His hand slaps my cheek, breaking my concentration. The second hit to my face today draws blood. My teeth rip through my lip, and I land in the cold snow at my husband’s knees. Reaching for Shaw, I push my hands over his wounds with tears blurring my vision and look for the link in his coat.
Bjorn twists my hair, yanking me away as I scream, but Shaw moves to his feet.
“Thank you for finding the bow and the map. You won’t be punished too harshly.” Bjorn’s words sink like a stone in my stomach. “He can watch us punish you as he dies.”
Shaw moves with the reserve strength I didn’t know he had. His fist collides with Bjorn’s face, and I use the opportunity to search the snow where Shaw was kneeling. Blood coats my hands along with melting snow. Following that humming power, I finally feel the fucking link between my fingers. Shaw is wrestling with Bjorn, throwing punch after punch while Jorvik doesn’t seem to know what to do.
Connect the link, Rasha.
Vidarr’s voice is in my mind, and I look up to see a huge black eagle circling overhead.
“How?” I shout at the sky. Aslaug comes from the top of the ridge, and my worst nightmare unfolds. Claws out and jaw wide, she leaps at Bjorn, but he’s learned from previous encounters.
“No, Aslaug!” I yell while Jorvik wraps his body around mine, suffocating me.
“It’s for the best,” he grunts in my ear as I push and hit him.
Shaw screams when Bjorn twists his axe and slices through Aslaug’s pretty white belly. Swinging the axe again, Bjorn hits the cat clean across the neck, splattering blood on himself and Shaw. Shaw is spent, lying in the snow, trying to breath with broken ribs and exposed muscles.
“Fuck you.” I slam my knee up into Jorvik’s groin, and because he’s a complete pussy, he releases me. The bond is threatening to break between Shaw and I, my bones shaking as I try to hold ittogether. I remember what it felt like to bond the first link between us. What Vidarr’s magic felt like flowing through my hands.
That’s it. Bring the mountain down, my lady.
Vidarr’s words of encouragement are enough to spur me to run. Jorvik reaches for the quiver on my back, but he doesn’t reach me because I leap off the cliff.
I don’t look down. I don’t let my fear take hold. I have no business scaling the side of the mountain, but I’ll die if I don’t try. One foot over another, I am running far too fast to keep balanced as my feet trip over icy rocks. Hitting wet, prickly evergreen branches, I grab hold of anything to stop my descent and try to catch my breath.
Bjorn and Jorvik send another slew of arrows through the brush in my direction, but it doesn’t matter anymore.
“There is nowhere to run.” Jorvik’s words reverberate off the rocks. Pulling the bracelet off my wrist, I open the hidden compartment and find the unfinished end.
He promised this was enough to bind us forever.
Tears slide down my cheeks as I hold our new link against the two open sides. I need to make a triangle. After a minute, I don’t see any arrows coming down the mountain, so I run again. As soon as I make it past a line of trees, Jorvik’s accuracy lessons from our mother kick in, and his arrow buries itself in my thigh.
The pain is beyond anything I’ve ever felt. My screams are swallowed by the absolute shock that my brother shot me with an arrow.
“Come on, Rasha. I don’t want to kill my own sister,” he sneers. Looking up at him, I can see he’s half way through the path my body carved out as I tumbled down the steep tree-dotted incline. Over the gorge we all came from, there are massive sections of melting snow. Snow that could break at any moment and blanket this side of the mountain in another layer of frost.
I struggle to stand, blood streaming over my knee and into my boot. My muscles rip against the iron arrow embedded in my thigh as I bite down on my lip to not scream. Taking out Skadi’s bow, I plant my feet in the ground and aim high.
If I can cover the gorge with snow, no one will get through formonths until Spring, and by then, the reindeer will have moved on. Katrine will make sure of it.
“Vidarr, if your fucking listening, I need Katrine to know what happened,” I call to the skies. I don’t see his feathers or his yellow beak anymore, but I am out of time. Jorvik has his shot lined up already, and Bjorn is not far behind, carrying a dazed Joanna.
Shaw’s heartbeat is a dull thump in my own chest. Pulling the silver string back, I close my eyes. I can’t watch myself kill my own kin.
“I never wanted it to come to this,” I whisper, knowing Jorvik will never listen. The arrow comes easily, dusting my cheek with the familiar silver bristles. I open the channel with my hand pressed into the forefront of the slender bow and leave all that I am here on this mountain. I was always destined to wield this bow. Releasing the solid arrow, I watch as it flies fast and true into the weakest part of the snow-capped mountain top.
“You missed!” Jorvik hollers. Dropping to the ground to avoid him, I put the bow between my legs, letting the sheer pain explode through my body. After laying out the chain, I hold the last link over the two edges and press my palms together.
I promised to be yours. To bring you home. You promised you’d find me in all our lifetimes. Find me now.
Pink and purple dust swirls as I open my palms over the chain. Above me, the snow rumbles, making the most feared noise in the mountains.
“What have you done!” Jorvik yells as he realizes that he cannot outrun an avalanche. I repeat my prayer, knowing I don’t need fire to ignite the triangle. My connection to the Vanheim gives me all the power I need. Flames shoot out around me, protecting me from the arrows that Bjorn is volleying my way.
Holding the chain and the link together in my own power, I persevere the bond we worked so hard to make. As I close my eyes, I feel the plume of wet air coming down the mountain as rocks and trees begin to roll toward me.
