Chapter 30
SHAW
Last night, Vidarr left for the Vanheim and returned with a new idea. A Dísablót ritual calls a goddess to the Mortal Realm. If Rasha is alive, then the women will be able to call her home.
Convincing Jorvik to allow Joanna and Katrine to perform a Dísablót ritual isn’t the easiest task.
And Vidarr is risking his magic every day that goes by, staying with me in the Mortal Realm while we argue with Jorvik.
He wants to wait for Harald’s word to find the reindeer herd and would rather forget his sister ever existed.
Now that we’ve told him our plan to call her from the open channel he laughed like a fucking maniac, prompting Joanna to close the meeting room for several hours.
I don’t want to ask what Joanna promises him, or if it is our constant bluffing and willing her to be alive that finally wins him over, but he does have a soft spot for Joanna.
I remind him the clans will never let him keep his seat on the council if his sister is alive and well.
So to prove us wrong, at dusk, he marches his slithery ass through the snow and into the forest.
“These are her closest friends?” Vidarr asks. His power is waning, and he refuses to tell me what happened when he crossed back over. “I don’t know about the old woman.”
“She wouldn’t take no for an answer.” Between Katrine and Joanna stands a sturdy elder who cussed me out and told me her name was Edith.
She gave us no choice. Insisting she’d come to honor the offering given to the female goddess, she grumbled about how the feminine power of three, Maiden, Mother, and Crone, would make the ritual stronger.
“I won’t be able to stay.” Vidarr winces as he keeps himself upright.
“Can you feel her?” I ask, gripping his shoulders. Being without Rasha for four days is a torture worse than exile.
“I feel Vali, and he’s furious.”
“We have never done this before. Shaw! Are you coming?” Katrine’s voice carries on the wet wind blowing through the trees. With winter shedding the bitter cold to usher in Spring, the storms have been dumping tumultuous amounts of heavy, wet snow instead of crystal clear flakes.
“Harald will kill us if he finds out we are worshipping the goddesses,” Jorvik whines from his post under a tree with his scrawny arms crossed like he has a hundred other places to be.
“Well, don’t tell him.” Vidarr snorts.
“Alright, make a triangle in the snow. The vertex point needs to face where the Ivalo River flows into the sea to open the sacred space to femininity,” I explain. The women, including Edith, map out a large triangle in the forest clearing.
“When I was a girl, we had a Dísablót every year to call forth the goddesses, especially when we were worried about a woman ready to give birth or before a battle to give our Shield-maidens strength in the fight.” Edith takes over explaining the ritual while Vidarr and I gather snowdrop flowers and any holly berries that haven’t been eaten by passing creatures.
Aslaug’s amber eyes flash through the dark trees, and I beckon her closer.
“We are being hunted,” Jorvik whispers, but no one so much as flinches. Aslaug pounces out of the tree line and into the clearing, causing Jorvik to reach for his axe.
“Relax, she’s a friend,” Joanna calls. Aslaug sits with her paws holding down the wings of a raven so the frantic bird can’t fly away.
“Do you remember me?” Joanna’s voice is small as Aslaug peers up at her, blinking in recognition.
“Can I take your offering?” she asks. Aslaug retracts her long claws for Joanna to pick up the dying raven.
“Why a raven?” Katrine grimaces at the way Joanna quickly snaps its hollow-boned neck.
“Once upon a time, ravens were used to call the Valkyries. It is our best chance at using the three of you to call forth a goddess,” I explain.
Katrine’s concern shifts into a smile. “So we are Valkyries?”
“Perform the ritual and find out.” Try as I might to keep a straight face, I match her smile with a smirk.
The women are intelligent. They know there is more happening here than a simple prayer.
While they are busy, I take out the amulet and drip tiny amounts of our bonded blood on the wood.
Striking the iron, I watch as sparks skitter over three torches, and the bundles erupt into flames.
“Edith is the oldest,” Vidarr starts. The elder woman huffs a glare his way. “I don’t mean to insult, but your connection to this world is strong, so you should lead.” He walks back his instructions in a smoothing tone, and Edith picks up a torch on her way to the bottom of the triangle.
