by Bec McMaster
He bit his tongue on the reminder that she was only half-Valkyrie. It was clear which side she rejected and which side she yearned for.
But could he blame her?
Her mortal father had cast her out when she was barely old enough to survive. Only with her mother had she found… something.
“It sounds like you take the scraps of acceptance they grant you and deem it love,” he muttered. “But that’s not love, Bryn. If Haakon and I were in the same situation and he was cast out for a crime he didn’t commit, then I would tear Valhalla apart to get him back. It wouldn’t matter how much it cost me. True love has no cost. It has no price it won’t pay.”
Bryn pushed to her feet and paced past him. “You don’t understand. They fight to protect the world from Ragnarök. It is a god’s calling, a sacred duty—”
“And that’s what you want?”
“Yes, it’s what I want.” There was a fierce glow of hope in her eyes. “Solveig gave me the signed letter from Róta, confessing to my mother’s murder. Once this job is done, then I can clear my name. I can rejoin my sisters. I can leave this plane.”
Every inch of his heart felt like lead in his chest.
But to argue with her, to try and demand that she stay with him—that she choose him above her immortal sisters—would only shatter the pair of them.
She wasn’t human, not truly.
And he could see the way her hope breathed new life into her veins. She’d been cold and ruthless when they first met, like a wolf cub savaged by the hardest of winters. She’d been lost and lonely, her heart battle-scarred and heavy.
But this was spring settling over her heart.
He could see it in her eyes. See it in her sad smile. See it in the breathless way she trembled as she told her story. Maybe it was a poor facsimile of love that she strove for, but it was all she had.
And if he didn’t let her go, then that glow would fade.
Her smile would vanish, perhaps forever.
And she would always carry this wound deep inside her.
“Then I will help you.” Those simple words were the hardest he’d ever had to say. “Once we have found our missing princess, then I will see you to Valhalla. I will help you find your redemption.”
Bryn’s gaze focused upon him as if she’d woken from a dream. “You don’t have to do that. I’m the one repaying my debt here. Not you.”
“You owe me nothing. And I will help you”—because I love you—“because you are my friend, my lover.”
“And what of us?”
“There is no us.”
She’d made that clear, and until she had confronted her past, there could never be a future for them.
Bryn fell into silence, as if he’d somehow stolen the words from her tongue. “To finding a missing princess,” she finally whispered, “and then Valhalla.”
Twenty-Three
The following afternoon, Bryn knelt, pressing her fingers into an indentation in the snow. She glanced up at the sky and the soft flakes drifting from heavy clouds. It had been snowing steadily all morning, which meant the Keepers weren’t far ahead.
“They’re barely an hour ahead of us, I think. And moving fast.” She roved forward, finding the bare footprints of the dreki princess. The horse at her side snorted, its breath blowing hot in the chill air. “Hers are shallower. Despite her bare feet, she’s somehow managing to stay just ahead of them.”
Every now and then the princess’s trail disappeared, but the Keepers pressed on—perhaps guided by some invisible force—and invariably, after a mile or two, she would find trace of Ishtar.
“Why would the Keepers stay in mortal form?” Tormund asked, trudging through the snow behind her.
“Foreign territory perhaps. Or perhaps they cannot sense her when they’re in the skies. Perhaps they’re reduced to tracking her the way we’re doing.”
“Perhaps.”
It was the most words they’d shared all morning.
Bryn tipped her flask to her lips, watching him stand outlined against the sky. A fight brewed within her, but he’d already won it. She’d expected him to make some sort of demand upon her last night—to insist that what they shared was worth fighting for—but he’d merely squeezed her fingers and promised he’d help her find her way home.
What did you expect?
That he would beg?
Bryn squeezed the pendant around her throat. Perhaps a little part of her had wanted him to beg her to stay—to make her choice for her. It was easier this way. Cleaner. Neither of them would part with their hearts broken.
But an angry, jagged little piece of her felt cheated.
He’d given her everything she’d ever wanted, but the taste of it was as bitter as poison.
Sýr floated out of the gloom, her ghostly wings brushing against Bryn’s cheek as she soared to the next tree, and then looked back at them as if questioning whether Bryn would follow.
She’d spent her entire lifetime following that call, her life bound to Freyja’s.
But for the first time, her feet felt as heavy as her heart.
Sýr cocked her head, then preened under her wing.
“We’d best move out,” Tormund called, slinging his pack over his shoulders. “The snow’s getting heavier, and we’re going to have to seek shelter for the night soon.”
Bryn let go of the pendant and screwed the lid on her flask.
One last night together.
She’d recognized how close they were to finding their prey. The Keepers moved slowly, as if having trouble tracking the dreki princess. For all that she and Tormund were mortal—or near enough—they seemed to be gaining ground.
Tomorrow they would have them, and then what?
She would have to make a choice.
“Did you have anything in mind?” Bryn muttered.
“That,” he called, pointing toward a rocky overhang, and the shepherd’s hut that perched upon it.
“I’ll get the fire going.”
