Chapter 17
Revna
Panic overwhelmed every other sense. It flushed out the cold, even. Because I couldn’t breathe.
My eyes stung with water, nothing but blurry shapes visible. Thinking was impossible—my limbs flailed of their own accord, desperate to reach air.
I’m going to die. The thought rang as clear and true as when I’d lain on my back, Bjorn carving up my face with his knives. I’m going to die.
A strong hand wrapped around my arm and pulled.
I coughed and retched, water pouring from my mouth as the lake surrounding me disappeared. Every limb shook with exhaustion and shock and cold. But there was solid ground beneath me.
After a few minutes, my desperate inhales slowed to shaky breaths.
I became aware of fabric draped over my shoulders, pressure beneath my knees and my back.
When I blinked, the sun through the pines threatened to blind me.
The world around me bobbed, sending nausea spiraling all over again, and I closed my eyes once more.
My left side rested against something solid and breathing. Gods, I was so cold. My teeth chattered and I leaned into the warmth. My muddied thoughts swept every which way. The Tapestry, the prophecy, Tam, Aloisa and Callum…it all swam around me in hazy waves.
“Hey, stay with me, Revna. Can you hear me? Don’t go to sleep, Princess. The forge is right here, let’s get you warmed up.”
I recognized S?ren’s voice, but it made something itch at the back of my mind. There was something I needed to tell him. Something I needed to remember.
The light burning through my eyelids, a harsh red, softened to full darkness. And the blissful numbness that had overtaken my body was beginning to be replaced by sharp, stabbing pain. A whimper escaped me.
“Can you open your eyes?” S?ren asked. Awareness trickled back in slowly. I managed to force my eyes open, though everything around me remained blurry and dim. “Perfect.”
He set me down, right next to the fire. The light stung my eyes but the heat burned. My teeth clacked together and my muscles tightened so hard it hurt. S?ren swore. “You’re not going to like this, but I need to get you out of these clothes.”
“N-n-n-no,” I managed.
His expression went from worried to dangerous in an instant.
“I promised I wouldn’t touch you unless you asked me to.
Unless it was necessary. I’ve wronged you enough already, and I refuse to sit here and watch you get hypothermia while you shiver in a puddle of lake water.
So choose, Princess—are you stripping down yourself or am I doing it for you? ”
I wanted to cry, and I hated it. My options were both terrible, but I could barely move my limbs. Getting out of these clothes myself wasn’t a possibility. I gritted my teeth through my shudders. He’s seen it all before anyway.
“Fi-i-i-ne.”
Gods, but I hated how gentle his hands were as he put an arm behind my back to lift me into a sitting position.
The cloak he’d wrapped around me fell from my shoulders.
I felt nothing when he slipped his fingers beneath the hem of my shirt and lifted it over my head.
The soaked fabric peeled off my skin, leaving goose bumps behind in its wake.
Once he disentangled it from my arms, he moved to the waistband of my pants, hoisting me up and supporting my entire weight with one arm while he pulled the thick pants from my legs.
My underwear and breastband came next, and I shivered naked by the fire, begrudgingly trembling less than I was before.
S?ren kept his eyes averted as he hung the clothing up to dry. I watched him reach for the fresh cloak he’d set out earlier, along with a thick wool hat and matching socks and mittens. They were huge and somewhat lumpy. Handmade, perhaps. Did S?ren knit?
He draped the cloak over my shoulders, and I relaxed almost instantly.
The inside was lined with thick fur, and I relished the sensation.
He tugged on each of my ankles until I could extend my leg and allow him to put the socks on.
The mittens were next. “D-don’t put the hat on,” I said, curling in on myself to try to contain the limited body heat I’d regained. “My hair is wet.”
S?ren eyed the tight bun I’d wound earlier. “Let me take it down. Then it can start to dry.”
I tensed but offered no argument when he knelt behind me and pulled out the leather tie softly before unwinding my hair to cascade down my back. The locks were cold against the backs of my ears and I made an involuntary sound—something like a moan of sadness at the chill.
“How’s that?” he asked.
“Better.” It was the truth, too. Every part of me hurt, worse than when he’d carried me back after I’d spent hours wandering the prison halls once. But the pins and needles were a good sign, I knew. It was enough.
He stood and set some meat to cook over the giant fire. “Did you meet it?”
