Snippets of memory flared behind his eyes. Runný, hauling Silla to her feet. Silla had grasped Runný’s arm. Formed a reflective shield. Rebounded Myrkur’s black flames at Him. Rey’s mind blurred.
Nothing made sense. Saga Volsik was here, hugging her sister. The impenetrable tree was now cracked clean down the middle, and the undead monsters had broken, chased from the grove by Jarl Agnar and his men.
“That’s my sister,” sobbed Saga.
Emotion caught deep in Rey’s chest. After seventeen years, the Volsik sisters were reunited. Rey would not interrupt them, but he lingered nearby, keeping a watchful eye for danger.
To his left, he caught sight of Hekla falling to her knees before a prone figure. “Hakonsson, you gods damned fool of a man. You tore your stitches! Do you know how long they took me?”
He could not hear Eyvind’s mumbled reply, but as Atli joined Hekla, Rey’s gaze shifted to another scene unfolding in the grove. The Forest Maiden strode toward the broken tree, a dozen grimwolves surrounding her. She looked as she had when last he’d seen her, only now human-sized. But with her green skin, antlers sprouting from her brow, and a fox tail bristling behind her, she looked every bit like a thing of myth and legend.
The Forest Maiden approached the split tree, and Rey watched in fascination as she placed her hand upon the ruined bark. The Maiden closed her eyes, almost as though listening for a pulse. Gods willing, life would never flow in that damnable tree again.
Her lips moved in an inaudible murmur, and Rey watched in fascination. Mushrooms of all shapes and sizes sprouted before his eyes—white clamshells unfurling like shelves up the tree; delicate, frilled mushrooms bursting from the bark. Upward they blossomed until they covered every surface of the tree.
Rey could sense them beneath him as well, burrowing in the soil and encasing the tree’s roots. He blinked in astonishment as the mushrooms feasted on the tree’s corpse before his very eyes.
For a single moment, Rey could have sworn he felt the pulse of the forest and a deep understanding of the complex thread work in the soil. He felt the parched, gasping trees all around him, finally able to draw breath. Death was all around them—skeleton saplings and brittle bracken; bone-dry grasses and graves of insects.
But as the mushrooms consumed the dead tree, Rey felt wonders happening beneath the soil—minuscule threads weaving into a web, nutrients from the dead tree flowing through them like blood through a vein. As the strange underground network reached dormant spores and seeds, they germinated with the burst of nutrition. As the web reached the other great hjarta trees in the grove, they were infused with life.
In this moment, Rey understood that the forest held its own sort of magic. The dead would feed the living. The elderly would nurture the seedlings. Life would return to these woods. In time, it would be all right.
“Married!” Silla exclaimed, and Rey’s deep connection to the woods snapped free. Dazed, he turned to Silla. She and her sister had disentangled and settled themselves cross-legged on a cloak. Silla’s smile was bigger than Rey had ever seen, warming him clean through.
But then he caught sight of a large form approaching the pair. Rey’s sword was drawn in an instant.
“Not another step forward,” he growled, the tip of his blade pressing into the middle of the man’s bare chest. Rey scowled, his gaze drifting downward, then swiftly snapping up. “Where are your breeches?”
The man’s eyes flashed a dangerous green. “Is…casualty of battle,” the warrior said, shrugging. “I suggest you put away your sword before I tear hands from your body and use them to decorate my wife’s horse.”
Inky-black markings pulsed on the man’s tanned skin, further raising Rey’s hackles. He expressed a thin ribbon of smoke, covering his concerningly low reserves with extra bravado. “I’ll roast you like a spring rabbit before you can try.”
“Kassandr,” came a woman’s voice. “Oh, gods, you impossible man.” A cloak flew through the air, smacking the green-eyed warrior on the side of the head.
Saga Volsik appeared by the man’s side and eyed Rey coldly. “Unhand my husband.” Shocked, Rey’s gaze flitted between Silla’s sister and the green-eyed warrior who was apparently her…husband?
“So protective, mywife,” said the man, grinning like a wildcat as he pulled the cloak around his shoulders. “It seems almost like you care for me.”
“Just cover yourself before you get frostbite,” Saga muttered.
Silla’s hand slid around Rey’s elbow, and she gently pulled his sword away. Rey discarded it in an instant, his hands moving to cup her jaw. “Sunshine,” he rasped, inspecting her for any signs of injury. There was a cut on her pale cheekbone, an egg-shaped swelling behind her ear. She hissed as his fingers probed her shoulder and thigh, but she had no broken bones. No deep wounds in need of stitching. She was a gods damned miracle.
Rey pressed his forehead to hers and asked the question he dreaded most. “Do you feel Him? Do you feel Myrkur?”
She wrapped her hands around his wrists, holding him to her. “No,” she whispered. “He’s gone.”
Rey met her eyes with a tremulous exhale, then kissed her because he couldn’t bear not to. “You did it,” he breathed, between kisses. “I knew you could—”
But the clearing of a throat made the pair break apart. Silla and Rey turned sheepishly toward Saga and her husband.
“Is sister of my Saga!” exclaimed the green-eyed man, the cloak now belted at his waist to cover his most prominent parts. The half-naked warrior’s smile somehow widened as his gaze landed on Silla. He took Silla’s hand in his and brushed his lips against her knuckles. “I am Kassandr Rurik of Zagadka,” the man continued, “son of high prince and husband of Saga.”
“Tone it down, Rurik,” muttered Saga, rolling her eyes.
“Nice to meet you,” said Silla, her cheeks flaming red. Rey wrapped a proprietary arm around Silla’s shoulders and pulled hertight to his chest. Looking over her head, he and Kassandr Rurik locked eyes, and the gleam that Rey found there told him this man was trouble.
“Oh!” Silla glanced up. “This is Rey!MyRey.”