Bryn rubbed her upper arms, nodding briefly as Tormund moved toward the cold stone fireplace. It was barely a hut—wind howled through a crevice near the door—but the stone walls were thick and would keep the worst of the snow at bay, and the shelter outside would protect the horses.
“As much as I appreciate your intentions, I think it’s going to take more than a fire to keep warm tonight.” The storm had blown in as they climbed the bluff, until her cloak threatened to strangle her.
“If you’re asking whether I intend to share my bedroll,” he called over his shoulder, “then you have the subtlety of Thor’s hammer.”
“Mjölnir?” She tossed her own bedroll in the corner and unknotted the ropes that bound it. “Perhaps I was merely commenting on the cold. Perhaps you’re the one who lacks subtlety.” Bryn screwed up her nose. “This hut stinks of wet sheep.”
“Not the worst place I’ve stayed in. Haakon has a talent for finding the smallest, shittiest hellhole in every town we ever visited and insisting we stay there.” He struck his flint, and a tiny flame caught.
“Why follow him all these years?” she asked, shaking out her bedroll. “Haakon said you’d traipsed at his heels to the end of the earth and back. He said he told you to leave him a thousand times or more and you wouldn’t. Why?”
Tormund blew on the coals, earning a hot spark that flickered and then caught in the kindling. He sat back on his heels and fed more dry bracken into the meager flame. “Because he needed me.”
“So you gave up your entire life to protect his?” She’d seen his family, and the life he’d left behind him. For an orphaned child, it must have seemed a heaven of sorts.
Tormund rested his palms on his thighs and looked up at her. “He is my cousin.”
More of this nonsense about love.
Bryn’s knuckles tightened as she tugged sharply on his bedroll and laid it next to her own.
“You had a life,” she said. “And he was so consumed with his own loss that he barely spared
your sacrifice a thought. That’s what he said. You could have died many times over. You could have married. Had your own children. Why?”
“Are you trying to understand why I followed him? Or are you trying to understand what sort of man I am?”
“Both.”
Or maybe she was trying to define what love truly meant.
His words of the other day lingered in her heart like a festering wound. What was love? She’d thought she’d known once, as she shared in a celebratory hug with her sisters. They’d laughed and drunk themselves stupid after surviving the trials. For the first time in her life, she hadn’t been alone.
Sisters forever, they’d promised each other.
But where was Ragnhild now? Where was Lina?
When her exile was pronounced, she’d met their eyes and given them a grim nod—a sign that she would make this sacrifice so that she wouldn’t drag them further into this mess.
But had they ever fought for her? Would either of them have made such a sacrifice if they’d stood in her place?
Or did they grieve her and then forget her? Did they ever even spare her a thought?
Bryn stared down at the bedrolls, her eyes hot. The closer she came to her goal, the harder it was to keep putting one foot in front of the other. Especially when this man turned everything on its head.
“Bryn?”
She shook the thoughts off like water from her cloak. Doubt was a death blow in her world. “You never answered my question. Why give everything for him when he was so consumed by his grief that he gave nothing back?”
Tormund squatted on his heels, watching her with those implacable eyes. “He saved my life once. Did I tell you that?”
Bryn shook her head.
Tormund sighed and fingered his side, where she’d once traced her fingers over the enormous scar that ran across his ribs. “If you ever repeat this, I will deny it to my dying day, but when we were younger, Haakon was the type of young man that drew all eyes. Even mine. He was a gift of the gods to our village. Tall, handsome, and blond. He won every race. He could outfight any other young man. And the girls…. The girls loved him for it, though he never looked twice at them. And then he met Árdís.
“I don’t think he even knew what it was that we saw in him. We all wanted to be him. We all wanted to be his friend. And I more than most.”
“Because of your father?” she whispered.
His lips thinned as if he’d bitten into something sour. “There were boys in the village who liked to call me names to make themselves feel bigger. Bastard. Giant’s spawn. I shrugged them all off, but there was one name they called my mother, and I couldn’t let that go unchallenged.
“I was bigger than most of them. Had a temper on me too, unsurprisingly. I spent most of my days picking fights until Haakon dragged me out of a pack of rowdy boys and told me I was shaming myself. He said, ‘Real men don’t pick fights with those who are smaller than they are.’ I took that about as well as you could imagine, and tried to shove him in the river. Well, it turns out he’s a right mean little prick when he wants to be, and he knew a few more tricks than I did.” Tormund shook his head. “Damn near broke my fingers, forcing me to yield.”
Bryn sank down onto her knees on the bedroll.
“And then he gathered those boys off to the side and had a quiet word with them. He told them I was his cousin, and that if they spoke even a single word against me or my mother, then they’d be having words with him.” Tormund breathed out a laugh. “You had to know him back then—you had to see him. He was two years older, built like Thor’s younger brother, and could wither your privates with a single stare. Every boy in my village worshipped him, and he chose me—the village bastard—as a cousin.”
“You’re not related?”
“Not by blood, no.”
“You said he saved your life.”
“He did. Each and every day afterwards.” Tormund flashed a grin and then lifted the hem of his shirt. “Did you think these were earned from some dashing adventure? I used to tell the ladies a vicious wolf attacked me when I was a child, but the truth is, I tripped and fell against a scythe when I was sixteen. Damn near gutted myself.”
