Page 18

I CHANGED FROM the dress and back into the drab tunic I’d been wearing when Balder brought me here. I couldn’t uncut my hair or coat my body in dirt like it used to be, but I could do this to make myself appear like a Viking again before Tova showed up at my doorstep.

It felt more foreign than it ought to. Even the simple tunics I’d been wearing were finer than this, and I found myself cringing at the rough way the fabric lay over my body.

Goddess wasn’t the right term for me. But I was becoming less Viking the longer I stayed here. To think, I thought I’d escape the first night I arrived. Back before dinner, I’d imagined. Yet here I remained, and now here my sister was.

I took the broadswords off my back and traded them for my axe again. Having the weight behind me—that felt Viking enough.

When I hung my swords back in the wardrobe, my fingers brushed against the thin edge of parchment. A note had been pinned there with a brass clip.

I pried it off the spoke and checked for a seal. There was none, only a thin cerulean ribbon holding a tiny, furled note. The ribbon fell open easily when tugged upon, and it slid to my feet. I opened it.

I didn’t know anyone’s handwriting here, so I checked for the name at the bottom first.

Balder.

I can’t image what you are thinking upon seeing your sister as one of the Champions. But from how you reacted, I imagine you want to protect her. Gods are not meant to interfere, but they always do, pulling the strings behind the matches to benefit their favorites. I cannot do much, but I will place an iron spear with a wooden hilt amongst the other weapons—appearing simple, but she will know it by the small emerald at the handle. It is fortified to never break and never fall from the hand that holds it. If Tova uses it, she will win.

My eyes scoured the page twice to realize the significance of what Balder had done for me. Tova would still need to make it through the second round, but she would survive the first. My lungs soaked in a huge breath of air. She had a chance. I pressed the paper to my chest. I could figure something out for the second round, but she would survive long enough to see that day.

Horses whinnied outside. Tova was here.

I stashed the parchment back in the wardrobe and locked the doors. Then I ran down the stairs to fling open the doors to a gentle evening light.

Tova was brought by the gruff guard in a chariot, her hands bound and a ball and chain attached to her foot as if she’d have any idea where to run if she could. She didn’t look when I opened the door, but inspected Hitta Haven with a calculated curiosity I knew well. She was assessing her surroundings, finding a way to use them to her advantage. Likely ready to run if the opportunity presented itself.

It wouldn’t. I’d been looking for the opportunity for days and hadn’t found it, and I wasn’t chained like a criminal.

The guard lifted the iron ball from the chariot and dropped it in the courtyard with little difficulty.

“One hour,”

he said. He gave me a hard look that told me not to make him regret this. Then he rode away, leaving a trail of dust behind him.

As soon as he’d gone, I wanted to collapse into Tova’s arms and feel her embrace again. I wanted to hold her close and promise everything would be okay. I wanted to hear her promise the same thing to me.

But I stayed planted on the stairs.

Seeing her again reminded me why I left home. Before I embraced her, I needed to understand where we stood. “Did you know?”

I asked, my voice filling the space between us.

Tova’s earlier anger was gone, and she almost appeared at ease as she finished taking in my new home. Finally, at the sound of my voice, her attention settled on me. “That I’d be brought here? I didn’t know until they took me this morning.”

I swallowed. I was frightened of the answer, but the question came out anyway. “Did you know if Trig intended to marry you the whole time?”

Her expression dipped slightly. From across the courtyard, I could see a storm ignite in her eyes. “No,”

she said with a forceful tone like she needed me to believe it. “I had no idea until Sigrid came running down the hill to tell us. I’d only spoken to Trig a handful of times before that, I swear it.”

I very badly wanted to believe the betrayal had been Trig’s alone. “There was no secret relationship between you two?”

She stepped to the foot of the stairs, as far as she could before the chain held her back. She tilted her chin to look up at me. “No, and now there will never be a relationship at all.”

A sliver of anger simmered there, and it drew me back.

She went on. “We should have been married by now. But now I’m going to die here.”

“You won’t die,”

I said. I started down the stairs. Closer, I could see the terror in her eyes. They burned with desperation. Her hair was unkempt, falling from her two braids to frame her face with wild whisps, and her tunic was bloodied to tell that her attempt to find me hadn’t been a kind one. “You didn’t have to chase after me.”

She laughed like it was a bitter joke. “What was I supposed to do? I knew Trig chased after you, then he returned all solemn and bloodied and wouldn’t talk about it. You were my best friend, and you were hurting. Of course I had to find you. I gave up everything to search for you, and I’ve probably lost the love of my life and the chance to lead the clan, trying to save you. Meanwhile, you’ve been here, living as a goddess and gallivanting around Asgard with a handsome god on your arm like you’ve forgotten all about us back home.”

I should be sympathetic. But her words struck me like a fist.

Gallivanting around Asgard. I’d barely breathed in between the moments I’d been trying to get home. I’d been scared out of my mind here. I’d thought of home more times than I could count.

But the sharpest blow came as she blamed me for what happened with Trig. It wasn’t her heart that had been broken.

I steadied myself, and clenched my teeth. “You do not get to blame me for driving a wedge between you and the boy I loved.”

She clenched a fist over her heart. “I love him!”

Her shout rang through the trees while silencing me.

“I’ve always loved him,”

she went on. Her voice cracked with the pressure of a great loss. “I’ve wanted Trig my whole life, but I didn’t know how to approach him. I was willing to be happy for you when he wanted to marry you, and I never would have said anything different. I certainly wouldn’t have abandoned my family merely over a broken heart.”

