A thud hits the fiery, triangular channel, and all the flames are doused instantly. I feel her before I see her, but I can’t bring myself to enter the sacred feminine space. Smoke wafts over all of us, and Joanna’s elated voice breaks through the chaos.
“You’re alive!”
“I am. It’s good to see you,” Rasha chokes out. Aslaug runs to her, pummeling Rasha with big, furry paws. All three females are in a heap of dirt, snow, and ash with smiles on their faces.
“How did you know how to reach me?” She looks to Katrine who turns Rasha’s shoulders so she can see me. It’s a strange feeling of embarrassment to want to love someone beyond comparison when she is fully capable of caring for herself. I am humbled.
Rasha moves to her feet with that gorgeous glossy look in her eye and my chain wrapped around her arm.
“Where were you?” Jorvik doesn’t miss much, I’ll give him that.
“I had to die because of you,” Rasha snarls. Her ferocity makes me hard before I know what my body is doing.
“Do not blame me for your fucking foolishness. Where were you?” he asks her, then turns on me without waiting for her to answer. “And where did your brother go?”
My body heat rises in tune with hers.
“Vidarr was needed elsewhere,” I say, my eyes colliding with Rasha’s for the first time. Her beautiful lips fall open, but Joanna interjects, stomping over the threshold to cajole Jorvik.
“Obviously she didn’t die in the longboat because she is standing here, good as new. Let’s have a feast to welcome our huntress back home.” Joanna’s flat tone leaves no room for argument.
“Where is Harald?” Rasha asks her brother, stepping over the threshold to square herself to him with Katrine right behind her.
“Not here. Not yet anyway. Bjorn is staying with us to protect Harald’s interests.”
Hanging back, I walk around the triangle, picking up torches. Aslaug rubs her square head up and down Edith’s little body as the sturdy woman wipes tears from her eyes.
“You are not what you seem,” she says to me. I take off my coat, giving her an extra layer against the cold night.
“That may be true. I have to ask. Who is Rasha to you?”
“One of the many orphans I have cared for over the years. When her parents were killed, Jorvik dragged her here. She was an unruly child, so when he pledged their lives to the council, Rasha was thrown into the kitchens to work for her meals,” she explains. I am listening, but I can’t take my eyes offmymaiden huntress, glowing from her time in the Vanheim. My chain is pulling us together, but I stay away while she is speaking with her brother. The glare she is giving Jorvik holds decades of pain that I want to wipe from her memory, but it is what gives her a multifaceted heart. A heart I certainly don’t deserve.
“Thank you for putting your neck on the line with Jorvik,” I tell Edith. We start to walk back to the village, and I watch Rasha fully embrace her friends.
“I have participated in many rituals, but I have never felt a man leave the Mortal Realm until tonight. We are in the presence of the gods are we not?” Edith quietly asks, her wrinkled face roaming over mine. “The better question is who is Rasha to you?”
Patting Edith’s hand, I let my guard down. “She is a goddess in my eyes.”
Edith pokes me with a boney finger, and I look to see the old woman grinning from ear to ear. Shuffling away from me to join the women, I watch as they loop their arms around her. Rasha looks over her shoulder to see that I am still behind them.
Jorvik is leading the way, hopefully to catch Bjorn before he has a chance to find a horse and get word back to Harald’s traveling party. When we come to the edges of the huts and longhouses, Rasha hugs her friends and turns to me.
“Are you alright?” I ask. Against everything raging inside me, I stay planted across from her.
“I saw Skadi die. I met your brother Vali, and I learned how to open my own channel.” She speaks in an unrelenting tone, and I fight back the urge to kiss her. She went to the Vanheim and came back unscathed, which reaffirms everything I know in my soul.
“Vali is hurting,” I reply.
“I am hurt too. I am hurt that you didn’t tell me what happened the moment I came back from the shrine with her bow.”
Needing to touch her, I move closer. The air fractures with sparks from the chain, our bodies desperate to touch.
“I couldn’t. I am in exile because I tried to give Skadi everything she wanted. But what she wanted was mortality, and gods cannot change their fate!” I yell, giving my emotion an outlet. Rasha crosses the snowy ground with a swirling torrent of utter arousal and anger.
“From where I am standing, you don’t want to fulfill your fate either! You’ve been here pretending you are a blacksmith instead of being a leader.” Her fists are clenched, squeezing the chain, and my lungs collapse in my chest.
“You say that like you know what it is to deny yourself for hundreds of years,’ I shoot back, and her eyes widen. Why didn’t I remember that arguing with a woman is like trying to breathe while drowning?