Joanna slices the black bird’s chest open and dips her finger into its warm blood. Painting a solid line down Katrine’s and Edith’s lips, she stops to look at Jorvik, and her body tenses like she wants to ask but already knows the answer.
Walking through Vidarr and I, Jorvik finally comes to her side and takes one finger to coat Joanna’s lips with a thin red line down to her chin.
“Thank you,” Joanna whispers and places the dead raven in the middle of the triangle. Joanna takes her place across from Katrine. Jorvik falls back by the trees while Aslaug stays on heightened alert by his side.
Edith clears her throat to say, “Once, we worshiped the goddesses. Once, we prayed for their might. Tonight, we reclaim that power in the name of Rasha.”
The women close their eyes. Vidarr uses the moment to open his hands and call his remaining power to light the triangle in beautiful flames. Joanna jumps when the raven’s body bursts into orange and yellow fire, but she holds her place and the torch high.
“I will see you at home.” Vidarr flashes a clever smile and steps into the flaming triangle.
The world shifts. His magic and the combined power that the women have unknowingly brought forth connects, yanking my heart through my ribcage.
I clutch the amulet in my palm and desperately search my soul for the fragments of Rasha’s connection to my realm.
It is easy to find. I don’t know why I doubted us. Every ounce of what I have to give is met with her unending love. There is sadness and hurt forming around the bonds, being quenched in the deepest well of our connection, but it never falters.
A thud hits the fiery, triangular channel, and all the flames are doused instantly. I feel her before I see her, but I can’t bring myself to enter the sacred feminine space. Smoke wafts over all of us, and Joanna’s elated voice breaks through the chaos.
“You’re alive!”
“I am. It’s good to see you,” Rasha chokes out. Aslaug runs to her, pummeling Rasha with big, furry paws. All three females are in a heap of dirt, snow, and ash with smiles on their faces.
“How did you know how to reach me?” She looks to Katrine who turns Rasha’s shoulders so she can see me. It’s a strange feeling of embarrassment to want to love someone beyond comparison when she is fully capable of caring for herself. I am humbled.
Rasha moves to her feet with that gorgeous glossy look in her eye and my chain wrapped around her arm.
“Where were you?” Jorvik doesn’t miss much, I’ll give him that.
“I had to die because of you,” Rasha snarls. Her ferocity makes me hard before I know what my body is doing.
“Do not blame me for your fucking foolishness. Where were you?” he asks her, then turns on me without waiting for her to answer. “And where did your brother go?”
My body heat rises in tune with hers.
“Vidarr was needed elsewhere,” I say, my eyes colliding with Rasha’s for the first time. Her beautiful lips fall open, but Joanna interjects, stomping over the threshold to cajole Jorvik.
“Obviously she didn’t die in the longboat because she is standing here, good as new. Let’s have a feast to welcome our huntress back home.” Joanna’s flat tone leaves no room for argument.
“Where is Harald?” Rasha asks her brother, stepping over the threshold to square herself to him with Katrine right behind her.
“Not here. Not yet anyway. Bjorn is staying with us to protect Harald’s interests.”
Hanging back, I walk around the triangle, picking up torches. Aslaug rubs her square head up and down Edith’s little body as the sturdy woman wipes tears from her eyes.
“You are not what you seem,” she says to me. I take off my coat, giving her an extra layer against the cold night.
“That may be true. I have to ask. Who is Rasha to you?”
“One of the many orphans I have cared for over the years. When her parents were killed, Jorvik dragged her here. She was an unruly child, so when he pledged their lives to the council, Rasha was thrown into the kitchens to work for her meals,” she explains.
I am listening, but I can’t take my eyes off my maiden huntress, glowing from her time in the Vanheim.
My chain is pulling us together, but I stay away while she is speaking with her brother.
The glare she is giving Jorvik holds decades of pain that I want to wipe from her memory, but it is what gives her a multifaceted heart. A heart I certainly don’t deserve.
“Thank you for putting your neck on the line with Jorvik,” I tell Edith. We start to walk back to the village, and I watch Rasha fully embrace her friends.
“I have participated in many rituals, but I have never felt a man leave the Mortal Realm until tonight. We are in the presence of the gods are we not?” Edith quietly asks, her wrinkled face roaming over mine. “The better question is who is Rasha to you?”
