Page 2 of A Curse Carved in Bone
Though I’d tempted this fate, she still surprised me. Her fist struck my cheek and knocked me back. My head hit the mast, stars bursting in my eyes as Skade’s hands reached for my throat.
“You need to be put down,” she screamed in my face. “You are a plague, Hel-child!”
I jerked my knee up and slammed it into her cunt. The other woman rewarded me with a shriek but didn’t let go, fingers implacable around my throat.
Then Bjorn grabbed Skade around the waist. He hauled her off me, but she only turned her ire on him, and all went to chaos.
Thralls recoiled as the pair collided with them. The drakkar groaned and turned sideways, dipping into the swell of a wave. Water crashed over me, heavy and relentless. Everything tipped and I rolled, my eyes filled with wood and waves and blackened sky.
And then hands had me by the wrists, Bjorn’s skin hot against mine as he pinned me to the bottom of the vessel. “Are you trying to get us all killed?”
“Yes!” I screamed as the others struggled with the oars. “That is exactly what I’m trying to do!”
“If you die, you will never have answers!” He pressed down, holding me in place as I thrashed and tried to knee him in the balls. “You’ll never know the truth!”
“Do not speak to me of truth!”
To avoid my knees, he forced himself between my legs, hips in the crook of my pelvis as the ship rocked. Wholly against my will, my mind filled with memories of us in the cave when happiness had felt possible. Memories of his lips on mine, hands on my body, cock buried deep inside of me as he made me his. And my traitorous desires surged in defiance of fear and logic, my lust uncaring of the fact that the man it wanted was my enemy.
Only rage had the strength to drive thewantaway, and I reached for my anger even as I unleashed all the cruelty born of the pain in my heart. Wrapping my legs around Bjorn’s waist, I ground against him, my voice mocking as I said, “The truth that will regain you this?”
His grip on my wrists tightened as the drakkar rocked violently, and I dug the heel of my shoe into his back, feeling him press against me. “The truth that will get you back your pretty Freya so you can make her your wife?”
Lifting my head, I kissed him, catching his bottom lip hard enough between my teeth that he jerked away. “So that you can become a farmer with her? Have pretty daughters who look just like her? The truth that will ensure you grow old in her arms?”
I hurled the dream he’d given me in that cave back in his face, my rage relishing the flash of pain in his eyes because I wanted him to hurt as much as I did. “There is no truth that will bring me back to you, for you are a liar. A traitor. A fucking coward who does not deserve to see Valhalla!”
“You think you know everything, Freya,” he said. “But you know nothing.”
I spat in his face. “I know that I’ll hate you until my last breath, Bjorn. And that is something.”
“Hate me all you want.” He let go of my wrists. “But your last breath will not be today, Born-in-Fire.”
I watched him return to the oars, joining the effort to see the drakkar through the storm.
“The Allfather sees all that was and all that the Norns have said will be.” Harald had ceased rowing, and his gray eyes locked on mine. “Saga is his child and knowledge is his gift. Other seers might have answers, but Saga, it seems, is bound to your fate. It may be that he’ll show her the truths you so desperately desire.” Without waiting for a response, Harald faced forward again, muscles bunching as he rowed.
My anger slowly faded, and its absence left me hollow. Tilting my head back, I stared at the blackened sky and swirling clouds, lightning dancing among them. What I wouldn’t give to be fated. For higher powers to have already determined the course of my life, so all that I said, all that I did, and all that I ever wanted could be blamed upon them.
But the two drops of god’s blood in my veins, one from Hlin and one from Hel, meant I was accountable for everything I left in my wake. Failures and successes. Nightmares and dreams. Love and hate.
What did I want?
The question sank into my soul, because I needed an answer. Needed a purpose to pull me forward. To remain where I was, as I was, would mean incinerating myself from the inside out.
I want the truth.
I wanted to hear from her lips the future that Saga had foreseen because Odin’s children did not lie. Wanted the story of what had happened between her and Snorri. Wanted answers about whether Harald was as much of a villain as I’d been raised to believe.
But most of all, I needed the truth about who I was.
Climbing to my hands and knees, I crawled until I found a spot next to a thrall with heavily tattooed arms. Taking hold of the oar, I put my strength into it and looked to the rocky coast of Nordeland. The winds slackened and the seas began to ease, and if the Norns were watching, I was certain they feared for the future they had created.
Because I was Freya Born-in-Fire. Daughter of Hlin. Daughter of Hel.
And I would weave my own fate.
Clear skies shone overhead as we pushed the drakkar onto the beach. Every muscle in my body ached, and I felt no guilt leaving Harald’s thralls to drain the vessel as I walked onto the land that was more my home than any other. We’d landed at Stormnes, the point of land that jutted into the strait on which one could see across to Skaland on a clear day. The beach was narrow and rocky, and beyond it rose mountains covered with dense forest, their tops still white with snow.
