Page 5 of The Girl the Sea Gave Back

But the stones never lied. Not to me.

My eyes drifted over them again, the pace of my heart quickening.

“What do you see?” Jorrund’s voice was heavy when he finally spoke.

I stared at him, the weight of silence pushing down on me in the hot room until it was hard to draw breath.

“It’s alright, Tova,” he said, gently. “What lies in the future of the Svell?”

My eyes cut to Bekan, who stared into the fire, his gaze as hollow as the night his daughter died.

I reached out, the tip of my finger landing onHagalazbefore I answered.

“In the future, there are no Svell.”

CHAPTER TWO

HALVARD

“How many?” Espen barked, the pounding of his boots hitting the rocky path ahead of me like a racing heartbeat.

Aghi struggled to keep up, leaning into his staff and rocking from side to side as we made our way up the narrow trail that led away from the beach. “More than forty.”

Espen stopped short, turning on his heel to face us. “You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.” Aghi’s eyes met mine over Espen’s shoulder.

I’d known by the look on his face when I saw Aghi standing on the dock that something was wrong. But this… the entire village of Ljós was gone. Aghi and I had been there only a week ago, meeting with the village leader. Now, it was most likely nothing more than a pile of ash.

Espen drew in a deep breath, his hand tangling in his beard as he thought. “Are they waiting in the ritual house?”

“Yes,” Aghi answered.

I looked up, feeling eyes on us. The people of Hylli were tending to their morning chores, but their hands stilled on their work as we passed. They could feel that something was happening even if they couldn’t see it.

“It was the Svell?” I kept my voice low as a man shouldered around us, a line of silver fish slung over his back.

Espen’s jaw clenched. “Who else would it be?”

A fire was lit in his eyes that I hadn’t seen since the day I’d first met him, after the battle against the Herja that nearly wiped out the entirety of both our clans. It was something I recognized, the same fire that had lit the eyes of so many warriors I’d known as a boy up on the mountain. The hunger to spill blood was something that ran through the veins of both the Aska and the Riki, but we were the Nadhir now. And it had been ten years since that part of us had been awakened.

“What will you do?”

He didn’t answer aloud, but I could see in his face the weary look of a man who’d seen far more death than me.

We’d spoken many times about the tensions growing along the border with the Svell. The call to act had grown more insistent in the last few months, but we needed another ten years before we’d have a strong enough army to defend our lands and our people with better odds. We’d lost too many when the Herja came, and now many of the warriors who’d survived were too old to fight.

As if he could hear my thoughts, Aghi’s gaze drifted back to me. His leg had never recovered from the wound he suffered in the battle that defeated the Herja.

Espen led us up the path, an eerie quiet dragging behind us and covering the village in our wake. Spring had melted most of the ice on the fjord, but the crisp tinge of it still cut through on the wind that blew in from the sea. Beyond the rooftops, the mountain rose before a clear gray sky. My family had spent the winter in the snow-laden village where I was born and they wouldn’t be back for weeks. But if war was coming, it would draw every Nadhir to the fjord in a matter of days.

Freydis, Latham, and Mýra were already waiting when we came through the doors, their armor oiled and their weapons cleaned. Mýra’s red hair glowed around her fair face like fire, twisting down into a tight braid over her shoulder. She was wound as tight as rope, ready to snap. Beside her, Espen’s wife stood before the altar, his axe sheaths in her hands.

He turned, taking them onto his back, and she buckled them as he spoke. “Tell me.”

“More than forty dead.” Freydis answered first. “They moved on Ljós in the night, about twenty or thirty warriors. A few survivors made it to Utan by morning and riders were sent, but the Svell were already gone.”

“How do we know it wasn’t raiders?”

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