“The god in the lake?” The acknowledgment of what had happened weighed heavy on my tongue, and if I wasn’t speaking to someone who believed in its existence, I would have convinced myself I imagined the entire thing. “Yes. It calls itself the Tapestry.”
S?ren looked at me over the flickering flames. “And? What did you learn?”
I sighed and pulled the cloak tighter around myself. “I heard the prophecy. Do you have paper and something to write with? I think I still have it all memorized, but I’m not sure it’ll stick around if I fall asleep.”
Ever the scholar, he procured a notebook and writing instrument from his bag. He dutifully copied down every word I spoke. When I finished reciting the prophecy, he was silent.
“Any idea what it means?” I asked.
He shook his head. “No. It’s so vague.”
S?ren’s lips moved soundlessly as he read over the words again. I forced my gaze away. Studying the shape of his mouth was a quick way to more unwelcome thoughts—ones I couldn’t afford.
Frode made his own choice, my thoughts whispered. Maybe you can make yours.
No. I didn’t care what decisions Frode had made in the heat of the moment.
He didn’t have to die, and forgiveness was too much to ask of me.
I dug my fingernails into the edge of the cloak wrapped around me, hoping the sensation would ground me.
Instead, it lent my thoughts to the familiar smell infused there. Pine, snow, and smoke.
S?ren’s next words interrupted my thoughts. “ ‘A guardian divided,’ ” he read aloud. “If you’re ‘born of brothers’ blood,’ then it makes sense for me to be…”
He hesitated, and I frowned. “ ‘Harbinger of forebearers’ doom’?”
He glanced up at me. “It’s a long story.”
S?ren’s tone was a firm boundary not to ask about it again. Chilled as I was, I didn’t think to snark at him the way I usually would have. Instead, I thought of my own horror stories, kept from my closest friends, and nodded. Whatever it was, he would tell me if I needed to know.
He cleared his throat and changed the subject. “But that begs the question of what—or who—this guardian is.”
“Was,” I corrected. “It said they met their end by their own hand, right?”
“Hmm.” His brow furrowed as he studied the paper. “You’re right, it does seem to imply that the Weaver and the guardian are the same person. A woman.”
“Aloisa, maybe?” I ventured. When he offered me a puzzled look, I explained the dreams I’d been having, including the full vision the Tapestry had shown me of Aloisa’s past. “It said she was a real person. That what it was showing me was a memory. When she received her Lurae, she could see threads, the same way you and I can. Maybe she was this…Weaver.”
“It’s entirely possible. I wish we had more than just these vague things to go off of.” S?ren ran a hand through his hair, looking at the flickering flames. “ ‘Old gods will rise to meet the new’ is soundly unhelpful, especially when we only know of a single actual god.”
I chuckled a bit at that. “I know. Even if the queen had the prophecy, it seems like a stretch that she would know what it meant. Or that it could have provided any real information about my Lurae.”
“Her cunning might surprise you,” S?ren said. “She’s more conniving than she seems. And don’t you find it odd that she’s the one who named me the Hellbringer, and that same title is given in the prophecy?”
I hadn’t even considered it, but S?ren’s mouth twisted in a self-deprecating smile, and I knew he was right. The queen had absolutely heard the prophecy already. Before she even met S?ren, it seemed.
Valen had been the first to call me Bloodsinger. I wished we had asked the Seeing One to stay in Bhorglid longer instead of rejoining their caravan. Maybe they had answers we so desperately needed.
“The god—this Tapestry being—it said we would be able to speak to it without diving into the lake again,” I said. “That we would need to use our Lurae together to summon it.”
“Did it say how exactly we do that?”
I shook my head and huffed a laugh. “Of course not. Could it be a god if it wasn’t making things overly complicated?”
S?ren chuckled. “Do you think it is a god, then?”
“I’m not sure.” A wave of exhaustion overtook me.
Logically, I knew the sun hadn’t even set yet, but my eyelids began to flutter, weighted down more with every blink.
“It’s an incredibly powerful being. It can access memories from the past, all of which seem to be correct.
But what makes a god, really?” I lay down, curling up on my side.
The hard stone floor didn’t matter. Not when I just wanted to rest.
Still, through a yawn, I managed, “So what do we do now?”
S?ren’s reply was the last thing I heard before I lost consciousness. “I suppose we go back to the castle and keep searching for answers.”