Patting Edith’s hand, I let my guard down. “She is a goddess in my eyes.”
Edith pokes me with a boney finger, and I look to see the old woman grinning from ear to ear. Shuffling away from me to join the women, I watch as they loop their arms around her. Rasha looks over her shoulder to see that I am still behind them.
Jorvik is leading the way, hopefully to catch Bjorn before he has a chance to find a horse and get word back to Harald’s traveling party. When we come to the edges of the huts and longhouses, Rasha hugs her friends and turns to me.
“Are you alright?” I ask. Against everything raging inside me, I stay planted across from her.
“I saw Skadi die. I met your brother Vali, and I learned how to open my own channel.” She speaks in an unrelenting tone, and I fight back the urge to kiss her. She went to the Vanheim and came back unscathed, which reaffirms everything I know in my soul.
“Vali is hurting,” I reply.
“I am hurt too. I am hurt that you didn’t tell me what happened the moment I came back from the shrine with her bow.”
Needing to touch her, I move closer. The air fractures with sparks from the chain, our bodies desperate to touch.
“I couldn’t. I am in exile because I tried to give Skadi everything she wanted. But what she wanted was mortality, and gods cannot change their fate!” I yell, giving my emotion an outlet. Rasha crosses the snowy ground with a swirling torrent of utter arousal and anger.
“From where I am standing, you don’t want to fulfill your fate either! You’ve been here pretending you are a blacksmith instead of being a leader.” Her fists are clenched, squeezing the chain, and my lungs collapse in my chest.
“You say that like you know what it is to deny yourself for hundreds of years,’ I shoot back, and her eyes widen. Why didn’t I remember that arguing with a woman is like trying to breathe while drowning?
“Vali showed me the moment Skadi was struck down. I held her as she died while you ran away. Is that all you’re capable of?
You took me away from my clan. We hid in your cabin for weeks, to what end?
To keep me from leading my people because you cannot lead your own.
” Rasha’s voice drops so low the ground shakes at her mercy.
“I wanted to protect you.” My response is weak.
“You don’t even want to sleep with me because you’re afraid.”
“Stop.” I bring myself to touch her, taking her face in my hands.
“I am afraid that you won’t stay because I won’t be enough for you.
” To say my heart is breaking is an understatement.
Rasha’s crystal blue eyes have pierced through me since the first day I met her and have forced me out of hiding.
Tonight she deserves the truth. “Denying the bond is how Skadi and I found trouble in the first place. I have lived with her death on my hands for so long I don’t know how to let you in.
” My admission crushes Rasha’s blazing temper.
“We need to make the last link in the chain before the next full moon, or Vali is going to take your place forever,” she says.
Infusing hidden gems of love and acceptance over every torn and fractured particle floating without direction in our frayed bond, I cradle the back of her head, threading my fingers through her crimson hair.
“Making the last link will bond us for all of eternity. Do you want that?” I whisper. My resolve falters, and I brush a delicate kiss over her cold lips to invite her in.
“I made a promise.” She is slowly unraveling.
“Eternity is forever. Will you be happy arguing with me forever?” Our bodies are sealed together against the cold, and I drag her leg up my thigh to hold her as close.
“As long as you promise to hear me out, but, Shaw?” she says my name, and I am ready to fall to my knees here in the dark, unnamed forest.
“Ask me anything you want.” I don’t care about the rules. She is right, I am the King of the Vanheim, and it is time to go home.
“I need you.” She grips my tunic. Running my nose down her face, I nip her lip, and she finally lets out the moan I have waited to hear.
“You don’t need me. Ask me a better question.” I know the same feeling building inside me is also driving her to madness. She leans up, and I pull her hair gently aside to expose her neck to my lips. Kissing down her throat, I want to lay on snow covered ground and please her until Spring blooms.
“Who am I?” she whispers a new question with a hot and needy breath in my ear.
I give her the truth.
“You’re mine. You will be a Queen.”
We cannot stop the chain from constantly bringing our souls together, even though the last link isn’t made.
Rasha stands before me a maiden, which I am about to change.
She is the other half of me for all eternity.
We can die together or fight through our shortcomings, but we will always find one another.
Life exists in balance, and it starts with the gods.