Page 45 of The Girl the Sea Gave Back
I froze, looking up at his hard face, but he stared ahead, unblinking.
I’d already cut the corpse’s head off when Gunther and Jorrund found me near the gate. I’d told him that I had seen one of the Svell kill him, and he didn’t ask questions. He only walked into the forest without waiting for Jorrund and me to follow. Now, he was lying to Vigdis, but I didn’t know why.
Vigdis let out a long breath before he set the head down onto the table beside his bowl of stew. “Make sure they’re ready.” He spoke to Siv, but his attention landed on me when he finally looked up. His eyes bored into mine, a fragile silence falling over the tent.
Jorrund took my arm gently, pulling me away, and I looked back once more to Gunther, who still stood before the table. He didn’t look at me as Jorrund pushed the canvas open, his arm wrapping around my shoulder. “Are you alright?” He ran a worried hand over my hair and I resisted the urge to push him away.
“Am I alright?” I whispered hoarsely, stopping. “I just cut off a man’s head and carried it through the forest.”
“Of course. I’m sorry.” He lifted his hands before him. “Who was it?” When I didn’t answer, his wrinkled brow arched up over his slanted eyes knowingly. “Whose head was it?” he asked again.
I twisted my hands into my skirt. “Just a dead man in the village. I had to…” I swallowed, the weakness coming back into my legs. “I had to come back with something.”
But the truth was that in that moment, beneath the gate with Halvard staring down into my face, I couldn’t do it. There was something about him that felt too familiar. A feeling that pulled like an anchor in my chest when I saw him. If he was fated to die, he should have died in the glade. And I wasn’t going to be the one to change it. Not this time. I told myself it was because I’d seen enough death, but I knew it was more than that. I didn’t want the man who’d looked me in the eye to die. I didn’t want to think that I’d never see him again.
Jorrund surveyed me, the worry creasing the skin around his mouth as his eyes dropped down to my throat, where I could still feel the ache of Halvard’s hands. “What happened?”
I reached up, pulling the collar of my tunic up. “It’s nothing,” I said beneath my breath. “I need to speak with you.”
His gaze flickered up to my face. “What is it?”
“I think…” I stopped, thinking before I said it. “I think we’ve made a mistake.”
He looked around us warily before he put his arm back around me, leading me to our tent at the end of the row. Once we were inside, he turned to face me, lifting the torch between us. “What are you talking about?”
“It’s a mistake.”
“What is?”
“All of it. Utan, Ljós. Hylli. We have to stop them. We have to go back.”
“Tova, you saw what the future holds. Vigdis made a difficult decision, but it was the right one.”
“What if I was wrong? About the runes. About everything.” I sat down on the cot, putting my face into my hands. It had been haunting me, the thought that maybe I couldn’t see into the future. That maybe I didn’t understand the language of the Spinners or the will of the gods at all.
Jorrund’s hand landed on my shoulder and squeezed. “You weren’t wrong.”
“But I saw something when I took the henbane, Jorrund. Something…”
He crouched down before me. “What?” The firelight shifted in the wind coming in from outside and I watched his face change with it. “What did you see?”
“I think it was a memory. From before.”
He stilled. “Before? You mean, before Eydis brought you to us?”
But I didn’t believe that anymore, and I didn’t know if he did either. It was just something he said to make sense of things that couldn’t be understood. “I don’t know. But I think the Spinners are trying to speak to me, Jorrund. And there’s something about Halvard…” I called him by name without even realizing it and the word stung on my lips.
“Who?”
“The Nadhir from the glade.” I looked up at him. “Ithink this path is tangled with mine somehow. I think the gods will be angry with us if we don’t—”
He stood. “Tova, we cannot undo what has been done. We cannot stop a war that has already spilled this much blood.”
“But the gods—”
“Silence!” he roared suddenly and I flinched, recoiling. “What do you know of the gods? You’re a child.” He rubbed his forehead with the palm of his hand, taking a deep breath. “Remember your place, Tova. This is not for you to decide.”
I stared into my folded hands, pressing my tongue to the roof of my mouth to keep from speaking. Whatever bound me to Jorrund was like the ice clinging to the shores outside of Liera, growing thinner every moment.
