Chapter 34 #2
“What the fuck are you doing?” I grind out, rolling my body over hers. Her small fists collide with my collarbones and cheek. My power is recalled into my palms, and I shake, trying to hold her down without opening the channel or setting her on fire.
“I’m saving our people!” she yells, using everything in her wheelhouse to throw her leg around my waist to knock me off.
“Jorvik and I will be in charge of the clan. I am taking your place. Harald is going to reward us,” she shrieks.
I get a better grip and pick her shoulders up enough to bash her head on the ground.
“Little Rasha, he’s dying,” Bjorn mocks, walking down the side of the ridge. Jumping off the last ledge, he’s standing next to Shaw, who is clutching his chest, staunching the blood flow with his hands. I swallow back my vomit.
“Get her off me,” Joanna yells for her partners, but they don’t come to her aid. Jorvik obviously used her feelings to twist her against me, but I don’t have time to reason with anyone. Shaw’s bond is pulsing down my spine.
Pushing off of Joanna, I take the axe from my belt and hit her clean across the face with the blunt wooden handle.
Something breaks between us at that moment.
She hits the ground, unconscious, not able to watch what I plan to do next.
I pray to Vidarr to help me and to Vali for forgiveness on Shaw’s behalf.
I sense in my blood that they are here on the edge of the Vanheim, waiting for us.
Jorvik slides down the path, wet, heavy snow slipping beside him, and rocks begin to fall from the disturbed mountainside.
At the end of the gorge, there is a cliff overlooking the pass where the reindeer should be.
Keeping my axe at the ready, I need to make it to Shaw and the link before he truly dies.
“Come here, Harald will have you still.” Jorvik reaches for me, and I drop the axe. I have more powerful weapons to help me get closer to Shaw. “That’s it. This is over. He’s dying.”
I calm my breathing, settling the air in my lungs so I don’t explode, and wait for Jorvik.
He kicks my axe over the cliff, and I watch it tumble down the mountain.
In the valley below are hundreds of oval shapes.
Some are moving, and others are still, but there is no mistaking the amount of reindeer right below us.
His hand slaps my cheek, breaking my concentration. The second hit to my face today draws blood. My teeth rip through my lip, and I land in the cold snow at my husband’s knees. Reaching for Shaw, I push my hands over his wounds with tears blurring my vision and look for the link in his coat.
Bjorn twists my hair, yanking me away as I scream, but Shaw moves to his feet.
“Thank you for finding the bow and the map. You won’t be punished too harshly.” Bjorn’s words sink like a stone in my stomach. “He can watch us punish you as he dies.”
Shaw moves with the reserve strength I didn’t know he had.
His fist collides with Bjorn’s face, and I use the opportunity to search the snow where Shaw was kneeling.
Blood coats my hands along with melting snow.
Following that humming power, I finally feel the fucking link between my fingers.
Shaw is wrestling with Bjorn, throwing punch after punch while Jorvik doesn’t seem to know what to do.
Connect the link, Rasha.
Vidarr’s voice is in my mind, and I look up to see a huge black eagle circling overhead.
“How?” I shout at the sky. Aslaug comes from the top of the ridge, and my worst nightmare unfolds. Claws out and jaw wide, she leaps at Bjorn, but he’s learned from previous encounters.
“No, Aslaug!” I yell while Jorvik wraps his body around mine, suffocating me.
“It’s for the best,” he grunts in my ear as I push and hit him.
Shaw screams when Bjorn twists his axe and slices through Aslaug’s pretty white belly. Swinging the axe again, Bjorn hits the cat clean across the neck, splattering blood on himself and Shaw. Shaw is spent, lying in the snow, trying to breath with broken ribs and exposed muscles.
“Fuck you.” I slam my knee up into Jorvik’s groin, and because he’s a complete pussy, he releases me.
The bond is threatening to break between Shaw and I, my bones shaking as I try to hold it together.
I remember what it felt like to bond the first link between us.
What Vidarr’s magic felt like flowing through my hands.
That’s it. Bring the mountain down, my lady.
Vidarr’s words of encouragement are enough to spur me to run. Jorvik reaches for the quiver on my back, but he doesn’t reach me because I leap off the cliff.