Bryn shook her head and threw her bag at him. “You would.”
He caught it with a laugh, but as he lowered it, the laughter died. “He did save me, Bryn. He saved a sad and lonely boy from thinking about just jumping in that river and letting it wash him away.” His eyes grew distant. “He told his mother about me. And the next thing I knew, I was moving into their homestead and living in a set of rooms over the stables. Haakon put a sword in my hands and told me that if I was going to get into fights, then I’d best damned well learn how to defend myself, because I couldn’t throw a punch for shit. And so he taught me. I can never repay him for that.”
She felt that pain echo through her.
All along she’d thought that he had never known true loneliness.
But it was clear he still worshipped his “cousin”. And now she knew why. Because when you grew up with so little to call your own, you cleaved to those who gave you the barest scrap of love.
“I swore then that I would somehow repay the favor. I promised myself that if Haakon ever needed me, then I would be there. And so I have been. I am his shield when he needs someone to watch his back. I am his axe when his arm is faltering. I am the one who guards his sleep when he is too deep in his cups to guard it himself. And I was the one who never let him lose hope when he realized Árdís had abandoned him.”
It was more than she could have ever hoped for from her sisters.
This. This was love.
And not the love that she’d heard in all the stanzas, but the kind of love that burned like dragon fire. It was sacrifice, not passion. It was putting another before your own needs.
“Everyone is a little lost at some stage of their lives. And sometimes all you need is a helping hand to guide you through those stormy nights. Haakon thinks he failed me? He never failed me. He found me. He helped me find myself. And so, when his wife vanished without a trace and his heart broke, I decided he needed me to bear his burden for a while.” Tormund gave her the sweetest smile she’d ever seen on a man. “And so I did. My shoulders are broad enough to carry any weight.”
It turned everything she had ever known about this man on its head.
No wonder he was so loyal.
“And then, of course, without him, I had nothing else to stay for.”
“No pretty girls?”
He flashed her a smile. “Many. But none who stirred more than my fancy.”
She wanted to ask, Why me?
But her tongue wouldn’t let her.
And yet, as always, he saw right through her. “Do you know what first caught my eye about you?”
Bryn’s lips thinned. “I’m fairly certain I know exactly what caught your eye.” After all, men had been drawn to her figure for centuries.
He shook his head. “Oh, you’re pretty. The kind of pretty that punches a man in the throat and sets his balls on fire. But no. That’s not what made me realize there was more to you than first assumed.”
“When I slew the draugr?”
“Aye, you near on ripped my heart out of my chest with such a move,” he admitted. “But no, not that either.”
She honestly couldn’t think of a single thing.
“We were leaving the inn in Grøa that first morning,” he said. “And there was a girl begging in the village square, and you reached into your pouch and dumped a handful of coins into her cup. I caught a glimpse of her face, Bryn, and I saw those coins. They were solid gold, and here you were, telling the world how much coin meant to you. You’ve spent weeks telling me how heartless you are. How mercenary. You’ve told me a thousand times not to trust you. That you know no mercy. But I never forgot that moment.”
Nor had she.
A girl shivering in the cold. It reminded her so much of her past that she’d barely bothered to count. She could always
earn more coin, but for that girl, the gift was one of life.
“It caught my eye, because that’s what I want in a wife,” he continued. “I want someone who will guard the weak. I want someone who doesn’t even hesitate when it comes to gifting others. I want someone who’s going to stand between me and an enraged dreki queen who can breathe fire, and give no quarter.”
“Tormund—”
“And maybe it won’t be you. But one day,” he told her, his voice roughening, “I will have my own wife. My own family. And I will be her axe. And her shield. And the one who guards her while she sleeps. My children will never suffer a single nightmare, for they will know their father watches over them. And should an enemy seek to harm my family, I will make them wish they had known the mercy of Fenrir.”
“She will be a lucky woman,” she said softly.
He knelt on the bedroll before her. The way he cupped her face in his hands and stared into her eyes left her breathless.
Don’t. Please don’t say it.
It would ruin everything between them.
And perhaps he saw it in her eyes, for his own half shuttered, and then he was leaning down to brush the softest of kisses to her lips. “Yes,” he mused, his thumbs caressing her cheeks. “She will be a lucky woman.”
The dream tore Bryn awake, her heart pounding in her ears.
She suffered a moment of disorientation—the clang of steel still ringing in her ears, and the flash of Tormund’s startled face turning toward an invisible opponent—before the dark of night finally soothed her.
The fire had burned low, the last lick of flame gilding the sculpted line of Tormund’s brow. And he snored under his breath, as if no nightmares plagued him.
Bryn sat up, swallowing hard as the blankets pooled in her lap. Tormund snorted under his breath, his arm thrown slackly across her hips.
Damn it. What had that nightmare been about? She used to suffer them when she was younger—flashes of premonition that warned of the day ahead. They always occurred before battle, though she’d not felt prescience grip her like that since she was cast out of Valhalla.
