Filed to story: A Fate Inked In Blood Free
My heart skipped, unease pooling in my stomach as I ceased trying to extract my mare from his hold. “What did she say? And when?”
Why didn’t you tell me?
“I…” His throat moved as he swallowed. “It was a long time ago, when I was still a boy, but I remember it clearly.”
“You seem to remember everything about her very clearly and yet communicate none of it,” I snapped. “What did she say?”
Bjorn was silent, and nausea twisted my guts. For what he might say. And the fact that he kept it from me at all.
“She went into these strange trances when she was being told something by Odin,” he finally answered. “I was alone with her when she was suddenly seized by one. She told me that the shield maiden would unite Skaland, but that tens of thousands would be left dead in your wake. That you’d walk upon the ground like a plague, pitting friend against friend, brother against brother, and that all would fear you.”
His words settled into my core, and I struggled to breathe.
“Whatever she saw terrified her,” he continued. “I was young, and it sank into my mind that the shield maiden would be more monster than woman. Even as a grown man, I…I had this vision of what you’d be like.” He looked away. “It couldn’t have been further from the truth. Not a monster, but a beautiful and brave woman who rescues fish and walks through fire to protect others.”
My eyes burned and I blinked rapidly to keep tears from forming.
“I didn’t tell you, because you weren’t what my mother described,” Bjorn said. “I was certain that I’d remembered wrong. Or that you’d altered fate and that the future Odin had shown my mother no longer existed, not just the darkness and death, but all of it. Except then the tests began, the gods stepping onto the mortal plane to acknowledge you, and I could not deny that you were destined to lead.” He took a deep breath. “I watched you make choices to protect Halsar and it didn’t seem possible that you would become a monster who’d bring death and destruction. But after the siege of Grindill…”
“You decided that maybe I was a monster after all.” I choked out the words, horror strangling me.
Bjorn shook his head. “No. But that Snorri would turn you into one if you allowed him to control your fate. I thought hearing Steinunn’s song, seeing yourself like that, would drive you to walk a different path, but you just couldn’t escape the need to protect the pieces of shit you call family.”
I flinched. “Don’t speak about them that way.”
“Why not?” he snapped. “Despite all you do, all you’ve done for them, your brother called you a mad bitch. Your mother called you a whore. They aren’t worth allowing Snorri to turn you into a monster to make himself king.”
He wasn’t wrong. But neither was he right.
“I thought when you saw how your mother is living, you’d turn your back on them,” he said. “Yet though I watched you realize she profited from your pain, it changed nothing. I watched you listen to her tell you how time and again she’s chosen your brother and herself over you, and again, it changed nothing. You refuse to change your fate.”
“So you thought to do it for me?” My skin flushed with anger. “Because I’m not the only one with a god’s blood in my veins, with the power to make the Norns alter their plans. You can do it too.”
“I would tear their plans to shreds if it meant sparing you the fate my mother foresaw,” he said. “But I want you to choose to leave, Freya. All I’ve done is given you the opportunity.”
Though I wished he’d told me the whole truth sooner, I still found my anger fading. “I want to say yes, Bjorn. What I saw in Steinunn’s magic terrifies me. But if I go, I’m condemning my family to die.”
“They condemned themselves.”
Turning my mare, I walked a short distance away to stand on the cliffs overlooking the sea. Gulls sailed over the whitecaps, a north wind tugging my hair loose from its braid. It would be so easy to ride down to the shore. To find a merchant vessel from one of the lands far south of here and sail away, never looking back. Never even knowing if Snorri followed through on his threats.
Not knowing would be worse. To have the uncertainty of whether those I loved lived or died. Would happiness even be possible, or would the guilt poison whatever life I built?
“Hlin told my mother that if I possessed only avarice, my words would be curses, but if I possessed altruism, what divine power I might make my own was a fate yet unwoven.” I hesitated. “I know there is no way to know what she meant by that, but to me, it means that choosing others before myself will be how I achieve a destiny different from what your mother saw.” Turning my head to look at him, my breath caught, because I knew that making this choice meant giving him up. “I have to go back. I can’t leave knowing that they will die, because that would mean conceding to the avarice that Hlin warned of.”
I held my breath, waiting for Bjorn to react. Waiting for anger and condemnation for my choice. Instead, he exhaled softly. “How is it that the part of you that I hate the most is also the reason I love you?”
Love.
Emotion drowned me, threatening to double me over, and I wanted desperately to tell him that I loved him as well. That I loved him more than I’d ever dreamed was possible.
Except what did that even mean, given that I hadn’t chosen him? So instead I said, “If you want nothing more to do with me, I’d understand that. I wouldn’t fault you.”
Even if it breaks my heart.
“You’re mine, Born-in-Fire,” he answered, reaching out to take my hand. “And I’m yours, even if only the two of us know it.”
I clung to his hand, barely able to breathe. Knowing that if I looked at him I’d crack; instead I stared out at the fjord. In time to see a large drakkar with a blue-striped sail appear around the bend. “Bjorn…”
“I see it,” he answered, lifting his hand to shield his eyes. “Fuck.”
Unease filtered into my chest. “What is it?”
Or who?
“Skade.” Bjorn spat in the dirt. “We need to go.”
Snorri had mentioned the name Skade while we were in Fjalltindr, but I had no idea who she was. “Is she one of Harald’s warriors?”
“His hunter. Who he sends to find those who don’t wish to be found.” His throat moved as he swallowed. “She’s a child of Ullr.”
My stomach tightened, for I knew Ullr’s children had bows with magical arrows that never missed their target. “Who is she hunting?”