I don’t look down. I don’t let my fear take hold.
I have no business scaling the side of the mountain, but I’ll die if I don’t try.
One foot over another, I am running far too fast to keep balanced as my feet trip over icy rocks.
Hitting wet, prickly evergreen branches, I grab hold of anything to stop my descent and try to catch my breath.
Bjorn and Jorvik send another slew of arrows through the brush in my direction, but it doesn’t matter anymore.
“There is nowhere to run.” Jorvik’s words reverberate off the rocks. Pulling the bracelet off my wrist, I open the hidden compartment and find the unfinished end.
He promised this was enough to bind us forever.
Tears slide down my cheeks as I hold our new link against the two open sides.
I need to make a triangle. After a minute, I don’t see any arrows coming down the mountain, so I run again.
As soon as I make it past a line of trees, Jorvik’s accuracy lessons from our mother kick in, and his arrow buries itself in my thigh.
The pain is beyond anything I’ve ever felt. My screams are swallowed by the absolute shock that my brother shot me with an arrow.
“Come on, Rasha. I don’t want to kill my own sister,” he sneers.
Looking up at him, I can see he’s half way through the path my body carved out as I tumbled down the steep tree-dotted incline.
Over the gorge we all came from, there are massive sections of melting snow.
Snow that could break at any moment and blanket this side of the mountain in another layer of frost.
I struggle to stand, blood streaming over my knee and into my boot. My muscles rip against the iron arrow embedded in my thigh as I bite down on my lip to not scream. Taking out Skadi’s bow, I plant my feet in the ground and aim high.
If I can cover the gorge with snow, no one will get through for months until Spring, and by then, the reindeer will have moved on. Katrine will make sure of it.
“Vidarr, if your fucking listening, I need Katrine to know what happened,” I call to the skies. I don’t see his feathers or his yellow beak anymore, but I am out of time. Jorvik has his shot lined up already, and Bjorn is not far behind, carrying a dazed Joanna.
Shaw’s heartbeat is a dull thump in my own chest. Pulling the silver string back, I close my eyes. I can’t watch myself kill my own kin.
“I never wanted it to come to this,” I whisper, knowing Jorvik will never listen.
The arrow comes easily, dusting my cheek with the familiar silver bristles.
I open the channel with my hand pressed into the forefront of the slender bow and leave all that I am here on this mountain.
I was always destined to wield this bow.
Releasing the solid arrow, I watch as it flies fast and true into the weakest part of the snow-capped mountain top.
“You missed!” Jorvik hollers. Dropping to the ground to avoid him, I put the bow between my legs, letting the sheer pain explode through my body. After laying out the chain, I hold the last link over the two edges and press my palms together.
I promised to be yours. To bring you home. You promised you’d find me in all our lifetimes. Find me now.
Pink and purple dust swirls as I open my palms over the chain. Above me, the snow rumbles, making the most feared noise in the mountains.
“What have you done!” Jorvik yells as he realizes that he cannot outrun an avalanche.
I repeat my prayer, knowing I don’t need fire to ignite the triangle.
My connection to the Vanheim gives me all the power I need.
Flames shoot out around me, protecting me from the arrows that Bjorn is volleying my way.
Holding the chain and the link together in my own power, I persevere the bond we worked so hard to make. As I close my eyes, I feel the plume of wet air coming down the mountain as rocks and trees begin to roll toward me.
I am not of this realm, I don’t belong here, and I am going home with my King.
Connecting the link pulls in all the available air around me for a moment before sending it sprawling out in every direction. Trees are felled, and birds are sent flying high over the avalanche racing down the mountainside. Aslaug and Shaw’s bodies are covered in a tomb of ice and snow.
Massive waves of white snow hit me, and there is nothing I can do besides hold on to the finished chain. The first heavy bout of snow sends me rolling down the mountain, and my pain is suddenly nonexistent. I feel the arrow snap out of my thigh and blood pour from my wounds.
When the snow picks up speed, my body is released, only to be pounded down again by another heavy wave. Rocks are tumbling in the unrelenting waves of cold, airless snow, and my body is tossed around, compressing and fracturing in all the wrong ways.
Fighting to keep myself alive, I feel the chain slip from my broken hands, and the world I know is, all at once, gone.