think, I ordered myself. Think of a way out of this.
Yet all thought vanished from my head as Bjorn let out a roar and attacked the barrier. Over and over, he smashed his axe against the barrier, the noise deafening, but each time, the wards threw him back.
Harald threw back his head and laughed, which only enraged Bjorn further. He flung himself at the wards, clawing at the magic, screaming in wordless rage. Harald only came closer, stopping when he was inches away from Bjorn. His eyes burned with delight as he watched Bjorn rage, the pleasure he took in the hurt he’d caused making my stomach turn. “Stop.”
In his frenzy, Bjorn didn’t hear me. I leaped to my feet. “Bjorn, enough! This is what he wants!”
But all he seemed to hear was Harald’s laughter. Desperate to stop him from hurting himself, I waited for the magic to throw him back, then wrapped my arms around his neck and heaved.
Bjorn fell backward on me, weight driving the air from my lungs, but I held on even as I managed to gasp out, “He…wants…this.”
He was shaking in my arms. “He killed her. He killed her.”
“I didn’t kill Saga, Bjorn,” Harald said. “You did. You set the fire that burned her alive.”
“Be silent,” I shouted at him. “Haven’t you done enough harm?”
“It’s never enough.” Harald’s grin was all teeth. “I never grow weary of watching others bring themselves low.”
“You were hurting her.” Tears ran down Bjorn’s face, his knuckles split and bloody from attacking the barrier. “Disguised as Snorri, but it was you hurting her. Threatening her. Why? Was it because she knew that you were a trickster?”
“She did not know.” Harald tilted his head, that awful smile still plastered over his face.
“Why, then? What did she ever do but be a friend to you?”
“Yes. A friend.” Finally, Harald’s smile fell away. “That is what she did—chose poorly by favoring Snorri over me. My goal was to break her bond with him, turn her against him so that she’d come to me of her own free will. Then you spoiled my plans to make her the cornerstone of my cabal by killing her.” Hate replaced the amusement. “I considered leaving you to die but it felt too easy an end for what you’d done. You needed to lose everything. Snorri needed to lose everything. And Tyr’s fire was no small addition to my cabal. So I brought you to Nordeland and oh, what a game grew from that decision. It has been a pleasure from beginning to end, and I think that the best is yet to come.”
There were no words. No words for the depths of Harald’s cruelty, so I only tightened my arms around Bjorn and tried to will my strength into him so that he could endure this horror.
“What do you want?” I demanded. “What is the point of all of this? Power?”
He smirked. “As though I can be reduced to one goal, you little fool. My goals are without limit, but the pleasure is in making all those around me dance to my drum and love me while they do it.”
“It was your Nameless who kidnapped me, wasn’t it?” All the countless ways he’d manipulated me were falling into place. “Not Snorri. You sacrificed your own thralls to convince me that the threat was real and imminent. But it wasn’t. Snorri wasn’t sailing to Nordeland bent on conquest—he truly believed he was coming to rescue us.”
Harald giggled, clearly enjoying watching horror build in me as I came to understand his schemes. Came to understand how cleverly he played his games.
“You’re a monster,” I breathed.
Harald’s expression hardened at my words, but he only snapped his fingers at Tora like a dog. “Come.”
Tora walked toward him, visibly fighting the compulsion every step of the way. But whatever magic Harald had used to bind her was too powerful for her to resist. “Yes, my king.”
He bent his head, whispering something in her ear. Tora nodded, then lightning exploded from her hands. It shot through the air, striking the ground beneath Snorri’s body and launching it through the air.
I gasped as dirt and rock rained down on me, but Bjorn’s eyes were on Snorri’s smoking corpse, which now rested outside the barrier.
“Kill them,” Harald said. “They have served their purpose and are now only a liability to us.”
“I’m sorry,” Tora whispered. But lightning was already crackling between her palms.
“Hlin.” I snatched up my shield. “Lend me your strength.”
Magic surged and covered my shield with silver light not a heartbeat before Tora’s lightning bolt struck. It rebounded off my magic, nearly striking Harald, who cursed and leaped sideways.
More lightning crackled between Tora’s hands, and I could see in her eyes the plan burning in her heart. But so did Harald. “Tora, stop!”
She grimaced, but the flickering light between her palms disappeared. Harald slapped her hard. “You test your limits again, and it will be the death of you,” he snarled. “Obey.”
“Yes, my king,” Tora answered between her teeth. “Do you wish me to try again?”
“No. We’ve played this game before.” Harald eyed us, gaze full of cunning as he weighed his options. I knew what he’d choose. Knew that it would be a slow, painful death forus.
“You want to kill us?” I shouted. “Then come in here and do it yourself, Harald. Or are you too much of a coward?”
He only chuckled. “Such tactics have little use against me, Freya. Especially with no witnesses.”
“The gods are watching,” I hissed. “They see your cowardice.”
“Or my cleverness.” He lifted one shoulder. “No one knows you are here. You are trapped within wards with no food or shelter. If the cold doesn’t take you, starvation surely will, and my half sister will welcome you both into Helheim, for this is not a death for one destined to enter Valhalla.” Crooking a finger, he said, “Tora, fetch the corpse and have my Nameless make ready to sail to rejoin our fleet. Skaland awaits its king.”
Tears ran down Tora’s face, but she obeyed and slung Snorri’s body over her shoulder. Then she and Harald walked away.
“Coward,” I screamed. “You’re a fucking coward, Harald!”
But the only answer I received was laughter carried over us on the frigid wind. And then…silence.