“A broken heart?”

I asked her. It was so much more than that. “It felt like my whole body was empty. I didn’t know how to return to a home that always valued you more than me, and watch as you had the only thing I had wanted. Broken? I was shattered.”

I ran my hands through my hair. “You should have told me you loved him that day on the beach when you heard he was proposing to you.”

“I couldn’t, and you know that.”

“Why, because you pitied me? I could have handled the truth.”

“I never pitied you. I took care of you our entire lives. I am not a bad person for trying to spare you pain when I could. And besides”—she looked around, and spread her arms wide–“it looks like you landed on your feet.”

“Hardly.”

Our words were heated. Our emotions high. And I feared my time in Asgard took more than the Viking from within me—it’d taken my sister as well. The one thing I never thought I’d lose. “I have done nothing but try to get back to Danmark. This isn’t home. You are.”

She didn’t shout anymore, and the quiet let me hear the threads of defeat in her voice. “We’ll never get that chance. Neither of us will escape this place.”

“We can.”

I dared to step forward again. “You can win.”

She thrust a finger north—in the direction of the arena. “You saw them just as I did. They are the strongest from the clans. I might survive the first day, but I won’t survive the week.”

“I have ways to help you,”

I told her. The topic of Trig’s betrayal wasn’t resolved between us, but the tension had shifted, and right now, the dilemma of the Champion Games seemed easier to take on. I might rather fight in it myself than go over our shared heartbreak again. “Balder has put a spear amongst the weapons that is sure to let you win.”

Her eyes flared wide. “A god is helping you?”

“A god is helping you,”

I pressed. “He’s helping you win.”

It should have brought her relief, but instead she drew away like something about it hurt her.

Tova clung her arms to her body and spoke with low tones. “You really are one of them.”

I frowned. “Tova, don’t be stupid here. Don’t deny the help.”

“I don’t trust them.”

“I do.”

I was all the way down the stairs now, looking her in the eye, clutching her hands in mine and begging her to take the help.

She ripped herself away from me.

“Your trust means nothing to me.”

It took effort, but she managed to drag the ball and chain back several steps until there was a distance between us again, only a few paces, but it felt like a mile.

“The shields are traps,”

I went on with urgency. “They are rigged to break easily. Don’t touch them. Take the spear with an iron point and small emerald in the hilt. That one will be stronger than the rest. Tova, listen to me!”

But her back was already turned. Her body was clenched with the effort of dragging her chains away. At the sound of shouting, the guard was returning, and soon the glint of his chariot came through the trees.

No, we were meant to have a whole meal together. But now that we couldn’t get along, I hardly got two minutes.

“If I survive, it’ll be because that is Odin’s will,”

Tova said over her shoulder. “I will not trust the gods to save me.”

“Then trust me! You’ll need the spear to survive the Champion Games,”

I shouted at her.

The words seemed to knock her off her feet, and she shook her head. “The Champion Games?”

she questioned. She looked over her shoulder. “You even sound like the gods.”

I’d forgotten we called it the Beckoning. But whatever name she gave it didn’t make it less lethal.

“Use the spear, not the shields,”

I pressed again.

The guard was back and picked up the ball and chain to help her onto the chariot.

“Tova,”

I pressed once more. “I am still your sister. I don’t want to see you die.”

I saw her suck in breath, and she held it in her chest. Then she let it out. “Then you may need to close your eyes.”

She stepped on the chariot and didn’t look back as she was taken back toward the arena, where she’d be thrown in the cells again to count down the minutes until her duel.

I could throw up.

She would use it. She wouldn’t be stupid enough to die.

But the worries tangled themselves inside me until they were all I could feel. When my stomach lurched, I hardly made it to the bushes before emptying the contents onto the ground.

Worries would do nothing. If Tova wouldn’t save herself, I would save her.

And when Ve came an hour later, I was still there, sitting on the steps, plotting.

“How did it go?”

he asked tentatively.

I ran my hand over my cheeks. “Painfully.”

I stood. “Tell me how to rig who wins.”

He was by my side in an instant. “Ruin, I admire your tenacity. You know I do. But some things cannot be interfered with.”

“Just tell me how.”

“There is no way.”

“There must be something I can do.”

He grabbed my hands. His eyes bore into mine. “Listen to me, this is a worse idea than when you decided to fight with Faoir. Do not get involved.”

I slipped from his grasp. “It doesn’t matter what rules you gods play by. I will dictate the winner.”

I started walking away.

Ve caught me by the elbow. “You can have all of Odin’s favor, and it still wouldn’t keep him from destroying you if you mess with the integrity of the champions.”

I spun around. “You don’t know me well enough yet, but I need to make one thing clear. For my sister, I would burn Asgard down.”

Our gazes collided. For the longest while, there was only the steady sound of his breathing and the rush of my own pulse in my ears. He took the sight of me in, back in my Viking clothes, and once more with the axe on my back. As if time had changed nothing at all, and I’d only just been dragged here from the vineyard.

The look of it seemed to disappoint him, and I watched him deflate.

Then he asked a question I wasn’t expecting.

“Even if you burned me with it?”

The words dug into me. I didn’t have time to process what he was asking.

“I can’t do this.”

I stepped away. The broken look on his face wasn’t one I’d soon forget. Like I was walking away from anything we might be. “I have to go save her.”

Before Ve could stop me again, I left him there, running off toward the one person who might be able to save Tova. I went to find Odin.